who stopped and stared at her with an appearance of great interest. He
was the same old man whom Captain Wragge had seen in the backyard at
St. Crux, at work on the model of a ship. All round the neighborhood he
was known, far and wide, as “the admiral’s coxswain.” His name was
Mazey. Sixty years had written their story of hard work at sea, and
hard drinking on shore, on the veteran’s grim and wrinkled face. Sixty
years had proved his fidelity, and had brought his battered old
carcass, at the end of the voyage, into port in his master’s house.
Seeing no one else of whom she could inquire, Magdalen requested the
old man to show her the way that led to the housekeeper’s room.
“I’ll show you, my dear,” said old Mazey, speaking in the high and
hollow voice peculiar to the deaf. “You’re the new maid—eh? And a
fine-grown girl, too! His honor, the admiral, likes a parlor-maid with
a clean run fore and aft. You’ll do, my dear—you’ll do.”
“You must not mind what Mr. Mazey says to you,” remarked the
housekeeper, opening her door as the old sailor expressed his approval
of Magdalen in these terms. “He is privileged to talk as he pleases;
and he is very tiresome and slovenly in his habits; but he means no
harm.”
With that apology for the veteran, Mrs. Drake led Magdalen first to the
pantry, and next to the linen-room, installing her, with all due
formality, in her own domestic dominions. This ceremony completed, the
new parlor-maid was taken upstairs, and was shown the dining-room,
which opened out of the corridor on the first floor. Here she was
directed to lay the cloth, and to prepare the table for one person
only—Mr. George Bartram not having returned with his uncle to St. Crux.
Mrs. Drake’s sharp eyes watched Magdalen attentively as she performed
this introductory duty; and Mrs. Drake’s private convictions, when the
table was spread, forced her to acknowledge, so far, that the new
servant thoroughly understood her work.
An hour later the soup-tureen was placed on the table; and Magdalen
stood alone behind the admiral’s empty chair, waiting her master’s
first inspection of her when he entered the dining-room.
A large bell rang in the lower regions—quick, shambling footsteps
pattered on the stone corridor outside—the door opened suddenly—and a
tall lean yellow old man, sharp as to his eyes, shrewd as to his lips,
fussily restless as to all his movements, entered the room, with two
huge Labrador dogs at his heels, and took his seat in a violent hurry.
The dogs followed him, and placed themselves, with the utmost gravity
and composure, one on each side of his chair. This was Admiral Bartram,
and these were the companions of his solitary meal.
“Ay! ay! ay! here’s the new parlor-maid, to be sure!” he began, looking
sharply, but not at all unkindly, at Magdalen. “What’s your name, my
good girl? Louisa, is it? I shall call you Lucy, if you don’t mind.
Take off the cover, my dear—I’m a minute or two late to-day. Don’t be
unpunctual to-morrow on that account; I am as regular as clock-work
generally. How are you after your journey? Did my spring-cart bump you
about much in bringing you from the station? Capital soup this—hot as
fire—reminds me of the soup we used to have in the West Indies in the
year Three. Have you got your half-mourning on? Stand there, and let me
see. Ah, yes, very neat, and nice, and tidy. Poor Mrs. Girdlestone! Oh
dear, dear, dear, poor Mrs. Girdlestone! You’re not afraid of dogs, are
you, Lucy? Eh? What? You like dogs? That’s right! Always be kind to
dumb animals. These two dogs dine with me every day, except when
there’s company. The dog with the black nose is Brutus, and the dog
with the white nose is Cassius. Did you ever hear who Brutus and
Cassius were? Ancient Romans? That’s right—-good girl. Mind your book
and your needle, and we’ll get you a good husband one of these days.
Take away the soup, my dear, take away the soup!”
This was the man whose secret it was now the one interest of Magdalen’s
life to surprise! This was the man whose name had supplanted hers in
Noel Vanstone’s will!
The fish and the roast meat followed; and the admiral’s talk rambled
on—now in soliloquy, now addressed to the parlor-maid, and now directed
to the dogs—as familiarly and as discontentedly as ever. Magdalen
observed with some surprise that the companions of the admiral’s dinner
had, thus far, received no scraps from their master’s plate. The two
magnificent brutes sat squatted on their haunches, with their great
heads over the table, watching the progress of the meal, with the
profoundest attention, but apparently expecting no share in it. The
roast meat was removed, the admiral’s plate was changed, and Magdalen
took the silver covers off the two made-dishes on either side of the
table. As she handed the first of the savory dishes to her master, the
dogs suddenly exhibited a breathless personal interest in the
proceedings. Brutus gluttonously watered at the mouth; and the tongue
of Cassius, protruding in unutterable expectation, smoked again between
his enormous jaws.
The admiral helped himself liberally from the dish; sent Magdalen to
the side-table to get him some bread; and, when he thought her eye was
off him, furtively tumbled the whole contents of his plate into
Brutus’s mouth. Cassius whined faintly as his fortunate comrade
swallowed the savory mess at a gulp. “Hush! you fool,” whispered the
admiral. “Your turn next!”
Magdalen presented the second dish. Once more the old gentleman helped
himself largely—once more he sent her away to the side-table—once more
he tumbled the entire contents of the plate down the dog’s throat,
selecting Cassius this time, as became a considerate master and an
impartial man. When the next course followed—consisting of a plain
pudding and an unwholesome “cream”—Magdalen’s suspicion of the function
of the dogs at the dinner-table was confirmed. While the master took
the simple pudding, the dogs swallowed the elaborate cream. The admiral
was plainly afraid of offending his cook on the one hand, and of
offending his digestion on the other—and Brutus and Cassius were the
two trained accomplices who regularly helped him every day off the
horns of his dilemma. “Very good! very good!” said the old gentleman,
with the most transparent duplicity. “Tell the cook, my dear, a capital
cream!”
Having placed the wine and dessert on the table, Magdalen was about to
withdraw. Before she could leave the room, her master called her back.
“Stop, stop!” said the admiral; “you don’t know the ways of the house
yet, Lucy. Put another wine-glass here, at my right hand—the largest
you can find, my dear. I’ve got a third dog, who comes in at dessert—a
drunken old sea-dog who has followed my fortunes, afloat and ashore,
for fifty years and more. Yes, yes, that’s the sort of glass we want.
You’re a good girl—you’re a neat, handy girl. Steady, my dear! there’s
nothing to be frightened at!”
A sudden thump on the outside of the door, followed by one mighty bark
from each of the dogs, had made Magdalen start. “Come in!” shouted the
admiral. The door opened; the tails of Brutus and Cassius cheerfully
thumped the floor; and old Mazey marched straight up to the right-hand
side of his master’s chair. The veteran stood there, with his legs wide
apart and his balance carefully adjusted, as if the dining-room had
been a cabin, and the house a ship pitching in a sea-way.
The admiral filled the large glass with port, filled his own glass with
claret, and raised it to his lips.
“God bless the Queen, Mazey,” said the admiral.
“God bless the Queen, your honor,” said old Mazey, swallowing his port,
as the dogs swallowed the made-dishes, at a gulp.
“How’s the wind, Mazey?”
“West and by Noathe, your honor.”
“Any report to-night, Mazey!”
“No report, your honor.”
“Good-evening, Mazey.”
“Good-evening, your honor.”
The after-dinner ceremony thus completed, old Mazey made his bow, and
walked out of the room again. Brutus and Cassius stretched themselves
on the rug to digest mushrooms and made gravies in the lubricating heat
of the fire. “For what we have received, the Lord make us truly
thankful,” said the admiral. “Go downstairs, my good girl, and get your
supper. A light meal, Lucy, if you take my advice—a light meal, or you
will have the nightmare. Early to bed, my dear, and early to rise,
makes a parlor-maid healthy and wealthy and wise. That’s the wisdom of
your ancestors—you mustn’t laugh at it. Good-night.” In those words
Magdalen was dismissed; and so her first day’s experience of Admiral
Bartram came to an end.
After breakfast the next morning, the admiral’s directions to the new
parlor-maid included among them one particular order which, in
Magdalen’s situation, it was especially her interest to receive. In the
old gentleman’s absence from home that day, on local business which
took him to Ossory, she was directed to make herself acquainted with
the whole inhabited quarter of the house, and to learn the positions of
the various rooms, so as to know where the bells called her when the
bells rang. Mrs. Drake was charged with the duty of superintending the
voyage of domestic discovery, unless she happened to be otherwise
engaged—in which case any one of the inferior servants would be equally
competent to act as Magdalen’s guide.
At noon the admiral left for Ossory, and Magdalen presented herself in
Mrs. Drake’s room, to be shown over the house. Mrs. Drake happened to
be otherwise engaged, and referred her to the head house-maid. The head
house-maid happened on that particular morning to be in the same
condition as Mrs. Drake, and referred her to the under-house-maids. The
under-house-maids declared they were all behindhand and had not a
minute to spare—they suggested, not too civilly, that old Mazey had
nothing on earth to do, and that he knew the house as well, or better,
than he knew his A B C. Magdalen took the hint, with a secret
indignation and contempt which it cost her a hard struggle to conceal.
She had suspected, on the previous night, and she was certain now, that
the women-servants all incomprehensibly resented her presence among
them with the same sullen unanimity of distrust. Mrs. Drake, as she had
seen for herself, was really engaged that morning over her accounts.
But of all the servants under her who had made their excuses not one
had even affected to be more occupied than usual. Their looks said
plainly, “We don’t like you; and we won’t show you over the house.”
She found her way to old Mazey, not by the scanty directions given her,
but by the sound of the veteran’s cracked and quavering voice, singing
in some distant seclusion a verse of the immortal sea-song—“Tom
Bowling.” Just as she stopped among the rambling stone passages on the
basement story of the house, uncertain which way to turn next, she
heard the tuneless old voice in the distance, singing these lines:
“His form was of the manliest beau-u-u-uty,
His heart was ki-i-ind and soft;
Faithful below Tom did his duty,
But now he’s gone alo-o-o-o-oft—
But now he’s go-o-o-one aloft!”
Magdalen followed in the direction of the quavering voice, and found
herself in a little room looking out on the back yard. There sat old
Mazey, with his spectacles low on his nose, and his knotty old hands
blundering over the rigging of his model ship. There were Brutus and
Cassius digesting before the fire again, and snoring as if they
thoroughly enjoyed it. There was Lord Nelson on one wall, in flaming
watercolors; and there, on the other, was a portrait of Admiral
Bartram’s last flagship, in full sail on a sea of slate, with a
salmon-colored sky to complete the illusion.
“What, they won’t show you over the house—won’t they?” said old Mazey.
“I will, then! That head house-maid’s a sour one, my dear—if ever there
was a sour one yet. You’re too young and good-looking to please
’em—that’s what you are.” He rose, took off his spectacles, and feebly
mended the fire. “She’s as straight as a poplar,” said old Mazey,
considering Magdalen’s figure in drowsy soliloquy. “I say she’s as
straight as a poplar, and his honor the admiral says so too! Come
along, my dear,” he proceeded, addressing himself to Magdalen again.
“I’ll teach you your Pints of the Compass first. When you know your
Pints, blow high, blow low, you’ll find it plain sailing all over the
house.”
He led the way to the door—stopped, and suddenly bethinking himself of
his miniature ship, went back to put his model away in an empty
cupboard—led the way to the door again—stopped once more—remembered
that some of the rooms were chilly—and pottered about, swearing and
grumbling, and looking for his hat. Magdalen sat down patiently to wait
for him. She gratefully contrasted his treatment of her with the
treatment she had received from the women. Resist it as firmly, despise
it as proudly as we may, all studied unkindness—no matter how
contemptible it may be—has a stinging power in it which reaches to the
quick. Magdalen only knew how she had felt the small malice of the
female servants, by the effect which the rough kindness of the old
sailor produced on her afterward. The dumb welcome of the dogs, when
the movements in the room had roused them from their sleep, touched her
more acutely still. Brutus pushed his mighty muzzle companionably into
her hand; and Cassius laid his friendly fore-paw on her lap. Her heart
yearned over the two creatures as she patted and caressed them. It
seemed only yesterday since she and the dogs at Combe-Raven had roamed
the garden together, and had idled away the summer mornings luxuriously
on the shady lawn.
Old Mazey found his hat at last, and they started on their exploring
expedition, with the dogs after them.
Leaving the basement story of the house, which was entirely devoted to
the servants’ offices, they ascended to the first floor, and entered
the long corridor, with which Magdalen’s last night’s experience had
already made her acquainted. “Put your back ag’in this wall,” said old
Mazey, pointing to the long wall—pierced at irregular intervals with
windows looking out over a courtyard and fish-pond—which formed the
right-hand side of the corridor, as Magdalen now stood. “Put your back
here,” said the veteran, “and look straight afore you. What do you
see?”—“The opposite wall of the passage,” said Magdalen.—“Ay! ay! what
else?”—“The doors leading into the rooms.”—“What else?”—“I see nothing
else.” Old Mazey chuckled, winked, and shook his knotty forefinger at
Magdalen, impressively. “You see one of the Pints of the Compass, my
dear. When you’ve got your back ag’in this wall, and when you look
straight afore you, you look Noathe. If you ever get lost hereaway, put
your back ag’in the wall, look out straight afore you, and say to
yourself: ‘I look Noathe!’ You do that like a good girl, and you won’t
lose your bearings.”
