CAPTAIN WRAGGE stopped nearly midway in the one little row of houses
composing Rosemary Lane, and let himself and his guest in at the door of
his lodgings with his own key. As they entered the passage, a care-worn
woman in a widow's cap made her appearance with a candle. "My niece,"
said the captain, presenting Magdalen; "my niece on a visit to York. She
has kindly consented to occupy your empty bedroom. Consider it let, if
you please, to my niece--and be very particular in airing the sheets?
Is Mrs. Wragge upstairs? Very good. You may lend me your candle. My
dear girl, Mrs. Wragge's boudoir is on the first floor; Mrs. Wragge is
visible. Allow me to show you the way up."
As he ascended the stairs first, the care-worn widow whispered,
piteously, to Magdalen, "I hope you'll pay me, miss. Your uncle
doesn't."
The captain threw open the door of the front room on the first
floor, and disclosed a female figure, arrayed in a gown of tarnished
amber-colored satin, seated solitary on a small chair, with dingy old
gloves on its hands, with a tattered old book on its knees, and with one
little bedroom candle by its side. The figure terminated at its upper
extremity in a large, smooth, white round face--like a moon--encircled
by a cap and green ribbons, and dimly irradiated by eyes of mild and
faded blue, which looked straightforward into vacancy, and took not the
smallest notice of Magdalen's appearance, on the opening of the door.
"Mrs. Wragge!" cried the captain, shouting at her as if she was fast
asleep. "Mrs. Wragge!"
The lady of the faded blue eyes slowly rose to an apparently
interminable height. When she had at last attained an upright position,
she towered to a stature of two or three inches over six feet. Giants of
both sexes are, by a wise dispensation of Providence, created, for the
most part, gentle. If Mrs. Wragge and a lamb had been placed side by
side, comparison, under those circumstances, would have exposed the lamb
as a rank impostor.
"Tea, captain?" inquired Mrs. Wragge, looking submissively down at
her husband, whose head, when he stood on tiptoe, barely reached her
shoulder.
"Miss Vanstone, the younger," said the captain, presenting Magdalen.
"Our fair relative, whom I have met by fortunate accident. Our guest for
the night. Our guest!" reiterated the captain, shouting once more as if
the tall lady was still fast asleep, in spite of the plain testimony of
her own eyes to the contrary.
A smile expressed itself (in faint outline) on the large vacant space of
Mrs. Wragge's countenance. "Oh?" she said, interrogatively. "Oh, indeed?
Please, miss, will you sit down? I'm sorry--no, I don't mean I'm sorry;
I mean I'm glad--" she stopped, and consulted her husband by a helpless
look.
"Glad, of course!" shouted the captain.
"Glad, of course," echoed the giantess of the amber satin, more meekly
than ever.
"Mrs. Wragge is not deaf," explained the captain. "She's only a little
slow. Constitutionally torpid--if I may use the expression. I am merely
loud with her (and I beg you will honor me by being loud, too) as a
necessary stimulant to her ideas. Shout at her--and her mind comes up
to time. Speak to her--and she drifts miles away from you directly. Mrs.
Wragge!"
Mrs. Wragge instantly acknowledged the stimulant. "Tea, captain?" she
inquired, for the second time.
"Put your cap straight!" shouted her husband. "I beg ten thousand
pardons," he resumed, again addressing himself to Magdalen. "The sad
truth is, I am a martyr to my own sense of order. All untidiness, all
want of system and regularity, cause me the acutest irritation. My
attention is distracted, my composure is upset; I can't rest till things
are set straight again. Externally speaking, Mrs. Wragge is, to my
infinite regret, the crookedest woman I ever met with. More to the
right!" shouted the captain, as Mrs. Wragge, like a well-trained
child, presented herself with her revised head-dress for her husband's
inspection.
Mrs. Wragge immediately pulled the cap to the left. Magdalen rose, and
set it right for her. The moon-face of the giantess brightened for the
first time. She looked admiringly at Magdalen's cloak and bonnet. "Do
you like dress, miss?" she asked, suddenly, in a confidential whisper.
