THE first week passed, the second week passed, and Magdalen was, to all
appearance, no nearer to the discovery of the Secret Trust than on the
day when she first entered on her service at St. Crux.
But the fortnight, uneventful as it was, had not been a fortnight lost.
Experience had already satisfied her on one important point--experience
had shown that she could set the rooted distrust of the other servants
safely at defiance. Time had accustomed the women to her presence in
the house, without shaking the vague conviction which possessed them all
alike, that the newcomer was not one of themselves. All that Magdalen
could do in her own defense was to keep the instinctive female suspicion
of her confined within those purely negative limits which it had
occupied from the first, and this she accomplished.
Day after day the women watched her with the untiring vigilance of
malice and distrust, and day after day not the vestige of a
discovery rewarded them for their pains. Silently, intelligently, and
industriously--with an ever-present remembrance of herself and her
place--the new parlor-maid did her work. Her only intervals of rest and
relaxation were the intervals passed occasionally in the day with old
Mazey and the dogs, and the precious interval of the night during which
she was secure from observation in the solitude of her room. Thanks to
the superfluity of bed-chambers at St. Crux, each one of the servants
had the choice, if she pleased, of sleeping in a room of her own. Alone
in the night, Magdalen might dare to be herself again--might dream
of the past, and wake from the dream, encountering no curious eyes
to notice that she was in tears--might ponder over the future, and
be roused by no whisperings in corners, which tainted her with the
suspicion of "having something on her mind."
Satisfied, thus far, of the perfect security of her position in the
house, she profited next by a second chance in her favor, which--before
the fortnight was at an end--relieved her mind of all doubt on the
formidable subject of Mrs. Lecount.
Partly from the accidental gossip of the women at the table in the
servants' hall; partly from a marked paragraph in a Swiss newspaper,
which she had found one morning lying open on the admiral's
easy-chair--she gained the welcome assurance that no danger was to be
dreaded, this time, from the housekeeper's presence on the scene. Mrs.
Lecount had, as it appeared, passed a week or more at St. Crux after the
date of her master's death, and had then left England, to live on the
interest of her legacy, in honorable and prosperous retirement, in
her native place. The paragraph in the Swiss newspaper described
the fulfillment of this laudable project. Mrs. Lecount had not only
established herself at Zurich, but (wisely mindful of the uncertainty of
life) had also settled the charitable uses to which her fortune was to
be applied after her death. One half of it was to go to the founding of
a "Lecompte Scholarship" for poor students in the University of Geneva.
The other half was to be employed by the municipal authorities of Zurich
in the maintenance and education of a certain number of orphan girls,
natives of the city, who were to be trained for domestic service
in later life. The Swiss journalist adverted to these philanthropic
bequests in terms of extravagant eulogy. Zurich was congratulated on
the possession of a Paragon of public virtue; and William Tell, in the
character of benefactor to Switzerland, was compared disadvantageously
with Mrs. Lecount.
The third week began, and Magdalen was now at liberty to take her first
step forward on the way to the discovery of the Secret Trust.
She ascertained from old Mazey that it was his master's custom, during
the winter and spring months, to occupy the rooms in the north wing;
and during the summer and autumn to cross the Arctic passage of
"Freeze-your-Bones," and live in the eastward apartments which looked
out on the garden. While the Banqueting-Hall remained--owing to the
admiral's inadequate pecuniary resources--in its damp and dismantled
state, and while the interior of St. Crux was thus comfortlessly divided
into two separate residences, no more convenient arrangement than this
could well have been devised. Now and then (as Magdalen understood from
her informant) there were days, both in winter and summer, when the
admiral became anxious about the condition of the rooms which he was not
occupying at the time, and when he insisted on investigating the state
of the furniture, the pictures, and the books with his own eyes. On
these occasions, in summer as in winter, a blazing fire was kindled for
some days previously in the large grate, and the charcoal was lighted
in the tripod-pan, to keep the Banqueting-Hall as warm as circumstances
would admit. As soon as the old gentleman's anxieties were set at rest
the rooms were shut up again, and "Freeze-your-Bones" was once more
abandoned for weeks and weeks together to damp, desolation, and decay.
The last of these temporary migrations had taken place only a few days
since; the admiral had satisfied himself that the rooms in the east wing
were none the worse for the absence of their master, and he might now be
safely reckoned on as settled in the north wing for weeks, and perhaps,
if the season was cold, for months to come.
