AFTER placing the second cover, Magdalen awaited the ringing of the dinner-bell, with an interest and impatience which she found it no easy task to conceal. The return of Mr. Bartram would, in all probability, produce a change in the life of the house; and from change of any kind, no matter how trifling, something might be hoped. The nephew might be accessible to influences which had failed to reach the uncle. In any case, the two would talk of their affairs over their dinner; and through that talk—proceeding day after day in her presence—the way to discovery, now absolutely invisible, might, sooner or later, show itself.
At last the bell rang, the door opened, and the two gentlemen entered the room together.
Magdalen was struck, as her sister had been struck, by George Bartram’s resemblance to her father—judging by the portrait at Combe-Raven, which presented the likeness of Andrew Vanstone in his younger days. The light hair and florid complexion, the bright blue eyes and hardy upright figure, familiar to her in the picture, were all recalled to her memory, as the nephew followed the uncle across the room and took his place at table. She was not prepared for this sudden revival of the lost associations of home. Her attention wandered as she tried to conceal its effect on her; and she made a blunder in waiting at table, for the first time since she had entered the house.
A quaint reprimand from the admiral, half in jest, half in earnest, gave her time to recover herself. She ventured another look at George Bartram. The impression which he produced on her this time roused her curiosity immediately. His face and manner plainly expressed anxiety and preoccupation of mind. He looked oftener at his plate than at his uncle, and at Magdalen herself (except one passing inspection of the new parlor-maid, when the admiral spoke to her) he never looked at all. Some uncertainty was evidently troubling his thoughts; some oppression was weighing on his natural freedom of manner. What uncertainty? what oppression? Would any personal revelations come out, little by little, in the course of conversation at the dinner-table?
No. One set of dishes followed another set of dishes, and nothing in the shape of a personal revelation took place. The conversation halted on irregularly, between public affairs on one side and trifling private topics on the other. Politics, home and foreign, took their turn with the small household history of St. Crux; the leaders of the revolution which expelled Louis Philippe from the throne of France marched side by side, in the dinner-table review, with old Mazey and the dogs. The dessert was put on the table, the old sailor came in, drank his loyal toast, paid his respects to “Master George,” and went out again. Magdalen followed him, on her way back to the servants’ offices, having heard nothing in the conversation of the slightest importance to the furtherance of her own design, from the first word of it to the last. She struggled hard not to lose heart and hope on the first day. They could hardly talk again to-morrow, they could hardly talk again the next day, of the French Revolution and the dogs. Time might do wonders yet; and time was all her own.
Left together over their wine, the uncle and nephew drew their easy-chairs on either side of the fire; and, in Magdalen’s absence, began the very conversation which it was Magdalen’s interest to hear.
“Claret, George?” said the admiral, pushing the bottle across the table. “You look out of spirits.”
“I am a little anxious, sir,” replied George, leaving his glass empty, and looking straight into the fire.
“I am glad to hear it,” rejoined the admiral. “I am more than a little anxious myself, I can tell you. Here we are at the last days of March—and nothing done! Your time comes to an end on the third of May; and there you sit, as if you had years still before you, to turn round in.”
George smiled, and resignedly helped himself to some wine.
“Am I really to understand, sir,” he asked, “that you are serious in what you said to me last November? Are you actually resolved to bind me to that incomprehensible condition?”
“I don’t call it incomprehensible,” said the admiral, irritably.
“Don’t you, sir? I am to inherit your estate, unconditionally—as you have generously settled it from the first. But I am not to touch a farthing of the fortune poor Noel left you unless I am married within a certain time. The house and lands are to be mine (thanks to your kindness) under any circumstances. But the money with which I might improve them both is to be arbitrarily taken away from me, if I am not a married man on the third of May. I am sadly wanting in intelligence, I dare say, but a more incomprehensible proceeding I never heard of!”
“No snapping and snarling, George! Say your say out. We don’t understand sneering in Her Majesty’s Navy!”
“I mean no offense, sir. But I think it’s a little hard to astonish me by a change of proceeding on your part, entirely foreign to my experience of your character—and then, when I naturally ask for an explanation, to turn round coolly and leave me in the dark. If you and Noel came to some private arrangement together before he made his will, why not tell me? Why set up a mystery between us, where no mystery need be?”
