The formidable entrance of the captain suspended the next question on her lips. Fortunately for Mrs Wragge, her husband was far too anxious for the promised expression of Magdalen’s decision, to pay his customary attention to questions of cookery. When breakfast was over, he dismissed Mrs Wragge, and merely referred to the omelette by telling her that she had his full permission to ‘give it to the dog’.
‘How does my little proposal look by daylight?’ he asked, placing chairs for Magdalen and himself. ‘Which is it to be: “Captain Wragge, take charge of me?” or, “Captain Wragge, good morning?”‘
‘You shall hear directly,’ replied Magdalen. I have something to say first. I told you, last night, that I had another object in view, besides the object of earning my living on the stage —’
I beg your pardon,’ interposed Captain Wragge. ‘Did you say, earning your living?’
‘Certainly. Both my sister and myself must depend on our own exertions to gain our daily bread.’
‘What!!!’ cried the captain, starting to his feet. ‘The daughters of my wealthy and lamented relative by marriage, reduced to earn their own living? Impossible – wildly, extravagantly impossible!’ He sat down again, and looked at Magdalen as if she had inflicted a personal injury on him.
‘You are not acquainted with the full extent of our misfortune,’ she said, quietly. ‘I will tell you what has happened before I go any farther.’ She told him at once, in the plainest terms she could find, and with as few details as possible.
Captain Wragge’s profound bewilderment left him conscious of but one distinct result, produced by the narrative on his own mind. The lawyer’s offer of Fifty Pounds Reward for the missing young lady, ascended instantly to a place in his estimation which it had never occupied until that moment.
‘Do I understand,’ he inquired, ‘that you are entirely deprived of present resources?’
‘I have sold my jewellery and my dresses,’ said Magdalen, impatient of his mean harping on the pecuniary string. ‘If my want of experience keeps me back in a theatre, I can afford to wait till the stage can afford to pay me.’
Captain Wragge mentally appraised the rings, bracelets and necklaces, the silks, satins and laces of the daughter of a gentleman of fortune, at – say, a third of their real value. In a moment more, the Fifty Pounds Reward suddenly sank again to the lowest depths in the deep estimation of this judicious man.
‘Just so,’ he said, in his most business-like manner. ‘There is not the least fear, my dear girl, of your being kept back in a theatre, if you possess present resources, and if you profit by my assistance.’
‘I must accept more assistance than you have already offered – or none,’ said Magdalen. ‘I have more serious difficulties before me than the difficulty of leaving York, and the difficulty of finding my way to the stage.’
‘You don’t say so! I am all attention; pray explain yourself!’
She considered her next words carefully before they passed her lips.
‘There are certain inquiries,’ she said, ‘which I am interested in making. If I undertook them myself, I should excite the suspicion of the person inquired after, and should learn little or nothing of what I wish to know. If the inquiries could be made by a stranger, without my being seen in the matter, a service would be rendered me of much greater importance than the service you offered last night.’
Captain Wragge’s vagabond face became gravely and deeply attentive.
‘May I ask,’ he said, ‘what the nature of the inquiries is likely to be?’
Magdalen hesitated. She had necessarily mentioned Michael Van-stone’s name, in informing the captain of the loss of her inheritance. She must inevitably mention it to him again, if she employed his services. He would doubtless discover it for himself, by a plain process of inference, before she said many words more, frame them as carefully as she might. Under these circumstances was there any intelligible reason for shrinking from direct reference to Michael Vanstone? No intelligible reason – and yet, she shrank.
‘For instance,’ pursued Captain Wragge, ‘are they inquiries about a man or a woman; inquiries about an enemy or a friend —’
‘An enemy,’ she answered quickly.
Her reply might still have kept the captain in the dark – but her eyes enlightened him. ‘Michael Vanstone!’ thought the wary Wragge. ‘She looks dangerous; I’ll feel my way a little farther.’
‘With regard, now, to the person who is the object of these inquiries,’ he resumed. ‘Are you thoroughly clear, in your own mind, about what you want to know?’
