THE THIRD SCENE.
VAUXHALL WALK, LAMBETH.
CHAPTER I.
THE old Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth, on the southern bank of the
Thames--with its Bishop's Walk and Garden, and its terrace fronting the
river--is an architectural relic of the London of former times, precious
to all lovers of the picturesque, in the utilitarian London of the
present day. Southward of this venerable structure lies the street
labyrinth of Lambeth; and nearly midway, in that part of the maze of
houses which is placed nearest to the river, runs the dingy double row
of buildings now, as in former days, known by the name of Vauxhall Walk.
The network of dismal streets stretching over the surrounding
neighborhood contains a population for the most part of the poorer
order. In the thoroughfares where shops abound, the sordid struggle with
poverty shows itself unreservedly on the filthy pavement; gathers its
forces through the week; and, strengthening to a tumult on Saturday
night, sees the Sunday morning dawn in murky gaslight. Miserable women,
whose faces never smile, haunt the butchers' shops in such London
localities as these, with relics of the men's wages saved from the
public-house clutched fast in their hands, with eyes that devour the
meat they dare not buy, with eager fingers that touch it covetously,
as the fingers of their richer sisters touch a precious stone. In this
district, as in other districts remote from the wealthy quarters of the
metropolis, the hideous London vagabond--with the filth of the street
outmatched in his speech, with the mud of the street outdirtied in his
clothes--lounges, lowering and brutal, at the street corner and the
gin-shop door; the public disgrace of his country, the unheeded warning
of social troubles that are yet to come. Here, the loud self-assertion
of Modern Progress--which has reformed so much in manners, and altered
so little in men--meets the flat contradiction that scatters its
pretensions to the winds. Here, while the national prosperity feasts,
like another Belshazzar, on the spectacle of its own magnificence, is
the Writing on the Wall, which warns the monarch, Money, that his glory
is weighed in the balance, and his power found wanting.
Situated in such a neighborhood as this, Vauxhall Walk gains by
comparison, and establishes claims to respectability which no impartial
observation can fail to recognize. A large proportion of the Walk is
still composed of private houses. In the scattered situations where
shops appear, those shops are not besieged by the crowds of more
populous thoroughfares. Commerce is not turbulent, nor is the public
consumer besieged by loud invitations to "buy." Bird-fanciers have
sought the congenial tranquillity of the scene; and pigeons coo,
and canaries twitter, in Vauxhall Walk. Second-hand carts and cabs,
bedsteads of a certain age, detached carriage-wheels for those who
may want one to make up a set, are all to be found here in the same
repository. One tributary stream, in the great flood of gas which
illuminates London, tracks its parent source to Works established in
this locality. Here the followers of John Wesley have set up a temple,
built before the period of Methodist conversion to the principles of
architectural religion. And here--most striking object of all--on the
site where thousands of lights once sparkled; where sweet sounds of
music made night tuneful till morning dawned; where the beauty and
fashion of London feasted and danced through the summer seasons of a
century--spreads, at this day, an awful wilderness of mud and rubbish;
the deserted dead body of Vauxhall Gardens mouldering in the open air.
On the same day when Captain Wragge completed the last entry in his
Chronicle of Events, a woman appeared at the window of one of the houses
in Vauxhall Walk, and removed from the glass a printed paper which
had been wafered to it announcing that Apartments were to be let. The
apartments consisted of two rooms on the first floor. They had just been
taken for a week certain by two ladies who had paid in advance--those
two ladies being Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge.
As soon as the mistress of the house had left the room, Magdalen walked
to the window, and cautiously looked out from it at the row of buildings
opposite. They were of superior pretensions in size and appearance to
the other houses in the Walk: the date at which they had been erected
was inscribed on one of them, and was stated to be the year 1759. They
stood back from the pavement, separated from it by little strips of
garden-ground. This peculiarity of position, added to the breadth of the
roadway interposing between them and the smaller houses opposite,
made it impossible for Magdalen to see the numbers on the doors, or
to observe more of any one who might come to the windows than the bare
general outline of dress and figure. Nevertheless, there she stood,
anxiously fixing her eyes on one house in the row, nearly opposite to
her--the house she had looked for before entering the lodgings; the
house inhabited at that moment by Noel Vanstone and Mrs. Lecount.
After keeping watch at the window in silence for ten minutes or more,
she suddenly looked back into the room, to observe the effect which her
behavior might have produced on her traveling companion.
Not the slightest cause appeared for any apprehension in that quarter.