After administering this preliminary dose of instruction, old Mazey
opened the first of the doors on the left-hand side of the passage. It
led into the dining-room, with which Magdalen was already familiar. The
second room was fitted up as a library; and the third, as a
morning-room. The fourth and fifth doors—both belonging to dismantled
and uninhabited rooms, and both locked-brought them to the end of the
north wing of the house, and to the opening of a second and shorter
passage, placed at a right angle to the first. Here old Mazey, who had
divided his time pretty equally during the investigation of the rooms,
in talking of “his honor the Admiral,” and whistling to the dogs,
returned with all possible expedition to the points of the compass, and
gravely directed Magdalen to repeat the ceremony of putting her back
against the wall. She attempted to shorten the proceedings, by
declaring (quite correctly) that in her present position she knew she
was looking east. “Don’t you talk about the east, my dear,” said old
Mazey, proceeding unmoved with his own system of instruction, “till you
know the east first. Put your back ag’in this wall, and look straight
afore you. What do you see?” The remainder of the catechism proceeded
as before. When the end was reached, Magdalen’s instructor was
satisfied. He chuckled and winked at her once more. “Now you may talk
about the east, my dear,” said the veteran, “for now you know it.”
The east passage, after leading them on for a few yards only,
terminated in a vestibule, with a high door in it which faced them as
they advanced. The door admitted them to a large and lofty
drawing-room, decorated, like all the other apartments, with valuable
old-fashioned furniture. Leading the way across this room, Magdalen’s
conductor pushed back a heavy sliding-door, opposite the door of
entrance. “Put your apron over your head,” said old Mazey. “We are
coming to the Banqueting-Hall now. The floor’s mortal cold, and the
damp sticks to the place like cockroaches to a collier. His honor the
admiral calls it the Arctic Passage. I’ve got my name for it, too—I
call it, Freeze-your-Bones.”
Magdalen passed through the doorway, and found herself in the ancient
Banqueting-Hall of St. Crux.
On her left hand she saw a row of lofty windows, set deep in
embrasures, and extending over a frontage of more than a hundred feet
in length. On her right hand, ranged in one long row from end to end of
the opposite wall, hung a dismal collection of black, begrimed old
pictures, rotting from their frames, and representing battle-scenes by
sea and land. Below the pictures, midway down the length of the wall,
yawned a huge cavern of a fireplace, surmounted by a towering
mantel-piece of black marble. The one object of furniture (if furniture
it might be called) visible far or near in the vast emptiness of the
place, was a gaunt ancient tripod of curiously chased metal, standing
lonely in the middle of the hall, and supporting a wide circular pan,
filled deep with ashes from an extinct charcoal fire. The high ceiling,
once finely carved and gilt, was foul with dirt and cobwebs; the naked
walls at either end of the room were stained with damp; and the cold of
the marble floor struck through the narrow strip of matting laid down,
parallel with the windows, as a foot-path for passengers across the
wilderness of the room. No better name for it could have been devised
than the name which old Mazey had found. “Freeze-your-Bones” accurately
described, in three words, the Banqueting-Hall at St. Crux.
“Do you never light a fire in this dismal place?” asked Magdalen.
“It all depends on which side of Freeze-your-Bones his honor the
admiral lives,” said old Mazey. “His honor likes to shift his quarters,
sometimes to one side of the house, sometimes to the other. If he lives
Noathe of Freeze-your-Bones—which is where you’ve just come from—we
don’t waste our coals here. If he lives South of
Freeze-your-Bones—which is where we are going to next—we light the fire
in the grate and the charcoal in the pan. Every night, when we do that,
the damp gets the better of us: every morning, we turn to again, and
get the better of the damp.”
With this remarkable explanation, old Mazey led the way to the lower
end of the Hall, opened more doors, and showed Magdalen through another
suite of rooms, four in number, all of moderate size, and all furnished
in much the same manner as the rooms in the northern wing. She looked
out of the windows, and saw the neglected gardens of St. Crux,
overgrown with brambles and weeds. Here and there, at no great distance
in the grounds, the smoothly curving line of one of the tidal streams
peculiar to the locality wound its way, gleaming in the sunlight,
through gaps in the brambles and trees. The more distant view ranged
over the flat eastward country beyond, speckled with its scattered
little villages; crossed and recrossed by its network of “back-waters”;
and terminated abruptly by the long straight line of sea-wall which
protects the defenseless coast of Essex from invasion by the sea.
“Have we more rooms still to see?” asked Magdalen, turning from the
view of the garden, and looking about her for another door.
“No more, my dear—we’ve run aground here, and we may as well wear round
and put back again,” said old Mazey. “There’s another side of the
house—due south of you as you stand now—which is all tumbling about our
ears. You must go out into the garden if you want to see it; it’s built
off from us by a brick bulkhead, t’other side of this wall here. The
monks lived due south of us, my dear, hundreds of years afore his honor
the admiral was born or thought of, and a fine time of it they had, as
I’ve heard. They sang in the church all the morning, and drank grog in
the orchard all the afternoon. They slept off their grog on the best of
feather-beds, and they fattened on the neighborhood all the year round.
Lucky beggars! lucky beggars!”
Apostrophizing the monks in these terms, and evidently regretting that
he had not lived himself in those good old times, the veteran led the
way back through the rooms. On the return passage across
“Freeze-your-Bones,” Magdalen preceded him. “She’s as straight as a
poplar,” mumbled old Mazey to himself, hobbling along after his
youthful companion, and wagging his venerable head in cordial approval.
“I never was particular what nation they belonged to; but I always
_did_ like ’em straight and fine grown, and I always _shall_ like ’em
straight and fine grown, to my dying day.”
“Are there more rooms to see upstairs, on the second floor?” asked
Magdalen, when they had returned to the point from which they had
started.
The naturally clear, distinct tones of her voice had hitherto reached
the old sailor’s imperfect sense of hearing easily enough. Rather to
her surprise, he became stone deaf on a sudden, to her last question.
“Are you sure of your Pints of the Compass?” he inquired. “If you’re
not sure, put your back ag’in the wall, and we’ll go all over ’em
again, my dear, beginning with the Noathe.”
Magdalen assured him that she felt quite familiar, by this time, with
all the points, the “Noathe” included; and then repeated her question
in louder tones. The veteran obstinately matched her by becoming deafer
than ever.
“Yes, my dear,” he said, “you’re right; it _is_ chilly in these
passages; and unless I go back to my fire, my fire’ll go out—won’t it?
If you don’t feel sure of your Pints of the Compass, come in to me and
I’ll put you right again.” He winked benevolently, whistled to the
dogs, and hobbled off. Magdalen heard him chuckle over his own success
in balking her curiosity on the subject of the second floor. “I know
how to deal with ’em!” said old Mazey to himself, in high triumph.
“Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives—_I_ know how
to deal with ’em!”
Left by herself, Magdalen exemplified the excellence of the old
sailor’s method of treatment, in her particular case, by ascending the
stairs immediately, to make her own observations on the second floor.
The stone passage here was exactly similar, except that more doors
opened out of it, to the passage on the first floor. She opened the two
nearest doors, one after another, at a venture, and discovered that
both rooms were bed-chambers. The fear of being discovered by one of
the woman-servants in a part of the house with which she had no
concern, warned her not to push her investigations on the bedroom floor
too far at starting. She hurriedly walked down the passage to see where
it ended, discovered that it came to its termination in a lumber-room,
answering to the position of the vestibule downstairs, and retraced her
steps immediately.
On her way back she noticed an object which had previously escaped her
attention. It was a low truckle-bed, placed parallel with the wall, and
close to one of the doors on the bedroom side. In spite of its strange
and comfortless situation, the bed was apparently occupied at night by
a sleeper; the sheets were on it, and the end of a thick red
fisherman’s cap peeped out from under the pillow. She ventured on
opening the door near which the bed was placed, and found herself, as
she conjectured from certain signs and tokens, in the admiral’s
sleeping chamber. A moment’s observation of the room was all she dared
risk, and, softly closing the door again, she returned to the kitchen
regions.
The truckle-bed, and the strange position in which it was placed, dwelt
on her mind all through the afternoon. Who could possibly sleep in it?
The remembrance of the red fisherman’s cap, and the knowledge she had
already gained of Mazey’s dog-like fidelity to his master, helped her
to guess that the old sailor might be the occupant of the truckle-bed.
But why, with bedrooms enough and to spare, should he occupy that cold
and comfortless situation at night? Why should he sleep on guard
outside his master’s door? Was there some nocturnal danger in the house
of which the admiral was afraid? The question seemed absurd, and yet
the position of the bed forced it irresistibly on her mind.
Stimulated by her own ungovernable curiosity on this subject, Magdalen
ventured to question the housekeeper. She acknowledged having walked
from end to end of the passage on the second floor, to see if it was as
long as the passage on the first; and she mentioned having noticed with
astonishment the position of the truckle-bed. Mrs. Drake answered her
implied inquiry shortly and sharply. “I don’t blame a young girl like
you,” said the old lady, “for being a little curious when she first
comes into such a strange house as this. But remember, for the future,
that your business does not lie on the bedroom story. Mr. Mazey sleeps
on that bed you noticed. It is his habit at night to sleep outside his
master’s door.” With that meager explanation Mrs. Drake’s lips closed,
and opened no more.
Later in the day Magdalen found an opportunity of applying to old Mazey
himself. She discovered the veteran in high good humor, smoking his
pipe, and warming a tin mug of ale at his own snug fire.
“Mr. Mazey,” she asked, boldly, “why do you put your bed in that cold
passage?”
“What! you have been upstairs, you young jade, have you?” said old
Mazey, looking up from his mug with a leer.
Magdalen smiled and nodded. “Come! come! tell me,” she said, coaxingly.
“Why do you sleep outside the admiral’s door?”
“Why do you part your hair in the middle, my dear?” asked old Mazey,
with another leer.
“I suppose, because I am accustomed to do it,” answered Magdalen.
“Ay! ay!” said the veteran. “That’s why, is it? Well, my dear, the
reason why you part your hair in the middle is the reason why I sleep
outside the admiral’s door. I know how to deal with ’em!” chuckled old
Mazey, lapsing into soliloquy, and stirring up his ale in high triumph.
“Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives—_I_ know how
to deal with ’em!”
Magdalen’s third and last attempt at solving the mystery of the
truckle-bed was made while she was waiting on the admiral at dinner.
The old gentleman’s questions gave her an opportunity of referring to
the subject, without any appearance of presumption or disrespect; but
he proved to be quite as impenetrable, in his way, as old Mazey and
Mrs. Drake had been in theirs. “It doesn’t concern you, my dear,” said
the admiral, bluntly. “Don’t be curious. Look in your Old Testament
when you go downstairs, and see what happened in the Garden of Eden
through curiosity. Be a good girl, and don’t imitate your mother Eve.”
Late at night, as Magdalen passed the end of the second-floor passage,
proceeding alone on her way up to her own room, she stopped and
listened. A screen was placed at the entrance of the corridor, so as to
hide it from the view of persons passing on the stairs. The snoring she
heard on the other side of the screen encouraged her to slip round it,
and to advance a few steps. Shading the light of her candle with her
hand, she ventured close to the admiral’s door, and saw, to her
surprise, that the bed had been moved since she had seen it in the
day-time, so as to stand exactly across the door, and to bar the way
entirely to any one who might attempt to enter the admiral’s room.
After this discovery, old Mazey himself, snoring lustily, with the red
fisherman’s cap pulled down to his eyebrows, and the blankets drawn up
to his nose, became an object of secondary importance only, by
comparison with his bed. That the veteran did actually sleep on guard
before his master’s door, and that he and the admiral and the
housekeeper were in the secret of this unaccountable proceeding, was
now beyond all doubt.
“A strange end,” thought Magdalen, pondering over her discovery as she
stole upstairs to her own sleeping-room—“a strange end to a strange
day!”
CHAPTER II.
The first week passed, the second week passed, and Magdalen was, to all
appearance, no nearer to the discovery of the Secret Trust than on the
day when she first entered on her service at St. Crux.
But the fortnight, uneventful as it was, had not been a fortnight lost.
Experience had already satisfied her on one important point—experience
had shown that she could set the rooted distrust of the other servants
safely at defiance. Time had accustomed the women to her presence in
the house, without shaking the vague conviction which possessed them
all alike, that the newcomer was not one of themselves. All that
Magdalen could do in her own defense was to keep the instinctive female
suspicion of her confined within those purely negative limits which it
had occupied from the first, and this she accomplished.
Day after day the women watched her with the untiring vigilance of
malice and distrust, and day after day not the vestige of a discovery
rewarded them for their pains. Silently, intelligently, and
industriously—with an ever-present remembrance of herself and her
place—the new parlor-maid did her work. Her only intervals of rest and
relaxation were the intervals passed occasionally in the day with old
Mazey and the dogs, and the precious interval of the night during which
she was secure from observation in the solitude of her room. Thanks to
the superfluity of bed-chambers at St. Crux, each one of the servants
had the choice, if she pleased, of sleeping in a room of her own. Alone
in the night, Magdalen might dare to be herself again—might dream of
the past, and wake from the dream, encountering no curious eyes to
notice that she was in tears—might ponder over the future, and be
roused by no whisperings in corners, which tainted her with the
suspicion of “having something on her mind.”
