“THIS is where you are to sleep. Put yourself tidy, and then come down again to my room. The admiral has returned, and you will have to begin by waiting on him at dinner to-day.”

With those words, Mrs. Drake, the housekeeper, closed the door; and the new parlor-maid was left alone in her bed-chamber at St. Crux.

That day was the eventful twenty-fifth of February. In barely four months from the time when Mrs. Lecount had placed her master’s private Instructions in his Executor’s hands, the one combination of circumstances against which it had been her first and foremost object to provide was exactly the combination which had now taken place. Mr. Noel Vanstone’s widow and Admiral Bartram’s Secret Trust were together in the same house.

Thus far, events had declared themselves without an exception in Magdalen’s favor. Thus far, the path which had led her to St. Crux had been a path without an obstacle: Louisa, whose name she had now taken, had sailed three days since for Australia, with her husband and her child; she was the only living creature whom Magdalen had trusted with her secret, and she was by this time out of sight of the English land. The girl had been careful, reliable and faithfully devoted to her mistress’s interests to the last. She had passed the ordeal of her interview with the housekeeper, and had forgotten none of the instructions by which she had been prepared to meet it. She had herself proposed to turn the six weeks’ delay, caused by the death in the admiral’s family, to good account, by continuing the all-important practice of those domestic lessons, on the perfect acquirement of which her mistress’s daring stratagem depended for its success. Thanks to the time thus gained, when Louisa’s marriage was over, and the day of parting had come, Magdalen had learned and mastered, in the nicest detail, everything that her former servant could teach her. On the day when she passed the doors of St. Crux she entered on her desperate venture, strong in the ready presence of mind under emergencies which her later life had taught her, stronger still in the trained capacity that she possessed for the assumption of a character not her own, strongest of all in her two months’ daily familiarity with the practical duties of the position which she had undertaken to fill.

As soon as Mrs. Drake’s departure had left her alone, she unpacked her box, and dressed herself for the evening.

She put on a lavender-colored stuff-gown—half-mourning for Mrs. Girdlestone; ordered for all the servants, under the admiral’s instructions—a white muslin apron, and a neat white cap and collar, with ribbons to match the gown. In this servant’s costume—in the plain gown fastening high round her neck, in the neat little white cap at the back of her head—in this simple dress, to the eyes of all men, not linen-drapers, at once the most modest and the most alluring that a woman can wear, the sad changes which mental suffering had wrought in her beauty almost disappeared from view. In the evening costume of a lady, with her bosom uncovered, with her figure armed, rather than dressed, in unpliable silk, the admiral might have passed her by without notice in his own drawing-room. In the evening costume of a servant, no admirer of beauty could have looked at her once and not have turned again to look at her for the second time.

Descending the stairs, on her way to the house-keeper’s room, she passed by the entrances to two long stone corridors, with rows of doors opening on them; one corridor situated on the second, and one on the first floor of the house. “Many rooms!” she thought, as she looked at the doors. “Weary work searching here for what I have come to find!”

On reaching the ground-floor she was met by a weather-beaten old man, who stopped and stared at her with an appearance of great interest. He was the same old man whom Captain Wragge had seen in the backyard at St. Crux, at work on the model of a ship. All round the neighborhood he was known, far and wide, as “the admiral’s coxswain.” His name was Mazey. Sixty years had written their story of hard work at sea, and hard drinking on shore, on the veteran’s grim and wrinkled face. Sixty years had proved his fidelity, and had brought his battered old carcass, at the end of the voyage, into port in his master’s house.

Seeing no one else of whom she could inquire, Magdalen requested the old man to show her the way that led to the housekeeper’s room.

“I’ll show you, my dear,” said old Mazey, speaking in the high and hollow voice peculiar to the deaf. “You’re the new maid—eh? And a fine-grown girl, too! His honor, the admiral, likes a parlor-maid with a clean run fore and aft. You’ll do, my dear—you’ll do.”

“You must not mind what Mr. Mazey says to you,” remarked the housekeeper, opening her door as the old sailor expressed his approval of Magdalen in these terms. “He is privileged to talk as he pleases; and he is very tiresome and slovenly in his habits; but he means no harm.”

With that apology for the veteran, Mrs. Drake led Magdalen first to the pantry, and next to the linen-room, installing her, with all due formality, in her own domestic dominions. This ceremony completed, the new parlor-maid was taken upstairs, and was shown the dining-room, which opened out of the corridor on the first floor. Here she was directed to lay the cloth, and to prepare the table for one person only—Mr. George Bartram not having returned with his uncle to St. Crux. Mrs. Drake’s sharp eyes watched Magdalen attentively as she performed this introductory duty; and Mrs. Drake’s private convictions, when the table was spread, forced her to acknowledge, so far, that the new servant thoroughly understood her work.