"I do."
"Show Miss Vanstone her room," said the captain, looking as if the whole
house belonged to him. "The spare-room, the landlady's spare-room, on
the third floor front. Offer Miss Vanstone all articles connected with
the toilet of which she may stand in need. She has no luggage with her.
Supply the deficiency, and then come back and make tea."
Mrs. Wragge acknowledged the receipt of these lofty directions by a
look of placid bewilderment, and led the way out of the room; Magdalen
following her, with a candle presented by the attentive captain. As
soon as they were alone on the landing outside, Mrs. Wragge raised the
tattered old book which she had been reading when Magdalen was first
presented to her, and which she had never let out of her hand since, and
slowly tapped herself on the forehead with it. "Oh, my poor head!" said
the tall lady, in meek soliloquy; "it's Buzzing again worse than ever!"
"Buzzing?" repeated Magdalen, in the utmost astonishment.
Mrs. Wragge ascended the stairs, without offering any explanation,
stopped at one of the rooms on the second floor, and led the way in.
"This is not the third floor," said Magdalen. "This is not my room,
surely?"
"Wait a bit," pleaded Mrs. Wragge. "Wait a bit, miss, before we go up
any higher. I've got the Buzzing in my head worse than ever. Please wait
for me till I'm a little better again."
"Shall I ask for help?" inquired Magdalen. "Shall I call the landlady?"
"Help?" echoed Mrs. Wragge. "Bless you, I don't want help! I'm used to
it. I've had the Buzzing in my head, off and on--how many years?" She
stopped, reflected, lost herself, and suddenly tried a question in
despair. "Have you ever been at Darch's Dining-rooms in London?" she
asked, with an appearance of the deepest interest.
"No," replied Magdalen, wondering at the strange inquiry.
"That's where the Buzzing in my head first began," said Mrs. Wragge,
following the new clew with the deepest attention and anxiety. "I was
employed to wait on the gentlemen at Darch's Dining-rooms--I was. The
gentlemen all came together; the gentlemen were all hungry together; the
gentlemen all gave their orders together--" She stopped, and tapped her
head again, despondently, with the tattered old book.
"And you had to keep all their orders in your memory, separate one from
the other?" suggested Magdalen, helping her out. "And the trying to do
that confused you?"
"That's it!" said Mrs. Wragge, becoming violently excited in a moment.
"Boiled pork and greens and pease-pudding, for Number One. Stewed beef
and carrots and gooseberry tart, for Number Two. Cut of mutton, and
quick about it, well done, and plenty of fat, for Number Three. Codfish
and parsnips, two chops to follow, hot-and-hot, or I'll be the death of
you, for Number Four. Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Carrots and
gooseberry tart--pease-pudding and plenty of fat--pork and beef and
mutton, and cut 'em all, and quick about it--stout for one, and ale for
t'other--and stale bread here, and new bread there--and this gentleman
likes cheese, and that gentleman doesn't--Matilda, Tilda, Tilda, Tilda,
fifty times over, till I didn't know my own name again--oh lord! oh
lord!! oh lord!!! all together, all at the same time, all out of temper,
all buzzing in my poor head like forty thousand million bees--don't tell
the captain! don't tell the captain!" The unfortunate creature dropped
the tattered old book, and beat both her hands on her head, with a look
of blank terror fixed on the door.
"Hush! hush!" said Magdalen. "The captain hasn't heard you. I know what
is the matter with your head now. Let me cool it."
She dipped a towel in water, and pressed it on the hot and helpless head
which Mrs. Wragge submitted to her with the docility of a sick child.
"What a pretty hand you've got!" said the poor creature, feeling the
relief of the coolness and taking Magdalen's hand, admiringly, in her
own. "How soft and white it is! I try to be a lady; I always keep my
gloves on--but I can't get my hands like yours. I'm nicely dressed,
though, ain't I? I like dress; it's a comfort to me. I'm always happy
when I'm looking at my things. I say--you won't be angry with me?--I
should so like to try your bonnet on."
