‘I don’t know. Wait a minute.’
He proceeded discontentedly with his breakfast. Louisa waited resignedly at the door.
‘I think your mistress has been in bad spirits, lately,’ he resumed, with a sudden outbreak of petulance.
‘My mistress has not been very cheerful, sir.’
‘What do you mean by not very cheerful? Do you mean to prevaricate? Am I nobody in the house? Am I to be kept in the dark about everything? Is your mistress to go away on her own affairs, and leave me at home like a child – and am I not even to ask a question about her? Am I to be prevaricated with by a servant? I won’t be prevaricated with! Not very cheerful? What do you mean by not very cheerful?’
‘I only meant that my mistress was not in good spirits, sir.’
‘Why couldn’t you say it then? Don’t you know the value of words? The most dreadful consequences sometimes happen from not knowing the value of words. Did your mistress tell you she was going to London?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What did you think when your mistress told you she was going to London? Did you think it odd she was going without me?’
‘I did not presume to think it odd, sir. – Is there anything more I can do for you, if you please, sir?’
‘What sort of a morning is it out? Is it warm? Is the sun on the garden?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have you seen the sun yourself on the garden?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Get me my great-coat; I’ll take a little turn. Has the man brushed it? Did you see the man brush it yourself? What do you mean by saying he has brushed it, when you didn’t see him? Let me look at the tails. If there’s a speck of dust on the tails, I’ll turn the man off! – Help me on with it.’
Louisa helped him on with his coat, and gave him his hat. He went out irritably. The coat was a large one (it had belonged to his father); the hat was a large one (it was a misfit purchased as a bargain by himself). He was submerged in his hat and coat; he looked singularly small, and frail, and miserable, as he slowly wended his way, in the wintry sunlight, down the garden-walk. The path sloped gently from the back of the house to the water-side, from which it was parted by a low wooden fence. After pacing backwards and forwards slowly for some little time, he stopped at the lower extremity of the garden; and leaning on the fence, looked down listlessly at the smooth flow of the river.
His thoughts still ran on the subject of his first fretful question to Louisa – he was still brooding over the circumstances under which his wife had left the cottage that morning, and over the want of consideration towards himself, implied in the manner of her departure. The longer he thought of his grievance, the more acutely he resented it. He was capable of great tenderness of feeling, where any injury to his sense of his own importance was concerned. His head drooped little by little on his arms, as they rested on the fence; and, in the deep sincerity of his mortification, he sighed bitterly.
The sigh was answered by a voice close at his side.
‘You were happier with me, sir,’ said the voice in accents of tender regret.
He looked up with a scream – literally with a scream – and confronted Mrs Lecount.
Was it the spectre of the woman? or the woman herself? Her hair was white; her face had fallen away; her eyes looked out large, bright and haggard over her hollow cheeks. She was withered and old. Her dress hung loose round her wasted figure; not a trace of its buxom autumnal beauty remained. The quietly impenetrable resolution, the smoothly insinuating voice – these were the only relics of the past which sickness and suffering had left in Mrs Lecount.
‘Compose yourself, Mr Noel,’ she said, gently. ‘You have no cause to be alarmed at seeing me. Your servant, when I inquired, said you were in the garden; and I came here to find you. I have traced you out, sir, with no resentment against yourself, with no wish to distress you by so much as the shadow of a reproach. I come here, on what has been, and is still, the business of my life – your service.1
He recovered himself a little; but he was still incapable of speech. He held fast by the fence, and stared at her.
‘Try to possess your mind, sir, of what I say,’ proceeded Mrs Lecount. ‘I have not come here as your enemy, but as your friend. I have been tried by sickness; I have been tried by distress. Nothing remains of me, but my heart. My heart forgives you; my heart, in your sore need –need which you have yet to feel – places me at your service. Take my arm, Mr Noel. A little turn in the sun will help you to recover yourself.’
She put his hand through her arm, and marched him slowly up the garden–walk. Before she had been five minutes in his company, she had resumed full possession of him, in her own right.