Mrs. Wragge was seated at the table absorbed in the arrangement of
a series of smart circulars and tempting price-lists, issued by
advertising trades-people, and flung in at the cab-windows as they left
the London terminus. "I've often heard tell of light reading," said Mrs.
Wragge, restlessly shifting the positions of the circulars as a child
restlessly shifts the position of a new set of toys. "Here's light
reading, printed in pretty colors. Here's all the Things I'm going to
buy when I'm out shopping to-morrow. Lend us a pencil, please--you won't
be angry, will you? I do so want to mark 'em off." She looked up at
Magdalen, chuckled joyfully over her own altered circumstances, and
beat her great hands on the table in irrepressible delight. "No
cookery-book!" cried Mrs. Wragge. "No Buzzing in my head! no captain to
shave to-morrow! I'm all down at heel; my cap's on one side; and nobody
bawls at me. My heart alive, here _is_ a holiday and no mistake!"
Her hands began to drum on the table louder than ever, until Magdalen
quieted them by presenting her with a pencil. Mrs. Wragge instantly
recovered her dignity, squared her elbows on the table, and plunged into
imaginary shopping for the rest of the evening.
Magdalen returned to the window. She took a chair, seated herself
behind the curtain, and steadily fixed her eyes once more on the house
opposite.
The blinds were down over the windows of the first floor and the second.
The window of the room on the ground-floor was uncovered and partly
open, but no living creature came near it. Doors opened, and people came
and went, in the houses on either side; children by the dozen poured out
on the pavement to play, and invaded the little strips of garden-ground
to recover lost balls and shuttlecocks; streams of people passed
backward and forward perpetually; heavy wagons piled high with goods
lumbered along the road on their way to, or their way from, the railway
station near; all the daily life of the district stirred with its
ceaseless activity in every direction but one. The hours passed--and
there was the house opposite still shut up, still void of any signs of
human existence inside or out. The one object which had decided Magdalen
on personally venturing herself in Vauxhall Walk--the object of studying
the looks, manners and habits of Mrs. Lecount and her master from a post
of observation known only to herself--was thus far utterly defeated.
After three hours' watching at the window, she had not even discovered
enough to show her that the house was inhabited at all.
Shortly after six o'clock, the landlady disturbed Mrs. Wragge's studies
by spreading the cloth for dinner. Magdalen placed herself at the table
in a position which still enabled her to command the view from the
window. Nothing happened. The dinner came to an end; Mrs. Wragge (lulled
by the narcotic influence of annotating circulars, and eating and
drinking with an appetite sharpened by the captain's absence) withdrew
to an arm-chair, and fell asleep in an attitude which would have caused
her husband the acutest mental suffering; seven o'clock struck; the
shadows of the summer evening lengthened stealthily on the gray pavement
and the brown house-walls--and still the closed door opposite remained
shut; still the one window open showed nothing but the black blank of
the room inside, lifeless and changeless as if that room had been a
tomb.
Mrs. Wragge's meek snoring deepened in tone; the evening wore on
drearily; it was close on eight o'clock--when an event happened at last.
The street door opposite opened for the first time, and a woman appeared
on the threshold.
Was the woman Mrs. Lecount? No. As she came nearer, her dress showed her
to be a servant. She had a large door-key in her hand, and was evidently
going out to perform an errand. Roused partly by curiosity, partly by
the impulse of the moment, which urged her impetuous nature into action
after the passive endurance of many hours past, Magdalen snatched up
her bonnet, and determined to follow the servant to her destination,
wherever it might be.
The woman led her to the great thoroughfare of shops close at hand,
called Lambeth Walk. After proceeding some little distance, and looking
about her with the hesitation of a person not well acquainted with the
neighborhood, the servant crossed the road and entered a stationer's
shop. Magdalen crossed the road after her and followed her in.
The inevitable delay in entering the shop under these circumstances
made Magdalen too late to hear what the woman asked for. The first words
spoken, however, by the man behind the counter reached her ears, and
informed her that the servant's object was to buy a railway guide.
"Do you mean a Guide for this month or a Guide for July?" asked the
shopman, addressing his customer.
"Master didn't tell me which," answered the woman. "All I know is, he's
going into the country the day after to-morrow."
"The day after to-morrow is the first of July," said the shopman. "The
Guide your master wants is the Guide for the new month. It won't be
published till to-morrow."
Engaging to call again on the next day, the servant left the shop, and
took the way that led back to Vauxhall Walk.
Magdalen purchased the first trifle she saw on the counter, and hastily
returned in the same direction. The discovery she had just made was of
very serious importance to her; and she felt the necessity of acting on
it with as little delay as possible.
