‘I mean no offence!’ cried Noel Vanstone, piteously. ‘Why do you interrupt me, Mr Bygrave? Why don’t you let me explain? I mean no offence.’
‘No offence is taken, sir,’ said the captain. ‘You have a perfect right to the exercise of your own discretion. I am not offended – I only claim for myself the same privilege which I accord to you.’ He rose with great dignity and rang the bell. ‘Tell Miss Bygrave,’ he said to the servant, ‘that our walk this morning is put off until another opportunity, and that I won’t trouble her to come down stairs.’
This strong proceeding had the desired effect. Noel Vanstone vehemently pleaded for a moment’s private conversation before the message was delivered. Captain Wragge’s severity partially relaxed. He sent the servant downstairs again; and, resuming his chair, waited confidently for results. In calculating the facilities for practising on his visitor’s weakness, he had one great superiority over Mrs Lecount. His judgment was not warped by latent female jealousies; and he avoided the error into which the housekeeper had fallen, self-deluded – the error of underrating the impression on Noel Vanstone that Magdalen had produced. One of the forces in this world which no middle-aged woman is capable of estimating at its full value, when it acts against her – is the force of beauty in a woman younger than herself.
‘You are so hasty, Mr Bygrave – you won’t give me time – you won’t wait and hear what I have to say!’ cried Noel Vanstone, piteously, when the servant had closed the parlour door.
‘My family failing, sir – the blood of the Bygraves. Accept my excuses. We are alone, as you wished; pray proceed.’
Placed between the alternatives of losing Magdalen’s society or betraying Mrs Lecount – unenlightened by any suspicion of the housekeeper’s ultimate object; cowed by the immovable scrutiny of Captain Wragge’s inquiring eye – Noel Vanstone was not long in making his choice. He confusedly described his singular interview of the previous evening with Mrs Lecount; and taking the folded paper from his pocket, placed it in the captain’s hand.
A suspicion of the truth dawned on Captain Wragge’s mind, the moment he saw the mysterious note. He withdrew to the window before he opened it. The first lines that attracted his attention were these: – ‘Oblige me, Mr Noel, by comparing the young lady who is now in your company, with the personal description which follows these lines, and which has been communicated to me by a friend. You shall know the name of the person described –which I have left a blank –as soon as the evidence of your own eyes has forced you to believe, what you would refuse to credit on the unsupported testimony of Virginie Lecount.’
That was enough for the captain. Before he had read a word of the description itself, he knew what Mrs Lecount had done, and felt with a profound sense of humiliation, that his female enemy had taken him by surprise.
There was no time to think; the whole enterprise was threatened with irrevocable overthrow. The one resource, in Captain Wragge’s present situation, was to act instantly on the first impulse of his own audacity. Line by line he read on – and still the ready inventiveness which had never deserted him yet, failed to answer the call made on it now. He came to the closing sentence – to the last words which mentioned the two little moles on Magdalen’s neck. At that crowning point of the description, an idea crossed his mind – his parti-coloured eyes twinkled; his curly lips twisted up at the corners – Wragge was himself again.
He wheeled round suddenly from the window; and looked Noel Vanstone straight in the face, with a grimly-quiet suggestiveness of something serious to come.
‘Pray, sir, do you happen to know anything of Mrs Lecount’s family?’ he inquired.
‘A respectable family,’ said Noel Vanstone – ‘that’s all I know. Why do you ask?’
‘I am not usually a betting man,’ pursued Captain Wragge. ‘But on this occasion, I will lay you any wager you like, there is madness in your housekeeper’s family.’
‘Madness!’ repeated Noel Vanstone, amazedly.
‘Madness!’ reiterated the captain, sternly tapping the note with his forefinger. ‘I see the cunning of insanity, the suspicion of insanity, the feline treachery of insanity in every line of this deplorable document. There is a far more alarming reason, sir, than I had supposed for Mrs Lecount’s behaviour to my niece. It is clear to me, that Miss Bygrave resembles some other lady who has seriously offended your housekeeper – who has been formerly connected, perhaps, with an outbreak of insanity in your housekeeper –and who is now evidently confused with my niece, in your housekeeper’s wandering mind. That is my conviction, Mr Vanstone. I may be right, or I may be wrong. All I say is this – neither you, nor any man, can assign a sane motive for the production of that incomprehensible document, and for the use which you are requested to make of it.’