Trifling as they might be in themselves, these particulars were of
serious importance to Magdalen, for they helped her to fix the limits
of the field of search. Assuming that the admiral was likely to keep all
his important documents within easy reach of his own hand, she might now
feel certain that the Secret Trust was secured in one or other of the
rooms in the north wing.
In which room? That question was not easy to answer.
Of the four inhabitable rooms which were all at the admiral's disposal
during the day--that is to say, of the dining-room, the library, the
morning-room, and the drawing-room opening out of the vestibule--the
library appeared to be the apartment in which, if he had a preference,
he passed the greater part of his time. There was a table in this room,
with drawers that locked; there was a magnificent Italian cabinet, with
doors that locked; there were five cupboards under the book-cases, every
one of which locked. There were receptacles similarly secured in the
other rooms; and in all or any of these papers might be kept.
She had answered the bell, and had seen him locking and unlocking,
now in one room, now in another, but oftenest in the library. She had
noticed occasionally that his expression was fretful and impatient when
he looked round at her from an open cabinet or cupboard and gave his
orders; and she inferred that something in connection with his papers
and possessions--it might or might not be the Secret Trust--irritated
and annoyed him from time to time. She had heard him more than once lock
something up in one of the rooms, come out and go into another room,
wait there a few minutes, then return to the first room with his keys in
his hand, and sharply turn the locks and turn them again. This fidgety
anxiety about his keys and his cupboards might be the result of the
inbred restlessness of his disposition, aggravated in a naturally active
man by the aimless indolence of a life in retirement--a life drifting
backward and forward among trifles, with no regular employment to steady
it at any given hour of the day. On the other hand, it was just as
probable that these comings and goings, these lockings and unlockings,
might be attributable to the existence of some private responsibility
which had unexpectedly intruded itself into the old man's easy
existence, and which tormented him with a sense of oppression new to the
experience of his later years. Either one of these interpretations might
explain his conduct as reasonably and as probably as the other. Which
was the right interpretation of the two, it was, in Magdalen's position,
impossible to say.
The one certain discovery at which she arrived was made in her first
day's observation of him. The admiral was a rigidly careful man with his
keys.
All the smaller keys he kept on a ring in the breast-pocket of his coat.
The larger he locked up together; generally, but not always, in one of
the drawers of the library table. Sometimes he left them secured in this
way at night; sometimes he took them up to the bedroom with him in a
little basket. He had no regular times for leaving them or for taking
them away with him; he had no discoverable reason for now securing them
in the library-table drawer, and now again locking them up in some other
place. The inveterate willfulness and caprice of his proceedings in
these particulars defied every effort to reduce them to a system, and
baffled all attempts at calculating on them beforehand.
The hope of gaining positive information to act on, by laying artful
snares for him which he might fall into in his talk, proved, from the
outset, to be utterly futile.
In Magdalen's situation all experiments of this sort would have been in
the last degree difficult and dangerous with any man. With the admiral
they were simply impossible. His tendency to veer about from one subject
to another; his habit of keeping his tongue perpetually going, so long
as there was anybody, no matter whom, within reach of the sound of his
voice; his comical want of all dignity and reserve with his servants,
promised, in appearance, much, and performed in reality nothing. No
matter how diffidently or how respectfully Magdalen might presume on her
master's example, and on her master's evident liking for her, the old
man instantly discovered the advance she was making from her proper
position, and instantly put her back in it again, with a quaint good
humor which inflicted no pain, but with a blunt straightforwardness
of purpose which permitted no escape. Contradictory as it may sound,
Admiral Bartram was too familiar to be approached; he kept the distance
between himself and his servant more effectually than if he had been the
proudest man in England. The systematic reserve of a superior toward an
inferior may be occasionally overcome--the systematic familiarity never.
Slowly the time dragged on. The fourth week came; and Magdalen had made
no new discoveries. The prospect was depressing in the last degree. Even
in the apparently hopeless event of her devising a means of getting at
the admiral's keys, she could not count on retaining possession of them
unsuspected more than a few hours--hours which might be utterly wasted
through her not knowing in what direction to begin the search. The Trust
might be locked up in any one of some twenty receptacles for papers,
situated in four different rooms; and which room was the likeliest to
look in, which receptacle was the most promising to begin with, which
position among other heaps of papers the one paper needful might
be expected to occupy, was more than she could say. Hemmed in by
immeasurable uncertainties on every side; condemned, as it were, to
wander blindfold on the very brink of success, she waited for the chance
that never came, for the event that never happened, with a patience
which was sinking already into the patience of despair.