‘Perfectly clear,’ replied Magdalen. ‘I want to know where he lives, to begin with?’
‘Yes? And after that?’
‘I want to know about his habits; about who the people are whom he associates with; about what he does with his money –’ She considered a little. ‘And one thing more,’ she said; ‘I want to know whether there is any woman about his house – a relation, or a housekeeper – who has an influence over him.’
‘Harmless enough, so far,’ said the captain. ‘What next?’
‘Nothing. The rest is my secret.’
The clouds on Captain Wragge’s countenance began to clear away again. He reverted with his customary precision to his customary choice of alternatives. ‘These inquiries of hers,’ he thought, ‘mean one of two things – Mischief, or Money! If it’s Mischief, I’ll slip through her fingers. If it’s Money, I’ll make myself useful, with a view to the future.’
Magdalen’s vigilant eyes watched the progress of his reflections suspiciously. ‘Captain Wragge,’ she said, ‘if you want time to consider, say so plainly.’
‘I don’t want a moment,’ replied the captain. ‘Place your departure from York, your dramatic career, and your private inquiries under my care. Here I am, unreservedly at your disposal. Say the word – do you take me?’
Her heart beat fast; her lips turned dry – but she said the word.
‘I do.’
There was a pause. Magdalen sat silent, struggling with the vague dread of the future which had been roused in her mind by her own reply. Captain Wragge, on his side, was apparently absorbed in the consideration of a new set of alternatives. His hands descended into his empty pockets, and prophetically tested their capacity as receptacles for gold and silver. The brightness of the precious metals was in his face, the smoothness of the precious metals was in his voice, as he provided himself with a new supply of words, and resumed the conversation.
‘The next question,’ he said, ‘is the question of time. Do these confidential investigations of ours require immediate attention – or can they wait?’
‘For the present they can wait,’ replied Magdalen. I wish to secure my freedom from all interference on the part of my friends, before the inquiries are made.’
‘Very good. The first step towards accomplishing that object is to beat our retreat – excuse a professional metaphor from a military man -to beat our retreat from York to-morrow. I see my way plainly so far; but I am all abroad, as we used to say in the militia, about my marching orders afterwards. The next direction we take, ought to be chosen with an eye to advancing your dramatic views. I am all ready, when I know what your views are. How came you to think of the theatre at all? I see the sacred fire burning in you; tell me, who lit it?’
Magdalen could only answer him in one way. She could only look back at the days that were gone for ever; and tell him the story of her first step towards the stage at Evergreen Lodge. Captain Wragge listened with his usual politeness; but he evidently derived no satisfactory impression from what he heard. Audiences of friends, were audiences whom he privately declined to trust; and the opinion of the stage-manager, was the opinion of a man who spoke with his fee in his pocket, and his eye on a future engagement.
‘Interesting, deeply interesting,’ he said, when Magdalen had done. ‘But not conclusive to a practical man. A specimen of your abilities is necessary to enlighten me. I have been on the stage mysel
f; the comedy of The Rivals is familiar to me from beginning to end. A sample is all I want, if you have not forgotten the words – a sample of Lucy, and a sample of Julia.’
‘I have not forgotten the words,’ said Magdalen, sorrowfully; ‘and I have the little books with me, in which my dialogue was written out. I have never parted with them: they remind me of a time – ’ Her lip trembled; and a pang of the heartache silenced her.
‘Nervous,’ remarked the captain, indulgently. ‘Not at all a bad sign. The greatest actresses on the stage are nervous. Follow their example, and get over it. Where are the parts? Oh, here they are! Very nicely written, and remarkably clean. I’ll give you the cues — it will all be over (as the dentists say), in no time. Take the back drawing-room for the stage, and take me for the audience. Tingle goes the bell; up runs the curtain; order in the gallery, silence in the pit – enter Lucy!’