‘I don’t think Lecount’s mad,’ said Noel Vanstone, with a very blank look, and a very discomposed manner. ‘It couldn’t have escaped me -with my habits of observation – it couldn’t possibly have escaped me if Lecount had been mad.’
‘Very good, my dear sir. In my opinion she is the subject of an insane delusion. In your opinion she is in possession of her senses, and has some mysterious motive which neither you nor I can fathom. Either way, there can be no harm in putting Mrs Lecount’s description to the test, not only as a matter of curiosity, but for our own private satisfaction on both sides. It is of course impossible to tell my niece that she is to be made the subject of such a preposterous experiment as that note of yours suggests. But you can use your own eyes, Mr Vanstone; you can keep your own counsel; and – mad or not – you can at least tell your housekeeper, on the testimony of your own senses, that she is wrong. Let me look at the description again. The greater part of it is not worth two straws for any purpose of identification; hundreds of young ladies have tall figures, fair complexions, light brown hair and light grey eyes. You will say, on the other hand, hundreds of young ladies have not got two little moles close together on the left side of the neck. Quite true. The moles supply us with what we scientific men call, a Crucial Test. When my niece comes downstairs, sir, you have my full permission to take the liberty of looking at her neck.’
Noel Vanstone expressed his high approval of the Crucial Test, by smirking and simpering for the first time that morning.
‘Of looking at her neck,’ repeated the captain; returning the note to his visitor, and then making for the door. ‘I will go upstairs myself, Mr Vanstone,’ he continued, ‘and inspect Miss Bygrave’s walking dress. If she has innocently placed any obstacles in your way – if her hair is a little too low, or her frill is a little too high – I will exert my authority, on the first harmless pretext I can think of, to have those obstacles removed. All I ask is, that you will choose your opportunity discreetly, and that you will not allow my niece to suppose that her neck is the object of a gentleman’s inspection.’
The moment he was out of the parlour, Captain Wragge ascended the stairs at the top of his speed, and knocked at Magdalen’s door. She opened it to him, in her walking dress – obedient to the signal agreed on between them which summoned her downstairs.
‘What have you done with your paints and powders?’ asked the captain, without wasting a word in preliminary explanations. ‘They were not in the box of costumes which I sold for you at Birmingham. Where are they?’
I have got them here,’ replied Magdalen. ‘What can you possibly mean by wanting them now?’
‘Bring them instantly into my dressing-room – the whole collection, brushes, palette and everything. Don’t waste time in asking questions; I’ll tell you what has happened as we go on. Every moment is precious to us. Follow me instantly!’
His face plainly showed that there was a serious reason for his strange proposal. Magdalen secured her collection of cosmetics, and followed him into the dressing-room. He locked the door, placed her on a chair close to the light, and then told her what had happened.
‘We are on the brink of detection,’ proceeded the captain, carefully mi
xing his colours with liquid glue, and with a strong ‘drier’ added from a bottle in his own possession. ‘There is only one chance for us (lift up your hair from the left side of your neck) -I have told Mr Noel Vanstone to take a private opportunity of looking at you; and I am going to give the lie direct to that she-devil Lecount, by painting out your moles.’
‘They can’t be painted out,’ said Magdalen. ‘No colour will stop on them.’
’My colour will,’ remarked Captain Wragge. ‘I have tried a variety of professions in my time – the profession of painting among the rest. Did you ever hear of such a thing as a Black Eye? I lived some months once in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, entirely on Black Eyes. My flesh-colour stood on bruises of all sorts, shades and sizes – and it will stand, I promise you, on your moles.’
With this assurance, the captain dipped his brush into a little lump of opaque colour, which he had mixed in a saucer, and which he had graduated, as nearly as the materials would permit, to the colour of Magdalen’s skin. After first passing a cambric handkerchief with some white powder on it, over the part of her neck on which he designed to operate, he placed two layers of colour on the moles, with the tip of the brush. The process was performed in a few moments – and the moles, as if by magic, disappeared from view. Nothing but the closest inspection could have discovered the artifice by which they had been concealed: at the distance of two or three feet only, it was perfectly invisible.