An hour later the soup-tureen was placed on the table; and Magdalen stood alone behind the admiral’s empty chair, waiting her master’s first inspection of her when he entered the dining-room.

A large bell rang in the lower regions—quick, shambling footsteps pattered on the stone corridor outside—the door opened suddenly—and a tall lean yellow old man, sharp as to his eyes, shrewd as to his lips, fussily restless as to all his movements, entered the room, with two huge Labrador dogs at his heels, and took his seat in a violent hurry. The dogs followed him, and placed themselves, with the utmost gravity and composure, one on each side of his chair. This was Admiral Bartram, and these were the companions of his solitary meal.

“Ay! ay! ay! here’s the new parlor-maid, to be sure!” he began, looking sharply, but not at all unkindly, at Magdalen. “What’s your name, my good girl? Louisa, is it? I shall call you Lucy, if you don’t mind. Take off the cover, my dear—I’m a minute or two late to-day. Don’t be unpunctual to-morrow on that account; I am as regular as clock-work generally. How are you after your journey? Did my spring-cart bump you about much in bringing you from the station? Capital soup this—hot as fire—reminds me of the soup we used to have in the West Indies in the year Three. Have you got your half-mourning on? Stand there, and let me see. Ah, yes, very neat, and nice, and tidy. Poor Mrs. Girdlestone! Oh dear, dear, dear, poor Mrs. Girdlestone! You’re not afraid of dogs, are you, Lucy? Eh? What? You like dogs? That’s right! Always be kind to dumb animals. These two dogs dine with me every day, except when there’s company. The dog with the black nose is Brutus, and the dog with the white nose is Cassius. Did you ever hear who Brutus and Cassius were? Ancient Romans? That’s right—-good girl. Mind your book and your needle, and we’ll get you a good husband one of these days. Take away the soup, my dear, take away the soup!”

This was the man whose secret it was now the one interest of Magdalen’s life to surprise! This was the man whose name had supplanted hers in Noel Vanstone’s will!

The fish and the roast meat followed; and the admiral’s talk rambled on—now in soliloquy, now addressed to the parlor-maid, and now directed to the dogs—as familiarly and as discontentedly as ever. Magdalen observed with some surprise that the companions of the admiral’s dinner had, thus far, received no scraps from their master’s plate. The two magnificent brutes sat squatted on their haunches, with their great heads over the table, watching the progress of the meal, with the profoundest attention, but apparently expecting no share in it. The roast meat was removed, the admiral’s plate was changed, and Magdalen took the silver covers off the two made-dishes on either side of the table. As she handed the first of the savory dishes to her master, the dogs suddenly exhibited a breathless personal interest in the proceedings. Brutus gluttonously watered at the mouth; and the tongue of Cassius, protruding in unutterable expectation, smoked again between his enormous jaws.

The admiral helped himself liberally from the dish; sent Magdalen to the side-table to get him some bread; and, when he thought her eye was off him, furtively tumbled the whole contents of his plate into Brutus’s mouth. Cassius whined faintly as his fortunate comrade swallowed the savory mess at a gulp. “Hush! you fool,” whispered the admiral. “Your turn next!”

Magdalen presented the second dish. Once more the old gentleman helped himself largely—once more he sent her away to the side-table—once more he tumbled the entire contents of the plate down the dog’s throat, selecting Cassius this time, as became a considerate master and an impartial man. When the next course followed—consisting of a plain pudding and an unwholesome “cream”—Magdalen’s suspicion of the function of the dogs at the dinner-table was confirmed. While the master took the simple pudding, the dogs swallowed the elaborate cream. The admiral was plainly afraid of offending his cook on the one hand, and of offending his digestion on the other—and Brutus and Cassius were the two trained accomplices who regularly helped him every day off the horns of his dilemma. “Very good! very good!” said the old gentleman, with the most transparent duplicity. “Tell the cook, my dear, a capital cream!”

Having placed the wine and dessert on the table, Magdalen was about to withdraw. Before she could leave the room, her master called her back.

“Stop, stop!” said the admiral; “you don’t know the ways of the house yet, Lucy. Put another wine-glass here, at my right hand—the largest you can find, my dear. I’ve got a third dog, who comes in at dessert—a drunken old sea-dog who has followed my fortunes, afloat and ashore, for fifty years and more. Yes, yes, that’s the sort of glass we want. You’re a good girl—you’re a neat, handy girl. Steady, my dear! there’s nothing to be frightened at!”

