From that moment events hurried with a headlong rapidity to the parting scene. They were back at the house while the words of the Marriage Service seemed still ringing in their ears. Before they had been five minutes indoors the carriage drew up at the garden gate. In a minute more the opportunity came for which Magdalen and the captain had been on the watch--the opportunity of speaking together in private for the last time. She still preserved her icy resignation; she seemed beyond all reach now of the fear that had once mastered her, of the remorse that had once tortured her soul. With a firm hand she gave him the promised money. With a firm face she looked her last at him. "I'm not to blame," he whispered, eagerly; "I have only done what you asked me." She bowed her head; she bent it toward him kindly and let him touch her fore-head with his lips. "Take care!" he said. "My last words are--for God's sake take care when I'm gone!" She turned from him with a smile, and spoke her farewell words to his wife. Mrs. Wragge tried hard to face her loss bravely--the loss of the friend whose presence had fallen like light from Heaven over the dim pathway of her life. "You have been very good to me, my dear; I thank you kindly; I thank you with all my heart." She could say no more; she clung to Magdalen in a passion of tears, as her mother might have clung to her, if her mother had lived to see that horrible day. "I'm frightened for you!" cried the poor creature, in a wild, wailing voice. "Oh, my darling, I'm frightened for you!" Magdalen desperately drew herself free--kissed her--and hurried out to the door. The expression of that artless gratitude, the cry of that guileless love, shook her as nothing else had shaken her that day. It was a refuge to get to the carriage--a refuge, though the man she had married stood there waiting for her at the door.
Mrs. Wragge tried to follow her into the garden. But the captain had seen Magdalen's face as she ran out, and he steadily held his wife back in the passage. From that distance the last farewells were exchanged. As long as the carriage was in sight, Magdalen looked back at them; she waved her handkerchief as she turned the corner. In a moment more the last thread which bound her to them was broken; the familiar companionship of many months was a thing of the past already!
Captain Wragge closed the house door on the idlers who were looking in from the Parade. He led his wife back into the sitting-room, and spoke to her with a forbearance which she had never yet experienced from him.
"She has gone her way," he said, "and in another hour we shall have gone ours. Cry your cry out--I don't deny she's worth crying for."Even then--even when the dread of Magdalen's future was at its darkest in his mind--the ruling habit of the man's life clung to him. Mechanically he unlocked his dispatch-box. Mechanically he opened his Book of Accounts, and made the closing entry--the entry of his last transaction with Magdalen--in black and white. "By Rec'd from Miss Vanstone," wrote the captain, with a gloomy brow, "Two hundred pounds.""You won't be angry with me?" said Mrs. Wragge, looking timidly at her husband through her tears. "I want a word of comfort, captain. Oh, do tell me, when shall I see her again?"The captain closed the book, and answered in one inexorable word: "Never!"Between eleven and twelve o'clock that night Mrs. Lecount drove into Zurich.
Her brother's house, when she stopped before it, was shut up. With some difficulty and delay the servant was aroused. She held up her hands in speechless amazement when she opened the door and saw who the visitor was.
"Is my brother alive?" asked Mrs. Lecount, entering the house.
"Alive!" echoed the servant. "He has gone holiday-making into the country, to finish his recovery in the fine fresh air."The housekeeper staggered back against the wall of the passage. The coachman and the servant put her into a chair. Her face was livid, and her teeth chattered in her head.
"Send for my brother's doctor," she said, as soon as she could speak.
The doctor came. She handed him a letter before he could say a word.
"Did you write that letter?"
He looked it over rapidly, and answered her without hesitation, "Certainly not!""It is your handwriting."
"It is a forgery of my handwriting."
She rose from the chair with a new strength in her.
"When does the return mail start for Paris?" she asked.
"In half an hour."
"Send instantly and take me a place in it!"The servant hesitated, the doctor protested. She turned a deaf ear to them both.
"Send!" she reiterated, "or I will go myself."They obeyed. The servant went to take the place: the doctor remained and held a conversation with Mrs. Lecount. When the half-hour had passed, he helped her into her place in the mail, and charged the conductor privately to take care of his passenger.
"She has traveled from England without stopping," said the doctor; "and she is traveling back again without rest. Be careful of her, or she will break down under the double journey."The mail started. Before the first hour of the new day was at an end Mrs. Lecount was on her way back to England.
THE END OF THE FOURTH SCENE.
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[Table of Contents]No Name, Between the Scenes BETWEEN THE SCENES. PROGRESS OF THE STORY THROUGH THE POST. I. From George Bartram to Noel Vanstone.
"St. Crux, September 4th, 1847.
"MY DEAR NOEL--Here are two plain questions at starting. In the name of all that is mysterious, what are you hiding for? And why is everything relating to your marriage kept an impenetrable secret from your oldest friends?
"I have been to Aldborough to try if I could trace you from that place, and have come back as wise as I went. I have applied to your lawyer in London, and have been told, in reply, that you have forbidden him to disclose the place of your retreat to any one without first receiving your permission to do so. All I could prevail on him to say was, that he would forward any letter which might be sent to his care. I write accordingly, and mind this, I expect an answer.