Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (434 page)

“Pray, sir, do you happen to know anything of Mrs. Lecount’s family?” he inquired.

“A respectable family,” said Noel Vanstone — ”that’s all I know. Why do you ask?”

“I am not usually a betting man,” pursued Captain Wragge. “But on this occasion I will lay you any wager you like there is madness in your housekeeper’s family.”

“Madness!” repeated Noel Vanstone, amazedly

“Madness!” reiterated the captain, sternly tapping the note with his forefinger. “I see the cunning of insanity, the suspicion of insanity, the feline treachery of insanity in every line of this deplorable document. There is a far more alarming reason, sir, than I had supposed for Mrs. Lecount’s behavior to my niece. It is clear to me that Miss Bygrave resembles some other lady who has seriously offended your housekeeper — who has been formerly connected, perhaps, with an outbreak of insanity in your housekeeper — and who is now evidently confused with my niece in your housekeeper’s wandering mind. That is my conviction, Mr. Vanstone. I may be right, or I may be wrong. All I say is this — neither you, nor any man, can assign a sane motive for the production of that incomprehensible document, and for the use which you are requested to make of it.”

“I don’t think Lecount’s mad,” said Noel Vanstone, with a very blank look, and a very discomposed manner. “It couldn’t have escaped me, with my habits of observation; it couldn’t possibly have escaped me if Lecount had been mad.”

“Very good, my dear sir. In my opinion, she is the subject of an insane delusion. In your opinion, she is in possession of her senses, and has some mysterious motive which neither you nor I can fathom. Either way, there can be no harm in putting Mrs. Lecount’s description to the test, not only as a matter of curiosity, but for our own private satisfaction on both sides. It is of course impossible to tell my niece that she is to be made the subject of such a preposterous experiment as that note of yours suggests. But you can use your own eyes, Mr. Vanstone; you can keep your own counsel; and — mad or not — you can at least tell your housekeeper, on the testimony of your own senses, that she is wrong. Let me look at the description again. The greater part of it is not worth two straws for any purpose of identification; hundreds of young ladies have tall figures, fair complexions, light brown hair, and light gray eyes. You will say, on the other hand, hundreds of young ladies have not got two little moles close together on the left side of the neck. Quite true. The moles supply us with what we scientific men call a Crucial Test. When my niece comes downstairs, sir, you have my full permission to take the liberty of looking at her neck.”

Noel Vanstone expressed his high approval of the Crucial Test by smirking and simpering for the first time that morning.

“Of looking at her neck,” repeated the captain, returning the note to his visitor, and then making for the door. “I will go upstairs myself, Mr. Vanstone,” he continued, “and inspect Miss Bygrave’s walking-dress. If she has innocently placed any obstacles in your way, if her hair is a little too low, or her frill is a little too high, I will exert my authority, on the first harmless pretext I can think of, to have those obstacles removed. All I ask is, that you will choose your opportunity discreetly, and that you will not allow my niece to suppose that her neck is the object of a gentleman’s inspection.”

The moment he was out of the parlor Captain Wragge ascended the stairs at the top of his speed and knocked at Magdalen’s door. She opened it to him in her walking-dress, obedient to the signal agreed on between them which summoned her downstairs.

“What have you done with your paints and powders?” asked the captain, without wasting a word in preliminary explanations. “They were not in the box of costumes which I sold for you at Birmingham. Where are they?”

“I have got them here,” replied Magdalen. “What can you possibly mean by wanting them now?”

“Bring them instantly into my dressing-room — the whole collection, brushes, palette, and everything. Don’t waste time in asking questions; I’ll tell you what has happened as we go on. Every moment is precious to us. Follow me instantly!”

His face plainly showed that there was a serious reason for his strange proposal. Magdalen secured her collection of cosmetics and followed him into the dressing-room. He locked the door, placed her on a chair close to the light, and then told her what had happened.

“We are on the brink of detection,” proceeded the captain, carefully mixing his colours with liquid glue, and with a strong “drier” added from a bottle in his own possession. “There is only one chance for us (lift up your hair from the left side of your neck) — I have told Mr. Noel Vanstone to take a private opportunity of looking at you; and I am going to give the lie direct to that she-devil Lecount by painting out your moles.”

“They can’t be painted out,” said Magdalen. “No colour will stop on them.”

“
My
colour will,” remarked Captain Wragge. “I have tried a variety of professions in my time — the profession of painting among the rest. Did you ever hear of such a thing as a Black Eye? I lived some months once in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane entirely on Black Eyes. My flesh-colour stood on bruises of all sorts, shades, and sizes, and it will stand, I promise you, on your moles.”

With this assurance, the captain dipped his brush into a little lump of opaque colour which he had mixed in a saucer, and which he had graduated as nearly as the materials would permit to the colour of Magdalen’s skin. After first passing a cambric handkerchief, with some white powder on it, over the part of her neck on which he designed to operate, he placed two layers of colour on the moles with the tip of the brush. The process was performed in a few moments, and the moles, as if by magic, disappeared from view. Nothing but the closest inspection could have discovered the artifice by which they had been concealed; at the distance of two or three feet only, it was perfectly invisible.

“Wait here five minutes,” said Captain Wragge, “to let the paint dry — and then join us in the parlor. Mrs. Lecount herself would be puzzled if she looked at you now.”