Magdalen humored her, with the ready compassion of the young. She stood
smiling and nodding at herself in the glass, with the bonnet perched
on the top of her head. "I had one as pretty as this, once," she
said--"only it was white, not black. I wore it when the captain married
me."
"Where did you meet with him?" asked Magdalen, putting the question as
a chance means of increasing her scanty stock of information on the
subject of Captain Wragge.
"At the Dining-rooms," said Mrs. Wragge. "He was the hungriest and the
loudest to wait upon of the lot of 'em. I made more mistakes with him
than I did with all the rest of them put together. He used to swear--oh,
didn't he use to swear! When he left off swearing at me he married me.
There was others wanted me besides him. Bless you, I had my pick. Why
not? When you have a trifle of money left you that you didn't expect, if
that don't make a lady of you, what does? Isn't a lady to have her pick?
I had my trifle of money, and I had my pick, and I picked the captain--I
did. He was the smartest and the shortest of them all. He took care of
me and my money. I'm here, the money's gone. Don't you put that towel
down on the table--he won't have that! Don't move his razors--don't,
please, or I shall forget which is which. I've got to remember which is
which to-morrow morning. Bless you, the captain don't shave himself!
He had me taught. I shave him. I do his hair, and cut his nails--he's
awfully particular about his nails. So he is about his trousers. And
his shoes. And his newspaper in the morning. And his breakfasts, and
lunches, and dinners, and teas--" She stopped, struck by a sudden
recollection, looked about her, observed the tattered old book on the
floor, and clasped her hands in despair. "I've lost the place!" she
exclaimed helplessly. "Oh, mercy, what will become of me! I've lost the
place."
"Never mind," said Magdalen; "I'll soon find the place for you again."
She picked up the book, looked into the pages, and found that the
object of Mrs. Wragge's anxiety was nothing more important than an
old-fashioned Treatise on the Art of Cookery, reduced under the usual
heads of Fish, Flesh, and Fowl, and containing the customary series of
recipes. Turning over the leaves, Magdalen came to one particular page,
thickly studded with little drops of moisture half dry. "Curious!" she
said. "If this was anything but a cookery-book, I should say somebody
had been crying over it."
"Somebody?" echoed Mrs. Wragge, with a stare of amazement. "It isn't
somebody--it's Me. Thank you kindly, that's the place, sure enough.
Bless you, I'm used to crying over it. You'd cry, too, if you had to get
the captain's dinners out of it. As sure as ever I sit down to this book
the Buzzing in my head begins again. Who's to make it out? Sometimes
I think I've got it, and it all goes away from me. Sometimes I think I
haven't got it, and it all comes back in a heap. Look here! Here's what
he's ordered for his breakfast to-morrow: 'Omelette with Herbs. Beat up
two eggs with a little water or milk, salt, pepper, chives, and parsley.
Mince small.'--There! mince small! How am I to mince small when it's all
mixed up and running? 'Put a piece of butter the size of your thumb into
the frying-pan.'--Look at my thumb, and look at yours! whose size does
she mean? 'Boil, but not brown.'--If it mustn't be brown, what color
must it be? She won't tell me; she expects me to know, and I don't.
'Pour in the omelette.'--There! I can do that. 'Allow it to set, raise
it round the edge; when done, turn it over to double it.'--Oh, the
number of times I turned it over and doubled it in my head, before you
came in to-night! 'Keep it soft; put the dish on the frying-pan, and
turn it over.' Which am I to turn over--oh, mercy, try the cold towel
again, and tell me which--the dish or the frying-pan?"
"Put the dish on the frying-pan," said Magdalen; "and then turn the
frying-pan over. That is what it means, I think."
"Thank you kindly," said Mrs. Wragge, "I want to get it into my head;
please say it again."
Magdalen said it again.
"And then turn the frying-pan over," repeated Mrs. Wragge, with a sudden
burst of energy. "I've got it now! Oh, the lots of omelettes all frying
together in my head; and all frying wrong! Much obliged, I'm sure.
You've put me all right again: I'm only a little tired with talking.
And then turn the frying-pan, then turn the frying-pan, then turn the
frying-pan over. It sounds like poetry, don't it?"
