Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (426 page)

The meeting took place nearly midway between Sea-view Cottage and North Shingles. Captain Wragge took off his tall white hat and opened the interview immediately on the friendliest terms.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Lecount,” he said, with the frank and cheerful politeness of a naturally sociable man. “Good-morning, Mr. Vanstone; I am sorry to see you suffering to-day. Mrs. Lecount, permit me to introduce my niece — my niece, Miss Bygrave. My dear girl, this is Mr. Noel Vanstone, our neighbour at Sea-view Cottage. We must positively be sociable at Aldborough, Mrs. Lecount. There is only one walk in the place (as my niece remarked to me just now, Mr. Vanstone); and on that walk we must all meet every time we go out. And why not? Are we formal people on either side? Nothing of the sort; we are just the reverse. You possess the Continental facility of manner, Mr. Vanstone — I match you with the blunt cordiality of an old-fashioned Englishman — the ladies mingle together in harmonious variety, like flowers on the same bed — and the result is a mutual interest in making our sojourn at the sea-side agreeable to each other. Pardon my flow of spirits; pardon my feeling so cheerful and so young. The Iodine in the sea-air, Mrs. Lecount — the notorious effect of the Iodine in the sea-air!”

“You arrived yesterday, Miss Bygrave, did you not?” said the housekeeper, as soon as the captain’s deluge of language had come to an end.

She addressed those words to Magdalen with a gentle motherly interest in her youth and beauty, chastened by the deferential amiability which became her situation in Noel Vanstone’s household. Not the faintest token of suspicion or surprise betrayed itself in her face, her voice, or her manner, while she and Magdalen now looked at each other. It was plain at the outset that the true face and figure which she now saw recalled nothing to her mind of the false face and figure which she had seen in Vauxhall Walk. The disguise had evidently been complete enough even to baffle the penetration of Mrs. Lecount.

“My aunt and I came here yesterday evening,” said Magdalen. “We found the latter part of the journey very fatiguing. I dare say you found it so, too?”

She designedly made her answer longer than was necessary for the purpose of discovering, at the earliest opportunity, the effect which the sound of her voice produced on Mrs. Lecount.

The housekeeper’s thin lips maintained their motherly smile; the housekeeper’s amiable manner lost none of its modest deference, but the expression of her eyes suddenly changed from a look of attention to a look of inquiry. Magdalen quietly said a few words more, and then waited again for results. The change spread gradually all over Mrs. Lecount’s face, the motherly smile died away, and the amiable manner betrayed a slight touch of restraint. Still no signs of positive recognition appeared; the housekeeper’s expression remained what it had been from the first — an expression of inquiry, and nothing more.

“You complained of fatigue, sir, a few minutes since,” she said, dropping all further conversation with Magdalen and addressing her master. “Will you go indoors and rest?”

The proprietor of Sea-view Cottage had hitherto confined himself to bowing, simpering and admiring Magdalen through his half-closed eyelids. There was no mistaking the sudden flutter and agitation in his manner, and the heightened colour in his wizen little face. Even the reptile temperament of Noel Vanstone warmed under the influence of the sex: he had an undeniably appreciative eye for a handsome woman, and Magdalen’s grace and beauty were not thrown away on him.

“Will you go indoors, sir, and rest?” asked the housekeeper, repeating her quest ion.

“Not yet, Lecount,” said her master. “I fancy I feel stronger; I fancy I can go on a little.” He turned simpering to Magdalen, and added, in a lower tone: “I have found a new interest in my walk, Miss Bygrave. Don’t desert us, or you will take the interest away with you.”

He smiled and smirked in the highest approval of the ingenuity of his own compliment — from which Captain Wragge dexterously diverted the housekeeper’s attention by ranging himself on her side of the path and speaking to her at the same moment. They all four walked on slowly. Mrs. Lecount said nothing more. She kept fast hold of her master’s arm, and looked across him at Magdalen with the dangerous expression of inquiry more marked than ever in her handsome black eyes. That look was not lost on the wary Wragge. He shifted his indicative camp-stool from the left hand to the right, and opened his scientific batteries on the spot.

“A busy scene, Mrs. Lecount,” said the captain, politely waving his camp-stool over the sea and the passing ships. “The greatness of England, ma’am — the true greatness of England. Pray observe how heavily some of those vessels are laden! I am often inclined to wonder whether the British sailor is at all aware, when he has got his cargo on board, of the Hydrostatic importance of the operation that he has performed. If I were suddenly transported to the deck of one of those ships (which Heaven forbid, for I suffer at sea); and if I said to a member of the crew: ‘Jack! you have done wonders; you have grasped the Theory of Floating Vessels’ — how the gallant fellow would stare! And yet on that theory Jack’s life depends. If he loads his vessel one-thirtieth part more than he ought, what happens? He sails past Aldborough, I grant you, in safety. He enters the Thames, I grant you again, in safety. He gets on into the fresh water as far, let us say, as Greenwich; and — down he goes! Down, ma’am, to the bottom of the river, as a matter of scientific certainty!”

Here he paused, and left Mrs. Lecount no polite alternative but to request an explanation.

