No Name Wilkie Collins (e book reader android TXT) 📖

to pack up your curiosities, to settle with the tradespeople, and to follow you to St. Crux the next morning. The next morning is the tenth morning. On the tenth morning she receives the letter from Zurich; and if you only carry out my instructions, Mr. Vanstone, as sure as you sit there, to Zurich she goes.”

Noel Vanstone’s color began to rise again, as the captain’s stratagem dawned on him at last in its true light.

“And what am I to do at St. Crux?” he inquired.

“Wait there till I call for you,” replied the captain. “As soon as Mrs. Lecount’s back is turned, I will go to the church here and give the necessary notice of the marriage. The same day or the next, I will travel to the address written down in my pocketbook, pick you up at the admiral’s, and take you on to London with me to get the license. With that document in our possession, we shall be on our way back to Aldborough while Mrs. Lecount is on her way out to Zurich; and before she starts on her return journey, you and my niece will be man and wife! There are your future prospects for you. What do you think of them?”

“What a head you have got!” cried Noel Vanstone, in a sudden outburst of enthusiasm. “You’re the most extraordinary man I ever met with. One would think you had done nothing all your life but take people in.”

Captain Wragge received that unconscious tribute to his native genius with the complacency of a man who felt that he thoroughly deserved it.

“I have told you already, my dear sir,” he said, modestly, “that I never do things by halves. Pardon me for reminding you that we have no time for exchanging mutual civilities. Are you quite sure about your instructions? I dare not write them down for fear of accidents. Try the system of artificial memory; count your instructions off after me, on your thumb and your four fingers. Today you tell Mrs. Lecount I have tried to take you in with my relative’s works of art. Tomorrow you cut me on the Parade. The day after you refuse to go out, you get tired of Aldborough, and you allow Mrs. Lecount to make her suggestion. The next day you accept the suggestion. And the next day to that you go to St. Crux. Once more, my dear sir! Thumb⁠—works of art. Forefinger⁠—cut me on the Parade. Middle finger⁠—tired of Aldborough. Third finger⁠—take Lecount’s advice. Little finger⁠—off to St. Crux. Nothing can be clearer⁠—nothing can be easier to do. Is there anything you don’t understand? Anything that I can explain over again before you go?”

“Only one thing,” said Noel Vanstone. “Is it settled that I am not to come here again before I go to St. Crux?”

“Most decidedly!” answered the captain. “The whole success of the enterprise depends on your keeping away. Mrs. Lecount will try the credibility of everything you say to her by one test⁠—the test of your communicating, or not, with this house. She will watch you night and day! Don’t call here, don’t send messages, don’t write letters; don’t even go out by yourself. Let her see you start for St. Crux on her suggestion, with the absolute certainty in her own mind that you have followed her advice without communicating it in any form whatever to me or to my niece. Do that, and she must believe you, on the best of all evidence for our interests, and the worst for hers⁠—the evidence of her own senses.”

With those last words of caution, he shook the little man warmly by the hand and sent him home on the spot.

X

On returning to Sea View, Noel Vanstone executed the instructions which prescribed his line of conduct for the first of the five days with unimpeachable accuracy. A faint smile of contempt hovered about Mrs. Lecount’s lips while the story of Mr. Bygrave’s attempt to pass off his spurious pictures as originals was in progress, but she did not trouble herself to utter a single word of remark when it had come to an end. “Just what I said!” thought Noel Vanstone, cunningly watching her face; “she doesn’t believe a word of it!”

The next day the meeting occurred on the Parade. Mr. Bygrave took off his hat, and Noel Vanstone looked the other way. The captain’s start of surprise and scowl of indignation were executed to perfection, but they plainly failed to impose on Mrs. Lecount. “I am afraid, sir, you have offended Mr. Bygrave today,” she ironically remarked. “Happily for you, he is an excellent Christian! and I venture to predict that he will forgive you tomorrow.”

Noel Vanstone wisely refrained from committing himself to an answer. Once more he privately applauded his own penetration; once more he triumphed over his ingenious friend.

Thus far the captain’s instructions had been too clear and simple to be mistaken by anyone. But they advanced in complication with the advance of time, and on the third day Noel Vanstone fell confusedly into the commission of a slight error. After expressing the necessary weariness of Aldborough, and the consequent anxiety for change of scene, he was met (as he had anticipated) by an immediate suggestion from the housekeeper, recommending a visit to St. Crux. In giving his answer to the advice thus tendered, he made his first mistake. Instead of deferring his decision until the next day, he accepted Mrs. Lecount’s suggestion on the day when it was offered to him.

The consequences of this error were of no great importance. The housekeeper merely set herself to watch her master one day earlier than had been calculated on⁠—a result which had been already provided for by the wise precautionary measure of forbidding Noel Vanstone all communication with North Shingles. Doubting, as Captain Wragge had foreseen, the sincerity of her master’s desire to break off his connection with the Bygraves by going to St. Crux, Mrs. Lecount tested the truth or falsehood of the impression produced on her own mind by vigilantly watching for signs of secret communication