Satisfied, thus far, of the perfect security of her position in the
house, she profited next by a second chance in her favor, which—before
the fortnight was at an end—relieved her mind of all doubt on the
formidable subject of Mrs. Lecount.
Partly from the accidental gossip of the women at the table in the
servants’ hall; partly from a marked paragraph in a Swiss newspaper,
which she had found one morning lying open on the admiral’s
easy-chair—she gained the welcome assurance that no danger was to be
dreaded, this time, from the housekeeper’s presence on the scene. Mrs.
Lecount had, as it appeared, passed a week or more at St. Crux after
the date of her master’s death, and had then left England, to live on
the interest of her legacy, in honorable and prosperous retirement, in
her native place. The paragraph in the Swiss newspaper described the
fulfillment of this laudable project. Mrs. Lecount had not only
established herself at Zurich, but (wisely mindful of the uncertainty
of life) had also settled the charitable uses to which her fortune was
to be applied after her death. One half of it was to go to the founding
of a “Lecompte Scholarship” for poor students in the University of
Geneva. The other half was to be employed by the municipal authorities
of Zurich in the maintenance and education of a certain number of
orphan girls, natives of the city, who were to be trained for domestic
service in later life. The Swiss journalist adverted to these
philanthropic bequests in terms of extravagant eulogy. Zurich was
congratulated on the possession of a Paragon of public virtue; and
William Tell, in the character of benefactor to Switzerland, was
compared disadvantageously with Mrs. Lecount.
The third week began, and Magdalen was now at liberty to take her first
step forward on the way to the discovery of the Secret Trust.
She ascertained from old Mazey that it was his master’s custom, during
the winter and spring months, to occupy the rooms in the north wing;
and during the summer and autumn to cross the Arctic passage of
“Freeze-your-Bones,” and live in the eastward apartments which looked
out on the garden. While the Banqueting-Hall remained—owing to the
admiral’s inadequate pecuniary resources—in its damp and dismantled
state, and while the interior of St. Crux was thus comfortlessly
divided into two separate residences, no more convenient arrangement
than this could well have been devised. Now and then (as Magdalen
understood from her informant) there were days, both in winter and
summer, when the admiral became anxious about the condition of the
rooms which he was not occupying at the time, and when he insisted on
investigating the state of the furniture, the pictures, and the books
with his own eyes. On these occasions, in summer as in winter, a
blazing fire was kindled for some days previously in the large grate,
and the charcoal was lighted in the tripod-pan, to keep the
Banqueting-Hall as warm as circumstances would admit. As soon as the
old gentleman’s anxieties were set at rest the rooms were shut up
again, and “Freeze-your-Bones” was once more abandoned for weeks and
weeks together to damp, desolation, and decay. The last of these
temporary migrations had taken place only a few days since; the admiral
had satisfied himself that the rooms in the east wing were none the
worse for the absence of their master, and he might now be safely
reckoned on as settled in the north wing for weeks, and perhaps, if the
season was cold, for months to come.
Trifling as they might be in themselves, these particulars were of
serious importance to Magdalen, for they helped her to fix the limits
of the field of search. Assuming that the admiral was likely to keep
all his important documents within easy reach of his own hand, she
might now feel certain that the Secret Trust was secured in one or
other of the rooms in the north wing.
In which room? That question was not easy to answer.
Of the four inhabitable rooms which were all at the admiral’s disposal
during the day—that is to say, of the dining-room, the library, the
morning-room, and the drawing-room opening out of the vestibule—the
library appeared to be the apartment in which, if he had a preference,
he passed the greater part of his time. There was a table in this room,
with drawers that locked; there was a magnificent Italian cabinet, with
doors that locked; there were five cupboards under the book-cases,
every one of which locked. There were receptacles similarly secured in
the other rooms; and in all or any of these papers might be kept.
She had answered the bell, and had seen him locking and unlocking, now
in one room, now in another, but oftenest in the library. She had
noticed occasionally that his expression was fretful and impatient when
he looked round at her from an open cabinet or cupboard and gave his
orders; and she inferred that something in connection with his papers
and possessions—it might or might not be the Secret Trust—irritated and
annoyed him from time to time. She had heard him more than once lock
something up in one of the rooms, come out and go into another room,
wait there a few minutes, then return to the first room with his keys
in his hand, and sharply turn the locks and turn them again. This
fidgety anxiety about his keys and his cupboards might be the result of
the inbred restlessness of his disposition, aggravated in a naturally
active man by the aimless indolence of a life in retirement—a life
drifting backward and forward among trifles, with no regular employment
to steady it at any given hour of the day. On the other hand, it was
just as probable that these comings and goings, these lockings and
unlockings, might be attributable to the existence of some private
responsibility which had unexpectedly intruded itself into the old
man’s easy existence, and which tormented him with a sense of
oppression new to the experience of his later years. Either one of
these interpretations might explain his conduct as reasonably and as
probably as the other. Which was the right interpretation of the two,
it was, in Magdalen’s position, impossible to say.
The one certain discovery at which she arrived was made in her first
day’s observation of him. The admiral was a rigidly careful man with
his keys.
All the smaller keys he kept on a ring in the breast-pocket of his
coat. The larger he locked up together; generally, but not always, in
one of the drawers of the library table. Sometimes he left them secured
in this way at night; sometimes he took them up to the bedroom with him
in a little basket. He had no regular times for leaving them or for
taking them away with him; he had no discoverable reason for now
securing them in the library-table drawer, and now again locking them
up in some other place. The inveterate willfulness and caprice of his
proceedings in these particulars defied every effort to reduce them to
a system, and baffled all attempts at calculating on them beforehand.
The hope of gaining positive information to act on, by laying artful
snares for him which he might fall into in his talk, proved, from the
outset, to be utterly futile.
In Magdalen’s situation all experiments of this sort would have been in
the last degree difficult and dangerous with any man. With the admiral
they were simply impossible. His tendency to veer about from one
subject to another; his habit of keeping his tongue perpetually going,
so long as there was anybody, no matter whom, within reach of the sound
of his voice; his comical want of all dignity and reserve with his
servants, promised, in appearance, much, and performed in reality
nothing. No matter how diffidently or how respectfully Magdalen might
presume on her master’s example, and on her master’s evident liking for
her, the old man instantly discovered the advance she was making from
her proper position, and instantly put her back in it again, with a
quaint good humor which inflicted no pain, but with a blunt
straightforwardness of purpose which permitted no escape. Contradictory
as it may sound, Admiral Bartram was too familiar to be approached; he
kept the distance between himself and his servant more effectually than
if he had been the proudest man in England. The systematic reserve of a
superior toward an inferior may be occasionally overcome—the systematic
familiarity never.
Slowly the time dragged on. The fourth week came; and Magdalen had made
no new discoveries. The prospect was depressing in the last degree.
Even in the apparently hopeless event of her devising a means of
getting at the admiral’s keys, she could not count on retaining
possession of them unsuspected more than a few hours—hours which might
be utterly wasted through her not knowing in what direction to begin
the search. The Trust might be locked up in any one of some twenty
receptacles for papers, situated in four different rooms; and which
room was the likeliest to look in, which receptacle was the most
promising to begin with, which position among other heaps of papers the
one paper needful might be expected to occupy, was more than she could
say. Hemmed in by immeasurable uncertainties on every side; condemned,
as it were, to wander blindfold on the very brink of success, she
waited for the chance that never came, for the event that never
happened, with a patience which was sinking already into the patience
of despair.
Night after night she looked back over the vanished days, and not an
event rose on her memory to distinguish them one from the other. The
only interruptions to the weary uniformity of the life at St. Crux were
caused by the characteristic delinquencies of old Mazey and the dogs.
At certain intervals, the original wildness broke out in the natures of
Brutus and Cassius. The modest comforts of home, the savory charms of
made dishes, the decorous joy of digestions accomplished on
hearth-rugs, lost all their attractions, and the dogs ungratefully left
the house to seek dissipation and adventure in the outer world. On
these occasions the established after-dinner formula of question and
answer between old Mazey and his master varied a little in one
particular. “God bless the Queen, Mazey,” and “How’s the wind, Mazey?”
were followed by a new inquiry: “Where are the dogs, Mazey?” “Out on
the loose, your honor, and be damned to ’em,” was the veteran’s
unvarying answer. The admiral always sighed and shook his head gravely
at the news, as if Brutus and Cassius had been sons of his own, who
treated him with a want of proper filial respect. In two or three days’
time the dogs always returned, lean, dirty, and heartily ashamed of
themselves. For the whole of the next day they were invariably tied up
in disgrace. On the day after they were scrubbed clean, and were
formally re-admitted to the dining-room. There, Civilization, acting
through the subtle medium of the Saucepan, recovered its hold on them;
and the admiral’s two prodigal sons, when they saw the covers removed,
watered at the mouth as copiously as ever.
Old Mazey, in his way, proved to be just as disreputably inclined on
certain occasions as the dogs. At intervals, the original wildness in
_his_ nature broke out; he, too, lost all relish for the comforts of
home, and ungratefully left the house. He usually disappeared in the
afternoon, and returned at night as drunk as liquor could make him. He
was by many degrees too seasoned a vessel to meet with any disasters on
these occasions. His wicked old legs might take roundabout methods of
progression, but they never failed him; his wicked old eyes might see
double, but they always showed him the way home. Try as hard as they
might, the servants could never succeed in persuading him that he was
drunk; he always scorned the imputation. He even declined to admit the
idea privately into his mind, until he had first tested his condition
by an infallible criterion of his own.
It was his habit, in these cases of Bacchanalian emergency, to stagger
obstinately into his room on the ground-floor, to take the model-ship
out of the cupboard, and to try if he could proceed with the
never-to-be-completed employment of setting up the rigging. When he had
smashed the tiny spars, and snapped asunder the delicate ropes—then,
and not till then, the veteran admitted facts as they were, on the
authority of practical evidence. “Ay! ay!” he used to say
confidentially to himself, “the women are right. Drunk again,
Mazey—drunk again!” Having reached this discovery, it was his habit to
wait cunningly in the lower regions until the admiral was safe in his
room, and then to ascend in discreet list slippers to his post. Too
wary to attempt getting into the truckle-bed (which would have been
only inviting the catastrophe of a fall against his master’s door), he
always walked himself sober up and down the passage. More than once
Magdalen had peeped round the screen, and had seen the old sailor
unsteadily keeping his watch, and fancying himself once more at his
duty on board ship. “This is an uncommonly lively vessel in a sea-way,”
he used to mutter under his breath, when his legs took him down the
passage in zigzag directions, or left him for the moment studying the
“Pints of the Compass” on his own system, with his back against the
wall. “A nasty night, mind you,” he would maunder on, taking another
turn. “As dark as your pocket, and the wind heading us again from the
old quarter.” On the next day old Mazey, like the dogs, was kept
downstairs in disgrace. On the day after, like the dogs again, he was
reinstated in his privileges; and another change was introduced in the
after-dinner formula. On entering the room, the old sailor stopped
short and made his excuses in this brief yet comprehensive form of
words, with his back against the door: “Please your honor, I’m ashamed
of myself.” So the apology began and ended. “This mustn’t happen again,
Mazey,” the admiral used to answer. “It shan’t happen again, your
honor.” “Very good. Come here, and drink your glass of wine. God bless
the Queen, Mazey.” The veteran tossed off his port, and the dialogue
ended as usual.
So the days passed, with no incidents more important than these to
relieve their monotony, until the end of the fourth week was at hand.
On the last day, an event happened; on the last day, the long deferred
promise of the future unexpectedly began to dawn. While Magdalen was
spreading the cloth in the dining-room, as usual, Mrs. Drake looked in,
and instructed her on this occasion, for the first time, to lay the
table for two persons. The admiral had received a letter from his
nephew. Early that evening Mr. George Bartram was expected to return to
St. Crux.
CHAPTER III.
After placing the second cover, Magdalen awaited the ringing of the
dinner-bell, with an interest and impatience which she found it no easy
task to conceal. The return of Mr. Bartram would, in all probability,
produce a change in the life of the house; and from change of any kind,
no matter how trifling, something might be hoped. The nephew might be
accessible to influences which had failed to reach the uncle. In any
case, the two would talk of their affairs over their dinner; and
through that talk—proceeding day after day in her presence—the way to
discovery, now absolutely invisible, might, sooner or later, show
itself.
At last the bell rang, the door opened, and the two gentlemen entered
the room together.
Magdalen was struck, as her sister had been struck, by George Bartram’s
resemblance to her father—judging by the portrait at Combe-Raven, which
presented the likeness of Andrew Vanstone in his younger days. The
light hair and florid complexion, the bright blue eyes and hardy
upright figure, familiar to her in the picture, were all recalled to
her memory, as the nephew followed the uncle across the room and took
his place at table. She was not prepared for this sudden revival of the
lost associations of home. Her attention wandered as she tried to
conceal its effect on her; and she made a blunder in waiting at table,
for the first time since she had entered the house.