‘Now down again, Mr Noel,’ she said. ‘Gendy down again, in this fine sunlight. I have much to say to you, sir, which you never expected to hear from me. Let me ask a little domestic question first. They told me, at the house door, Mrs Noel Vanstone was gone away on a journey. Has she gone for long?’
Her master’s hand trembled on her arm, as she put that question. Instead of answering it, he tried faintly to plead for himself. The first words that escaped him were prompted by his first returning sense – the sense that his housekeeper had taken him into custody. He tried to make his peace with Mrs Lecount.
‘I always meant to do something for you,’ he said, coaxingly. ‘You would have heard from me, before long. Upon my word and honour, Lecount, you would have heard from me, before long!’
‘I don’t doubt it, sir,’ replied Mrs Lecount. ‘But for the present, never mind about Me. You, and your interests first.’
‘How did you come here?’ he asked, looking at her in astonishment. ‘How came you to find me out?’
‘It is a long story, sir; I will tell it you some other time. Let it be enough to say now, that I have found you. Will Mrs Noel be back again at the house to–day? A little louder, sir; I can hardly hear you. So! so! Not back again for a week! And where has she gone? To London, did you say? And what for? – I am not inquisitive, Mr Noel; I am asking serious questions, under serious necessity. Why has your wife left you here, and gone to London by herself?’
They were down at the fence again as she made that last inquiry; and they waited, leaning against it, while Noel Vanstone answered. Her reiterated assurances that she bore him no malice were producing their effect; he was beginning to recover himself. The old helpless habit of addressing all his complaints to his housekeeper, was returning already with the reappearance of Mrs Lecount – returning insidiously, in company with that besetting anxiety to talk about his grievances, which had got the better of him at the breakfast–table, and which had shown the wound inflicted on his vanity to his wife’s maid.
‘I can’t answer for Mrs Noel Vanstone,’ he said, spitefully. ‘Mrs Noel Vanstone has not treated me with the consideration which is my due. She has taken my permission for granted; and she has only thought proper to tell me that the object of her journey is to see her friends in London. She went away this morning, without bidding me good–bye. She takes her own way, as if I was nobody; she treats me like a child. You may not believe it, Lecount – but I don’t even know who her friends are. I am left quite in the dark – I am left to guess for myself that her friends in London are her uncle and aunt.’
Mrs Lecount privately considered the question by the help of her own knowledge, obtained in London. She soon reached the obvious conclusion. After writing to her sister in the first instance, Magdalen had now in all probability, followed the letter in person. There was little doubt that the friends she had gone to visit in London, were her sister and Miss Garth.
‘Not her uncle and aunt, sir,’ resumed Mrs Lecount, composedly. ‘A secret for your private ear! She has no uncle and aunt. Another little turn before I explain myself – another little turn to compose your spirits.’
She took him into custody once more; and marched him back towards the house.
‘Mr Noel!’ she said, suddenly stopping in
the middle of the walk. ‘Do you know what was the worst mischief you ever did yourself in your life? I will tell you. That worst mischief was sending me to Zurich.’
His hand began to tremble on her arm once more.
‘I didn’t do it!’ he cried, piteously. ‘It was all Mr Bygrave.’
‘You acknowledge, sir, that Mr Bygrave deceived me?’ proceeded Mrs Lecount. ‘I am glad to hear that. You will be all the reather to make the next discovery which is waiting for you – the discovery that Mr Bygrave has deceived you. He is not here to slip through my fingers now; and I am not the helpless woman in this place that I was at Aldborough. Thank God!’
She uttered that devout exclamation through her set teeth. All her hatred of Captain Wragge hissed out of her lips in those twowords.
‘Oblige me, sir, by holding one side of my travelling–bag,’ she resumed, ‘while I open it and take something out.’
The interior of the bag disclosed a series of neatly–folded papers, all laid together in order, and numbered outside. Mrs Lecount took out one of the papers, and shut up the bag again with a loud snap of the spring that closed it.
