The bedchamber was not very large, and the furniture was heavy and old–fashioned. But evidences of Magdalen’s natural taste and refinement were visible everywhere, in the little embellishments that graced and enlivened the aspect of the room. The perfume of dried rose–leaves hung fragrant on the cool air. Mrs Lecount sniffed the perfume with a disparaging frown, and threw the window up to its full height. ‘Pah!’ she said, with a shudder of virtuous disgust – ‘the atmosphere of deceit!’
She seated herself near the window. The wardrobe stood against the wall opposite, and the bed was at the side of the room on her right hand. ‘Open the wardrobe, Mr Noel,’ she said. ‘I don’t go near it. I touch nothing in it, myself. Take out the dresses with your own hand, and put them on the bed. Take them out one by one, until I tell you to stop.’
He obeyed her. ‘I’ll do it as well as I can,’ he said. ‘My hands are cold, and my head feels half asleep.’
The dresses to be removed were not many – for Magdalen had taken some of them away with her. After he had put two dresses on the bed, he was obliged to search in the inner recesses of the wardrobe, before he could find a third. When he produced it, Mrs Lecount made a sign to him to stop. The end was reached already: he had found the brown alpaca dress.
‘Lay it out on the bed, sir,’ said Mrs Lecount. ‘You will see a double flounce running round the bottom of it. Lift up the outer flounce, and pass the inner one through your fingers, inch by inch. If you come to a place where there is a morsel of the stuff missing, stop, and look up at me.’
He passed the flounce slowly through his fingers, for a minute or more – then stopped and looked up. Mrs Lecount produced her pocket–book, and opened it.
‘Every word I now speak, sir, is of serious consequence to you and to me,’ she said. ‘Listen with your closest attention. When the woman calling herself Miss Garth came to see us in Vauxhall Walk, I knelt down behind the chair in which she was sitting, and I cut a morsel of stuff from the dress she wore, which might help me to know that dress, if I ever saw it again. I did this, while the woman’s whole attention was absorbed in talking to you. The morsel of stuff has been kept in my pocket–book, from that time to this. See for yourself, Mr Noel, if it fits the gap in that dress, which your own hands have just taken from your wife’s wardrobe.’
She rose, and handed him the fragment of stuff across the bed. He put it into the vacant space in the flounce, as well as his trembling fingers would let him.
‘Does it fit, sir?’ asked Mrs Lecount.
The dress dropped from his hands; and the deadly bluish pallor –which every doctor who attended him had warned his housekeeper to dread – overspread his face slowly. Mrs Lecount had not reckoned on such an answer to her question as she now saw in his cheeks. She hurried round to him, with the smelling–bottle in her hand. He dropped to his knees, and caught at her dress with the grasp of a drowning man. ‘Save me!’ he gasped, in a hoarse, breathless whisper. ‘Oh, Lecount, save me!’
‘I promise to save you,’ said Mrs Lecount; ‘I am here with the means and the resolution to save you. Come away from this place – come nearer to the air.’ She raised him as she spoke, and led him across the room to the window. ‘Do you feel the chill pain again on your left side?’ she asked, with the first signs of alarm that she had shown yet. ‘Has your wife got any eau–de–cologne, any sal–volatile in her room. Don’t exhaust yourself by speaking – point to the place!’
He pointed to a little triangular cupboard, of old worm–eaten walnut–wood, fixed high in a corner of the room. Mrs Lecount tried the door – it was locked.
As she made that discovery, she saw his head sink back gradually on the easy–chair in which she had placed him. The warning of the doctors in past years – ‘If you ever let him faint, you let him the’ – recurred to her memory, as if it had been spoken the day before. She looked at the cupboard again. In a recess under it, lay some ends of cord, placed there apparently for purposes of packing. Without an instant’s hesitation, she snatched up a morsel of cord; tied one end fast round the knob of the cupboard door; and seizing the other end in both hands, pulled it suddenly with the exertion of her whole strength. The rotten wood gave way; the cupboard–doors flew open; and a heap of little trifles poured out noisily on the floor. Without stopping to notice the broken china and glass at her feet, she looked into the dark recesses of the cupboard, and saw the gleam of two glass bottles. One was put away at the extreme back of the shelf; the other was a little in advance, almost hiding it. She snatched them both out at once, and took them, one in each hand, to the window, where she could read their labels in the clearer light.