A quaint reprimand from the admiral, half in jest, half in earnest,
gave her time to recover herself. She ventured another look at George
Bartram. The impression which he produced on her this time roused her
curiosity immediately. His face and manner plainly expressed anxiety
and preoccupation of mind. He looked oftener at his plate than at his
uncle, and at Magdalen herself (except one passing inspection of the
new parlor-maid, when the admiral spoke to her) he never looked at all.
Some uncertainty was evidently troubling his thoughts; some oppression
was weighing on his natural freedom of manner. What uncertainty? what
oppression? Would any personal revelations come out, little by little,
in the course of conversation at the dinner-table?
No. One set of dishes followed another set of dishes, and nothing in
the shape of a personal revelation took place. The conversation halted
on irregularly, between public affairs on one side and trifling private
topics on the other. Politics, home and foreign, took their turn with
the small household history of St. Crux; the leaders of the revolution
which expelled Louis Philippe from the throne of France marched side by
side, in the dinner-table review, with old Mazey and the dogs. The
dessert was put on the table, the old sailor came in, drank his loyal
toast, paid his respects to “Master George,” and went out again.
Magdalen followed him, on her way back to the servants’ offices, having
heard nothing in the conversation of the slightest importance to the
furtherance of her own design, from the first word of it to the last.
She struggled hard not to lose heart and hope on the first day. They
could hardly talk again to-morrow, they could hardly talk again the
next day, of the French Revolution and the dogs. Time might do wonders
yet; and time was all her own.
Left together over their wine, the uncle and nephew drew their
easy-chairs on either side of the fire; and, in Magdalen’s absence,
began the very conversation which it was Magdalen’s interest to hear.
“Claret, George?” said the admiral, pushing the bottle across the
table. “You look out of spirits.”
“I am a little anxious, sir,” replied George, leaving his glass empty,
and looking straight into the fire.
“I am glad to hear it,” rejoined the admiral. “I am more than a little
anxious myself, I can tell you. Here we are at the last days of
March—and nothing done! Your time comes to an end on the third of May;
and there you sit, as if you had years still before you, to turn round
in.”
George smiled, and resignedly helped himself to some wine.
“Am I really to understand, sir,” he asked, “that you are serious in
what you said to me last November? Are you actually resolved to bind me
to that incomprehensible condition?”
“I don’t call it incomprehensible,” said the admiral, irritably.
“Don’t you, sir? I am to inherit your estate, unconditionally—as you
have generously settled it from the first. But I am not to touch a
farthing of the fortune poor Noel left you unless I am married within a
certain time. The house and lands are to be mine (thanks to your
kindness) under any circumstances. But the money with which I might
improve them both is to be arbitrarily taken away from me, if I am not
a married man on the third of May. I am sadly wanting in intelligence,
I dare say, but a more incomprehensible proceeding I never heard of!”
“No snapping and snarling, George! Say your say out. We don’t
understand sneering in Her Majesty’s Navy!”
“I mean no offense, sir. But I think it’s a little hard to astonish me
by a change of proceeding on your part, entirely foreign to my
experience of your character—and then, when I naturally ask for an
explanation, to turn round coolly and leave me in the dark. If you and
Noel came to some private arrangement together before he made his will,
why not tell me? Why set up a mystery between us, where no mystery need
be?”
“I won’t have it, George!” cried the admiral, angrily drumming on the
table with the nutcrackers. “You are trying to draw me like a badger,
but I won’t be drawn! I’ll make any conditions I please; and I’ll be
accountable to nobody for them unless I like. It’s quite bad enough to
have worries and responsibilities laid on my unlucky shoulders that I
never bargained for—never mind what worries: they’re not yours, they’re
mine—without being questioned and cross-questioned as if I was a
witness in a box. Here’s a pretty fellow!” continued the admiral,
apostrophizing his nephew in red-hot irritation, and addressing himself
to the dogs on the hearth-rug for want of a better audience. “Here’s a
pretty fellow? He is asked to help himself to two uncommonly
comfortable things in their way—a fortune and a wife; he is allowed six
months to get the wife in (we should have got her, in the Navy, bag and
baggage, in six days); he has a round dozen of nice girls, to my
certain knowledge, in one part of the country and another, all at his
disposal to choose from, and what does he do? He sits month after
month, with his lazy legs crossed before him; he leaves the girls to
pine on the stem, and he bothers his uncle to know the reason why! I
pity the poor unfortunate women. Men were made of flesh and blood, and
plenty of it, too, in my time. They’re made of machinery now.”
“I can only repeat, sir, I am sorry to have offended you,” said George.
“Pooh! pooh! you needn’t look at me in that languishing way if you
are,” retorted the admiral. “Stick to your wine, and I’ll forgive you.
Your good health, George. I’m glad to see you again at St. Crux. Look
at that plateful of sponge-cakes! The cook has sent them up in honor of
your return. We can’t hurt her feelings, and we can’t spoil our wine.
Here!”—The admiral tossed four sponge-cakes in quick succession down
the accommodating throats of the dogs. “I am sorry, George,” the old
gentleman gravely proceeded; “I am really sorry you haven’t got your
eye on one of those nice girls. You don’t know what a loss you’re
inflicting on yourself; you don’t know what trouble and mortification
you’re causing me by this shilly-shally conduct of yours.”
“If you would only allow me to explain myself, sir, you would view my
conduct in a totally different light. I am ready to marry to-morrow, if
the lady will have me.”
“The devil you are! So you have got a lady in your eye, after all? Why
in Heaven’s name couldn’t you tell me so before? Never mind, I’ll
forgive you everything, now I know you have laid your hand on a wife.
Fill your glass again. Here’s her health in a bumper. By-the-by, who is
she?”
“I’ll tell you directly, admiral. When we began this conversation, I
mentioned that I was a little anxious—”
“She’s not one of my round dozen of nice girls—aha, Master George, I
see that in your face already! Why are you anxious?”
“I am afraid you will disapprove of my choice, sir.”
“Don’t beat about the bush! How the deuce can I say whether I
disapprove or not, if you won’t tell me who she is?”
“She is the eldest daughter of Andrew Vanstone, of Combe-Raven.”
“Who!!!”
“Miss Vanstone, sir.”
The admiral put down his glass of wine untasted.
“You’re right, George,” he said. “I do disapprove of your choice
—strongly disapprove of it.”
“Is it the misfortune of her birth, sir, that you object to?”
“God forbid! the misfortune of her birth is not her fault, poor thing.
You know as well as I do, George, what I object to.”
“You object to her sister?”
“Certainly! The most liberal man alive might object to her sister, I
think.”
“It’s hard, sir, to make Miss Vanstone suffer for her sister’s faults.”
“_Faults_, do you call them? You have a mighty convenient memory,
George, when your own interests are concerned.”
“Call them crimes if you like, sir—I say again, it’s hard on Miss
Vanstone. Miss Vanstone’s life is pure of all reproach. From first to
last she has borne her hard lot with such patience, and sweetness, and
courage as not one woman in a thousand would have shown in her place.
Ask Miss Garth, who has known her from childhood. Ask Mrs. Tyrrel, who
blesses the day when she came into the house—”
“Ask a fiddlestick’s end! I beg your pardon, George, but you are enough
to try the patience of a saint. My good fellow, I don’t deny Miss
Vanstone’s virtues. I’ll admit, if you like, she’s the best woman that
ever put on a petticoat. That is not the question—”
“Excuse me, admiral—it _is_ the question, if she is to be my wife.”
“Hear me out, George; look at it from my point of view, as well as your
own. What did your cousin Noel do? Your cousin Noel fell a victim, poor
fellow, to one of the vilest conspiracies I ever heard of, and the
prime mover of that conspiracy was Miss Vanstone’s damnable sister. She
deceived him in the most infamous manner; and as soon as she was down
for a handsome legacy in his will, she had the poison ready to take his
life. This is the truth; we know it from Mrs. Lecount, who found the
bottle locked up in her own room. If you marry Miss Vanstone, you make
this wretch your sister-in-law. She becomes a member of our family. All
the disgrace of what she has done; all the disgrace of what she _may_
do—and the Devil, who possesses her, only knows what lengths she may go
to next—becomes _our_ disgrace. Good heavens, George, consider what a
position that is! Consider what pitch you touch, if you make this woman
your sister-in-law.”
“You have put your side of the question, admiral,” said George
resolutely; “now let me put mine. A certain impression is produced on
me by a young lady whom I meet with under very interesting
circumstances. I don’t act headlong on that impression, as I might have
done if I had been some years younger; I wait, and put it to the trial.
Every time I see this young lady the impression strengthens; her beauty
grows on me, her character grows on me; when I am away from her, I am
restless and dissatisfied; when I am with her, I am the happiest man
alive. All I hear of her conduct from those who know her best more than
confirms the high opinion I have formed of her. The one drawback I can
discover is caused by a misfortune for which she is not responsible—the
misfortune of having a sister who is utterly unworthy of her. Does this
discovery—an unpleasant discovery, I grant you—destroy all those good
qualities in Miss Vanstone for which I love and admire her? Nothing of
the sort—it only makes her good qualities all the more precious to me
by contrast. If I am to have a drawback to contend with—and who expects
anything else in this world?—I would infinitely rather have the
drawback attached to my wife’s sister than to my wife. My wife’s sister
is not essential to my happiness, but my wife is. In my opinion, sir,
Mrs. Noel Vanstone has done mischief enough already. I don’t see the
necessity of letting her do more mischief, by depriving me of a good
wife. Right or wrong, that is my point of view. I don’t wish to trouble
you with any questions of sentiment. All I wish to say is that I am old
enough by this time to know my own mind, and that my mind is made up.
If my marriage is essential to the execution of your intentions on my
behalf, there is only one woman in the world whom I _can_ marry, and
that woman is Miss Vanstone.”
There was no resisting this plain declaration. Admiral Bartram rose
from his chair without making any reply, and walked perturbedly up and
down the room.
The situation was emphatically a serious one. Mrs. Girdlestone’s death
had already produced the failure of one of the two objects contemplated
by the Secret Trust. If the third of May arrived and found George a
single man, the second (and last) of the objects would then have failed
in its turn. In little more than a fortnight, at the very latest, the
Banns must be published in Ossory church, or the time would fail for
compliance with one of the stipulations insisted on in the Trust.
Obstinate as the admiral was by nature, strongly as he felt the
objections which attached to his nephew’s contemplated alliance, he
recoiled in spite of himself, as he paced the room and saw the facts on
either side immovably staring him in the face.
“Are you engaged to Miss Vanstone?” he asked, suddenly.
“No, sir,” replied George. “I thought it due to your uniform kindness
to me to speak to you on the subject first.”
“Much obliged, I’m sure. And you have put off speaking to me to the
last moment, just as you put off everything else. Do you think Miss
Vanstone will say yes when you ask her?”
George hesitated.
“The devil take your modesty!” shouted the admiral. “This is not a time
for modesty; this is a time for speaking out. Will she or won’t she?”
“I think she will, sir.”
The admiral laughed sardonically, and took another turn in the room. He
suddenly stopped, put his hands in his pockets, and stood still in a
corner, deep in thought. After an interval of a few minutes, his face
cleared a little; it brightened with the dawning of a new idea. He
walked round briskly to George’s side of the fire, and laid his hand
kindly on his nephew’s shoulder.
“You’re wrong, George,” he said; “but it is too late now to set you
right. On the sixteenth of next month the Banns must be put up in
Ossory church, or you will lose the money. Have you told Miss Vanstone
the position you stand in? Or have you put that off to the eleventh
hour, like everything else?”
“The position is so extraordinary, sir, and it might lead to so much
misapprehension of my motives, that I have felt unwilling to allude to
it. I hardly know how I can tell her of it at all.”
“Try the experiment of telling her friends. Let them know it’s a
question of money, and they will overcome her scruples, if you can’t.
But that is not what I had to say to you. How long do you propose
stopping here this time?”
“I thought of staying a few days, and then—”
“And then of going back to London and making your offer, I suppose?
Will a week give you time enough to pick your opportunity with Miss
Vanstone—a week out of the fortnight or so that you have to spare?”
“I will stay here a week, admiral, with pleasure, if you wish it.”
“I don’t wish it. I want you to pack up your traps and be off
to-morrow.”
George looked at his uncle in silent astonishment.
“You found some letters waiting for you when you got here,” proceeded
the admiral. “Was one of those letters from my old friend, Sir Franklin
Brock?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was it an invitation to you to go and stay at the Grange?”
“Yes, sir.”
“To go at once?”
“At once, if I could manage it.”
“Very good. I want you to manage it; I want you to start for the Grange
to-morrow.”
George looked back at the fire, and sighed impatiently.
“I understand you now, admiral,” he said. “You are entirely mistaken in
me. My attachment to Miss Vanstone is not to be shaken in _that_
manner.”
Admiral Bartram took his quarter-deck walk again, up and down the room.
“One good turn deserves another, George,” said the old gentleman. “If I
am willing to make concessions on my side, the least you can do is to
meet me half-way, and make concessions on yours.”
