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

the letter there? Would the hands of the zealous public servant suddenly stop? Yes! They stopped, and picked out a letter from the rest.

“ ‘Noel Vanstone, Esquire,’ did you say?” asked the postmaster, keeping the letter in his own hand.

“ ‘Noel Vanstone, Esquire,’ ” replied the captain, “ ‘Admiral Bartram’s, St. Crux-in-the-Marsh.’ ”

“Ossory, Essex,” chimed in the postmaster, throwing the letter back into the box. “The lady has made no mistake, sir. The address is quite right.”

Nothing but a timely consideration of the heavy debt he owed to appearances prevented Captain Wragge from throwing his tall white hat up in the air as soon as he found the street once more. All further doubt was now at an end. Mrs. Lecount had written to her master⁠—therefore Mrs. Lecount was on her way to Zurich!

With his head higher than ever, with the tails of his respectable frock-coat floating behind him in the breeze, with his bosom’s native impudence sitting lightly on its throne, the captain strutted to the inn and called for the railway timetable. After making certain calculations (in black and white, as a matter of course), he ordered his chaise to be ready in an hour⁠—so as to reach the railway in time for the second train running to London⁠—with which there happened to be no communication from Aldborough by coach.

His next proceeding was of a far more serious kind; his next proceeding implied a terrible certainty of success. The day of the week was Thursday. From the inn he went to the church, saw the clerk, and gave the necessary notice for a marriage by license on the following Monday.

Bold as he was, his nerves were a little shaken by this last achievement; his hand trembled as it lifted the latch of the garden gate. He doctored his nerves with brandy and water before he sent for Magdalen to inform her of the proceedings of the morning. Another outbreak might reasonably be expected when she heard that the last irrevocable step had been taken, and that notice had been given of the wedding-day.

The captain’s watch warned him to lose no time in emptying his glass. In a few minutes he sent the necessary message upstairs. While waiting for Magdalen’s appearance, he provided himself with certain materials which were now necessary to carry the enterprise to its crowning point. In the first place, he wrote his assumed name (by no means in so fine a hand as usual) on a blank visiting-card, and added underneath these words: “Not a moment is to be lost. I am waiting for you at the door⁠—come down to me directly.” His next proceeding was to take some half-dozen envelopes out of the case, and to direct them all alike to the following address: “Thomas Bygrave, Esq., Mussared’s Hotel, Salisbury Street, Strand, London.” After carefully placing the envelopes and the card in his breast-pocket, he shut up the desk. As he rose from the writing-table, Magdalen came into the room.

The captain took a moment to decide on the best method of opening the interview, and determined, in his own phrase, to dash at it. In two words he told Magdalen what had happened, and informed her that Monday was to be her wedding-day.

He was prepared to quiet her, if she burst into a frenzy of passion; to reason with her, if she begged for time; to sympathize with her, if she melted into tears. To his inexpressible surprise, results falsified all his calculations. She heard him without uttering a word, without shedding a tear. When he had done, she dropped into a chair. Her large gray eyes stared at him vacantly. In one mysterious instant all her beauty left her; her face stiffened awfully, like the face of a corpse. For the first time in the captain’s experience of her, fear⁠—all-mastering fear⁠—had taken possession of her, body and soul.

“You are not flinching,” he said, trying to rouse her. “Surely you are not flinching at the last moment?”

No light of intelligence came into her eyes, no change passed over her face. But she heard him⁠—for she moved a little in the chair, and slowly shook her head.

“You planned this marriage of your own free will,” pursued the captain, with the furtive look and the faltering voice of a man ill at ease. “It was your own idea⁠—not mine. I won’t have the responsibility laid on my shoulders⁠—no! not for twice two hundred pounds. If your resolution fails you; if you think better of it⁠—?”

He stopped. Her face was changing; her lips were moving at last. She slowly raised her left hand, with the fingers outspread; she looked at it as if it was a hand that was strange to her; she counted the days on it, the days before the marriage.

“Friday, one,” she whispered to herself; “Saturday, two; Sunday, three; Monday⁠—” Her hands dropped into her lap, her face stiffened again; the deadly fear fastened its paralyzing hold on her once more, and the next words died away on her lips.

Captain Wragge took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

“Damn the two hundred pounds!” he said. “Two thousand wouldn’t pay me for this!”

He put the handkerchief back, took the envelopes which he had addressed to himself out of his pocket, and, approaching her closely for the first time, laid his hand on her arm.

“Rouse yourself,” he said, “I have a last word to say to you. Can you listen?”

She struggled, and roused herself⁠—a faint tinge of color stole over her white cheeks⁠—she bowed her head.

“Look at these,” pursued Captain Wragge, holding up the envelopes. “If I turn these to the use for which they have been written, Mrs. Lecount’s master will never receive Mrs. Lecount’s letter. If I tear them up, he will know by tomorrow’s post that you are the woman who visited him in Vauxhall Walk. Say the word! Shall I tear the envelopes up, or shall I put them back in my pocket?”

There was a pause of dead silence. The murmur of the summer waves on the shingle of the beach and