The days passed, the empty days of solitude and suspense. At last, a third letter from the lawyer announced the long-delayed conclusion of the correspondence. The final answer had been received from Zürich; and Mr Pendril would personally communicate it at Combe-Raven, on the afternoon of the next day.
That next day was Wednesday, the twelfth of August. The weather had changed in the night; and the sun rose watery through mist and cloud. By noon, the sky was overcast at all points; the temperature was sensibly colder; and the rain poured down, straight and soft and steady, on the thirsty earth. Towards three o’clock, Miss Garth and Norah entered the morning-room, to await Mr Pendril’s arrival. They were joined shortly afterwards by Magdalen. In half an hour more, the familiar fall of the iron latch in the socket, reached their ears from the fence beyond the shrubbery. Mr Pendril and Mr Clare advanced into view along the garden-path, walking arm in arm through the rain, sheltered by the same umbrella. The lawyer bowed as they passed the windows; Mr Clare walked straight on, deep in his own thoughts; noticing nothing.
After a delay which seemed interminable; after a weary scraping of wet feet on the hall mat; after a mysterious, muttered interchange of question and answer outside the door, the two came in – Mr Clare leading the way. The old man walked straight up to the table, without any preliminary greeting; and looked across it at the three women, with a stern pity for them, in his rugged wrinkled face.
‘Bad news,’ he said. ‘I am an enemy to all unnecessary suspense. Plainness is kindness in such a case as this. I mean to be kind – and I tell you plainly – bad news.’
Mr Pendril followed him. He shook hands, in silence, with Miss Garth and the two sisters; and took a seat near them. Mr Clare placed himself apart on a chair by the window. The grey rainy light fell soft and sad on the faces of Norah and Magdalen, who sat together opposite to him. Miss Garth had placed herself a little behind them, in partial shadow; and the lawyer’s quiet face was seen in profile, close beside her. So the four occupants of the room appeared to Mr Clare, as he sat apart in his corner; his long claw-like fingers interlaced on his knee; his dark vigilant eyes fixed searchingly now on one face, now on another. The dripping rustle of the rain among the leaves, and the clear ceaseless tick of the clock on the mantelpiece, made the minute of silence which followed the settling of the persons present in their places, indescribably oppressive. It was a relief to every one, when Mr Pendril spoke.
‘Mr Clare has told you already,’ he began, ‘that I am the bearer of bad news. I am grieved to say, Miss Garth, that your doubts, when I last saw you, were better founded than my hopes. What that heartless elder brother was in his youth, he is still in his old age. In all my unhappy experience of the worst side of human nature, I have never met with a man so utterly dead to every consideration of mercy, as Michael Vanstone.’
‘Do you mean that he takes the whole of his brother’s fortune, and makes no provision whatever for his brother’s children?’ asked Miss Garth.
‘He offers a sum of money for present emergencies,’ replied Mr Pendril, ’so meanly and disgracefully insufficient, that I am ashamed to mention it.’
‘And nothing for the future?’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
As that answer was given, the same thought passed, at the same moment, through Miss Garth’s mind and through Norah’s. The decision which deprived both the sisters alike of the resources of fortune, did not end there for the younger of the two. Michael Vanstone’s merciless resolution had virtually pronounced the sentence which dismissed Frank to China, and which destroyed all present hope of Magdalen’s marriage. As the words passed the lawyer’s lips, Miss Garth and Norah looked at Magdalen anxiously. Her face turned a shade paler – but not a feature of it moved; not a word escaped her. Norah, who held her sister’s hand in her own, felt it tremble for a moment, and then turn cold – and that was all.
‘Let me mention plainly what I have done,’ resumed Mr Pendril; ‘I am very desirous you should not think that I have left any effort untried. When I wrote to Michael Vanstone, in the first instance, I did not confine myself to the usual formal statement. I put before him, plainly and earnestly, every one of the circumstances under which he has become possessed of his brother’s fortune. When I received the answer, referring me to his written instructions to his lawyer in London – and when a copy of those instructions was placed in my hands –. I positively declined, on becoming acquainted with them, to receive the writer’s decision as final. I induced the solicitor on the other side, to accord us a further term of delay; I attempted to see Mr Noel Vanstone in London for the purpose of obtaining his intercession; and, failing in that, I myself wrote to his father for the second time. The answer referred me, in insolently curt terms, to the instructions already communicated; declared those instructions to be final; and declined any further correspondence with me. There is the beginning and the end of the negotiation. If I have overlooked any means of touching this heartless man – tell me, and those means shall be tried.’
He looked at Norah. She pressed her sister’s hand encouragingly, and answered for both of them.
‘I speak for my sister, as well as for myself,’ she said, with her colour a little heightened, with her natural gentleness of manner just touched by a quiet, uncomplaining sadness. ‘You have done all that could be done, Mr Pendril. We have tried to restrain ourselves from hoping too confidently; and we are deeply grateful for your kindness, at a time when kindness is sorely needed by both of us.’