“I don’t deny it, sir.”
“Very well. Now listen to my proposal. Give me a fair hearing, George—a
fair hearing is every man’s privilege. I will be perfectly just to
begin with. I won’t attempt to deny that you honestly believe Miss
Vanstone is the only woman in the world who can make you happy. I don’t
question that. What I do question is, whether you really know your own
mind in this matter quite so well as you think you know it yourself.
You can’t deny, George, that you have been in love with a good many
women in your time? Among the rest of them, you have been in love with
Miss Brock. No longer ago than this time last year there was a sneaking
kindness between you and that young lady, to say the least of it. And
quite right, too! Miss Brock is one of that round dozen of darlings I
mentioned over our first glass of wine.”
“You are confusing an idle flirtation, sir, with a serious attachment,”
said George. “You are altogether mistaken—you are, indeed.”
“Likely enough; I don’t pretend to be infallible—I leave that to my
juniors. But I happen to have known you, George, since you were the
height of my old telescope; and I want to have this serious attachment
of yours put to the test. If you can satisfy me that your whole heart
and soul are as strongly set on Miss Vanstone as you suppose them to
be, I must knock under to necessity, and keep my objections to myself.
But I _must_ be satisfied first. Go to the Grange to-morrow, and stay
there a week in Miss Brock’s society. Give that charming girl a fair
chance of lighting up the old flame again if she can, and then come
back to St. Crux, and let me hear the result. If you tell me, as an
honest man, that your attachment to Miss Vanstone still remains
unshaken, you will have heard the last of my objections from that
moment. Whatever misgivings I may feel in my own mind, I will say
nothing, and do nothing, adverse to your wishes. There is my proposal.
I dare say it looks like an old man’s folly, in your eyes. But the old
man won’t trouble you much longer, George; and it may be a pleasant
reflection, when you have got sons of your own, to remember that you
humored him in his last days.”
He came back to the fire-place as he said those words, and laid his
hand once more on his nephew’s shoulder. George took the hand and
pressed it affectionately. In the tenderest and best sense of the word,
his uncle had been a father to him.
“I will do what you ask me, sir,” he replied, “if you seriously wish
it. But it is only right to tell you that the experiment will be
perfectly useless. However, if you prefer my passing a week at the
Grange to my passing it here, to the Grange I will go.”
“Thank you, George,” said the admiral, bluntly. “I expected as much
from you, and you have not disappointed me.—If Miss Brock doesn’t get
us out of this mess,” thought the wily old gentleman, as he resumed his
place at the table, “my nephew’s weather-cock of a head has turned
steady with a vengeance!—We’ll consider the question settled for
to-night, George,” he continued, aloud, “and call another subject.
These family anxieties don’t improve the flavor of my old claret. The
bottle stands with you. What are they doing at the theaters in London?
We always patronized the theaters, in my time, in the Navy. We used to
like a good tragedy to begin with, and a hornpipe to cheer us up at the
end of the entertainment.”
For the rest of the evening, the talk flowed in the ordinary channels.
Admiral Bartram only returned to the forbidden subject when he and his
nephew parted for the night.
“You won’t forget to-morrow, George?”
“Certainly not, sir. I’ll take the dog-cart, and drive myself over
after breakfast.”
Before noon the next day Mr. George Bartram had left the house, and the
last chance in Magdalen’s favor had left it with him.
CHAPTER IV.
When the servants’ dinner-bell at St. Crux rang as usual on the day of
George Bartram’s departure, it was remarked that the new parlor-maid’s
place at table remained empty. One of the inferior servants was sent to
her room to make inquiries, and returned with the information that
“Louisa” felt a little faint, and begged that her attendance at table
might be excused for that day. Upon this, the superior authority of the
housekeeper was invoked, and Mrs. Drake went upstairs immediately to
ascertain the truth for herself. Her first look of inquiry satisfied
her that the parlor-maid’s indisposition, whatever the cause of it
might be, was certainly not assumed to serve any idle or sullen purpose
of her own. She respectfully declined taking any of the remedies which
the housekeeper offered, and merely requested permission to try the
efficacy of a walk in the fresh air.
“I have been accustomed to more exercise, ma’am, than I take here,” she
said. “Might I go into the garden, and try what the air will do for
me?”
“Certainly. Can you walk by yourself, or shall I send some one with
you?”
“I will go by myself, if you please, ma’am.”
“Very well. Put on your bonnet and shawl, and, when you get out, keep
in the east garden. The admiral sometimes walks in the north garden,
and he might feel surprised at seeing you there. Come to my room, when
you have had air and exercise enough, and let me see how you are.”
In a few minutes more Magdalen was out in the east garden. The sky was
clear and sunny; but the cold shadow of the house rested on the garden
walk and chilled the midday air. She walked toward the ruins of the old
monastery, situated on the south side of the more modern range of
buildings. Here there were lonely open spaces to breathe in freely;
here the pale March sunshine stole through the gaps of desolation and
decay, and met her invitingly with the genial promise of spring.
She ascended three or four riven stone steps, and seated herself on
some ruined fragments beyond them, full in the sunshine. The place she
had chosen had once been the entrance to the church. In centuries long
gone by, the stream of human sin and human suffering had flowed, day
after day, to the confessional, over the place where she now sat. Of
all the miserable women who had trodden those old stones in the bygone
time, no more miserable creature had touched them than the woman whose
feet rested on them now.
Her hands trembled as she placed them on either side of her, to support
herself on the stone seat. She laid them on her lap; they trembled
there. She held them out, and looked at them wonderingly; they trembled
as she looked. “Like an old woman!” she said, faintly, and let them
drop again at her side.
For the first time, that morning, the cruel discovery had forced itself
on her mind—the discovery that her strength was failing her, at the
time when she had most confidently trusted to it, at the time when she
wanted it most. She had felt the surprise of Mr. Bartram’s unexpected
departure, as if it had been the shock of the severest calamity that
could have befallen her. That one check to her hopes—a check which at
other times would only have roused the resisting power in her to new
efforts—had struck her with as suffocating a terror, had prostrated her
with as all-mastering a despair, as if she had been overwhelmed by the
crowning disaster of expulsion from St. Crux. But one warning could be
read in such a change as this. Into the space of little more than a
year she had crowded the wearing and wasting emotions of a life. The
bountiful gifts of health and strength, so prodigally heaped on her by
Nature, so long abused with impunity, were failing her at last.
She looked up at the far faint blue of the sky. She heard the joyous
singing of birds among the ivy that clothed the ruins. Oh the cold
distance of the heavens! Oh the pitiless happiness of the birds! Oh the
lonely horror of sitting there, and feeling old and weak and worn, in
the heyday of her youth! She rose with a last effort of resolution, and
tried to keep back the hysterical passion swelling at her heart by
moving and looking about her. Rapidly and more rapidly she walked to
and fro in the sunshine. The exercise helped her, through the very
fatigue that she felt from it. She forced the rising tears desperately
back to their sources; she fought with the clinging pain, and wrenched
it from its hold. Little by little her mind began to clear again: the
despairing fear of herself grew less vividly present to her thoughts.
There were reserves of youth and strength in her still to be wasted;
there was a spirit sorely wounded, but not yet subdued.
She gradually extended the limits of her walk; she gradually recovered
the exercise of her observation.
At the western extremity the remains of the monastery were in a less
ruinous condition than at the eastern. In certain places, where the
stout old walls still stood, repairs had been made at some former time.
Roofs of red tile had been laid roughly over four of the ancient cells;
wooden doors had been added; and the old monastic chambers had been
used as sheds to hold the multifarious lumber of St. Crux. No padlocks
guarded any of the doors. Magdalen had only to push them to let the
daylight in on the litter inside. She resolved to investigate the sheds
one after the other—not from curiosity, not with the idea of making
discoveries of any sort. Her only object was to fill up the vacant
time, and to keep the thoughts that unnerved her from returning to her
mind.
The first shed she opened contained the gardener’s utensils, large and
small. The second was littered with fragments of broken furniture,
empty picture-frames of worm-eaten wood, shattered vases, boxes without
covers, and books torn from their bindings. As Magdalen turned to leave
the shed, after one careless glance round her at the lumber that it
contained, her foot struck something on the ground which tinkled
against a fragment of china lying near it. She stooped, and discovered
that the tinkling substance was a rusty key.
She picked up the key and looked at it. She walked out into the air,
and considered a little. More old forgotten keys were probably lying
about among the lumber in the sheds. What if she collected all she
could find, and tried them, one after another, in the locks of the
cabinets and cupboards now closed against her? Was there chance enough
that any one of them might fit to justify her in venturing on the
experiment? If the locks at St. Crux were as old-fashioned as the
furniture—if there were no protective niceties of modern invention to
contend against—there was chance enough beyond all question. Who could
say whether the very key in her hand might not be the lost duplicate of
one of the keys on the admiral’s bunch? In the dearth of all other
means of finding the way to her end, the risk was worth running. A
flash of the old spirit sparkled in her weary eyes as she turned and
re-entered the shed.
Half an hour more brought her to the limits of the time which she could
venture to allow herself in the open air. In that interval she had
searched the sheds from first to last, and had found five more keys.
“Five more chances!” she thought to herself, as she hid the keys, and
hastily returned to the house.
After first reporting herself in the housekeeper’s room, she went
upstairs to remove her bonnet and shawl; taking that opportunity to
hide the keys in her bed-chamber until night came. They were crusted
thick with rust and dirt; but she dared not attempt to clean them until
bed-time secluded her from the prying eyes of the servants in the
solitude of her room.
When the dinner hour brought her, as usual, into personal contact with
the admiral, she was at once struck by a change in him. For the first
time in her experience the old gentleman was silent and depressed. He
ate less than usual, and he hardly said five words to her from the
beginning of the meal to the end. Some unwelcome subject of reflection
had evidently fixed itself on his mind, and remained there
persistently, in spite of his efforts to shake it off. At intervals
through the evening, she wondered with an ever-growing perplexity what
the subject could be.
At last the lagging hours reached their end, and bed-time came. Before
she slept that night Magdalen had cleaned the keys from all impurities,
and had oiled the wards, to help them smoothly into the locks. The last
difficulty that remained was the difficulty of choosing the time when
the experiment might be tried with the least risk of interruption and
discovery. After carefully considering the question overnight, Magdalen
could only resolve to wait and be guided by the events of the next day.
The morning came, and for the first time at St. Crux events justified
the trust she had placed in them. The morning came, and the one
remaining difficulty that perplexed her was unexpectedly smoothed away
by no less a person than the admiral himself! To the surprise of every
one in the house, he announced at breakfast that he had arranged to
start for London in an hour; that he should pass the night in town; and
that he might be expected to return to St. Crux in time for dinner on
the next day. He volunteered no further explanations to the housekeeper
or to any one else, but it was easy to see that his errand to London
was of no ordinary importance in his own estimation. He swallowed his
breakfast in a violent hurry, and he was impatiently ready for the
carriage before it came to the door.
Experience had taught Magdalen to be cautious. She waited a little,
after Admiral Bartram’s departure, before she ventured on trying her
experiment with the keys. It was well she did so. Mrs. Drake took
advantage of the admiral’s absence to review the condition of the
apartments on the first floor. The results of the investigation by no
means satisfied her; brooms and dusters were set to work; and the
house-maids were in and out of the rooms perpetually, as long as the
daylight lasted.
The evening passed, and still the safe opportunity for which Magdalen
was on the watch never presented itself. Bed-time came again, and found
her placed between the two alternatives of trusting to the doubtful
chances of the next morning, or of trying the keys boldly in the dead
of night. In former times she would have made her choice without
hesitation. She hesitated now; but the wreck of her old courage still
sustained her, and she determined to make the venture at night.
They kept early hours at St. Crux. If she waited in her room until
half-past eleven, she would wait long enough. At that time she stole
out on to the staircase, with the keys in her pocket, and the candle in
her hand.
On passing the entrance to the corridor on the bedroom floor, she
stopped and listened. No sound of snoring, no shuffling of infirm
footsteps was to be heard on the other side of the screen. She looked
round it distrustfully. The stone passage was a solitude, and the
truckle-bed was empty. Her own eyes had shown her old Mazey on his way
to the upper regions, more than an hour since, with a candle in his
hand. Had he taken advantage of his master’s absence to enjoy the
unaccustomed luxury of sleeping in a room? As the thought occurred to
her, a sound from the further end of the corridor just caught her ear.
She softly advanced toward it, and heard through the door of the last
and remotest of the spare bed-chambers the veteran’s lusty snoring in
the room inside. The discovery was startling, in more senses than one.
It deepened the impenetrable mystery of the truckle-bed; for it showed
plainly that old Mazey had no barbarous preference of his own for
passing his nights in the corridor; he occupied that strange and
comfortless sleeping-place purely and entirely on his master’s account.
It was no time for dwelling on the reflections which this conclusion
might suggest. Magdalen retraced her steps along the passage, and
descended to the first floor. Passing the doors nearest to her, she
tried the library first. On the staircase and in the corridors she had
felt her heart throbbing fast with an unutterable fear; but a sense of
security returned to her when she found herself within the four walls
of the room, and when she had closed the door on the ghostly quiet
outside.