She tried hard to control herself; she forced back the sorrow – the innocent, natural, human sorrow for the absent and the dead – pleading hard with her for the tears that she refused. Resolutely, with cold clenched hands, she tried to begin. As the first familiar words passed her lips, Frank came back to her from the sea; and the face of her dead father looked at her with the smile of happy old times. The voices of her mother and her sister talked gently in the fragrant country stillness; and the garden-walks at Combe-Raven opened once more on her view. With a faint wailing cry, she dropped into a chair; her head fell forward on the table, and she burst passionately into tears.
Captain Wragge was on his feet in a moment. She shuddered as he came near her; and waved him back vehemently with her hand. ‘Leave me!’ she said; ‘leave me a minute by myself!’ The compliant Wragge retired to the front room; looked out of the window; and whistled under his breath. ‘The family spirit again!’ he said. ‘Complicated by hysterics.’
After waiting a minute or two, he returned to make inquiries.
‘Is there anything I can offer you?’ he asked. ‘Cold water? burnt feathers? smelling salts? medical assistance? Shall I summon Mrs Wragge? Shall we put it off till to-morrow?’
She started up, wild and flushed, with a desperate self-command in her face, with an angry resolution in her manner.
‘No!’ she said. ‘I must harden myself – and I will! Sit down again, and see me act.’
‘Bravo!’ cried the captain. ‘Dash at it, my beauty – and it’s done!’
She dashed at it, with a mad defiance of herself – with a raised voice, and a glow like fever in her cheeks. All the artless, girlish charm of the performance in happier and better days, was gone. The native dramatic capacity that was in her, came, hard and bold, to the surface, stripped of every softening allurement which had once adorned it. She would have saddened and disappointed a man with any delicacy of feeling. She absolutely electrified Captain Wragge. He forgot his politeness, he forgot his long words. The essential spirit of the man’s whole vagabond life, burst out of him irresistibly in his first exclamation. ‘Who the devil would have thought it? She can act, after all!’ The instant the words escaped his lips, he recovered himself, and glided off into his ordinary colloquial channels. Magdalen stopped him in the middle of his first compliment. ‘No,’ she said; ‘I have forced the truth out of you, for once. I want no more.’
‘Pardon me,’ replied the incorrigible Wragge. ‘You want a little instruction; and I am the man to give it you.’
With that answer, he placed a chair for her, and proceeded to explain himself.
She sat down in silence. A sullen indifference began to show itself in her manner; her cheeks turned pale again; and her eyes looked wearily vacant at the wall before her. Captain Wragge noticed these signs of heartsickness and discontent with herself, after the effort she had made, and saw the importance of rousing her by speaking, for once, plainly and directly to the point. She had set a new value on herself in his mercenary eyes. She had suggested to him a speculation in her youth, her beauty and her marked ability for the stage, which had never entered his mind until he saw her act. The old militiaman was quick at his shifts. He and his plans had both turned right about together, when Magdalen sat down to hear what he had to say.
‘Mr Huxtable’s opinion is my opinion,’ he began. ‘You are a born actress. But you must be trained before you can do anything on the stage. I am disengaged – I am competent – I have trained others – I can train you. Don’t trust my word: trust my eye to my own interests. I’ll make it my interest to take pains with you, and to be quick about it. You shall pay me for my instructions from your profits on the stage. Half your salary, for the first year; a third of your salary for the second year; and half the sum you clear by your first benefit in a London theatre.1 What do you say to that? Have I made it my interest to push you, or have I not?’
So far as appearances went, and so far as the stage went, it was plain that he had linked his interests and Magdalen’s together. She briefly told him so, and waited to hear more.
‘A month or six weeks’ study,’ continued the captain, ‘will give me a reasonable idea of what you can do best. All ability runs in grooves; and your groove remains to be found. We can’t find it here – for we can’t keep you a close prisoner for weeks together in Rosemary Lane. A quiet country place, secure from all interference and interruption, is the place we want for a month certain. Trust my knowledge of Yorkshire; and consider the place found. I see no difficulties anywhere, except the difficulty of beating our retreat to-morrow.’