‘Wait here, five minutes,’ said Captain Wragge, ‘to let the paint dry -and then join us in the parlour. Mrs Lecount herself would be puzzled, if she looked at you now.’
‘Stop!’ said Magdalen. ‘There is one thing you have not told me yet. How did Mrs Lecount get the description which you read downstairs? Whatever else she has seen of me, she has not seen the mark on my neck – it is too far back, and too high up; my hair hides it.’
‘Who knows of the mark?’ asked Captain Wragge.
She turned deadly pale under the anguish of a sudden recollection of Frank.
‘My sister knows it,’ she said faintly.
‘Mrs Lecount may have written to your sister,’ suggested the captain.
‘Do you think my sister would tell a stranger what no stranger has a right to know? Never! never!’
‘Is there nobody else who could tell Mrs Lecount? The mark was mentioned in the handbills at York. Who put it there?’
‘Not Norah! Perhaps Mr Pendril. Perhaps Miss Garth.’
‘Then Mrs Lecount has written to Mr Pendril or Miss Garth – more likely to Miss Garth. The governess would be easier to deal with than the lawyer.’
‘What can she have said to Miss Garth?’
Captain Wragge considered a little.
‘I can’t say what Mrs Lecount may have written,’ he said; ‘but I can tell you what I should have written in Mrs Lecount’s place. I should have frightened Miss Garth by false reports about you, to begin with -and then I should have asked for personal particulars, to help a benevolent stranger in restoring you to your friends.’
The angry glitter flashed up instantly in Magdalen’s eyes.
‘What you would have done, is what Mrs Lecount has done,’ she said indignantly. ‘Neither lawyer, nor governess, shall dispute my right to my own will, and my own way. If Miss Garth thinks she can control my actions by corresponding with Mrs Lecount – I will show Miss Garth she is mistaken! It is high time, Captain Wragge, to have done with these wretched risks of discovery. We will take the short way to the end we have in view, sooner than Mrs Lecount or Miss Garth think for. How long can you give me to wring an offer of marriage out of that creature downstairs?’
‘I dare not give you long,’ replied Captain Wragge. ‘Now your friends know where you are, they may come down on us at a day’s notice. Could you manage it in a week?’
‘I’ll manage it in half the time,’ she said, with a hard, defiant laugh. ‘Leave us together this morning as you left us at Dunwich – and take Mrs Wragge with you, as an excuse for parting company. Is the paint dry yet? Go downstairs, and tell him I am coming directly.’
So, for the second time, Miss Garth’s well-meant efforts defeated their own end. So, the fatal force of circumstance turned the hand that would fain have held Magdalen back, into the hand that drove her on.
The captain returned to his visitor in the parlour – after first stopping on the way, to issue his orders for the walking excursion to Mrs Wragge.
‘I am shocked to have kept you waiting,’ he said, sitting down again confidentially by Noel Vanstone’s side. ‘My only excuse is, that my niece had accidentally dressed her hair, so as to defeat our object. I have been persuading her to alter it – and young ladies are apt to be a little obstinate on questions relating to their toilette. Give her a chair on that side of you, when she comes in – and take your look at her neck comfortably, before we start for our walk.’
Magdalen entered the room, as he said those words – and, after the first greetings were exchanged, took the chair presented to her with the most unsuspicious readiness. Noel Vanstone applied the Crucial Test on the spot –with the highest appreciation of the fair material which was the subject of experiment. Not the vestige of a mole was visible on any part of the smooth white surface of Miss Bygrave’s neck. It mutely answered the blinking inquiry of Noel Vanstone’s half-closed eyes, by the flattest practical contradiction of Mrs Lecount. That one central incident in the events of the morning, was of all the incidents that had hitherto occurred, the most important in its results. That one discovery shook the housekeeper’s hold on her master, as nothing had shaken it yet.