The first lock she tried was the lock of the table-drawer. None of the
keys fitted it. Her next experiment was made on the cabinet. Would the
second attempt fail, like the first?
No! One of the keys fitted; one of the keys, with a little patient
management, turned the lock. She looked in eagerly. There were open
shelves above, and one long drawer under them. The shelves were devoted
to specimens of curious minerals, neatly labeled and arranged. The
drawer was divided into compartments. Two of the compartments contained
papers. In the first, she discovered nothing but a collection of
receipted bills. In the second, she found a heap of business documents;
but the writing, yellow with age, was enough of itself to warn her that
the Trust was not there. She shut the doors of the cabinet, and, after
locking them again with some little difficulty, proceeded to try the
keys in the bookcase cupboards next, before she continued her
investigations in the other rooms.
The bookcase cupboards were unassailable, the drawers and cupboards in
all the other rooms were unassailable. One after another she tried them
patiently in regular succession. It was useless. The chance which the
cabinet in the library had offered in her favor was the first chance
and the last.
She went back to her room, seeing nothing but her own gliding shadow,
hearing nothing but her own stealthy footfall in the midnight stillness
of the house. After mechanically putting the keys away in their former
hiding-place, she looked toward her bed, and turned away from it,
shuddering. The warning remembrance of what she had suffered that
morning in the garden was vividly present to her mind. “Another chance
tried,” she thought to herself, “and another chance lost! I shall break
down again if I think of it; and I shall think of it if I lie awake in
the dark.” She had brought a work-box with her to St. Crux, as one of
the many little things which in her character of a servant it was
desirable to possess; and she now opened the box and applied herself
resolutely to work. Her want of dexterity with her needle assisted the
object she had in view; it obliged her to pay the closest attention to
her employment; it forced her thoughts away from the two subjects of
all others which she now dreaded most—herself and the future.
The next day, as he had arranged, the admiral returned. His visit to
London had not improved his spirits. The shadow of some unconquerable
doubt still clouded his face; his restless tongue was strangely quiet,
while Magdalen waited on him at his solitary meal. That night the
snoring resounded once more on the inner side of the screen, and old
Mazey was back again in the comfortless truckle-bed.
Three more days passed—April came. On the second of the month
—returning as unexpectedly as he had departed a week before—Mr. George
Bartram re-appeared at St. Crux.
He came back early in the afternoon, and had an interview with his
uncle in the library. The interview over, he left the house again, and
was driven to the railway by the groom in time to catch the last train
to London that night. The groom noticed, on the road, that “Mr. George
seemed to be rather pleased than otherwise at leaving St. Crux.” He
also remarked, on his return, that the admiral swore at him for
overdriving the horses—an indication of ill-temper, on the part of his
master, which he described as being entirely without precedent in all
his former experience. Magdalen, in her department of service, had
suffered in like manner under the old man’s irritable humor: he had
been dissatisfied with everything she did in the dining-room; and he
had found fault with all the dishes, one after another, from the
mutton-broth to the toasted cheese.
The next two days passed as usual. On the third day an event happened.
In appearance, it was nothing more important than a ring at the
drawing-room bell. In reality, it was the forerunner of approaching
catastrophe—the formidable herald of the end.
It was Magdalen’s business to answer the bell. On reaching the
drawing-room door, she knocked as usual. There was no reply. After
again knocking, and again receiving no answer, she ventured into the
room, and was instantly met by a current of cold air flowing full on
her face. The heavy sliding door in the opposite wall was pushed back,
and the Arctic atmosphere of Freeze-your-Bones was pouring unhindered
into the empty room.
She waited near the door, doubtful what to do next; it was certainly
the drawing-room bell that had rung, and no other. She waited, looking
through the open doorway opposite, down the wilderness of the
dismantled Hall.
A little consideration satisfied her that it would be best to go
downstairs again, and wait there for a second summons from the bell. On
turning to leave the room, she happened to look back once more, and
exactly at that moment she saw the door open at the opposite extremity
of the Banqueting-Hall—the door leading into the first of the
apartments in the east wing. A tall man came out, wearing his great
coat and his hat, and rapidly approached the drawing-room. His gait
betrayed him, while he was still too far off for his features to be
seen. Before he was quite half-way across the Hall, Magdalen had
recognized—the admiral.
He looked, not irritated only, but surprised as well, at finding his
parlor-maid waiting for him in the drawing-room, and inquired, sharply
and suspiciously, what she wanted there? Magdalen replied that she had
come there to answer the bell. His face cleared a little when he heard
the explanation. “Yes, yes; to be sure,” he said. “I did ring, and then
I forgot it.” He pulled the sliding door back into its place as he
spoke. “Coals,” he resumed, impatiently, pointing to the empty scuttle.
“I rang for coals.”
Magdalen went back to the kitchen regions. After communicating the
admiral’s order to the servant whose special duty it was to attend to
the fires, she returned to the pantry, and, gently closing the door,
sat down alone to think.
It had been her impression in the drawing-room—and it was her
impression still—that she had accidentally surprised Admiral Bartram on
a visit to the east rooms, which, for some urgent reason of his own, he
wished to keep a secret. Haunted day and night by the one dominant idea
that now possessed her, she leaped all logical difficulties at a bound,
and at once associated the suspicion of a secret proceeding on the
admiral’s part with the kindred suspicion which pointed to him as the
depositary of the Secret Trust. Up to this time it had been her settled
belief that he kept all his important documents in one or other of the
suite of rooms which he happened to be occupying for the time being.
Why—she now asked herself, with a sudden distrust of the conclusion
which had hitherto satisfied her mind—why might he not lock some of
them up in the other rooms as well? The remembrance of the keys still
concealed in their hiding-place in her room sharpened her sense of the
reasonableness of this new view. With one unimportant exception, those
keys had all failed when she tried them in the rooms on the north side
of the house. Might they not succeed with the cabinets and cupboards in
the east rooms, on which she had never tried them, or thought of trying
them, yet? If there was a chance, however small, of turning them to
better account than she had turned them thus far, it was a chance to be
tried. If there was a possibility, however remote, that the Trust might
be hidden in any one of the locked repositories in the east wing, it
was a possibility to be put to the test. When? Her own experience
answered the question. At the time when no prying eyes were open, and
no accidents were to be feared—when the house was quiet—in the dead of
night.
She knew enough of her changed self to dread the enervating influence
of delay. She determined to run the risk headlong that night.
More blunders escaped her when dinner-time came; the admiral’s
criticisms on her waiting at table were sharper than ever. His hardest
words inflicted no pain on her; she scarcely heard him—her mind was
dull to every sense but the sense of the coming trial. The evening
which had passed slowly to her on the night of her first experiment
with the keys passed quickly now. When bed-time came, bed-time took her
by surprise.
She waited longer on this occasion than she had waited before. The
admiral was at home; he might alter his mind and go downstairs again,
after he had gone up to his room; he might have forgotten something in
the library and might return to fetch it. Midnight struck from the
clock in the servants’ hall before she ventured out of her room, with
the keys again in her pocket, with the candle again in her hand.
At the first of the stairs on which she set her foot to descend, an
all-mastering hesitation, an unintelligible shrinking from some peril
unknown, seized her on a sudden. She waited, and reasoned with herself.
She had recoiled from no sacrifices, she had yielded to no fears, in
carrying out the stratagem by which she had gained admission to St.
Crux; and now, when the long array of difficulties at the outset had
been patiently conquered, now, when by sheer force of resolution the
starting-point was gained, she hesitated to advance. “I shrank from
nothing to get here,” she said to herself. “What madness possesses me
that I shrink now?”
Every pulse in her quickened at the thought, with an animating shame
that nerved her to go on. She descended the stairs, from the third
floor to the second, from the second to the first, without trusting
herself to pause again within easy reach of her own room. In another
minute, she had reached the end of the corridor, had crossed the
vestibule, and had entered the drawing-room. It was only when her grasp
was on the heavy brass handle of the sliding door—it was only at the
moment before she pushed the door back—that she waited to take breath.
The Banqueting-Hall was close on the other side of the wooden partition
against which she stood; her excited imagination felt the death-like
chill of it flowing over her already.
She pushed back the sliding door a few inches—and stopped in momentary
alarm. When the admiral had closed it in her presence that day, she had
heard no noise. When old Mazey had opened it to show her the rooms in
the east wing, she had heard no noise. Now, in the night silence, she
noticed for the first time that the door made a sound—a dull, rushing
sound, like the wind.
She roused herself, and pushed it further back—pushed it halfway into
the hollow chamber in the wall constructed to receive it. She advanced
boldly into the gap, and met the night view of the Banqueting-Hall face
to face.
The moon was rounding the southern side of the house. Her paling beams
streamed through the nearer windows, and lay in long strips of slanting
light on the marble pavement of the Hall. The black shadows of the
pediments between each window, alternating with the strips of light,
heightened the wan glare of the moonshine on the floor. Toward its
lower end, the Hall melted mysteriously into darkness. The ceiling was
lost to view; the yawning fire-place, the overhanging mantel-piece, the
long row of battle pictures above, were all swallowed up in night. But
one visible object was discernible, besides the gleaming windows and
the moon-striped floor. Midway in the last and furthest of the strips
of light, the tripod rose erect on its gaunt black legs, like a monster
called to life by the moon—a monster rising through the light, and
melting invisibly into the upper shadows of the Hall. Far and near, all
sound lay dead, drowned in the stagnant cold. The soothing hush of
night was awful here. The deep abysses of darkness hid abysses of
silence more immeasurable still.
She stood motionless in the door-way, with straining eyes, with
straining ears. She looked for some moving thing, she listened for some
rising sound, and looked and listened in vain. A quick ceaseless
shivering ran through her from head to foot. The shivering of fear, or
the shivering of cold? The bare doubt roused her resolute will. “Now,”
she thought, advancing a step through the door-way, “or never! I’ll
count the strips of moonlight three times over, and cross the Hall.”
“One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two,
three, four, five.”
As the final number passed her lips at the third time of counting, she
crossed the Hall. Looking for nothing, listening for nothing, one hand
holding the candle, the other mechanically grasping the folds of her
dress, she sped, ghost-like, down the length of the ghostly place. She
reached the door of the first of the eastern rooms, opened it, and ran
in. The sudden relief of attaining a refuge, the sudden entrance into a
new atmosphere, overpowered her for the moment. She had just time to
put the candle safely on a table before she dropped giddy and
breathless into the nearest chair.
Little by little she felt the rest quieting her. In a few minutes she
became conscious of the triumph of having won her way to the east
rooms. In a few minutes she was strong enough to rise from the chair,
to take the keys from her pocket, and to look round her.
The first objects of furniture in the room which attracted her
attention were an old bureau of carved oak, and a heavy buhl table with
a cabinet attached. She tried the bureau first; it looked the likeliest
receptacle for papers of the two. Three of the keys proved to be of a
size to enter the lock, but none of them would turn it. The bureau was
unassailable. She left it, and paused to trim the wick of the candle
before she tried the buhl cabinet next.
At the moment when she raised her hand to the candle, she heard the
stillness of the Banqueting-Hall shudder with the terror of a sound—a
sound faint and momentary, like the distant rushing of the wind.
The sliding door in the drawing-room had moved.
Which way had it moved? Had an unknown hand pushed it back in its
socket further than she had pushed it, or pulled it to again, and
closed it? The horror of being shut out all night, by some
undiscoverable agency, from the life of the house, was stronger in her
than the horror of looking across the Banqueting-Hall. She made
desperately for the door of the room.
It had fallen to silently after her when she had come in, but it was
not closed. She pulled it open, and looked.
The sight that met her eyes rooted her, panic-stricken, to the spot.
Close to the first of the row of windows, counting from the
drawing-room, and full in the gleam of it, she saw a solitary figure.
It stood motionless, rising out of the furthest strip of moonlight on
the floor. As she looked, it suddenly disappeared. In another instant
she saw it again, in the second strip of moonlight—lost it again—saw it
in the third strip—lost it once more—and saw it in the fourth. Moment
by moment it advanced, now mysteriously lost in the shadow, now
suddenly visible again in the light, until it reached the fifth and
nearest strip of moonlight. There it paused, and strayed aside slowly
to the middle of the Hall. It stopped at the tripod, and stood,
shivering audibly in the silence, with its hands raised over the dead
ashes, in the action of warming them at a fire. It turned back again,
moving down the path of the moonlight, stopped at the fifth window,
turned once more, and came on softly through the shadow straight to the
place where Magdalen stood.
Her voice was dumb, her will was helpless. Every sense in her but the
seeing sense was paralyzed. The seeing sense—held fast in the fetters
of its own terror—looked unchangeably straightforward, as it had looked
from the first. There she stood in the door-way, full in the path of
the figure advancing on her through the shadow, nearer and nearer, step
by step.
It came close.
The bonds of horror that held her burst asunder when it was within
arm’s-length. She started back. The light of the candle on the table
fell full on its face, and showed her—Admiral Bartram.
