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

easily enough. “When my father’s in spirits,” he said, sulkily, “he likes to bully me about my good luck. This message means that he’s going to bully me now.”

“Don’t go,” suggested Magdalen.

“I must,” rejoined Frank. “I shall never hear the last of it if I don’t. He’s primed and loaded, and he means to go off. He went off, once, when the engineer took me; he went off, twice, when the office in the City took me; and he’s going off, thrice, now you’ve taken me. If it wasn’t for you, I should wish I had never been born. Yes; your father’s been kind to me, I know⁠—and I should have gone to China, if it hadn’t been for him. I’m sure I’m very much obliged. Of course, we have no right to expect anything else⁠—still it’s discouraging to keep us waiting a year, isn’t it?”

Magdalen stopped his mouth by a summary process, to which even Frank submitted gratefully. At the same time, she did not forget to set down his discontent to the right side. “How fond he is of me!” she thought. “A year’s waiting is quite a hardship to him.” She returned to the house, secretly regretting that she had not heard more of Frank’s complimentary complaints. Miss Garth’s elaborate satire, addressed to her while she was in this frame of mind, was a purely gratuitous waste of Miss Garth’s breath. What did Magdalen care for satire? What do Youth and Love ever care for except themselves? She never even said as much as “Pooh!” this time. She laid aside her hat in serene silence, and sauntered languidly into the morning-room to keep her mother company. She lunched on dire forebodings of a quarrel between Frank and his father, with accidental interruptions in the shape of cold chicken and cheesecakes. She trifled away half an hour at the piano; and played, in that time, selections from the songs of Mendelssohn, the mazurkas of Chopin, the operas of Verdi, and the sonatas of Mozart⁠—all of whom had combined together on this occasion and produced one immortal work, entitled “Frank.” She closed the piano and went up to her room, to dream away the hours luxuriously in visions of her married future. The green shutters were closed, the easy-chair was pushed in front of the glass, the maid was summoned as usual; and the comb assisted the mistress’s reflections, through the medium of the mistress’s hair, till heat and idleness asserted their narcotic influences together, and Magdalen fell asleep.

It was past three o’clock when she woke. On going downstairs again she found her mother, Norah and Miss Garth all sitting together enjoying the shade and the coolness under the open portico in front of the house.

Norah had the railway timetable in her hand. They had been discussing the chances of Mr. Vanstone’s catching the return train and getting back in good time. That topic had led them, next, to his business errand at Grailsea⁠—an errand of kindness, as usual; undertaken for the benefit of the miller, who had been his old farm-servant, and who was now hard pressed by serious pecuniary difficulties. From this they had glided insensibly into a subject often repeated among them, and never exhausted by repetition⁠—the praise of Mr. Vanstone himself. Each one of the three had some experience of her own to relate of his simple, generous nature. The conversation seemed to be almost painfully interesting to his wife. She was too near the time of her trial now not to feel nervously sensitive to the one subject which always held the foremost place in her heart. Her eyes overflowed as Magdalen joined the little group under the portico; her frail hand trembled as it signed to her youngest daughter to take the vacant chair by her side. “We were talking of your father,” she said, softly. “Oh, my love, if your married life is only as happy⁠—” Her voice failed her; she put her handkerchief hurriedly over her face and rested her head on Magdalen’s shoulder. Norah looked appealingly to Miss Garth, who at once led the conversation back to the more trivial subject of Mr. Vanstone’s return. “We have all been wondering,” she said, with a significant look at Magdalen, “whether your father will leave Grailsea in time to catch the train⁠—or whether he will miss it and be obliged to drive back. What do you say?”

“I say, papa will miss the train,” replied Magdalen, taking Miss Garth’s hint with her customary quickness. “The last thing he attends to at Grailsea will be the business that brings him there. Whenever he has business to do, he always puts it off to the last moment, doesn’t he, mamma?”

The question roused her mother exactly as Magdalen had intended it should. “Not when his errand is an errand of kindness,” said Mrs. Vanstone. “He has gone to help the miller in a very pressing difficulty⁠—”

“And don’t you know what he’ll do?” persisted Magdalen. “He’ll romp with the miller’s children, and gossip with the mother, and hob-and-nob with the father. At the last moment when he has got five minutes left to catch the train, he’ll say: ‘Let’s go into the countinghouse and look at the books.’ He’ll find the books dreadfully complicated; he’ll suggest sending for an accountant; he’ll settle the business off hand, by lending the money in the meantime; he’ll jog back comfortably in the miller’s gig; and he’ll tell us all how pleasant the lanes were in the cool of the evening.”

The little character-sketch which these words drew was too faithful a likeness not to be recognized. Mrs. Vanstone showed her appreciation of it by a smile. “When your father returns,” she said, “we will put your account of his proceedings to the test. I think,” she continued, rising languidly from her chair, “I had better go indoors again now and rest on the sofa till he comes back.”

The little group under the portico broke up. Magdalen slipped away into the garden to hear Frank’s account of