TOWARD three o'clock in the afternoon Captain Wragge stopped at the
nearest station to Ossory which the railway passed in its course through
Essex. Inquiries made on the spot informed him that he might drive
to St. Crux, remain there for a quarter of an hour, and return to the
station in time for an evening train to London. In ten minutes more the
captain was on the road again, driving rapidly in the direction of the
coast.
After proceeding some miles on the highway, the carriage turned off, and
the coachman involved himself in an intricate network of cross-roads.
"Are we far from St. Crux?" asked the captain, growing impatient, after
mile on mile had been passed without a sign of reaching the journey's
end.
"You'll see the house, sir, at the next turn in the road," said the man.
The next turn in the road brought them within view of the open country
again. Ahead of the carriage, Captain Wragge saw a long dark line
against the sky--the line of the sea-wall which protects the low coast
of Essex from inundation. The flat intermediate country was intersected
by a labyrinth of tidal streams, winding up from the invisible sea in
strange fantastic curves--rivers at high water, and channels of mud at
low. On his right hand was a quaint little village, mostly composed of
wooden houses, straggling down to the brink of one of the tidal streams.
On his left hand, further away, rose the gloomy ruins of an abbey,
with a desolate pile of buildings, which covered two sides of a square
attached to it. One of the streams from the sea (called, in Essex,
"backwaters") curled almost entirely round the house. Another, from an
opposite quarter, appeared to run straight through the grounds, and
to separate one side of the shapeless mass of buildings, which was in
moderate repair, from another, which was little better than a ruin.
Bridges of wood and bridges of brick crossed the stream, and gave access
to the house from all points of the compass. No human creature appeared
in the neighborhood, and no sound was heard but the hoarse barking of a
house-dog from an invisible courtyard.
"Which door shall I drive to, sir?" asked the coachman. "The front or
the back?"
"The back," said Captain Wragge, feeling that the less notice he
attracted in his present position, the safer that position might be.
The carriage twice crossed the stream before the coachman made his way
through the grounds into a dreary inclosure of stone. At an open door on
the inhabited side of the place sat a weather-beaten old man, busily
at work on a half-finished model of a ship. He rose and came to the
carriage door, lifting up his spectacles on his forehead, and looking
disconcerted at the appearance of a stranger.
"Is Mr. Noel Vanstone staying here?" asked Captain Wragge.
"Yes, sir," replied the old man. "Mr. Noel came yesterday."
"Take that card to Mr. Vanstone, if you please," said the captain, "and
say I am waiting here to see him."
In a few minutes Noel Vanstone made his appearance, breathless and
eager--absorbed in anxiety for news from Aldborough. Captain Wragge
opened the carriage door, seized his outstretched hand, and pulled him
in without ceremony.
"Your housekeeper has gone," whispered the captain, "and you are to
be married on Monday. Don't agitate yourself, and don't express your
feelings--there isn't time for it. Get the first active servant you can
find in the house to pack your bag in ten minutes, take leave of the
admiral, and come back at once with me to the London train."
Noel Vanstone faintly attempted to ask a question. The captain declined
to hear it.
"As much talk as you like on the road," he said. "Time is too precious
for talking here. How do we know Lecount may not think better of it? How
do we know she may not turn back before she gets to Zurich?"
That startling consideration terrified Noel Vanstone into instant
submission.
"What shall I say to the admiral?" he asked, helplessly.
"Tell him you are going to be married, to be sure! What does it matter,
now Lecount's back is turned? If he wonders you didn't tell him before,
say it's a runaway match, and the bride is waiting for you. Stop! Any
letters addressed to you in your absence will be sent to this place, of
course? Give the admiral these envelopes, and tell him to forward your
letters under cover to me. I am an old customer at the hotel we are
going to; and if we find the place full, the landlord may be depended
on to take care of any letters with my name on them. A safe address in
London for your correspondence may be of the greatest importance. How do
we know Lecount may not write to you on her way to Zurich?"
"What a head you have got!" cried Noel Vanstone, eagerly taking the
envelopes. "You think of everything."