Her voice sank, and she drowsily closed her eyes. At the same moment the
door of the room below opened, and the captain's mellifluous bass notes
floated upstairs, charged with the customary stimulant to his wife's
faculties.
"Mrs. Wragge!" cried the captain. "Mrs. Wragge!"
She started to her feet at that terrible summons. "Oh, what did he tell
me to do?" she asked, distractedly. "Lots of things, and I've forgotten
them all!"
"Say you have done them when he asks you," suggested Magdalen. "They
were things for me--things I don't want. I remember all that is
necessary. My room is the front room on the third floor. Go downstairs
and say I am coming directly."
She took up the candle and pushed Mrs. Wragge out on the landing. "Say
I am coming directly," she whispered again--and went upstairs by herself
to the third story.
The room was small, close, and very poorly furnished. In former days
Miss Garth would have hesitated to offer such a room to one of the
servants at Combe-Raven. But it was quiet; it gave her a few minutes
alone; and it was endurable, even welcome, on that account. She locked
herself in and walked mechanically, with a woman's first impulse in
a strange bedroom, to the rickety little table and the dingy little
looking-glass. She waited there for a moment, and then turned away with
weary contempt. "What does it matter how pale I am?" she thought to
herself. "Frank can't see me--what does it matter now!"
She laid aside her cloak and bonnet, and sat down to collect herself.
But the events of the day had worn her out. The past, when she tried
to remember it, only made her heart ache. The future, when she tried
to penetrate it, was a black void. She rose again, and stood by the
uncurtained window--stood looking out, as if there was some hidden
sympathy for her own desolation in the desolate night.
"Norah!" she said to herself, tenderly; "I wonder if Norah is thinking
of me? Oh, if I could be as patient as she is! If I could only forget
the debt we owe to Michael Vanstone!"
Her face darkened with a vindictive despair, and she paced the little
cage of a room backward and forward, softly. "No: never till the debt
is paid!" Her thoughts veered back again to Frank. "Still at sea, poor
fellow; further and further away from me; sailing through the day,
sailing through the night. Oh, Frank, love me!"
Her eyes filled with tears. She dashed them away, made for the door, and
laughed with a desperate levity, as she unlocked it again.
"Any company is better than my own thoughts," she burst out, recklessly,
as she left the room. "I'm forgetting my ready-made relations--my
half-witted aunt, and my uncle the rogue." She descended the stairs
to the landing on the first floor, and paused there in momentary
hesitation. "How will it end?" she asked herself. "Where is my
blindfolded journey taking me to now? Who knows, and who cares?"
She entered the room.
Captain Wragge was presiding at the tea-tray with the air of a prince
in his own banqueting-hall. At one side of the table sat Mrs. Wragge,
watching her husband's eye like an animal waiting to be fed. At the
other side was an empty chair, toward which the captain waved his
persuasive hand when Magdalen came in. "How do you like your room?" he
inquired; "I trust Mrs. Wragge has made herself useful? You take
milk and sugar? Try the local bread, honor the York butter, test
the freshness of a new and neighboring egg. I offer my little all. A
pauper's meal, my dear girl--seasoned with a gentleman's welcome."
"Seasoned with salt, pepper, chives and parsley," murmured Mrs. Wragge,
catching instantly at a word in connection with cookery, and harnessing
her head to the omelette for the rest of the evening.
"Sit straight at the table!" shouted the captain. "More to the left,
more still--that will do. During your absence upstairs," he continued,
addressing himself to Magdalen, "my mind has not been unemployed. I
have been considering your position with a view exclusively to your
own benefit. If you decide on being guided to-morrow by the light of
my experience, that light is unreservedly at your service. You may
naturally say: 'I know but little of you, captain, and that little is
unfavorable.' Granted, on one condition--that you permit me to make
myself and my character quite familiar to you when tea is over. False
shame is foreign to my nature. You see my wife, my house, my bread, my
butter, and my eggs, all exactly as they are. See me, too, my dear girl,
while you are about it."
