Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (399 page)

“The Walk on the Walls,” thought this judicious man, with a twinkle of his party-coloured eyes. “The quietest place in York; and the place that every stranger goes to see.”

In ten minutes more Captain Wragge was exploring the new field of search. He mounted to the walls (which inclose the whole western portion of the city) by the North Street Postern, from which the walk winds round until it ends again at its southernly extremity in the narrow passage of Rosemary Lane. It was then twenty minutes to seven. The sun had set more than half an hour since; the red light lay broad and low in the cloudless western heaven; all visible objects were softening in the tender twilight, but were not darkening yet. The first few lamps lit in the street below looked like faint little specks of yellow light, as the captain started on his walk through one of the most striking scenes which England can show.

On his right hand, as he set forth, stretched the open country beyond the walls — the rich green meadows, the boundary-trees dividing them, the broad windings of the river in the distance, the scattered buildings nearer to view; all wrapped in the evening stillness, all made beautiful by the evening peace. On his left hand, the majestic west front of York Minster soared over the city and caught the last brightest light of heaven on the summits of its lofty towers. Had this noble prospect tempted the lost girl to linger and look at it? No; thus far, not a sign of her. The captain looked round him attentively, and walked on.

He reached the spot where the iron course of the railroad strikes its way through arches in the old wall. He paused at this place — where the central activity of a great railway enterprise beats, with all the pulses of its loud-clanging life, side by side with the dead majesty of the past, deep under the old historic stones which tell of fortified York and the sieges of two centuries since — he stood on this spot, and searched for her again, and searched in vain. Others were looking idly down at the desolate activity on the wilderness of the iron rails; but she was not among them. The captain glanced doubtfully at the darkening sky, and walked on.

He stopped again where the postern of Micklegate still stands, and still strengthens the city wall as of old. Here the paved walk descends a few steps, passes through the dark stone guardroom of the ancient gate, ascends again, and continues its course southward until the walls reach the river once more. He paused, and peered anxiously into the dim inner corners of the old guard-room. Was she waiting there for the darkness to come, and hide her from prying eyes? No: a solitary workman loitered through the stone chamber; but no other living creature stirred in the place. The captain mounted the steps which led out from the postern and walked on.

He advanced some fifty or sixty yards along the paved footway; the outlying suburbs of York on one side of him, a rope-walk and some patches of kitchen garden occupying a vacant strip of ground on the other. He advanced with eager eyes and quickened step; for he saw before him the lonely figure of a woman, standing by the parapet of the wall, with her face set toward the westward view. He approached cautiously, to make sure of her before she turned and observed him. There was no mistaking that tall, dark figure, as it rested against the parapet with a listless grace. There she stood, in her long black cloak and gown, the last dim light of evening falling tenderly on her pale, resolute young face. There she stood — not three months since the spoiled darling of her parents; the priceless treasure of the household, never left unprotected, never trusted alone — there she stood in the lovely dawn of her womanhood, a castaway in a strange city, wrecked on the world!

Vagabond as he was, the first sight of her staggered even the dauntless assurance of Captain Wragge. As she slowly turned her face and looked at him, he raised his hat, with the nearest approach to respect which a long life of unblushing audacity had left him capable of making.

“I think I have the honour of addressing the younger Miss Vanstone?” he began. “Deeply gratified, I am sure — for more reasons than one.”

She looked at him with a cold surprise. No recollection of the day when he had followed her sister and herself on their way home with Miss Garth rose in her memory, while he now confronted her, with his altered manner and his altered dress.

“You are mistaken,” she said, quietly. “You are a perfect stranger to me.”

“Pardon me,” replied the captain; “I am a species of relation. I had the pleasure of seeing you in the spring of the present year. I presented myself on that memorable occasion to an honoured preceptress in your late father’s family. Permit me, under equally agreeable circumstances, to present myself to
you
. My name is Wragge.”

By this time he had recovered complete possession of his own impudence; his party-coloured eyes twinkled cheerfully, and he accompanied his modest announcement of himself with a dancing-master’s bow.

Magdalen frowned, and drew back a step. The captain was not a man to be daunted by a cold reception. He tucked his umbrella under his arm and jocosely spelled his name for her further enlightenment. “W, R, A, double G, E — Wragge,” said the captain, ticking off the letters persuasively on his fingers.

“I remember your name,” said Magdalen. “Excuse me for leaving you abruptly. I have an engagement.”

She tried to pass him and walk on northward toward the railway. He instantly met the attempt by raising both hands, and displaying a pair of darned black gloves outspread in polite protest.

“Not that way,” he said; “not that way, Miss Vanstone, I beg and entreat!”

“Why not?” she asked haughtily.

“Because,” answered the captain, “that is the way which leads to Mr. Huxtable’s.”

In the ungovernable astonishment of hearing his reply she suddenly bent forward, and for the first time looked him close in the face. He sustained her suspicious scrutiny with every appearance of feeling highly gratified by it. “H, U, X — Hux,” said the captain, playfully turning to the old joke: “T, A — ta, Huxta; B, L, E — ble; Huxtable.”