‘At Aldborough, Mr Noel, I had only my own opinion to support me,’ she remarked. ‘My own opinion was nothing against Miss Bygrave’s youth and beauty, and Mr Bygrave’s ready wit. I could only hope to attack your infatuation with proofs – and at that time I had not got them. I have got them now! I am armed at all points with proofs – I bristle from head to foot with proofs – I break my forced silence, and speak with the emphasis of my proofs. Do you know this writing, sir?’
He shrank back from the paper which she offered to him.
‘I don’t understand this,’ he said nervously. ‘I don’t know what you want, or what you mean.’
Mrs Lecount forced the paper into his hand. ‘You shall know what I mean, sir, if you will give me a moment’s attention,’ she said. ‘On the day after you went away to St Crux, I obtained admission to Mr Bygrave’s house, and I had some talk in private with Mr Bygrave’s wife. That talk supplied me with the means to convince you which I had wanted to find for weeks and weeks past. I wrote you a letter to say so – I wrote to tell you, that I would forfeit my place in your service, and my expectations from your generosity, if I did not prove to you when I came back from Switzerland, that my own private suspicion of Miss Bygrave was the truth. I directed that letter to you at St Crux, and I posted it myself. Now, Mr Noel, read the paper which I have forced into your hand. It is Admiral Bartram’s written affirmation, that my letter came to St Crux, and that he enclosed it to you, under cover to Mr Bygrave, at your own request. Did Mr Bygrave ever give you that letter? Don’t agitate yourself, sir! One word of reply will do – Yes? or No?’
He read the paper, and looked up at her with growing bewilderment and fear. She obstinately waited until he spoke. ‘No,’ he said faintly; ‘I never got the letter.’
‘First proof!’ said Mrs Lecount, taking the paper from him, and putting it back in the bag. ‘One more, with your kind permission, before we come to things more serious still. I gave you a written description, sir, at Aldborough, of a person not named; and I asked you to compare it with Miss Bygrave, the next time you were in her company. After having first shown the description to Mr Bygrave – it is useless to deny it now, Mr Noel; your friend at North Shingles is not here to help you! – after having first shown my note to Mr Bygrave, you made the comparison; and you found it fail in the most important particular. There were two little moles placed close together on the left side of the neck, in my description of the unknown lady, and there were no little moles at all when you looked at Miss Bygrave’s neck. I am old enough to be your mother, Mr Noel. If the question is not indelicate –may I ask what the present state of your knowledge is, on the subject of your wife’s neck?’
She looked at him with a merciless steadiness. He drew back a few steps, cowering under her eye. ‘ can’t say,’ he stammered. ‘I don’t know. What do you mean by these questions? I never thought about the moles afterwards; I never looked. She wears her hair low –’
‘She has excellent reasons to wear it low, sir,’ remarked Mrs Lecount. ‘We will try and lift that hair, before we have done with the subject. When I came out here to find you in the garden, I saw a neat young person, through the kitchen window, with her work in her hand, who looked to my eyes, like a lady’s maid. Is this young person your wife’s maid? I beg your pardon, sir, did you say yes? In that case, another question, if you please. Did you engage her, or did your wife?’
‘I engaged her –’
‘While I was away? While I was in total ignorance that you meant to have a wife, or a wife’s maid?’
‘Yes.’
‘Under those circumstances, Mr Noel, you cannot possibly suspect me of conspiring to deceive you, with the maid for my instrument. Go into the house, sir, while I wait here. Ask the woman who dresses Mrs Noel Vanstone’s hair, morning and night, whether her mistress has a mark on the left side of her neck, and (if so) what that mark is?’
He walked a few steps towards the house, without uttering a word, then stopped, and looked back at Mrs Lecount. His blinking eyes were steady, and his wizen face had become suddenly composed. Mrs Lecount advanced a little and joined him. She saw the change; but, with all her experience of him, she failed to interpret the true meaning of it.
‘Are you in want of a pretence, sir?’ she asked. ‘Are you at a loss to account to your wife’s maid for such a question as I wish you to put to her? Pretences are easily found, which will do for persons in her station of life. Say I have come here, with news of a legacy for Mrs Noel Vanstone, and that there is a question of her identity to settle, before she can receive the money.’