When tea was over, Mrs. Wragge, at a signal from her husband, retired to
a corner of the room, with the eternal cookery-book still in her hand.
"Mince small," she whispered, confidentially, as she passed Magdalen.
"That's a teaser, isn't it?"
"Down at heel again!" shouted the captain, pointing to his wife's heavy
flat feet as they shuffled across the room. "The right shoe. Pull it up
at heel, Mrs. Wragge--pull it up at heel! Pray allow me," he continued,
offering his arm to Magdalen, and escorting her to a dirty little
horse-hair sofa. "You want repose--after your long journey, you really
want repose." He drew his chair to the sofa, and surveyed her with a
bland look of investigation--as if he had been her medical attendant,
with a diagnosis on his mind.
"Very pleasant! very pleasant!" said the captain, when he had seen his
guest comfortable on the sofa. "I feel quite in the bosom of my family.
Shall we return to our subject--the subject of my rascally self? No!
no! No apologies, no protestations, pray. Don't mince the matter on your
side--and depend on me not to mince it on mine. Now come to facts;
pray come to facts. Who, and what am I? Carry your mind back to our
conversation on the Walls of this interesting City, and let us start
once more from your point of view. I am a Rogue; and, in that capacity
(as I have already pointed out), the most useful man you possibly could
have met with. Now observe! There are many varieties of Rogue; let me
tell you my variety, to begin with. I am a Swindler."
His entire shamelessness was really super-human. Not the vestige of a
blush varied the sallow monotony of his complexion; the smile wreathed
his curly lips as pleasantly as ever his party-colored eyes twinkled at
Magdalen with the self-enjoying frankness of a naturally harmless man.
Had his wife heard him? Magdalen looked over his shoulder to the corner
of the room in which she was sitting behind him. No the self-taught
student of cookery was absorbed in her subject. She had advanced her
imaginary omelette to the critical stage at which the butter was to
be thrown in--that vaguely-measured morsel of butter, the size of your
thumb. Mrs. Wragge sat lost in contemplation of one of her own thumbs,
and shook her head over it, as if it failed to satisfy her.
"Don't be shocked," proceeded the captain; "don't be astonished.
Swindler is nothing but a word of two syllables. S, W, I, N, D--swind;
L, E, R--ler; Swindler. Definition: A moral agriculturist; a man who
cultivates the field of human sympathy. I am that moral agriculturist,
that cultivating man. Narrow-minded mediocrity, envious of my success in
my profession, calls me a Swindler. What of that? The same low tone of
mind assails men in other professions in a similar manner--calls great
writers scribblers--great generals, butchers--and so on. It entirely
depends on the point of view. Adopting your point, I announce myself
intelligibly as a Swindler. Now return the obligation, and adopt
mine. Hear what I have to say for myself, in the exercise of my
profession.--Shall I continue to put it frankly?"
"Yes," said Magdalen; "and I'll tell you frankly afterward what I think
of it."
The captain cleared his throat; mentally assembled his entire army of
words--horse, foot, artillery, and reserves; put himself at the head;
and dashed into action, to carry the moral intrenchments of Society by a
general charge.
"Now observe," he began. "Here am I, a needy object. Very good. Without
complicating the question by asking how I come to be in that condition,
I will merely inquire whether it is, or is not, the duty of a Christian
community to help the needy. If you say No, you simply shock me; and
there is an end of it; if you say Yes, then I beg to ask, Why am I to
blame for making a Christian community do its duty? You may say, Is a
careful man who has saved money bound to spend it again on a careless
stranger who has saved none? Why of course he is! And on what ground,
pray? Good heavens! on the ground that he has _got_ the money, to be
sure. All the world over, the man who has not got the thing, obtains it,
on one pretense or another, of the man who has--and, in nine cases out
of ten, the pretense is a false one. What! your pockets are full, and
my pockets are empty; and you refuse to help me? Sordid wretch! do you
think I will allow you to violate the sacred obligations of charity
in my person? I won't allow you--I say, distinctly, I won't allow you.