“With infinite pleasure, ma’am,” said the captain, drowning in the deepest notes of his voice the feeble treble in which Noel Vanstone paid his compliments to Magdalen. “We will start, if you please, with a first principle. All bodies whatever that float on the surface of the water displace as much fluid as is equal in weight to the weight of the bodies. Good. We have got our first principle. What do we deduce from it? Manifestly this: That, in order to keep a vessel above water, it is necessary to take care that the vessel and its cargo shall be of less weight than the weight of a quantity of water — pray follow me here! — of a quantity of water equal in bulk to that part of the vessel which it will be safe to immerse in the water. Now, ma’am, salt-water is specifically thirty times heavier than fresh or river water, and a vessel in the German Ocean will not sink so deep as a vessel in the Thames. Consequently, when we load our ship with a view to the London market, we have (Hydrostatically speaking) three alternatives. Either we load with one-thirtieth part less than we can carry at sea; or we take one-thirtieth part out at the mouth of the river; or we do neither the one nor the other, and, as I have already had the honour of remarking — down we go! Such,” said the captain, shifting the camp-stool back again from his right hand to his left, in token that Joyce was done with for the time being; “such, my dear madam, is the Theory of Floating Vessels. Permit me to add, in conclusion, you are heartily welcome to it.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount. “You have unintentionally saddened me; but the information I have received is not the less precious on that account. It is long, long ago, Mr. Bygrave, since I have heard myself addressed in the language of science. My dear husband made me his companion — my dear husband improved my mind as you have been trying to improve it. Nobody has taken pains with my intellect since. Many thanks, sir. Your kind consideration for me is not thrown away.”

She sighed with a plaintive humility, and privately opened her ears to the conversation on the other side of her.

A minute earlier she would have heard her master expressing himself in the most flattering terms on the subject of Miss Bygrave’s appearance in her sea-side costume. But Magdalen had seen Captain Wragge’s signal with the camp-stool, and had at once diverted Noel Vanstone to the topic of himself and his possessions by a neatly-timed question about his house at Aldborough.

“I don’t wish to alarm you, Miss Bygrave,” were the first words of Noel Vanstone’s which caught Mrs. Lecount’s attention, “but there is only one safe house in Aldborough, and that house is mine. The sea may destroy all the other houses — it can’t destroy Mine. My father took care of that; my father was a remarkable man. He had My house built on piles. I have reason to believe they are the strongest piles in England. Nothing can possibly knock them down — I don’t care what the sea does — nothing can possibly knock them down.”

“Then, if the sea invades us,” said Magdalen, “we must all run for refuge to you.”

Noel Vanstone saw his way to another compliment; and, at the same moment, the wary captain saw his way to another burst of science.

“I could almost wish the invasion might happen,” murmured one of the gentlemen, “to give me the happiness of offering the refuge.”

“I could almost swear the wind had shifted again!” exclaimed the other. “Where is a man I can ask? Oh, there he is. Boatman! How’s the wind now? Nor’west and by west still — hey? And southeast and by south yesterday evening — ha? Is there anything more remarkable, Mrs. Lecount, than the variableness of the wind in this climate?” proceeded the captain, shifting the camp-stool to the scientific side of him. “Is there any natural phenomenon more bewildering to the scientific inquirer? You will tell me that the electric fluid which abounds in the air is the principal cause of this variableness. You will remind me of the experiment of that illustrious philosopher who measured the velocity of a great storm by a flight of small feathers. My dear madam, I grant all your propositions — ”

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount; “you kindly attribute to me a knowledge that I don’t possess. Propositions, I regret to say, are quite beyond me.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, ma’am,” continued the captain, politely unconscious of the interruption. “My remarks apply to the temperate zone only. Place me on the coasts beyond the tropics — place me where the wind blows toward the shore in the day-time, and toward the sea by night — and I instantly advance toward conclusive experiments. For example, I know that the heat of the sun during the day rarefies the air over the land, and so causes the wind. You challenge me to prove it. I escort you down the kitchen stairs (with your kind permission); take my largest pie-dish out of the cook’s hands; I fill it with cold water. Good! that dish of cold water represents the ocean. I next provide myself with one of our most precious domestic conveniences, a hot-water plate; I fill it with hot water and I put it in the middle of the pie-dish. Good again! the hot-water plate represents the land rarefying the air over it. Bear that in mind, and give me a lighted candle. I hold my lighted candle over the cold water, and blow it out. The smoke immediately moves from the dish to the plate. Before you have time to express your satisfaction, I light the candle once more, and reverse the whole proceeding. I fill the pie-dish with hot-water, and the plate with cold; I blow the candle out again, and the smoke moves this time from the plate to the dish. The smell is disagreeable — but the experiment is conclusive.”

He shifted the camp-stool back again, and looked at Mrs. Lecount with his ingratiating smile. “You don’t find me long-winded, ma’am — do you?” he said, in his easy, cheerful way, just as the housekeeper was privately opening her ears once more to the conversation on the other side of her.

“I am amazed, sir, by the range of your information,” replied Mrs. Lecount, observing the captain with some perplexity — but thus far with no distrust. She thought him eccentric, even for an Englishman, and possibly a little vain of his knowledge. But he had at least paid her the implied compliment of addressing that knowledge to herself; and she felt it the more sensibly, from having hitherto found her scientific sympathies with her deceased husband treated with no great respect by the people with whom she came in contact. “Have you extended your inquiries, sir,” she proceeded, after a momentary hesitation, “to my late husband’s branch of science? I merely ask, Mr. Bygrave, because (though I am only a woman) I think I might exchange ideas with you on the subject of the reptile creation.”

Captain Wragge was far too sharp to risk his ready-made science on the enemy’s ground. The old militia-man shook his wary head.

“Too vast a subject, ma’am,” he said, “for a smatterer like me. The life and labours of such a philosopher as your husband, Mrs. Lecount, warn men of my intellectual caliber not to measure themselves with a giant. May I inquire,” proceeded the captain, softly smoothing the way for future intercourse with Sea-view Cottage, “whether you possess any scientific memorials of the late Professor?”

“I possess his Tank, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount, modestly casting her eyes on the ground, “and one of his Subjects — a little foreign Toad.”

“His Tank!” exclaimed the captain, in tones of mournful interest; “and his Toad! Pardon my blunt way of speaking my mind, ma’am. You possess an object of public interest; and, as one of the public, I acknowledge my curiosity to see it.”