On entering the front room at the lodgings she found Mrs. Wragge just
awake, lost in drowsy bewilderment, with her cap fallen off on her
shoulders, and with one of her shoes missing altogether. Magdalen
endeavored to persuade her that she was tired after her journey, and
that her wisest proceeding would be to go to bed. Mrs. Wragge was
perfectly willing to profit by this suggestion, provided she could find
her shoe first. In looking for the shoe, she unfortunately discovered
the circulars, put by on a side-table, and forthwith recovered her
recollection of the earlier proceedings of the evening.
"Give us the pencil," said Mrs. Wragge, shuffling the circulars in a
violent hurry. "I can't go to bed yet--I haven't half done marking
down the things I want. Let's see; where did I leave off? _Try Finch's
feeding-bottle for Infants._ No! there's a cross against that: the cross
means I don't want it. _Comfort in the Field. Buckler's Indestructible
Hunting-breeches._ Oh dear, dear! I've lost the place. No, I haven't.
Here it is; here's my mark against it. _Elegant Cashmere Robes; strictly
Oriental, very grand; reduced to one pound nineteen-and-sixpence. Be in
time. Only three left._ Only three! Oh, do lend us the money, and let's
go and get one!"
"Not to-night," said Magdalen. "Suppose you go to bed now, and finish
the circulars tomorrow? I will put them by the bedside for you, and you
can go on with them as soon as you wake the first thing in the morning."
This suggestion met with Mrs. Wragge's immediate approval. Magdalen took
her into the next room and put her to bed like a child--with her toys
by her side. The room was so narrow, and the bed was so small; and Mrs.
Wragge, arrayed in the white apparel proper for the occasion, with her
moon-face framed round by a spacious halo of night-cap, looked so hugely
and disproportionately large, that Magdalen, anxious as she was, could
not repress a smile on taking leave of her traveling companion for the
night.
"Aha!" cried Mrs. Wragge, cheerfully; "we'll have that Cashmere Robe
to-morrow. Come here! I want to whisper something to you. Just you look
at me--I'm going to sleep crooked, and the captain's not here to bawl at
me!"
The front room at the lodgings contained a sofa-bedstead which the
landlady arranged betimes for the night. This done, and the candles
brought in, Magdalen was left alone to shape the future course as her
own thoughts counseled her.
The questions and answers which had passed in her presence that evening
at the stationer's shop led plainly to the conclusion that one day more
would bring Noel Vanstone's present term of residence in Vauxhall Walk
to an end. Her first cautious resolution to pass many days together
in unsuspected observation of the house opposite before she ventured
herself inside was entirely frustrated by the turn events had taken. She
was placed in the dilemma of running all risks headlong on the next day,
or of pausing for a future opportunity which might never occur. There
was no middle course open to her. Until she had seen Noel Vanstone with
her own eyes, and had discovered the worst there was to fear from Mrs.
Lecount--until she had achieved t his double object, with the needful
precaution of keeping her own identity carefully in the dark--not a step
could she advance toward the accomplishment of the purpose which had
brought her to London.
One after another the minutes of the night passed away; one after
another the thronging thoughts followed each other over her mind--and
still she reached no conclusion; still she faltered and doubted, with a
hesitation new to her in her experience of herself. At last she crossed
the room impatiently to seek the trivial relief of unlocking her trunk
and taking from it the few things that she wanted for the night. Captain
Wragge's suspicions had not misled him. There, hidden between two
dresses, were the articles of costume which he had missed from her box
at Birmingham. She turned them over one by one, to satisfy herself that
nothing she wanted had been forgotten, and returned once more to her
post of observation by the window.
The house opposite was dark down to the parlor. There the blind,
previously raised, was now drawn over the window: the light burning
behind it showed her for the first time that the room was inhabited. Her
eyes brightened, and her color rose as she looked at it.
"There he is!" she said to herself, in a low, angry whisper. "There he
lives on our money, in the house that his father's warning has closed
against me!" She dropped the blind which she had raised to look out,
returned to her trunk, and took from it the gray wig which was part of
her dramatic costume in the character of the North-country lady. The wig
had been crumpled in packing; she put it on and went to the toilet-table
to comb it out. "His father has warned him against Magdalen Vanstone,"
she said, repeating the passage in Mrs. Lecount's letter, and laughing
bitterly, as she looked at herself in the glass. "I wonder whether his
father has warned him against Miss Garth? To-morrow is sooner than I
bargained for. No matter: to-morrow shall show."