“Stop!” said Magdalen. “There is one thing you have not told me yet. How did Mrs. Lecount get the description which you read downstairs? Whatever else she has seen of me, she has not seen the mark on my neck — it is too far back, and too high up; my hair hides it.”

“Who knows of the mark?” asked Captain Wragge.

She turned deadly pale under the anguish of a sudden recollection of Frank.

“My sister knows it,” she said, faintly.

“Mrs. Lecount may have written to your sister,” suggested the captain:

“Do you think my sister would tell a stranger what no stranger has a right to know? Never! never!”

“Is there nobody else who could tell Mrs. Lecount? The mark was mentioned in the handbills at York. Who put it there?”

“Not Norah! Perhaps Mr. Pendril. Perhaps Miss Garth.”

“Then Mrs. Lecount has written to Mr. Pendril or Miss Garth — more likely to Miss Garth. The governess would be easier to deal with than the lawyer.”

“What can she have said to Miss Garth?”

Captain Wragge considered a little.

“I can’t say what Mrs. Lecount may have written,” he said, “but I can tell you what I should have written in Mrs. Lecount’s place. I should have frightened Miss Garth by false reports about you, to begin with, and then I should have asked for personal particulars, to help a benevolent stranger in restoring you to your friends.” The angry glitter flashed up instantly in Magdalen’s eyes.

“What
you
would have done is what Mrs. Lecount has done,” she said, indignantly. “Neither lawyer nor governess shall dispute my right to my own will and my own way. If Miss Garth thinks she can control my actions by corresponding with Mrs. Lecount, I will show Miss Garth she is mistaken! It is high time, Captain Wragge, to have done with these wretched risks of discovery. We will take the short way to the end we have in view sooner than Mrs. Lecount or Miss Garth think for. How long can you give me to wring an offer of marriage out of that creature downstairs?”

“I dare not give you long,” replied Captain Wragge. “Now your friends know where you are, they may come down on us at a day’s notice. Could you manage it in a week?”

“I’ll manage it in half the time,” she said, with a hard, defiant laugh. “Leave us together this morning as you left us at Dunwich, and take Mrs. Wragge with you, as an excuse for parting company. Is the paint dry yet? Go downstairs and tell him I am coming directly.”

So, for the second time, Miss Garth’s well-meant efforts defeated their own end. So the fatal force of circumstance turned the hand that would fain have held Magdalen back into the hand that drove her on.

The captain returned to his visitor in the parlor, after first stopping on his way to issue his orders for the walking excursion to Mrs. Wragge.

“I am shocked to have kept you waiting,” he said, sitting down again confidentially by Noel Vanstone’s side. “My only excuse is, that my niece had accidentally dressed her hair so as to defeat our object. I have been persuading her to alter it, and young ladies are apt to be a little obstinate on questions relating to their toilet. Give her a chair on that side of you when she comes in, and take your look at her neck comfortably before we start for our walk.”

Magdalen entered the room as he said those words, and after the first greetings were exchanged, took the chair presented to her with the most unsuspicious readiness. Noel Vanstone applied the Crucial Test on the spot, with the highest appreciation of the fair material which was the subject of experiment. Not the vestige of a mole was visible on any part of the smooth white surface of Miss Bygrave’s neck. It mutely answered the blinking inquiry of Noel Vanstone’s half-closed eyes by the flattest practical contradiction of Mrs. Lecount. That one central incident in the events of the morning was of all the incidents that had hitherto occurred, the most important in its results. That one discovery shook the housekeeper’s hold on her master as nothing had shaken it yet.

In a few minutes Mrs. Wragge made her appearance, and excited as much surprise in Noel Vanstone’s mind as he was capable of feeling while absorbed in the enjoyment of Magdalen’s society. The walking-party left the house at once, directing their steps northward, so as not to pass the windows of Sea-view Cottage. To Mrs. Wragge’s unutterable astonishment, her husband, for the first time in the course of their married life, politely offered her his arm, and led her on in advance of the young people, as if the privilege of walking alone with her presented some special attraction to him! “Step out!” whispered the captain, fiercely. “Leave your niece and Mr. Vanstone alone! If I catch you looking back at them, I’ll put the Oriental Cashmere Robe on the top of the kitchen fire! Turn your toes out, and keep step — confound you, keep step!” Mrs. Wragge kept step to the best of her limited ability. Her sturdy knees trembled under her. She firmly believed the captain was intoxicated.

The walk lasted for rather more than an hour. Before nine o’clock they were all back again at North Shingles. The ladies went at once into the house. Noel Vanstone remained with Captain Wragge in the garden. “Well,” said the captain, “what do you think now of Mrs. Lecount?”

“Damn Lecount!” replied Noel Vanstone, in great agitation. “I’m half inclined to agree with you. I’m half inclined to think my infernal housekeeper is mad.”

He spoke fretfully and unwillingly, as if the merest allusion to Mrs. Lecount was distasteful to him. His colour came and went; his manner was absent and undecided; he fidgeted restlessly about the garden walk. It would have been plain to a far less acute observation than Captain Wragge’s, that Magdalen had met his advances by an unexpected grace and readiness of encouragement which had entirely overthrown his self-control.