Magdalen’s hand returned the pressure of her sister’s – withdrew itself – trifled for a moment impatiently with the arrangement of her dress – then suddenly moved the chair closer to the table. Leaning one arm on it (with the hand fast clenched), she looked across at Mr Pendril. Her face, always remarkable for its want of colour, was now startling to contemplate, in its blank bloodless pallor. But the light in her large grey eyes was bright and steady as ever; and her voice, though low in tone, was clear and resolute in accent as she addressed the lawyer in these terms:
‘I understood you to say, Mr Pendril, that my father’s brother had sent his written orders to London, and that you had a copy. Have you preserved it?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Have you got it about you?’
‘I have.’
‘May I see it?’
Mr Pendril hesitated, and looked uneasily from Magdalen to Miss Garth, and from Miss Garth back again to Magdalen.
‘Pray oblige me by not pressing your request,’ he said. ’It is surely enough that you know the result of the instructions. Why should you agitate yourself to no purpose by reading them? They are expressed so cruelly; they show such abominable want of feeling, that I really cannot prevail upon myself to let you see them.’
‘I am sensible of your kindness, Mr Pendril, in wishing to spare me pain. But I can bear pain; I promise to distress nobody. Will you excuse me if I repeat my request?’
She held out her hand – the soft, white, virgin hand that had touched nothing to soil it or harden it yet.
‘Oh, Magdalen, think again!’ said Norah.
‘You distress Mr Pendril,’ added Miss Garth; ‘you distress us all.’
‘There can be no end gained,’ pleaded the lawyer – ‘forgive me for saying so – there can really be no useful end gained by my showing you the instructions.’
(‘Fools!’ said Mr Clare to himself. ’Have they no eyes to see that she means to have her own way?’)
‘Something tells me there is an end to be gained,’ persisted Magdalen. ‘This decision is a very serious one. It is more serious to me –’ She looked round at Mr Clare, who sat closely watching her, and instantly looked back again, with the first outward betrayal of emotion which had escaped her yet. ‘It is even more serious to me,’ she resumed, ‘for private reasons – than it is to my sister. I know nothing yet, but that our father’s brother has taken our fortunes from us. He must have some motives of his own for such conduct as that. It is not fai
r to him, or fair to us, to keep those motives concealed. He has deliberately robbed Norah, and robbed me; and I think we have a right, if we wish it, to know why?’
‘I don’t wish it,’ said Norah.
‘I do,’ said Magdalen; and, once more, she held out her hand.
At this point, Mr Clare roused himself, and interfered for the first time.
‘You have relieved your conscience,’ he said, addressing the lawyer. ‘Give her the right she claims. It is her right – if she will have it.’
Mr Pendril quietly took the written instructions from his pocket. ‘I have warned you,’ he said – and handed the papers across the table, without another word. One of the pages of writing was folded down at the corner; and, at that folded page, the manuscript opened, when Magdalen first turned the leaves. ‘Is this the place which refers to my sister and myself?’ she inquired. Mr Pendril bowed; and Magdalen smoothed out the manuscript before her, on the table.
‘Will you decide, Norah?’ she asked, turning to her sister. ‘Shall I read this aloud, or shall I read it to myself?’
‘To yourself,’ said Miss Garth; answering for Norah, who looked at her in mute perplexity and distress.
‘It shall be as you wish,’ said Magdalen. With that reply, she turned again to the manuscript, and read these lines:
‘… You are now in possession of my wishes in relation to the property in money, and to the sale of the furniture, carriages, horses and so forth. The last point left, on which it is necessary for me to instruct you, refers to the persons inhabiting the house, and to certain preposterous claims on their behalf, set up by a solicitor named Pendril; who has no doubt interested reasons of his own for making application to me.
‘I understand that my late brother has left two illegitimate children; both of them young women, who are of an age to earn their own livelihood. Various considerations, all equally irregular, have been urged in respect to these persons, by the solicitor representing them. Be so good as to tell him that neither you nor I have anything to do with questions of mere sentiment; and then state plainly, for his better information, what the motives are which regulate my conduct, and what the provision is which I feel myself justified in making for the two young women. Your instructions on both these points, you will find detailed in the next paragraph.
‘I wish the persons concerned, to know, once for all, how I regard the circumstances which have placed my late brother’s property at my disposal. Let them understand that I consider those circumstances to be a Providential interposition, which has restored to me the inheritance that ought always to have been mine. I receive the money, not only as my right, but also as a proper compensation for the injustice which I suffered from my father, and a proper penalty paid by my younger brother for the vile intrigue by which he succeeded in disinheriting me. His conduct, when a young man, was uniformly discreditable in all the relations of life; and what it then was, it continued to be (on the showing of his own legal representative) after the time when I ceased to hold any communication with him. He appears to have systematically imposed a woman on Society as his wife, who was not his wife; and to have completed the outrage on morality by afterwards marrying her. Such conduct as this, has called down a Judgment on himself and his children. I will not invite retribution on my own head, by assisting those children to continue the imposition which their parents practised, and by helping them to take a place in the world to which they are not entitled. Let them, as becomes their birth, gain their bread in situations. If they show themselves disposed to accept their proper position, I will assist them to start virtuously in life, by a present of one hundred pounds each. This sum I authorize you to pay them, on their personal application, with the necessary acknowledgment of receipt; and on the express understanding that the transaction, so completed, is to be the beginning and the end of my connection with them. The arrangements under which they quit the house, I leave to your discretion; and I have only to add
that my decision on this matter, as on all other matters, is positive and final.’