He left the carriage in high excitement, and ran back into the house. In
ten minutes more Captain Wragge had him in safe custody, and the horses
started on their return journey.
The travelers reached London in good time that evening, and found
accommodation at the hotel.
Knowing the restless, inquisitive nature of the man he had to deal with,
Captain Wragge had anticipated some little difficulty and embarrassment
in meeting the questions which Noel Vanstone might put to him on the way
to London. To his great relief, a startling domestic discovery absorbed
his traveling companion's whole attention at the outset of the journey.
By some extraordinary oversight, Miss Bygrave had been left, on the eve
of her marriage, unprovided with a maid. Noel Vanstone declared that he
would take the whole responsibility of correcting this deficiency in the
arrangements, on his own shoulders; he would not trouble Mr. Bygrave
to give him any assistance; he would confer, when they got to their
journey's end, with the landlady of the hotel, and would examine the
candidates for the vacant office himself. All the way to London, he
returned again and again to the same subject; all the evening, at the
hotel, he was in and out of the landlady's sitting-room, until he fairly
obliged her to lock the door. In every other proceeding which related to
his marriage, he had been kept in the background; he had been compelled
to follow in the footsteps of his ingenious friend. In the matter of the
lady's maid he claimed his fitting position at last--he followed nobody;
he took the lead!
The forenoon of the next day was devoted to obtaining the license--the
personal distinction of making the declaration on oath being eagerly
accepted by Noel Vanstone, who swore, in perfect good faith (on
information previously obtained from the captain) that the lady was
of age. The document procured, the bridegroom returned to examine the
characters and qualifications of the women-servants out of the place
whom the landlady had engaged to summon to the hotel, while Captain
Wragge turned his steps, "on business personal to himself," toward the
residence of a friend in a distant quarter of London.
The captain's friend was connected with the law, and the captain's
business was of a twofold nature. His first object was to inform himself
of the legal bearings of the approaching marriage on the future of the
husband and the wife. His second object was to provide beforehand
for destroying all traces of the destination to which he might betake
himself when he left Aldborough on the wedding-day. Having reached his
end successfully in both these cases, he returned to the hotel, and
found Noel Vanstone nursing his offended dignity in the landlady's
sitting-room. Three ladies' maids had appeared to pass their
examination, and had all, on coming to the question of wages, impudently
declined accepting the place. A fourth candidate was expected to present
herself on the next day; and, until she made her appearance, Noel
Vanstone positively declined removing from the metropolis. Captain
Wragge showed his annoyance openly at the unnecessary delay thus
occasioned in the return to Aldborough, but without producing any
effect. Noel Vanstone shook his obstinate little head, and solemnly
refused to trifle with his responsibilities.
The first event which occurred on Saturday morning was the arrival of
Mrs. Lecount's letter to her master, inclosed in one of the envelopes
which the captain had addressed to himself. He received it (by previous
arrangement with the waiter) in his bedroom--read it with the closest
attention--and put it away carefully in his pocketbook. The letter
was ominous of serious events to come when the housekeeper returned to
England; and it was due to Magdalen--who was the person threatened--to
place the warning of danger in her own possession.
Later in the day the fourth candidate appeared for the maid's
situation--a young woman of small expectations and subdued manners, who
looked (as the landlady remarked) like a person overtaken by misfortune.
She passed the ordeal of examination successfully, and accepted the
wages offered with out a murmur. The engagement having been ratified on
both sides, fresh delays ensued, of which Noel Vanstone was once more
the cause. He had not yet made up his mind whether he would, or would
not, give more than a guinea for the wedding-ring; and he wasted the
rest of the day to such disastrous purpose in one jeweler's shop after
another, that he and the captain, and the new lady's maid (who traveled
with them), were barely in time to catch the last train from London that
evening. It was late at night when they left the railway at the nearest
station to Aldborough. Captain Wragge had been strangely silent all
through the journey. His mind was ill at ease. He had left Magdalen,
under very critical circumstances, with no fit person to control her,
and he was wholly ignorant of the progress of events in his absence at
North Shingles.