Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (475 page)

She went into the room, and, shading the candle-light with her hand, approached the bedside to look at him. The dream was past; the old man’s sleep was deep and peaceful; his lips were still; his quiet hand was laid over the coverlet in motionless repose. He lay with his face turned toward the right-hand side of the bed. A little table stood there within reach of his hand. Four objects were placed on it; his candle, his matches, his customary night drink of lemonade, and his basket of keys.

The idea of possessing herself of his keys that night (if an opportunity offered when the basket was not in his hand) had first crossed her mind when she saw him go into his room. She had lost it again for the moment, in the surprise of discovering the empty truckle-bed. She now recovered it the instant the table attracted her attention. It was useless to waste time in trying to choose the one key wanted from the rest — the one key was not well enough known to her to be readily identified. She took all the keys from the table, in the basket as they lay, and noiselessly closed the door behind her on leaving the room.

The truckle-bed, as she passed it, obtruded itself again on her attention, and forced her to think of it. After a moment’s consideration, she moved the foot of the bed back to its customary position across the door. Whether he was in the house or out of it, the veteran might return to his deserted post at any moment. If he saw the bed moved from its usual place, he might suspect something wrong, he might rouse his master, and the loss of the keys might be discovered.

Nothing happened as she descended the stairs, nothing happened as she passed along the corridor; the house was as silent and as solitary as ever. She crossed the Banqueting-Hall this time without hesitation; the events of the night had hardened her mind against all imaginary terrors. “Now, I have got it!” she whispered to herself, in an irrepressible outburst of exaltation, as she entered the first of the east rooms and put her candle on the top of the old bureau.

Even yet there was a trial in store for her patience. Some minutes elapsed — minutes that seemed hours — before she found the right key and raised the lid of the bureau. At last she drew out the inner drawer! At last she had the letter in her hand!

It had been sealed, but the seal was broken. She opened it on the spot, to make sure that she had actually possessed herself of the Trust before leaving the room. The end of the letter was the first part of it she turned to. It came to its conclusion high on the third page, and it was signed by Noel Vanstone. Below the name these lines were added in the admiral’s handwriting:

“This letter was received by me at the same time with the will of my friend, Noel Vanstone. In the event of my death, without leaving any other directions respecting it, I beg my nephew and my executors to understand that I consider the requests made in this document as absolutely binding on me.

“ARTHUR EVERARD BARTRAM.”

She left those lines unread. She just noticed that they were not in Noel Vanstone’s handwriting; and, passing over them instantly, as immaterial to the object in view, turned the leaves of the letter, and transferred her attention to the opening sentences on the first page. She read these words:

“DEAR ADMIRAL BARTRAM — When you open my Will (in which you are named my sole executor), you will find that I have bequeathed the whole residue of my estate — after payment of one legacy of five thousand pounds — to yourself. It is the purpose of my letter to tell you privately what the object is for which I have left you the fortune which is now placed in your hands.

“I beg you to consider this large legacy as intended — ”

She had proceeded thus far with breathless curiosity and interest, when her attention suddenly failed her. Something — she was too deeply absorbed to know what — had got between her and the letter. Was it a sound in the Banqueting-Hall again? She looked over her shoulder at the door behind her, and listened. Nothing was to be heard, nothing was to be seen. She returned to the letter.

The writing was cramped and close. In her impatient curiosity to read more, she failed to find the lost place again. Her eyes, attracted by a blot, lighted on a sentence lower in the page than the sentence at which she had left off. The first three words she saw riveted her attention anew — they were the first words she had met with in the letter which directly referred to George Bartram. In the sudden excitement of that discovery, she read the rest of the sentence eagerly, before she made any second attempt to return to the lost place:

“If your nephew fails to comply with these conditions — that is to say, if, being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my decease, he fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed him to marry, within six calendar months from that time — it is my desire that he shall not receive — ”

She had read to that point, to that last word and no further, when a hand passed suddenly from behind her between the letter and her eye, and gripped her fast by the wrist in an instant.

She turned with a shriek of terror, and found herself face to face with old Mazey.

The veteran’s eyes were bloodshot; his hand was heavy; his list slippers were twisted crookedly on his feet; and his body swayed to and fro on his widely parted legs. If he had tested his condition that night by the unfailing criterion of the model ship, he must have inevitably pronounced sentence on himself in the usual form: “Drunk again, Mazey; drunk again.”

“You young Jezebel!” said the old sailor, with a leer on one side of his face, and a frown on the other. “The next time you take to night-walking in the neighbourhood of Freeze-your-Bones, use those sharp eyes of yours first, and make sure there’s nobody else night walking in the garden outside. Drop it, Jezebel! drop it!”

Keeping fast hold of Magdalen’s arm with one hand, he took the letter from her with the other, put it back into the open drawer, and locked the bureau. She never struggled with him, she never spoke. Her energy was gone; her powers of resistance were crushed. The terrors of that horrible night, following one close on the other in reiterated shocks, had struck her down at last. She yielded as submissively, she trembled as helplessly, as the weakest woman living.

Old Mazey dropped her arm, and pointed with drunken solemnity to a chair in an inner corner of the room. She sat down, still without uttering a word. The veteran (breathing very hard over it) steadied himself on both elbows against the slanting top of the bureau, and from that commanding position addressed Magdalen once more.