A sudden thump on the outside of the door, followed by one mighty bark from each of the dogs, had made Magdalen start. “Come in!” shouted the admiral. The door opened; the tails of Brutus and Cassius cheerfully thumped the floor; and old Mazey marched straight up to the right-hand side of his master’s chair. The veteran stood there, with his legs wide apart and his balance carefully adjusted, as if the dining-room had been a cabin, and the house a ship pitching in a sea-way.

The admiral filled the large glass with port, filled his own glass with claret, and raised it to his lips.

“God bless the Queen, Mazey,” said the admiral.

“God bless the Queen, your honor,” said old Mazey, swallowing his port, as the dogs swallowed the made-dishes, at a gulp.

“How’s the wind, Mazey?”

“West and by Noathe, your honor.”

“Any report to-night, Mazey!”

“No report, your honor.”

“Good-evening, Mazey.”

“Good-evening, your honor.”

The after-dinner ceremony thus completed, old Mazey made his bow, and walked out of the room again. Brutus and Cassius stretched themselves on the rug to digest mushrooms and made gravies in the lubricating heat of the fire. “For what we have received, the Lord make us truly thankful,” said the admiral. “Go downstairs, my good girl, and get your supper. A light meal, Lucy, if you take my advice—a light meal, or you will have the nightmare. Early to bed, my dear, and early to rise, makes a parlor-maid healthy and wealthy and wise. That’s the wisdom of your ancestors—you mustn’t laugh at it. Good-night.” In those words Magdalen was dismissed; and so her first day’s experience of Admiral Bartram came to an end.

After breakfast the next morning, the admiral’s directions to the new parlor-maid included among them one particular order which, in Magdalen’s situation, it was especially her interest to receive. In the old gentleman’s absence from home that day, on local business which took him to Ossory, she was directed to make herself acquainted with the whole inhabited quarter of the house, and to learn the positions of the various rooms, so as to know where the bells called her when the bells rang. Mrs. Drake was charged with the duty of superintending the voyage of domestic discovery, unless she happened to be otherwise engaged—in which case any one of the inferior servants would be equally competent to act as Magdalen’s guide.

At noon the admiral left for Ossory, and Magdalen presented herself in Mrs. Drake’s room, to be shown over the house. Mrs. Drake happened to be otherwise engaged, and referred her to the head house-maid. The head house-maid happened on that particular morning to be in the same condition as Mrs. Drake, and referred her to the under-house-maids. The under-house-maids declared they were all behindhand and had not a minute to spare—they suggested, not too civilly, that old Mazey had nothing on earth to do, and that he knew the house as well, or better, than he knew his A B C. Magdalen took the hint, with a secret indignation and contempt which it cost her a hard struggle to conceal. She had suspected, on the previous night, and she was certain now, that the women-servants all incomprehensibly resented her presence among them with the same sullen unanimity of distrust. Mrs. Drake, as she had seen for herself, was really engaged that morning over her accounts. But of all the servants under her who had made their excuses not one had even affected to be more occupied than usual. Their looks said plainly, “We don’t like you; and we won’t show you over the house.”

She found her way to old Mazey, not by the scanty directions given her, but by the sound of the veteran’s cracked and quavering voice, singing in some distant seclusion a verse of the immortal sea-song—“Tom Bowling.” Just as she stopped among the rambling stone passages on the basement story of the house, uncertain which way to turn next, she heard the tuneless old voice in the distance, singing these lines:

     “His form was of the manliest beau-u-u-uty,
     His heart was ki-i-ind and soft;
     Faithful below Tom did his duty,
     But now he’s gone alo-o-o-o-oft
     —But now he’s go-o-o-one aloft!”
 

Magdalen followed in the direction of the quavering voice, and found herself in a little room looking out on the back yard. There sat old Mazey, with his spectacles low on his nose, and his knotty old hands blundering over the rigging of his model ship. There were Brutus and Cassius digesting before the fire again, and snoring as if they thoroughly enjoyed it. There was Lord Nelson on one wall, in flaming watercolors; and there, on the other, was a portrait of Admiral Bartram’s last flagship, in full sail on a sea of slate, with a salmon-colored sky to complete the illusion.

“What, they won’t show you over the house—won’t they?” said old Mazey. “I will, then! That head house-maid’s a sour one, my dear—if ever there was a sour one yet. You’re too young and good-looking to please ‘em—that’s what you are.” He rose, took off his spectacles, and feebly mended the fire. “She’s as straight as a poplar,” said old Mazey, considering Magdalen’s figure in drowsy soliloquy. “I say she’s as straight as a poplar, and his honor the admiral says so too! Come along, my dear,” he proceeded, addressing himself to Magdalen again. “I’ll teach you your Pints of the Compass first. When you know your Pints, blow high, blow low, you’ll find it plain sailing all over the house.”
............