Those are my principles as a moral agriculturist. Principles which admit
of trickery? Certainly. Am I to blame if the field of human sympathy
can't be cultivated in any other way? Consult my brother agriculturists
in the mere farming line--do they get their crops for the asking? No!
they must circumvent arid Nature exactly as I circumvent sordid
Man. They must plow, and sow, and top-dress, and bottom-dress, and
deep-drain, and surface-drain, and all the rest of it. Why am I to be
checked in the vast occupation of deep-draining mankind? Why am I to be
persecuted for habitually exciting the noblest feelings of our common
nature? Infamous!--I can characterize it by no other word--infamous! If
I hadn't confidence in the future, I should despair of humanity--but I
have confidence in the future. Yes! one of these days (when I am dead
and gone), as ideas enlarge and enlightenment progresses, the abstract
merits of the profession now called swindling will be recognized.
When that day comes, don't drag me out of my grave and give me a public
funeral; don't take advantage of my having no voice to raise in my own
defense, and insult me by a national statue. No! do me justice on my
tombstone; dash me off, in one masterly sentence, on my epitaph. Here
lies Wragge, embalmed in the tardy recognition of his species: he
plowed, sowed, and reaped his fellow-creatures; and enlightened
posterity congratulates him on the uniform excellence of his crops."
He stopped; not from want of confidence, not from want of words--purely
from want of breath. "I put it frankly, with a dash of humor," he said,
pleasantly. "I don't shock you--do I?" Weary and heart-sick as she
was--suspicious of others, doubtful of herself--the extravagant
impudence of Captain Wragge's defense of swindling touched Magdalen's
natural sense of humor, and forced a smile to her lips. "Is the
Yorkshire crop a particularly rich one just at present?" she inquired,
meeting him, in her neatly feminine way, with his own weapons.
"A hit--a palpable hit," said the captain, jocosely exhibiting the
tails of his threadbare shooting jacket, as a practical commentary on
Magdalen's remark. "My dear girl, here or elsewhere, the crop never
fails--but one man can't always gather it in. The assistance of
intelligent co-operation is, I regret to say, denied me. I have nothing
in common with the clumsy rank and file of my profession, who convict
themselves, before recorders and magistrates, of the worst of all
offenses--incurable stupidity in the exercise of their own vocation.
Such as you see me, I stand entirely alone. After years of successful
self-dependence, the penalties of celebrity are beginning to attach to
me. On my way from the North, I pause at this interesting city for the
third time; I consult my Books for the customary references to past
local experience; I find under the heading, 'Personal position in York,'
the initials, T. W. K., signifying Too Well Known. I refer to my Index,
and turn to the surrounding neighborhood. The same brief marks meet my
eye. 'Leeds. T. W. K.--Scarborough. T. W. K.--Harrowgate. T. W. K.'--and
so on. What is the inevitable consequence? I suspend my proceedings; my
resources evaporate; and my fair relative finds me the pauper gentleman
whom she now sees before her."
"Your books?" said Magdalen. "What books do you mean?"
"You shall see," replied the captain. "Trust me, or not, as you like--I
trust _you_ implicitly. You shall see."
With those words he retired into the back room. While he was gone,
Magdalen stole another look at Mrs. Wragge. Was she still self-isolated
from her husband's deluge of words? Perfectly self-isolated. She had
advanced the imaginary omelette to the last stage of culinary progress;
and she was now rehearsing the final operation of turning it over--with
the palm of her hand to represent the dish, and the cookery-book to
impersonate the frying-pan. "I've got it," said Mrs. Wragge, nodding
across the room at Magdalen. "First put the frying-pan on the dish, and
then tumble both of them over."
Captain Wragge returned, carrying a neat black dispatch-box, adorned
with a bright brass lock. He produced from the box five or six plump
little books, bound in commercial calf and vellum, and each fitted
comfortably with its own little lock.
"Mind!" said the moral agriculturist, "I take no credit to myself for
this: it is my nature to be orderly, and orderly I am. I must have
everything down in black and white, or I should go mad! Here is my
commercial library: Daybook, Ledger, Book of Districts, Book of Letters,
Book of Remarks, and so on. Kindly throw your eye over any one of them.