A long, gray dressing-gown was wrapped round him. His head was
uncovered; his feet were bare. In his left hand he carried his little
basket of keys. He passed Magdalen slowly, his lips whispering without
intermission, his open eyes staring straight before him with the glassy
stare of death. His eyes revealed to her the terrifying truth. He was
walking in his sleep.
The terror of seeing him as she saw him now was not the terror she had
felt when her eyes first lighted on him—an apparition in the
moon-light, a specter in the ghostly Hall. This time she could struggle
against the shock; she could feel the depth of her own fear.
He passed her, and stopped in the middle of the room. Magdalen ventured
near enough to him to be within reach of his voice as he muttered to
himself. She ventured nearer still, and heard the name of her dead
husband fall distinctly from the sleep-walker’s lips.
“Noel!” he said, in the low monotonous tones of a dreamer talking in
his sleep, “my good fellow, Noel, take it back again! It worries me day
and night. I don’t know where it’s safe; I don’t know where to put it.
Take it back, Noel—take it back!”
As those words escaped him, he walked to the buhl cabinet. He sat down
in the chair placed before it, and searched in the basket among his
keys. Magdalen softly followed him, and stood behind his chair, waiting
with the candle in her hand. He found the key, and unlocked the
cabinet. Without an instant’s hesitation, he drew out a drawer, the
second of a row. The one thing in the drawer was a folded letter. He
removed it, and put it down before him on the table. “Take it back,
Noel!” he repeated, mechanically; “take it back!”
Magdalen looked over his shoulder and read these lines, traced in her
husband’s handwriting, at the top of the letter: _To be kept in your
own possession, and to be opened by yourself only on the day of my
decease. Noel Vanstone._ She saw the words plainly, with the admiral’s
name and the admiral’s address written under them.
The Trust within reach of her hand! The Trust traced to its
hiding-place at last!
She took one step forward, to steal round his chair and to snatch the
letter from the table. At the instant when she moved, he took it up
once more, locked the cabinet, and, rising, turned and faced her.
In the impulse of the moment, she stretched out her hand toward the
hand in which he held the letter. The yellow candle-light fell full on
him. The awful death-in-life of his face—the mystery of the sleeping
body, moving in unconscious obedience to the dreaming mind—daunted her.
Her hand trembled, and dropped again at her side.
He put the key of the cabinet back in the basket, and crossed the room
to the bureau, with the basket in one hand and the letter in the other.
Magdalen set the candle on the table again, and watched him. As he had
opened the cabinet, so he now opened the bureau. Once more Magdalen
stretched out her hand, and once more she recoiled before the mystery
and the terror of his sleep. He put the letter in a drawer at the back
of the bureau, and closed the heavy oaken lid again. “Yes,” he said.
“Safer there, as you say, Noel—safer there.” So he spoke. So, time
after time, the words that betrayed him revealed the dead man living
and speaking again in the dream.
Had he locked the bureau? Magdalen had not heard the lock turn. As he
slowly moved away, walking back once more toward the middle of the
room, she tried the lid. It was locked. That discovery made, she looked
to see what he was doing next. He was leaving the room again, with the
basket of keys in his hand. When her first glance overtook him, he was
crossing the threshold of the door.
Some inscrutable fascination possessed her, some mysterious attraction
drew her after him, in spite of herself. She took up the candle and
followed him mechanically, as if she too were walking in her sleep. One
behind the other, in slow and noiseless progress, they crossed the
Banqueting-Hall. One behind the other, they passed through the
drawing-room, and along the corridor, and up the stairs. She followed
him to his own door. He went in, and shut it behind him softly. She
stopped, and looked toward the truckle-bed. It was pushed aside at the
foot, some little distance away from the bedroom door. Who had moved
it? She held the candle close and looked toward the pillow, with a
sudden curiosity and a sudden doubt.
The truckle-bed was empty.
The discovery startled her for the moment, and for the moment only.
Plain as the inferences were to be drawn from it, she never drew them.
Her mind, slowly recovering the exercise of its faculties, was still
under the influence of the earlier and the deeper impressions produced
on it. Her mind followed the admiral into his room, as her body had
followed him across the Banqueting-Hall.
Had he lain down again in his bed? Was he still asleep? She listened at
the door. Not a sound was audible in the room. She tried the door, and,
finding it not locked, softly opened it a few inches and listened
again. The rise and fall of his low, regular breathing instantly caught
her ear. He was still asleep.
She went into the room, and, shading the candle-light with her hand,
approached the bedside to look at him. The dream was past; the old
man’s sleep was deep and peaceful; his lips were still; his quiet hand
was laid over the coverlet in motionless repose. He lay with his face
turned toward the right-hand side of the bed. A little table stood
there within reach of his hand. Four objects were placed on it; his
candle, his matches, his customary night drink of lemonade, and his
basket of keys.
The idea of possessing herself of his keys that night (if an
opportunity offered when the basket was not in his hand) had first
crossed her mind when she saw him go into his room. She had lost it
again for the moment, in the surprise of discovering the empty
truckle-bed. She now recovered it the instant the table attracted her
attention. It was useless to waste time in trying to choose the one key
wanted from the rest—the one key was not well enough known to her to be
readily identified. She took all the keys from the table, in the basket
as they lay, and noiselessly closed the door behind her on leaving the
room.
The truckle-bed, as she passed it, obtruded itself again on her
attention, and forced her to think of it. After a moment’s
consideration, she moved the foot of the bed back to its customary
position across the door. Whether he was in the house or out of it, the
veteran might return to his deserted post at any moment. If he saw the
bed moved from its usual place, he might suspect something wrong, he
might rouse his master, and the loss of the keys might be discovered.
Nothing happened as she descended the stairs, nothing happened as she
passed along the corridor; the house was as silent and as solitary as
ever. She crossed the Banqueting-Hall this time without hesitation; the
events of the night had hardened her mind against all imaginary
terrors. “Now, I have got it!” she whispered to herself, in an
irrepressible outburst of exaltation, as she entered the first of the
east rooms and put her candle on the top of the old bureau.
Even yet there was a trial in store for her patience. Some minutes
elapsed—minutes that seemed hours—before she found the right key and
raised the lid of the bureau. At last she drew out the inner drawer! At
last she had the letter in her hand!
It had been sealed, but the seal was broken. She opened it on the spot,
to make sure that she had actually possessed herself of the Trust
before leaving the room. The end of the letter was the first part of it
she turned to. It came to its conclusion high on the third page, and it
was signed by Noel Vanstone. Below the name these lines were added in
the admiral’s handwriting:
“This letter was received by me at the same time with the will of my
friend, Noel Vanstone. In the event of my death, without leaving any
other directions respecting it, I beg my nephew and my executors to
understand that I consider the requests made in this document as
absolutely binding on me.
“ARTHUR EVERARD BARTRAM.”
She left those lines unread. She just noticed that they were not in
Noel Vanstone’s handwriting; and, passing over them instantly, as
immaterial to the object in view, turned the leaves of the letter, and
transferred her attention to the opening sentences on the first page.
She read these words:
“DEAR ADMIRAL BARTRAM—When you open my Will (in which you are named my
sole executor), you will find that I have bequeathed the whole residue
of my estate—after payment of one legacy of five thousand pounds—to
yourself. It is the purpose of my letter to tell you privately what the
object is for which I have left you the fortune which is now placed in
your hands.
“I beg you to consider this large legacy as intended——”
She had proceeded thus far with breathless curiosity and interest, when
her attention suddenly failed her. Something—she was too deeply
absorbed to know what—had got between her and the letter. Was it a
sound in the Banqueting-Hall again? She looked over her shoulder at the
door behind her, and listened. Nothing was to be heard, nothing was to
be seen. She returned to the letter.
The writing was cramped and close. In her impatient curiosity to read
more, she failed to find the lost place again. Her eyes, attracted by a
blot, lighted on a sentence lower in the page than the sentence at
which she had left off. The first three words she saw riveted her
attention anew—they were the first words she had met with in the letter
which directly referred to George Bartram. In the sudden excitement of
that discovery, she read the rest of the sentence eagerly, before she
made any second attempt to return to the lost place:
“If your nephew fails to comply with these conditions—that is to say,
if, being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my decease, he
fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed him to marry,
within six calendar months from that time—it is my desire that he shall
not receive—”
She had read to that point, to that last word and no further, when a
hand passed suddenly from behind her between the letter and her eye,
and gripped her fast by the wrist in an instant.
She turned with a shriek of terror, and found herself face to face with
old Mazey.
The veteran’s eyes were bloodshot; his hand was heavy; his list
slippers were twisted crookedly on his feet; and his body swayed to and
fro on his widely parted legs. If he had tested his condition that
night by the unfailing criterion of the model ship, he must have
inevitably pronounced sentence on himself in the usual form: “Drunk
again, Mazey; drunk again.”
“You young Jezebel!” said the old sailor, with a leer on one side of
his face, and a frown on the other. “The next time you take to
night-walking in the neighborhood of Freeze-your-Bones, use those sharp
eyes of yours first, and make sure there’s nobody else night walking in
the garden outside. Drop it, Jezebel! drop it!”
Keeping fast hold of Magdalen’s arm with one hand, he took the letter
from her with the other, put it back into the open drawer, and locked
the bureau. She never struggled with him, she never spoke. Her energy
was gone; her powers of resistance were crushed. The terrors of that
horrible night, following one close on the other in reiterated shocks,
had struck her down at last. She yielded as submissively, she trembled
as helplessly, as the weakest woman living.
Old Mazey dropped her arm, and pointed with drunken solemnity to a
chair in an inner corner of the room. She sat down, still without
uttering a word. The veteran (breathing very hard over it) steadied
himself on both elbows against the slanting top of the bureau, and from
that commanding position addressed Magdalen once more.
“Come and be locked up!” said old Mazey, wagging his venerable head
with judicial severity. “There’ll be a court of inquiry to-morrow
morning, and I’m witness—worse luck!—I’m witness. You young jade,
you’ve committed burglary—that’s what you’ve done. His honor the
admiral’s keys stolen; his honor the admiral’s desk ransacked; and his
honor the admiral’s private letters broke open. Burglary! Burglary!
Come and be locked up!” He slowly recovered an upright position, with
the assistance of his hands, backed by the solid resisting power of the
bureau; and lapsed into lachrymose soliloquy. “Who’d have thought it?”
said old Mazey, paternally watering at the eyes. “Take the outside of
her, and she’s as straight as a poplar; take the inside of her, and
she’s as crooked as Sin. Such a fine-grown girl, too. What a pity! what
a pity!”
“Don’t hurt me!” said Magdalen, faintly, as old Mazey staggered up to
the chair, and took her by the wrist again. “I’m frightened, Mr.
Mazey—I’m dreadfully frightened.”
“Hurt you?” repeated the veteran. “I’m a deal too fond of you—and more
shame for me at my age!—to hurt you. If I let go of your wrist, will
you walk straight before me, where I can see you all the way? Will you
be a good girl, and walk straight up to your own door?”
Magdalen gave the promise required of her—gave it with an eager longing
to reach the refuge of her room. She rose, and tried to take the candle
from the bureau, but old Mazey’s cunning hand was too quick for her.
“Let the candle be,” said the veteran, winking in momentary
forgetfulness of his responsible position. “You’re a trifle quicker on
your legs than I am, my dear, and you might leave me in the lurch, if I
don’t carry the light.”
They returned to the inhabited side of the house. Staggering after
Magdalen, with the basket of keys in one hand and the candle in the
other, old Mazey sorrowfully compared her figure with the straightness
of the poplar, and her disposition with the crookedness of Sin, all the
way across “Freeze-your-Bones,” and all the way upstairs to her own
door. Arrived at that destination, he peremptorily refused to give her
the candle until he had first seen her safely inside the room. The
conditions being complied with, he resigned the light with one hand,
and made a dash with the other at the key, drew it from the inside of
the lock, and instantly closed the door. Magdalen heard him outside
chuckling over his own dexterity, and fitting the key into the lock
again with infinite difficulty. At last he secured the door, with a
deep grunt of relief. “There she is safe!” Magdalen heard him say, in
regretful soliloquy. “As fine a girl as ever I sat eyes on. What a
pity! what a pity!”
The last sounds of his voice died out in the distance; and she was left
alone in her room.
Holding fast by the banister, old Mazey made his way down to the
corridor on the second floor, in which a night light was always
burning. He advanced to the truckle-bed, and, steadying himself against
the opposite wall, looked at it attentively. Prolonged contemplation of
his own resting-place for the night apparently failed to satisfy him.
He shook his head ominously, and, taking from the side-pocket of his
great-coat a pair of old patched slippers, surveyed them with an aspect
of illimitable doubt. “I’m all abroad to-night,” he mumbled to himself.
“Troubled in my mind—that’s what it is—troubled in my mind.”
The old patched slippers and the veteran’s existing perplexities
happened to be intimately associated one with the other, in the
relation of cause and effect. The slippers belonged to the admiral, who
had taken one of his unreasonable fancies to this particular pair, and
who still persisted in wearing them long after they were unfit for his
service. Early that afternoon old Mazey had taken the slippers to the
village cobbler to get them repaired on the spot, before his master
called for them the next morning; he sat superintending the progress
and completion of the work until evening came, when he and the cobbler
betook themselves to the village inn to drink each other’s healths at
parting. They had prolonged this social ceremony till far into the
night, and they had parted, as a necessary consequence, in a finished
and perfect state of intoxication on either side.