She pointed to the house. He paid no attention to the sign. His face grew paler and paler. Without moving or speaking, he stood and looked at her.
‘Are you afraid?’ asked Mrs Lecount.
Those words roused him; those words lit a spark of the fire of manhood in him at last. He turned on her, like a sheep on a dog.
‘I won’t be questioned and ordered!’ he broke out, trembling violently under the new sensation of his own courage. ‘I won’t be threatened and mystified any longer! How did you find me out at this place? What do you mean by coming here with your hints and your mysteries? What have you got to say against my wife?’
Mrs Lecount composedly opened the travelling–bag, and took out her smelling–bottle, in case of emergency.
‘You have spoken to me in plain words,’ she said. ‘In plain words, sir, you shall have your answer. Are you too angry to listen?’
Her looks and tones alarmed him, in spite of himself. His courage began to sink again; and, desperately as he tried to steady it, his voice trembled when he answered her.
‘Give me my answer,’ he said, ‘and give it at once.’
‘Your commands shall be obeyed, sir, to the letter,’ replied Mrs Lecount. ‘I have come here with two objects. To open your eyes to your own situation; and to save your fortune – perhaps your life. Your situation is this. Miss Bygrave has married you, under a false character and a false name. Can you rouse your memory? Can you call to mind the disguised woman who threatened you in Vauxhall Walk? That woman – as certainly as I stand here – is now your wife.’
He looked at her in breathless silence. His lips falling apart; his eyes fixed in vacant inquiry. The suddenness of the disclosure had overreached its own end. It had stupefied him.
‘My wife?’ he repeated – and burst into an imbecile laugh.
‘Your wife,’ reiterated Mrs Lecount.
At the repetition of those two words, the strain on his faculties relaxed. A thought dawned on him for the first time. His eyes fixed on her with a furtive alarm, and he drew back hastily. ‘Mad!’ he said to himself, with a sudden remembrance of what his friend Mr Bygrave had told him at Aldborough; sharpened by his own sense of the haggard change that he saw in her face.
He spoke in a whisper – but Mrs Leco
unt heard him. She was close at his side again, in an instant. For the first time, her self–possession failed her; and she caught him angrily by the arm.
‘Will you put my madness to the proof, sir?’ she asked.
He shook off her hold; he began to gather courage again, in the intense sincerity of his disbelief– courage to face the assertion which she persisted in forcing on him.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘What must I do?’
‘Do what I told you,’ said Mrs Lecount. ‘Ask the maid that question about her mistress, on the spot. And, if she tells you the mark is there, do one thing more. Take me up into your wife’s room, and open her wardrobe in my presence, with your own hands.’
‘What do you want with her wardrobe?’ he asked.
‘You shall know when you open it.’
‘Very strange!’ he said to himself, vacantly. ‘It’s like a scene in a novel – it’s like nothing in real life.’
He went slowly into the house; and Mrs Lecount waited for him in the garden.
After an absence of a few minutes only, he appeared again, on the top of the flight of steps which led into the garden from the house. He held by the iron rail, with one hand; while with the other he beckoned to Mrs Lecount to join him on the steps. ‘What does the maid say?’ she asked as she approached him. ‘Is the mark there?’
He answered in a whisper, ‘Yes.’ What he had heard from the maid had produced a marked change in him. The horror of the coming discovery had laid its paralysing hold on his mind. He moved mechanically; he looked and spoke like a man in a dream.
‘Will you take my arm, sir?’
He shook his head; and, preceding her along the passage and up the stairs, led the way into his wife’s room. When she joined him, and locked the door, he stood passively waiting for his directions, without making any remark, without showing any external appearance of surprise. He had not removed either his hat or coat. Mrs Lecount took them off for him. ‘Thank you,’ he said, with the docility of a well–trained child. ‘It’s like a scene in a novel – it’s like nothing in real life.’
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