In a few minutes, Mrs Wragge made her appearance, and excited as much surprise in Noel Vanstone’s mind as he was capable of feeling, while absorbed in the enjoyment of Magdalen’s society. The walking party left the house at once; directing their steps northward, so as not to pass the windows of Sea-View Cottage. To Mrs Wragge’s unutterable astonishment, her husband, for the first time in the course of their married life, politely offered her his arm, and led her on, in advance of the young people, as if the privilege of walking alone with her presented some special attraction to him! ‘Step out!’ whispered the captain, fiercely. ‘Leave your niece and Mr Vanstone alone! If I catch you looking back at them, I’ll put the Oriental Cashmere Robe on the top of the kitchen fire! Turn your toes out, and keep step – confound you, keep step!’ Mrs Wragge kept step to the best of her limited ability. Her sturdy knees trembled under her. She firmly believed the captain was intoxicated.
The walk lasted for rather more than an hour. Before nine o’clock they were all back again at North Shingles. The ladies went at once into the house. No Vanstone remained with Captain Wragge in the garden.
‘Well,’ said the captain, ‘what do you think now of Mrs Lecount?’
‘Damn Lecount!’ replied Noel Vanstone, in great agitation. ‘I’m half inclined to agree with you. I’m half inclined to think my infernal housekeeper is mad.’
He spoke fretfully and unwillingly, as if the merest allusion to Mrs Lecount was distasteful to him. His colour came and went; his manner was absent and undecided; he fidgeted restlessly about the garden walk. It would have been plain to a far less acute observation than Captain Wragge’s, that Magdalen had met his advances by an unexpected grace and readiness of encouragement, which had entirely overthrown his self-control.
I never enjoyed a walk so much in my life!’ he exclaimed, with a sudden outburst of enthusiasm. ‘I hope Miss Bygrave feels all the better for it. Do you go out at the same time to-morrow morning? May I join you again?’
‘By all means, Mr Vanstone,’ said the captain, cordially. ‘Excuse me for returning to the subject – but what do you propose saying to Mrs Lecount?’
‘I don’t know. Lecount is a perfect nuisance! What would you do, Mr Bygrave, if you were in my place?’
‘Allow me to ask a question, my dear sir, before I tell you. What is your breakfast hour?’
‘Half-past nine.’
&
nbsp; ‘Is Mrs Lecount an early riser?’
‘No. Lecount is lazy in the morning. I hate lazy women! If you were in my place, what should you say to her?’
‘I should say nothing,’ replied Captain Wragge. ‘I should return at once by the back way; I should let Mrs Lecount see me in the front garden, as if I was taking a turn before breakfast; and I should leave her to suppose that I was only just out of my room. If she asks you whether you mean to come here to-day, say No. Secure a quiet life, until circumstances force you to give her an answer. Then tell the plain truth – say that Mr Bygrave’s niece and Mrs Lecount’s description are at variance with each other in the most important particular; and beg that the subject may not be mentioned again. There is my advice. What do you think of it?’
If Noel Vanstone could have looked into his counsellor’s mind, he might have thought the captain’s advice excellently adapted to serve the captain’s interests. As long as Mrs Lecount could be kept in ignorance of her master’s visits to North Shingles –so long she would wait until the opportunity came for trying her experiment; and so long she might be trusted not to endanger the conspiracy by any further proceedings. Necessarily incapable of viewing Captain Wragge’s advice under this aspect, Noel Vanstone simply looked at it, as offering him a temporary means of escape from an explanation with his housekeeper. He eagerly declared that the course of action suggested to him should be followed to the letter, and returned to Sea-View without further delay.
On this occasion, Captain Wragge’s anticipations were in no respect falsified by Mrs Lecount’s conduct. She had no suspicion of her master’s visit to North Shingles – she had made up her mind, if necessary, to wait patiently for his interview with Miss Bygrave, until the end of the week – and she did not embarrass him by any unexpected questions, when he announced his intention of holding no personal communication with the Bygraves on that day. All she said was, ‘Don’t you feel well enough, Mr Noel? or don’t you feel inclined?’ He answered, shortly, ‘I don’t feel well enough’; and there the conversation ended.
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