The bottle in her right hand was the first bottle she looked at. It was marked – Sal–volatile.
She instandy laid the other bottle aside on the table without looking at it. The other bottle lay there, waiting its turn. It held a dark liquid, and it was labelled – POISON.
Chapter Two
Mrs Lecount mixed the sal-volatile with water, and administered it immediately. The stimulant had its effect. In a few minutes, Noel Vanstone was able to raise himself in the chair without assistance: his colour changed again for the better, and his breath came and went more freely.
‘How do you feel now, sir?’ asked Mrs Lecount. ‘Are you warm again, on your left side?’
He paid no attention to that inquiry: his eyes, wandering about the room, turned by chance towards the table. To Mrs Lecount’s surprise, instead of answering her, he bent forward in his chair, and looked with staring eyes and pointing hand at the second bottle which she had taken from the cupboard, and which she had hastily laid aside, without paying attention to it. Seeing that some new alarm possessed him, she advanced to the table, and looked where he looked. The labelled side of the bottle was full in view; and there, in the plain handwriting of the chemist at Aldborough, was the one startling word, confronting them both–‘Poison’.
Even Mrs Lecount’s self-possession was shaken by that discovery. She was not prepared to see her own darkest forebodings – the unacknowledged offspring of her hatred for Magdalen – realized as she saw them realized now. The suicide-despair, in which the poison had been procured; the suicide-purpose for which, in distrust of the future, the poison had been kept, had brought with them their own retribution. There the bottle lay, in Magdalen’s absence, a false witness of treason which had never entered her mind – treason against her husband’s life!
With his hand still mechanically pointing at the table, Noel Vanstone raised his head, and looked up at Mrs Lecount.
‘I took it from the cupboard,’ she said answering the look. ‘I took both bottles out together, not knowing which might be the bottle I wanted. I am as much shocked, as much frightened, as you are.’
‘Poison!’ he said to himself, slowly, ‘Poison locked tip by my wife, in the cupboard in her own room.’ He stopped, and looked at Mrs Lecount once more. ‘For me?’ he asked, in a vacant, inquiring tone.
‘We will not talk of it, sir, until your mind is more at ease,’ said Mrs Lecount. ‘In the mean time, the danger that lies waiting in this bottle, shall be instantly destroyed in your presence.’ She took out the cork, and threw the laudanum out of window, and the empty bottle after it.1’ ‘Let us try to forget this dreadful discovery for the present,’ she resumed; ‘let us go downstairs at once. All that I have now to say to you, can be said in another room.’
She helped him to rise from the chair, and took his arm in her own. ‘It is well for him; it is well for me,’ she thought, as they went downstairs together, ‘that I came when I did.’
On crossing the passage, she stepped to the front door, where the carriage was waiting which had brought her from Dumfries, and instructed the coachman to put up his horses at the nearest inn, and to call again for her in two hours’ time. This done, she accompanied Noel Vanstone into the sitting-room, stirred up the fire, and placed him before it comfortably in an easy–chair. He sat for a few minutes, warming his hands feebly li
ke an old man, and staring straight into the flame. Then he spoke.
‘When the woman came and threatened me in Vauxhall Walk,’ he began, still staring into the fire, ‘you came back to the parlour, after she was gone; and you told me – ?’ He stopped, shivered a little, and lost the thread of his recollections at that point.