“Come and be locked up!” said old Mazey, wagging his venerable head with judicial severity. “There’ll be a court of inquiry to-morrow morning, and I’m witness — worse luck! — I’m witness. You young jade, you’ve committed burglary — that’s what you’ve done. His honour the admiral’s keys stolen; his honour the admiral’s desk ransacked; and his honour the admiral’s private letters broke open. Burglary! Burglary! Come and be locked up!” He slowly recovered an upright position, with the assistance of his hands, backed by the solid resisting power of the bureau; and lapsed into lachrymose soliloquy. “Who’d have thought it?” said old Mazey, paternally watering at the eyes. “Take the outside of her, and she’s as straight as a poplar; take the inside of her, and she’s as crooked as Sin. Such a fine-grown girl, too. What a pity! what a pity!”

“Don’t hurt me!” said Magdalen, faintly, as old Mazey staggered up to the chair, and took her by the wrist again. “I’m frightened, Mr. Mazey — I’m dreadfully frightened.”

“Hurt you?” repeated the veteran. “I’m a deal too fond of you — and more shame for me at my age! — to hurt you. If I let go of your wrist, will you walk straight before me, where I can see you all the way? Will you be a good girl, and walk straight up to your own door?”

Magdalen gave the promise required of her — gave it with an eager longing to reach the refuge of her room. She rose, and tried to take the candle from the bureau, but old Mazey’s cunning hand was too quick for her. “Let the candle be,” said the veteran, winking in momentary forgetfulness of his responsible position. “You’re a trifle quicker on your legs than I am, my dear, and you might leave me in the lurch, if I don’t carry the light.”

They returned to the inhabited side of the house. Staggering after Magdalen, with the basket of keys in one hand and the candle in the other, old Mazey sorrowfully compared her figure with the straightness of the poplar, and her disposition with the crookedness of Sin, all the way across “Freeze-your-Bones,” and all the way upstairs to her own door. Arrived at that destination, he peremptorily refused to give her the candle until he had first seen her safely inside the room. The conditions being complied with, he resigned the light with one hand, and made a dash with the other at the key, drew it from the inside of the lock, and instantly closed the door. Magdalen heard him outside chuckling over his own dexterity, and fitting the key into the lock again with infinite difficulty. At last he secured the door, with a deep grunt of relief. “There she is safe!” Magdalen heard him say, in regretful soliloquy. “As fine a girl as ever I sat eyes on. What a pity! what a pity!”

The last sounds of his voice died out in the distance; and she was left alone in her room.

Holding fast by the banister, old Mazey made his way down to the corridor on the second floor, in which a night light was always burning. He advanced to the truckle-bed, and, steadying himself against the opposite wall, looked at it attentively. Prolonged contemplation of his own resting-place for the night apparently failed to satisfy him. He shook his head ominously, and, taking from the side-pocket of his great-coat a pair of old patched slippers, surveyed them with an aspect of illimitable doubt. “I’m all abroad to-night,” he mumbled to himself. “Troubled in my mind — that’s what it is — troubled in my mind.”

The old patched slippers and the veteran’s existing perplexities happened to be intimately associated one with the other, in the relation of cause and effect. The slippers belonged to the admiral, who had taken one of his unreasonable fancies to this particular pair, and who still persisted in wearing them long after they were unfit for his service. Early that afternoon old Mazey had taken the slippers to the village cobbler to get them repaired on the spot, before his master called for them the next morning; he sat superintending the progress and completion of the work until evening came, when he and the cobbler betook themselves to the village inn to drink each other’s healths at parting. They had prolonged this social ceremony till far into the night, and they had parted, as a necessary consequence, in a finished and perfect state of intoxication on either side.

If the drinking-bout had led to no other result than those night wanderings in the grounds of St. Crux, which had shown old Mazey the light in the east windows, his memory would unquestionably have presented it to him the next morning in the aspect of one of the praiseworthy achievements of his life. But another consequence had sprung from it, which the old sailor now saw dimly, through the interposing bewilderment left in his brain by the drink. He had committed a breach of discipline, and a breach of trust. In plainer words, he had deserted his post.

The one safeguard against Admiral Bartram’s constitutional tendency to somnambulism was the watch and ward which his faithful old servant kept outside his door. No entreaties had ever prevailed on him to submit to the usual precaution taken in such cases. He peremptorily declined to be locked into his room; he even ignored his own liability, whenever a dream disturbed him, to walk in his sleep. Over and over again, old Mazey had been roused by the admiral’s attempts to push past the truckle-bed, or to step over it, in his sleep; and over and over again, when the veteran had reported the fact the next morning, his master had declined to believe him. As the old sailor now stood, staring in vacant inquiry at the bed-chamber door, these incidents of the past rose confusedly on his memory, and forced on him the serious question whether the admiral had left his room during the earlier hours of the night. If by any mischance the sleep-walking fit had seized him, the slippers in old Mazey’s hand pointed straight to the conclusion that followed — his master must have passed barefoot in the cold night over the stone stairs and passages of St. Crux. “Lord send he’s been quiet!” muttered old Mazey, daunted, bold as he was and drunk as he was, by the bare contemplation of that prospect. “If his honour’s been walking to-night, it will be the death of him!”

He roused himself for the moment by main force — strong in his dog-like fidelity to the admiral, though strong in nothing else — and fought off the stupor of the drink. He looked at the bed with steadier eyes and a clearer mind. Magdalen’s precaution in returning it to its customary position presented it to him necessarily in the aspect of a bed which had never been moved from its place. He next examined the counterpane carefully. Not the faintest vestige appeared of the indentation which must have been left by footsteps passing over it. There was the plain evidence before him — the evidence recognisable at last by his own bewildered eyes — that the admiral had never moved from his room.