I flatter myself there is no such thing as a blot, or a careless entry
in it, from the first page to the last. Look at this room--is there a
chair out of place? Not if I know it! Look at _me_. Am I dusty? am I
dirty? am I half shaved? Am I, in brief, a speckless pauper, or am I
not? Mind! I take no credit to myself; the nature of the man, my dear
girl--the nature of the man!"
He opened one of the books. Magdalen was no judge of the admirable
correctness with which the accounts inside were all kept; but she could
estimate the neatness of the handwriting, the regularity in the rows of
figures, the mathematical exactness of the ruled lines in red and black
ink, the cleanly absence of blots, stains, or erasures. Although Captain
Wragge's inborn sense of order was in him--as it is in others--a sense
too inveterately mechanical to exercise any elevating moral influence
over his actions, it had produced its legitimate effect on his habits,
and had reduced his rogueries as strictly to method and system as if
they had been the commercial transactions of an honest man.
"In appearance, my system looks complicated?" pursued the captain. "In
reality, it is simplicity itself. I merely avoid the errors of inferior
practitioners. That is to say, I never plead for myself; and I
never apply to rich people--both fatal mistakes which the inferior
practitioner perpetually commits. People with small means sometimes have
generous impulses in connection with money--rich people, _never_. My
lord, with forty thousand a year; Sir John, with property in half a
dozen counties--those are the men who never forgive the genteel beggar
for swindling them out of a sovereign; those are the men who send for
the mendicity officers; those are the men who take care of their
money. Who are the people who lose shillings and sixpences by sheer
thoughtlessness? Servants and small clerks, to whom shillings and
sixpences are of consequence. Did you ever hear of Rothschild or Baring
dropping a fourpenny-piece down a gutter-hole? Fourpence in Rothschild's
pocket is safer than fourpence in the pocket of that woman who is crying
stale shrimps in Skeldergate at this moment. Fortified by these sound
principles, enlightened by the stores of written information in my
commercial library, I have ranged through the population for years past,
and have raised my charitable crops with the most cheering success.
Here, in book Number One, are all my Districts mapped out, with the
prevalent public feeling to appeal to in each: Military District,
Clerical District, Agricultural District; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in
Number Two, are my cases that I plead: Family of an officer who fell at
Waterloo; Wife of a poor curate stricken down by nervous debility; Widow
of a grazier in difficulties gored to death by a mad bull; et cetera,
et cetera. Here, in Number Three, are the people who have heard of the
officer's family, the curate's wife, the grazier's widow, and the people
who haven't; the people who have said Yes, and the people who have said
No; the people to try again, the people who want a fresh case to stir
them up, the people who are doubtful, the people to beware of; et
cetera, et cetera. Here, in Number Four, are my Adopted Handwritings
of public characters; my testimonials to my own worth and integrity; my
Heartrending Statements of the officer's family, the curate's wife,
and the grazier's widow, stained with tears, blotted with emotion; et
cetera, et cetera. Here, in Numbers Five and Six, are my own personal
subscriptions to local charities, actually paid in remunerative
neighborhoods, on the principle of throwing a sprat to catch a herring;
also, my diary of each day's proceedings, my personal reflections and
remarks, my statement of existing difficulties (such as the difficulty
of finding myself T. W. K. in this interesting city); my outgivings and
incomings; wind and weather; politics and public events; fluctuations in
my own health; fluctuations in Mrs. Wragge's head; fluctuations in our
means and meals, our payments, prospects, and principles; et cetera,
et cetera. So, my dear girl, the Swindler's Mill goes. So you see me
exactly as I am. You knew, before I met you, that I lived on my wits.
Well! have I, or have I not, shown you that I have wits to live on?"
"I have no doubt you have done yourself full justice," said Magdalen,
quietly.