“What do you know about Mr. Huxtable?” she asked. “What do you mean by mentioning him to me?”

The captain’s curly lip took a new twist upward. He immediately replied, to the best practical purpose, by producing the handbill from his pocket.

“There is just light enough left,” he said, “for young (and lovely) eyes to read by. Before I enter upon the personal statement which your flattering inquiry claims from me, pray bestow a moment’s attention on this Document.”

She took the handbill from him. By the last gleam of twilight she read the lines which set a price on her recovery — which published the description of her in pitiless print, like the description of a strayed dog. No tender consideration had prepared her for the shock, no kind word softened it to her when it came. The vagabond, whose cunning eyes watched her eagerly while she read, knew no more that the handbill which he had stolen had only been prepared in anticipation of the worst, and was only to be publicly used in the event of all more considerate means of tracing her being tried in vain — than she knew it. The bill dropped from her hand; her face flushed deeply. She turned away from Captain Wragge, as if all idea of his existence had passed out of her mind.

“Oh, Norah, Norah!” she said to herself, sorrowfully. “After the letter I wrote you — after the hard struggle I had to go away! Oh, Norah, Norah!”

“How is Norah?” inquired the captain, with the utmost politeness.

She turned upon him with an angry brightness in her large gray eyes. “Is this thing shown publicly?” she asked, stamping her foot on it. “Is the mark on my neck described all over York?”

“Pray compose yourself,” pleaded the persuasive Wragge. “At present I have every reason to believe that you have just perused the only copy in circulation. Allow me to pick it up.”

Before he could touch the bill she snatched it from the pavement, tore it into fragments, and threw them over the wall.

“Bravo!” cried the captain. “You remind me of your poor dear mother. The family spirit, Miss Vanstone. We all inherit our hot blood from my maternal grandfather.”

“How did you come by it?” she asked, suddenly.

“My dear creature, I have just told you,” remonstrated the captain. “We all come by it from my maternal grandfather.”

“How did you come by that handbill?” she repeated, passionately.

“I beg ten thousand pardons! My head was running on the family spirit. — How did I come by it? Briefly thus.” Here Captain Wragge entered on his personal statement; taking his customary vocal exercise through the longest words of the English language, with the highest elocutionary relish. Having, on this rare occasion, nothing to gain by concealment, he departed from his ordinary habits, and, with the utmost amazement at the novelty of his own situation, permitted himself to tell the unmitigated truth.

The effect of the narrative on Magdalen by no means fulfilled Captain Wragge’s anticipations in relating it. She was not startled; she was not irritated; she showed no disposition to cast herself on his mercy, and to seek his advice. She looked him steadily in the face; and all she said, when he had neatly rounded his last sentence, was — ”Go on.”

“Go on?” repeated the captain. “Shocked to disappoint you, I am sure; but the fact is, I have done.”

“No, you have not,” she rejoined; “you have left out the end of your story. The end of it is, you came here to look for me; and you mean to earn the fifty pounds reward.”

Those plain words so completely staggered Captain Wragge that for the moment he stood speechless. But he had faced awkward truths of all sorts far too often to be permanently disconcerted by them. Before Magdalen could pursue her advantage, the vagabond had recovered his balance: Wragge was himself again.

“Smart,” said the captain, laughing indulgently, and drumming with his umbrella on the pavement. “Some men might take it seriously. I’m not easily offended. Try again.”

Magdalen looked at him through the gathering darkness in mute perplexity. All her little experience of society had been experience among people who possessed a common sense of honour, and a common responsibility of social position. She had hitherto seen nothing but the successful human product from the great manufactory of Civilisation. Here was one of the failures, and, with all her quickness, she was puzzled how to deal with it.

“Pardon me for returning to the subject,” pursued the captain. “It has just occurred to my mind that you might actually have spoken in earnest. My poor child! how can I earn the fifty pounds before the reward is offered to me? Those handbills may not be publicly posted for a week to come. Precious as you are to all your relatives (myself included), take my word for it, the lawyers who are managing this case will not pay fifty pounds for you if they can possibly help it. Are you still persuaded that my needy pockets are gaping for the money? Very good. Button them up in spite of me with your own fair fingers. There is a train to London at nine forty-five to-night. Submit yourself to your friend’s wishes and go back by it.”

“Never!” said Magdalen, firing at the bare suggestion, exactly as the captain had intended she should. “If my mind had not been made up before, that vile handbill would have decided me. I forgive Norah,” she added, turning away and speaking to herself, “but not Mr. Pendril, and not Miss Garth.”

“Quite right!” said Captain Wragge. “The family spirit. I should have done the same myself at your age. It runs in the blood. Hark! there goes the clock again — half-past seven. Miss Vanstone, pardon this seasonable abruptness! If you are to carry out your resolution — if you are to be your own mistress much longer, you must take a course of some kind before eight o’clock. You are young, you are inexperienced, you are in imminent danger. Here is a position of emergency on one side — and here am I, on the other, with an uncle’s interest in you, full of advice. Tap me.”