Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (401 page)

“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 colour 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, honour the York butter, test the freshness of a new and neighbouring 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.”