Night after night she looked back over the vanished days, and not an
event rose on her memory to distinguish them one from the other. The
only interruptions to the weary uniformity of the life at St. Crux were
caused by the characteristic delinquencies of old Mazey and the dogs.
At certain intervals, the original wildness broke out in the natures of
Brutus and Cassius. The modest comforts of home, the savory charms of
made dishes, the decorous joy of digestions accomplished on hearth-rugs,
lost all their attractions, and the dogs ungratefully left the house to
seek dissipation and adventure in the outer world. On these occasions
the established after-dinner formula of question and answer between old
Mazey and his master varied a little in one particular. "God bless
the Queen, Mazey," and "How's the wind, Mazey?" were followed by a new
inquiry: "Where are the dogs, Mazey?" "Out on the loose, your honor,
and be damned to 'em," was the veteran's unvarying answer. The admiral
always sighed and shook his head gravely at the news, as if Brutus and
Cassius had been sons of his own, who treated him with a want of proper
filial respect. In two or three days' time the dogs always returned,
lean, dirty, and heartily ashamed of themselves. For the whole of the
next day they were invariably tied up in disgrace. On the day after they
were scrubbed clean, and were formally re-admitted to the dining-room.
There, Civilization, acting through the subtle medium of the Saucepan,
recovered its hold on them; and the admiral's two prodigal sons, when
they saw the covers removed, watered at the mouth as copiously as ever.
Old Mazey, in his way, proved to be just as disreputably inclined on
certain occasions as the dogs. At intervals, the original wildness in
_his_ nature broke out; he, too, lost all relish for the comforts of
home, and ungratefully left the house. He usually disappeared in the
afternoon, and returned at night as drunk as liquor could make him. He
was by many degrees too seasoned a vessel to meet with any disasters on
these occasions. His wicked old legs might take roundabout methods of
progression, but they never failed him; his wicked old eyes might see
double, but they always showed him the way home. Try as hard as they
might, the servants could never succeed in persuading him that he was
drunk; he always scorned the imputation. He even declined to admit the
idea privately into his mind, until he had first tested his condition by
an infallible criterion of his own.
It was his habit, in these cases of Bacchanalian emergency, to stagger
obstinately into his room on the ground-floor, to take the model-ship
out of the cupboard, and to try if he could proceed with the
never-to-be-completed employment of setting up the rigging. When he had
smashed the tiny spars, and snapped asunder the delicate ropes--then,
and not till then, the veteran admitted facts as they were, on the
authority of practical evidence. "Ay! ay!" he used to say confidentially
to himself, "the women are right. Drunk again, Mazey--drunk again!"
Having reached this discovery, it was his habit to wait cunningly in the
lower regions until the admiral was safe in his room, and then to ascend
in discreet list slippers to his post. Too wary to attempt getting into
the truckle-bed (which would have been only inviting the catastrophe of
a fall against his master's door), he always walked himself sober up and
down the passage. More than once Magdalen had peeped round the screen,
and had seen the old sailor unsteadily keeping his watch, and fancying
himself once more at his duty on board ship. "This is an uncommonly
lively vessel in a sea-way," he used to mutter under his breath, when
his legs took him down the passage in zigzag directions, or left him for
the moment studying the "Pints of the Compass" on his own system, with
his back against the wall. "A nasty night, mind you," he would maunder
on, taking another turn. "As dark as your pocket, and the wind heading
us again from the old quarter." On the next day old Mazey, like the
dogs, was kept downstairs in disgrace. On the day after, like the dogs
again, he was reinstated in his privileges; and another change was
introduced in the after-dinner formula. On entering the room, the
old sailor stopped short and made his excuses in this brief yet
comprehensive form of words, with his back against the door: "Please
your honor, I'm ashamed of myself." So the apology began and ended.
"This mustn't happen again, Mazey," the admiral used to answer. "It
shan't happen again, your honor." "Very good. Come here, and drink your
glass of wine. God bless the Queen, Mazey." The veteran tossed off his
port, and the dialogue ended as usual.
So the days passed, with no incidents more important than these to
relieve their monotony, until the end of the fourth week was at hand.
On the last day, an event happened; on the last day, the long deferred
promise of the future unexpectedly began to dawn. While Magdalen was
spreading the cloth in the dining-room, as usual, Mrs. Drake looked
in, and instructed her on this occasion, for the first time, to lay
the table for two persons. The admiral had received a letter from his
nephew. Early that evening Mr. George Bartram was expected to return to
St. Crux.