‘I told you, sir,’ said Mrs Lecount, ‘that the woman was, in my opinion, Miss Vanstone herself. Don’t start, Mr Noel! Your wife is away, and I am here to take care of you. Say to yourself, if you feel frightened, “Lecount is here; Lecount will take care of me.” The truth must be told, sir – however hard to bear the truth may be. Miss Magdalen Vanstone was the woman who came to you in disguise; and the woman who came to you in disguise, is the woman you have married. The conspiracy which she threatened you with in London, is the conspiracy which has made her your wife. That is the plain truth. You have seen the dress upstairs. If that dress had been no longer in existence, I should still have had my proofs to convince you. Thanks to my interview with Mrs Bygrave, I have discovered the house your wife lodged at in London – it was opposite our house in Vauxhall Walk. I have laid my hand on one of the landlady’s daughters, who watched your wife from an inner room, and saw her put on the disguise; who can speak to her identity, and to the identity of her companion, Mrs Bygrave; and who has furnished me, at my own request, with a written statement of facts, which she is ready to affirm on oath, if any person ventures to contradict her. You shall read the statement, Mr Noel, if you like, when you are fitter to understand it. You shall also read a letter in the handwriting of Miss Garth – who will repeat to you personally every word she has written to me – a letter formally denying that she was ever in Vauxhall Walk, and formally asserting that those moles on your wife’s neck, are marks peculiar to Miss Magdalen Vanstone, whom she has known from childhood. I say it with a just pride – you will find no weak place anywhere in the evidence which I bring you. If Mr Bygrave had not stolen my letter, you would have had your warning, before I was cruelly deceived into going to Zurich; and the proofs which I now bring you, after your marriage, I should then have offered to you before it. Don’t hold me responsible, sir, for what has happened since I left England. Blame your uncle’s bastard daughter, and blame that villain with the brown eye and the green!’
She spoke her last venomous words as slowly and distinctly as she had spoken all the rest. Noel Vanstone made no answer – he still sat cowering over the fire. She looked round into his face. He was crying silently. ‘I was so fond of her!’ said the miserable little creature; ‘and I thought she was so fond of Me!’
Mrs Lecount turned her back on him in disdainful silence. ‘Fond of her!’ As she repeated those words to herself, her haggard face became almost handsome again in the magnificent intensity of its contempt.
She walked to a book-case at the lower end of the room, and began examining the volumes in it. Before she had been long engaged in this way, she was startled by the sound of his voice, affrightedly calling her back. The tears were gone from his face: it was blank again with terror when he now turned it towards her.
‘Lecount!’ he said, holding to her with both hands. ‘Can an egg be poisoned? I had an egg for breakfast this morning – and a little toast.’
‘Make your mind, easy, sir,’ said Mrs Lecount. ‘The poison of your wife’s deceit is the only poison you have taken yet. If she had resolved already on making you pay the price of your folly with your life, she would not be absent from the house while you were left living in it. Dismiss the thought from your mind. It is the middle of the day; you want refreshment. I have more to say to you, in the interests of your own safety – I have something for you to do, which must be done at once. Recruit your strength, and you will do it. I will set you the example of eating, if you still distrust the food in this house. Are you composed enough to give the servant her orders, if I ring the bell? It is necessary to the object I have in view for you, that nobody should think you ill in body, or troubled in mind. Try first with me before the servant comes in. Let us see how you look and speak when you say, “Bring up the lunch”.’
After two rehearsals, Mrs Lecount considered him fit to give the order, without betraying himself.
The bell was answered by Louisa – Louisa looked hard at Mrs Lecount. The luncheon was brought up by the housemaid – the housemaid looked hard at Mrs Lecount. When luncheon was over, the table was cleared by the cook – the cook looked hard at Mrs Lecount. The three servants were plainly suspicious that something extraordinary was going on in the house. It was hardly possible to doubt that they had arranged to share among themselves the three opportunities which the service of the table afforded them of entering the room.
The curiosity of which she was the object did not escape the penetration of Mrs Lecount. ‘I did well,’ she thought, ‘to arm myself in good time with the means of reaching my end. If I let the grass grow under my feet, one or other of those women might get in my way.’ Roused by this consideration, she produced her travelling-bag from a corner, as soon as the last of the servants had left the room; and seating herself at the end of the table opposite Noel Vanstone, looked at him for a moment, with a steady investigating attention. She had carefully regulated the quantity of wine which he had taken at luncheon – she had let him drink exactly enough to fortify, without confusing him – and she now examined his face critically, like an artist examining his picture, at the end of the day’s work. The result appeared to satisfy her; and she opened the serious business of the interview on the spot.