‘I thought your arrangements were made last night?’ said Magdalen.
‘Quite right,’ rejoined the captain. ‘They were made last night; and here they are. We can’t leave by railway, because the lawyer’s clerk is sure to be on the look-out for you at the York terminus. Very good; we take to the road instead, and leave in our own carriage. Where the deuce do we get it? We get it from the landlady’s brother, who has a horse and chaise which he lets out for hire. That chaise comes to the end of Rosemary Lane at an early hour to-morrow morning. I take my wife and my niece out to show them the beauties of the neighbourhood. We have a picnic hamper with us which marks our purpose in the public eye. You disfigure yourself in a shawl, bonnet and veil of Mrs Wragge’s; we turn our backs on York; and away we drive on a pleasure trip for the day – you and I on the front seat, Mrs Wragge and the hamper behind. Good again. Once on the high-road what do we do? Drive to the first station beyond York, northward, southward or eastward, as may be hereafter determined. No lawyer’s clerk is waiting for you there. You and Mrs Wragge get out – first opening the hamper at a convenient opportunity. Instead of containing chickens and champagne, it contains a carpet-bag with the things you want for the night. You take your tickets for a place previously determined on; and I take the chaise back to York. Arrived once more in this house, I collect the luggage left behind, and send for the woman downstairs. “Ladies so charmed with such-and-such-a-place (wrong place of course) that they have determined to stop there. Pray accept the customary week’s rent, in place of a week’s warning. Good day.” Is the clerk looking for me at the York terminus? Not he. I take my ticket, under his very nose; I follow you with the luggage along your line of railway – and where is the trace left of your departure? Nowhere. The fairy has vanished; and the legal authorities are left in the lurch.’
‘Why do you talk of difficulties?’ asked Magdalen. ‘The difficulties seem to be provided for.’
‘All but ONE,’ said Captain Wragge, with an ominous emphasis on the last word. ‘The Grand Difficulty of humanity from the cradle to the grave – Money.’ He slowly winked his green eye; sighed with deep feeling; and buried his insolvent hands in his unproductive pockets.
‘What is the money wanted for?’ inquired Magdalen.
‘To pay my bills,’ replied the captain, with a touching simplicity. ‘Pray understand! I never was – and never shall be – personally desirous of paying a single farthing to any human creature on the habitable globe. I am speaking in your interests, not in mine.’
‘My interest?’
‘Certainly. You can’t get safely away from York to-morrow, without the chaise. And I can’t get the chaise without money. The landlady’s brother will lend it, if he sees his sister’s bill receipted, and if he gets his day’s hire beforehand – not otherwise. Allow me to put the transaction in a business light. We have agreed that I am to be remunerated for my course of dramatic instruction out of your future earnings on the stage. Very good. I merely draw on my future prospects; and you, on whom those prospects depend, are naturally my banker. For mere argument’s sake, estimate my share in your first year’s salary at the totally inadequate value of a hundred pounds. Halve that sum; quarter that sum—’
‘How much do you want?’ said Magdalen, impatiently.
Captain Wragge was sorely tempted to take the Reward at the top of the handbills as his basis of calculation. But he felt the vast future importance of present moderation; and actually wanting some twelve or thirteen pounds, he merely doubled the amount, and said, ‘Five-and-twenty.’
Magdalen took the little bag from her bosom, and gave him the money, with a contemptuous wonder at the number of words which he had wasted on her for the purpose of cheating on so small a scale. In the old days at Combe-Raven, five-and-twenty pounds flowed from a stroke of her father’s pen into the hands of any one in the house who chose to ask for it.
Captain Wragge’s eyes dwelt on the little bag, as the eyes of lovers dwell on their mistresses. ‘Happy bag!’ he murmured, as she put it back in her bosom. He rose; dived into a corner of the room; produced his neat despatch-box; and solemnly unlocked it on the table between Magdalen and himself.
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