“I won’t have it, George!” cried the admiral, angrily drumming on the table with the nutcrackers. “You are trying to draw me like a badger, but I won’t be drawn! I’ll make any conditions I please; and I’ll be accountable to nobody for them unless I like. It’s quite bad enough to have worries and responsibilities laid on my unlucky shoulders that I never bargained for—never mind what worries: they’re not yours, they’re mine—without being questioned and cross-questioned as if I was a witness in a box. Here’s a pretty fellow!” continued the admiral, apostrophizing his nephew in red-hot irritation, and addressing himself to the dogs on the hearth-rug for want of a better audience. “Here’s a pretty fellow? He is asked to help himself to two uncommonly comfortable things in their way—a fortune and a wife; he is allowed six months to get the wife in (we should have got her, in the Navy, bag and baggage, in six days); he has a round dozen of nice girls, to my certain knowledge, in one part of the country and another, all at his disposal to choose from, and what does he do? He sits month after month, with his lazy legs crossed before him; he leaves the girls to pine on the stem, and he bothers his uncle to know the reason why! I pity the poor unfortunate women. Men were made of flesh and blood, and plenty of it, too, in my time. They’re made of machinery now.”
“I can only repeat, sir, I am sorry to have offended you,” said George.
“Pooh! pooh! you needn’t look at me in that languishing way if you are,” retorted the admiral. “Stick to your wine, and I’ll forgive you. Your good health, George. I’m glad to see you again at St. Crux. Look at that plateful of sponge-cakes! The cook has sent them up in honor of your return. We can’t hurt her feelings, and we can’t spoil our wine. Here!”—The admiral tossed four sponge-cakes in quick succession down the accommodating throats of the dogs. “I am sorry, George,” the old gentleman gravely proceeded; “I am really sorry you haven’t got your eye on one of those nice girls. You don’t know what a loss you’re inflicting on yourself; you don’t know what trouble and mortification you’re causing me by this shilly-shally conduct of yours.”
“If you would only allow me to explain myself, sir, you would view my conduct in a totally different light. I am ready to marry to-morrow, if the lady will have me.”
“The devil you are! So you have got a lady in your eye, after all? Why in Heaven’s name couldn’t you tell me so before? Never mind, I’ll forgive you everything, now I know you have laid your hand on a wife. Fill your glass again. Here’s her health in a bumper. By-the-by, who is she?”
“I’ll tell you directly, admiral. When we began this conversation, I mentioned that I was a little anxious—”
“She’s not one of my round dozen of nice girls—aha, Master George, I see that in your face already! Why are you anxious?”
“I am afraid you will disapprove of my choice, sir.”
“Don’t beat about the bush! How the deuce can I say whether I disapprove or not, if you won’t tell me who she is?”
“She is the eldest daughter of Andrew Vanstone, of Combe-Raven.”
“Who!!!”
“Miss Vanstone, sir.”
The admiral put down his glass of wine untasted.
“You’re right, George,” he said. “I do disapprove of your choice —strongly disapprove of it.”
“Is it the misfortune of her birth, sir, that you object to?”
“God forbid! the misfortune of her birth is not her fault, poor thing. You know as well as I do, George, what I object to.”
“You object to her sister?”
“Certainly! The most liberal man alive might object to her sister, I think.”
“It’s hard, sir, to make Miss Vanstone suffer for her sister’s faults.”
“Faults, do you call them? You have a mighty convenient memory, George, when your own interests are concerned.”
“Call them crimes if you like, sir—I say again, it’s hard on Miss Vanstone. Miss Vanstone’s life is pure of all reproach. From first to last she has borne her hard lot with such patience, and sweetness, and courage as not one woman in a thousand would have shown in her place. Ask Miss Garth, who has known her from childhood. Ask Mrs. Tyrrel, who blesses the day when she came into the house—”
“Ask a fiddlestick’s end! I beg your pardon, George, but you are enough to try the patience of a saint. My good fellow, I don’t deny Miss Vanstone’s virtues. I’ll admit, if you like, she’s the best woman that ever put on a petticoat. That is not the question—”
“Excuse me, admiral—it is the question, if she is to be my wife.”
“Hear me out, George; look at it from my point of view, as well as your own. What did your cousin Noel do? Your cousin Noel fell a victim, poor fellow, to one of the vilest conspiracies I ever heard of, and the prime mover of that conspiracy was Miss Vanstone’s damnable sister. She d............