"I am not at all exhausted," continued the captain. "I can go on, if
necessary, for t he rest of the evening.--However, if I have do ne
myself full justice, perhaps I may leave the remaining points in
my character to develop themselves at future opportunities. For
the present, I withdraw myself from notice. Exit Wragge. And now to
business! Permit me to inquire what effect I have produced on your own
mind? Do you still believe that the Rogue who has trusted you with all
his secrets is a Rogue who is bent on taking a mean advantage of a fair
relative?"
"I will wait a little," Magdalen rejoined, "before I answer that
question. When I came down to tea, you told me you had been employing
your mind for my benefit. May I ask how?"
"By all means," said Captain Wragge. "You shall have the net result
of the whole mental process. Said process ranges over the present and
future proceedings of your disconsolate friends, and of the lawyers
who are helping them to find you. Their present proceedings are, in all
probability, assuming the following form: the lawyer's clerk has given
you up at Mr. Huxtable's, and has also, by this time, given you up,
after careful inquiry, at all the hotels. His last chance is that you
may send for your box to the cloak-room--you don't send for it--and
there the clerk is to-night (thanks to Captain Wragge and Rosemary Lane)
at the end of his resources. He will forthwith communicate that fact to
his employers in London; and those employers (don't be alarmed!) will
apply for help to the detective police. Allowing for inevitable
delays, a professional spy, with all his wits about him, and with
those handbills to help him privately in identifying you, will be here
certainly not later than the day after tomorrow--possibly earlier. If
you remain in York, if you attempt to communicate with Mr. Huxtable,
that spy will find you out. If, on the other hand, you leave the city
before he comes (taking your departure by other means than the railway,
of course) you put him in the same predicament as the clerk--you defy
him to find a fresh trace of you. There is my brief abstract of your
present position. What do you think of it?"
"I think it has one defect," said Magdalen. "It ends in nothing."
"Pardon me," retorted the captain. "It ends in an arrangement for your
safe departure, and in a plan for the entire gratification of your
wishes in the direction of the stage. Both drawn from the resources of
my own experience, and both waiting a word from you, to be poured forth
immediately in the fullest detail."
"I think I know what that word is," replied Magdalen, looking at him
attentively.
"Charmed to hear it, I am sure. You have only to say, 'Captain Wragge,
take charge of me'--and my plans are yours from that moment."
"I will take to-night to consider your proposal," she said, after an
instant's reflection. "You shall have my answer to-morrow morning."
Captain Wragge looked a little disappointed. He had not expected the
reservation on his side to be met so composedly by a reservation on
hers.
"Why not decide at once?" he remonstrated, in his most persuasive tones.
"You have only to consider--"
"I have more to consider than you think for," she answered. "I have
another object in view besides the object you know of."
"May I ask--?"
"Excuse me, Captain Wragge--you may _not_ ask. Allow me to thank you
for your hospitality, and to wish you good-night. I am worn out. I want
rest."
Once more the captain wisely adapted himself to her humor with the ready
self-control of an experienced man.
"Worn out, of course!" he said, sympathetically. "Unpardonable on my
part not to have thought of it before. We will resume our conversation
to-morrow. Permit me to give you a candle. Mrs. Wragge!"
Prostrated by mental exertion, Mrs. Wragge was pursuing the course of
the omelette in dreams. Her head was twisted one way, and her body the
other. She snored meekly. At intervals one of her hands raised itself in
the air, shook an imaginary frying-pan, and dropped again with a faint
thump on the cookery-book in her lap. At the sound of her husband's
voice, she started to her feet, and confronted him with her mind fast
asleep, and her eyes wide open.
"Assist Miss Vanstone," said the captain. "And the next time you forget
yourself in your chair, fall asleep straight--don't annoy me by falling
asleep crooked."
Mrs. Wragge opened her eyes a little wider, and looked at Magdalen in
helpless amazement.
"Is the captain breakfasting by candle-light?" she inquired, meekly.
"And haven't I done the omelette?"
Before her husband's corrective voice could apply a fresh stimulant,
Magdalen took her compassionately by the arm and led her out of the
room.
"Another object besides the object I know of?" repeated Captain Wragge,
when he was left by himself. "_Is_ there a gentleman in the background,
after all? Is there mischief brewing in the dark that I don't bargain
for?"