If the drinking-bout had led to no other result than those night
wanderings in the grounds of St. Crux, which had shown old Mazey the
light in the east windows, his memory would unquestionably have
presented it to him the next morning in the aspect of one of the
praiseworthy achievements of his life. But another consequence had
sprung from it, which the old sailor now saw dimly, through the
interposing bewilderment left in his brain by the drink. He had
committed a breach of discipline, and a breach of trust. In plainer
words, he had deserted his post.
The one safeguard against Admiral Bartram’s constitutional tendency to
somnambulism was the watch and ward which his faithful old servant kept
outside his door. No entreaties had ever prevailed on him to submit to
the usual precaution taken in such cases. He peremptorily declined to
be locked into his room; he even ignored his own liability, whenever a
dream disturbed him, to walk in his sleep. Over and over again, old
Mazey had been roused by the admiral’s attempts to push past the
truckle-bed, or to step over it, in his sleep; and over and over again,
when the veteran had reported the fact the next morning, his master had
declined to believe him. As the old sailor now stood, staring in vacant
inquiry at the bed-chamber door, these incidents of the past rose
confusedly on his memory, and forced on him the serious question
whether the admiral had left his room during the earlier hours of the
night. If by any mischance the sleep-walking fit had seized him, the
slippers in old Mazey’s hand pointed straight to the conclusion that
followed—his master must have passed barefoot in the cold night over
the stone stairs and passages of St. Crux. “Lord send he’s been quiet!”
muttered old Mazey, daunted, bold as he was and drunk as he was, by the
bare contemplation of that prospect. “If his honor’s been walking
to-night, it will be the death of him!”
He roused himself for the moment by main force—strong in his dog-like
fidelity to the admiral, though strong in nothing else—and fought off
the stupor of the drink. He looked at the bed with steadier eyes and a
clearer mind. Magdalen’s precaution in returning it to its customary
position presented it to him necessarily in the aspect of a bed which
had never been moved from its place. He next examined the counterpane
carefully. Not the faintest vestige appeared of the indentation which
must have been left by footsteps passing over it. There was the plain
evidence before him—the evidence recognizable at last by his own
bewildered eyes—that the admiral had never moved from his room.
“I’ll take the Pledge to-morrow!” mumbled old Mazey, in an outburst of
grateful relief. The next moment the fumes of the liquor floated back
insidiously over his brain; and the veteran, returning to his customary
remedy, paced the passage in zigzag as usual, and kept watch on the
deck of an imaginary ship.
Soon after sunrise, Magdalen suddenly heard the grating of the key from
outside in the lock of the door. The door opened, and old Mazey
re-appeared on the threshold. The first fever of his intoxication had
cooled, with time, into a mild, penitential glow. He breathed harder
than ever, in a succession of low growls, and wagged his venerable head
at his own delinquencies without intermission.
“How are you now, you young land-shark in petticoats?” inquired the old
sailor. “Has your conscience been quiet enough to let you go to sleep?”
“I have not slept,” said Magdalen, drawing back from him in doubt of
what he might do next. “I have no remembrance of what happened after
you locked the door—I think I must have fainted. Don’t frighten me
again, Mr. Mazey! I feel miserably weak and ill. What do you want?”
“I want to say something serious,” replied old Mazey, with impenetrable
solemnity. “It’s been on my mind to come here and make a clean breast
of it, for the last hour or more. Mark my words, young woman. I’m going
to disgrace myself.”
Magdalen drew further and further back, and looked at him in rising
alarm.
“I know my duty to his honor the admiral,” proceeded old Mazey, waving
his hand drearily in the direction of his master’s door. “But, try as
hard as I may, I can’t find it in my heart, you young jade, to be
witness against you. I liked the make of you (especially about the
waist) when you first came into the house, and I can’t help liking the
make of you still—though you _have_ committed burglary, and though you
_are_ as crooked as Sin. I’ve cast the eyes of indulgence on fine-grown
girls all my life, and it’s too late in the day to cast the eyes of
severity on ’em now. I’m seventy-seven, or seventy-eight, I don’t
rightly know which. I’m a battered old hulk, with my seams opening, and
my pumps choked, and the waters of Death powering in on me as fast as
they can. I’m as miserable a sinner as you’ll meet with anywhere in
these parts—Thomas Nagle, the cobbler, only excepted; and he’s worse
than I am, for he’s the younger of the two, and he ought to know
better. But the long and short or it is, I shall go down to my grave
with an eye of indulgence for a fine-grown girl. More shame for me, you
young Jezebel—more shame for me!”
The veteran’s unmanageable eyes began to leer again in spite of him, as
he concluded his harangue in these terms: the last reserves of
austerity left in his face entrenched themselves dismally round the
corners of his mouth. Magdalen approached him again, and tried to
speak. He solemnly motioned her back with another dreary wave of his
hand.
“No carneying!” said old Mazey; “I’m bad enough already, without that.
It’s my duty to make my report to his honor the admiral, and I _will_
make it. But if you like to give the house the slip before the
burglary’s reported, and the court of inquiry begins, I’ll disgrace
myself by letting you go. It’s market morning at Ossory, and Dawkes
will be driving the light cart over in a quarter of an hour’s time.
Dawkes will take you if I ask him. I know my duty—my duty is to turn
the key on you, and see Dawkes damned first. But I can’t find it in my
heart to be hard on a fine girl like you. It’s bred in the bone, and it
wunt come out of the flesh. More shame for me, I tell you again—more
shame for me!”
The proposal thus strangely and suddenly presented to her took Magdalen
completely by surprise. She had been far too seriously shaken by the
events of the night to be capable of deciding on any subject at a
moment’s notice. “You are very good to me, Mr. Mazey,” she said. “May I
have a minute by myself to think?”
“Yes, you may,” replied the veteran, facing about forthwith and leaving
the room. “They’re all alike,” proceeded old Mazey, with his head still
running on the sex. “Whatever you offer ’em, they always want something
more. Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives,
they’re all alike!”
Left by herself, Magdalen reached her decision with far less difficulty
than she had anticipated.
If she remained in the house, there were only two courses before her—to
charge old Mazey with speaking under the influence of a drunken
delusion, or to submit to circumstances. Though she owed to the old
sailor her defeat in the very hour of success, his consideration for
her at that moment forbade the idea of defending herself at his
expense—even supposing, what was in the last degree improbable, that
the defense would be credited. In the second of the two cases (the case
of submission to circumstances), but one result could be
expected—instant dismissal, and perhaps discovery as well. What object
was to be gained by braving that degradation—by leaving the house
publicly disgraced in the eyes of the servants who had hated and
distrusted her from the first? The accident which had literally
snatched the Trust from her possession when she had it in her hand was
irreparable. The one apparent compensation under the disaster—in other
words, the discovery that the Trust actually existed, and that George
Bartram’s marriage within a given time was one of the objects contained
in it—was a compensation which could only be estimated at its true
value by placing it under the light of Mr. Loscombe’s experience. Every
motive of which she was conscious was a motive which urged her to leave
the house secretly while the chance was at her disposal. She looked out
into the passage, and called softly to old Mazey to come back.
“I accept your offer thankfully, Mr. Mazey,” she said. “You don’t know
what hard measure you dealt out to me when you took that letter from my
hand. But you did your duty, and I can be grateful to you for sparing
me this morning, hard as you were upon me last night. I am not such a
bad girl as you think me—I am not, indeed.”
Old Mazey dismissed the subject with another dreary wave of his hand.
“Let it be,” said the veteran; “let it be! It makes no difference, my
girl, to such an old rascal as I am. If you were fifty times worse than
you are, I should let you go all the same. Put on your bonnet and
shawl, and come along. I’m a disgrace to myself and a warning to
others—that’s what I am. No luggage, mind! Leave all your rattle-traps
behind you: to be overhauled, if necessary, at his honor the admiral’s
discretion. I can be hard enough on your boxes, you young Jezebel, if I
can’t be hard on you.”
With these words, old Mazey led the way out of the room. “The less I
see of her the better—especially about the waist,” he said to himself,
as he hobbled downstairs with the help of the banisters.
The cart was standing in the back yard when they reached the lower
regions of the house, and Dawkes (otherwise the farm-bailiff’s man) was
fastening the last buckle of the horse’s harness. The hoar-frost of the
morning was still white in the shade. The sparkling points of it
glistened brightly on the shaggy coats of Brutus and Cassius, as they
idled about the yard, waiting, with steaming mouths and slowly wagging
tails, to see the cart drive off. Old Mazey went out alone and used his
influence with Dawkes, who, staring in stolid amazement, put a leather
cushion on the cart-seat for his fellow-traveler. Shivering in the
sharp morning air, Magdalen waited, while the preliminaries of
departure were in progress, conscious of nothing but a giddy
bewilderment of thought, and a helpless suspension of feeling. The
events of the night confused themselves hideously with the trivial
circumstances passing before her eyes in the courtyard. She started
with the sudden terror of the night when old Mazey re-appeared to
summon her out to the cart. She trembled with the helpless confusion of
the night when the veteran cast the eyes of indulgence on her for the
last time, and gave her a kiss on the cheek at parting. The next minute
she felt him help her into the cart, and pat her on the back. The next,
she heard him tell her in a confidential whisper that, sitting or
standing, she was as straight as a poplar either way. Then there was a
pause, in which nothing was said, and nothing done; and then the driver
took the reins in hand and mounted to his place.
She roused herself at the parting moment and looked back. The last
sight she saw at St. Crux was old Mazey wagging his head in the
courtyard, with his fellow-profligates, the dogs, keeping time to him
with their tails. The last words she heard were the words in which the
veteran paid his farewell tribute to her charms:
“Burglary or no burglary,” said old Mazey, “she’s a fine-grown girl, if
ever there was a fine one yet. What a pity! what a pity!”
THE END OF THE SEVENTH SCENE.
BETWEEN THE SCENES.
PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST.
I.
From George Bartram to Admiral Bartram.
“London, April 3d, 1848.
“My dear uncle,
“One hasty line, to inform you of a temporary obstacle, which we
neither of us anticipated when we took leave of each other at St. Crux.
While I was wasting the last days of the week at the Grange, the
Tyrrels must have been making their arrangements for leaving London. I
have just come from Portland Place. The house is shut up, and the
family (Miss Vanstone, of course, included) left England yesterday, to
pass the season in Paris.
“Pray don’t let yourself be annoyed by this little check at starting.
It is of no serious importance whatever. I have got the address at
which the Tyrrels are living, and I mean to cross the Channel after
them by the mail to-night. I shall find my opportunity in Paris just as
soon as I could have found it in London. The grass shall not grow under
my feet, I promise you. For once in my life, I will take Time as
fiercely by the forelock as if I was the most impetuous man in England;
and, rely on it, the moment I know the result, you shall know the
result, too.
“Affectionately yours,
“GEORGE BARTRAM.”
II.
From George Bartram to Miss Garth.
“Paris, April 13th.
“DEAR MISS GARTH,
“I have just written, with a heavy heart, to my uncle, and I think I
owe it to your kind interest in me not to omit writing next to you.
“You will feel for my disappointment, I am sure, when I tell you, in
the fewest and plainest words, that Miss Vanstone has refused me.
“My vanity may have grievously misled me, but I confess I expected a
very different result. My vanity may be misleading me still; for I must
acknowledge to you privately that I think Miss Vanstone was sorry to
refuse me. The reason she gave for her decision—no doubt a sufficient
reason in her estimation—did not at the time, and does not now, seem
sufficient to _me_. She spoke in the sweetest and kindest manner, but
she firmly declared that ‘her family misfortunes’ left her no honorable
alternative—but to think of my own interests as I had not thought of
them myself—and gratefully to decline accepting my offer.
“She was so painfully agitated that I could not venture to plead my own
cause as I might otherwise have pleaded it. At the first attempt I made
to touch the personal question, she entreated me to spare her, and
abruptly left the room. I am still ignorant whether I am to interpret
the ‘family misfortunes’ which have set up this barrier between us, as
meaning the misfortune for which her parents alone are to blame, or the
misfortune of her having such a woman as Mrs. Noel Vanstone for her
sister. In whichever of these circumstances the obstacle lies, it is no
obstacle in my estimation. Can nothing remove it? Is there no hope?
Forgive me for asking these questions. I cannot bear up against my
bitter disappointment. Neither she, nor you, nor any one but myself,
can know how I love her.
“Ever most truly yours,
“GEORGE BARTRAM.
“P. S.—I shall leave for England in a day or two, passing through
London on my way to St. Crux. There are family reasons, connected with
the hateful subject of money, which make me look forward with anything
but pleasure to my next interview with my uncle. If you address your
letter to Long’s Hotel, it will be sure to reach me.”
III.
From Miss Garth to George Bartram.
“Westmoreland House, April 16th.
“DEAR MR. BARTRAM,
“You only did me justice in supposing that your letter would distress
me. If you had supposed that it would make me excessively angry as
well, you would not have been far wrong. I have no patience with the
pride and perversity of the young women of the present day.