*
Line by line – without once looking up from the pages before her – Magdalen read those atrocious sentences through, from beginning to end. The other persons assembled in the room, all eagerly looking at her together, saw the dress rising and falling faster and faster over her bosom – saw the hand in which she lightly held the manuscript at the outset, close unconsciously on the paper, and crush it, as she advanced nearer and nearer to the end – but detected no other outward signs of what was passing within her. As soon as she had done, she silently pushed the manuscript away, and put her hands on a sudden over her face. When she withdrew them, all the four persons in the room noticed a change in her. Something in her expression had altered, subtly and silently; something which made the familiar features suddenly look strange, even to her sister and Miss Garth; something, through all after years, never to be forgotten in connection with that day – and never to be described.
The first words she spoke were addressed to Mr Pendril.
‘May I ask one more favour,’ she said, ’before you enter on your business arrangements?’
Mr Pendril replied ceremoniously by a gesture of assent. Magdalen’s resolution to possess herself of the Instructions, did not appear to have produced a favourable impression on the lawyer’s mind.
‘You mentioned what you were so kind as to do, in our interests, when you first wrote to Mr Michael Vanstone,’ she continued. ‘You said you had told him all the circumstances. I want – if you will allow me – to be made quite sure of what he really knew about us when he sent these orders to his lawyer. Did he know that my father had made a will, and that he had left our fortunes to my sister and myself?’
‘He did know it,’ said Mr Pendril.
‘Did you tell him how it happened that we are left in this helpless position?’
‘I told him that your father was entirely unaware, when he married, of the necessity for making another will.’
‘And that another will would have been made, after he saw Mr Clare, but for the dreadful misfortune of his death?’
‘He knew that, also.’
‘Did he know that my father’s untiring goodness and kindness to both of us –’
Her voice faltered for the first time: she sighed, and put her hand to her head wearily. Norah spoke entreatingly to her; Miss Garth spoke entreatingly to her; Mr Clare sat silent, watching her more and more earnestly. She answered her sister’s remonstrance with a faint smile. ‘I will keep my promise,’ she said; ‘I will distress nobody.’ With that reply, she turned again to Mr Pendril; and steadily reiterated the question – but in another form of words.
‘Did Mr Michael Vanstone know that my father’s great anxiety was to make sure of providing for my sister and myself?’
‘He knew it in your father’s own words. I sent him an extract from your father’s last letter to me.’
‘The letter which asked you to come for God’s sake, and relieve him from the dreadful thought that his daughters were unprovided for? The letter which said he should not rest in his grave if he left us disinherited?’
‘That letter and those words.’
She paused, still keeping her eyes steadily fixed on the lawyer’s face.
‘I want to fasten it all in my mind,’ she said, ‘before I go on. Mr Michael Vanstone knew of the first will; he knew what prevented the making of the second will; he knew of the letter, and he read the words. What did he know of besides? Did you tell him of my mother’s last illness? Did you say that her share in the money would have been left to us, if she could have lifted her dying hand in your presence? Did you try to make him ashamed of the cruel law which calls girls in our situation Nobody’s Children, and which allows him to use us as he is using us now?’
‘I put all those considerations to him. I left none of them doubtful; I left none of them out.’
She slowly reached her hand to the copy of the Instructions; and slowly folded it up again
, in the shape in which it had been presented to her. ‘I am much obliged to you, Mr Pendril.’ With those words, she bowed, and gently pushed the manuscript back across the table; then turned to her sister.
‘Norah,’ she said, ‘if we both of us live to grow old, and if you ever forget all that we owe to Michael Vanstone – come to me, and I will remind you.’
She rose and walked across the room by herself to the window. As she passed Mr Clare, the old man stretched out his claw-like fingers, and caught her fast by the arm before she was aware of him.
‘What is this mask of yours hiding?’ he asked, forcing her to bend to him, and looking close into her face. ‘Which of the extremes of human temperature does your courage start from – the dead cold or the white hot?’
She shrank back from him; and turned away her head in silence. She would have resented that unscrupulous intrusion on her own thoughts from any man alive but Frank’s father. He dropped her arm as suddenly as he had taken it, and let her go on to the window. ‘No,’ he said to himself, ‘not the cold extreme, whatever else it may be. So much the worse for her, and for all belonging to her.’
There was a momentary pause. Once more the dripping rustle of the rain, and the steady ticking of the clock filled up the gap of silence. Mr Pendril put the Instructions back in his pocket, considered a little; and, turning towards Norah and Miss Garth, recalled their attention to the present and pressing necessities of the time.
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