‘Will you look at the written evidence I have mentioned to you, Mr Noel, before I say any more?’ she inquired. ‘Or are you sufficiently persuaded of the truth to proceed at once to the suggestion which I have now to make to you?’
‘Let me hear your suggestion,’ he said, sullenly resting his elbows on the table, and leaning his head on his hands.
Mrs Lecount took from her travelling-bag the written evidence to which she had just alluded, and carefully placed the papers on one side of him, within easy reach, if he wished to refer to them. Far from being daunted, she was visibly encouraged by the ungraciousness of his manner. Her experience of him informed her that the sign was a promising one. On those rare occasions when the little resolution that he possessed was roused in him, it invariably asserted itself – like the resolution of most other weak men – aggressively. At such times, in proportion as he was outwardly sullen and discourteous to those about him, his resolution rose; and in proportion as he was considerate and polite, it fell. The tone of the answer he had just given, and the attitude he assumed at the table, convinced Mrs Lecount that Spanish wine and Scotch mutton had done their duty, and had rallied his sinking courage.
‘I will put the question to you for form’s sake, sir, if you wish it,’ she proceeded. ‘But I am already certain, without any question at all, that you have made your will?’
He nodded his head without looking at her.
‘You have made it in your wife’s favour?’
He nodded again.
‘You have left her everything you possess?’
‘No.’
Mrs Lecount looked surprised.
‘Did you exercise a reserve towards her, Mr Noel, of your own accord?’ she inquired, ‘or is it possible that your wife put her own limits to her interest in your will?’
He was uneasily silent – he was plainly ashamed to answer the question. Mrs Lecount repeated it in a less direct form.
‘How much have you left your widow, Mr Noel, in the event of your death?’
‘Eighty thousand pounds.’
That reply answered the question. Eighty thousand pounds was exactly the fortune which Michael Vanstone had taken from his brother’s orphan children, at his brother’s death – exactly the fortune of which Michael Vanstone’s son had kept possession, in his turn, as pitilessly as his father before him. Noel Vanstone’s silence was eloquent of the confession which he was ashamed to make. His doting weakness had, beyond all dou
bt, placed his whole property at the feet of his wife. And this girl, whose vindictive daring had defied all restraints – this girl, who had not shrunk from her desperate determination even at the church-door – had, in the very hour of her triumph, taken part only from the man who would willingly have given all! – had rigorously exacted her father’s fortune from him to the last farthing; and had then turned her back on the hand that was tempting her with tens of thousands more! For the moment, Mrs Lecount was fairly silenced by her own surprise; Magdalen had forced the astonishment from her which is akin to admiration, the astonishment which her enmity would fain have refused. She hated Magdalen with a tenfold hatred from that time.
‘I have no doubt, sir,’ she resumed, after a momentary silence, ‘that Mrs Noel gave you excellent reasons why the provision for her at your death should be no more, and no less, than eighty thousand pounds. And, on the other hand, I am equally sure that you, in your innocence of all suspicion, found those reasons conclusive at the time. That time has now gone by. Your eyes are opened, sir – and you will not fail to remark (as I remark) that the Combe-Raven property happens to reach the same sum exactly, as the legacy which your wife’s own instructions directed you to leave her. If you are still in any doubt of the motive for which she married you, look in your own will – and there the motive is!’
He raised his head from his hands, and became closely attentive to what she was saying to him, for the first time since they had faced each other at the table. The Combe–Raven property had never been classed by itself in his estimation. It had come to him merged in his father’s other possessions, at his father’s death. The discovery which had now opened before him, was one to which his ordinary habits of thought, as well as his innocence of suspicion, had hitherto closed his eyes. He said nothing; but he looked less sullenly at Mrs Lecount. His manner was more ingratiating; the high tide of his courage was already on the ebb.
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