Miss or Mrs.?

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MISS OR MRS.?

by Wilkie Collins




PERSONS OF THE STORY.

Sir Joseph Graybrooke. . . . . . . . . .(Knight)
Richard Turlington . . . . (Of the Levant Trade)
Launcelot Linzie . .(Of the College of Surgeons)
James Dicas. . . . . .(Of the Roll of Attorneys)
Thomas Wildfang. . . . . .(Superannuated Seaman)
Miss Graybrooke. . . . . . (Sir Joseph's Sister)
Natalie. . . . . . . . . (Sir Joseph's Daughter)
Lady Winwood . . . . . . . .(Sir Joseph's Niece)
Amelia} Sophia}. (Lady Winwood's Stepdaughter's)
and Dorothea}



Period: THE PRESENT TIME. Place: ENGLAND.




FIRST SCENE

At Sea.

The night had come to an end. The new-born day waited for its quickening
light in the silence that is never known on land--the silence before
sunrise, in a calm at sea.

Not a breath came from the dead air. Not a ripple stirred on the
motionless water. Nothing changed but the softly-growing light; nothing
moved but the lazy mist, curling up to meet the sun, its master, on the
eastward sea. By fine gradations, the airy veil of morning thinned in
substance as it rose--thinned, till there dawned through it in the first
rays of sunlight the tall white sails of a Schooner Yacht.

From stem to stern silence possessed the vessel--as silence possessed
the sea.

But one living creature was on deck--the man at the helm, dozing
peaceably with his arm over the useless tiller. Minute by minute the
light grew, and the heat grew with it; and still the helmsman slumbered,
the heavy sails hung noiseless, the quiet water lay sleeping against
the vessel's sides. The whole orb of the sun was visible above the
water-line, when the first sound pierced its way through the morning
silence. From far off over the shining white ocean, the cry of a
sea-bird reached the yacht on a sudden out of the last airy circles of
the waning mist.

The sleeper at the helm woke; looked up at the idle sails, and yawned
in sympathy with them; looked out at the sea on either side of him, and
shook his head obstinately at the superior obstinacy of the calm.

"Blow, my little breeze!" said the man, whistling the sailor's
invocation to the wind softly between his teeth. "Blow, my little
breeze!"

"How's her head?" cried a bold and brassy voice, hailing the deck from
the cabin staircase.

"Anywhere you like, master; all round the compass."

The voice was followed by the man. The owner of the yacht appeared on
deck.

Behold Richard Turlington, Esq., of the great Levant firm of Pizzituti,
Turlington & Branca! Aged eight-and-thirty; standing stiffly and
sturdily at a height of not more than five feet six--Mr. Turlington
presented to the view of his fellow-creatures a face of the
perpendicular order of human architecture. His forehead was a straight
line, his upper lip was another, his chin was the straightest and the
longest line of all. As he turned his swarthy countenance eastward,
and shaded his light gray eyes from the sun, his knotty hand plainly
revealed that it had got him his living by its own labor at one time or
another in his life. Taken on the whole, this was a man whom it might
be easy to respect, but whom it would be hard to love. Better company at
the official desk than at the social table. Morally and physically--if
the expression may be permitted--a man without a bend in him.

"A calm yesterday," grumbled Richard Turlington, looking with stubborn
deliberation all round him. "And a calm to-day. Ha! next season I'll
have the vessel fitted with engines. I hate this!"

"Think of the filthy coals, and the infernal vibration, and leave your
beautiful schooner as she is. We are out for a holiday. Let the wind and
the sea take a holiday too."

Pronouncing those words of remonstrance, a slim, nimble, curly-headed
young gentleman joined Richard Turlington on deck, with his clothes
under his arm, his towels in his hand, and nothing on him but the
night-gown in which he had stepped out of his bed.

"Launcelot Linzie, you have been received on board my vessel in the
capacity of medical attendant on Miss Natalie Graybrooke, at her
father's request. Keep your place, if you please. When I want your
advice, I'll ask you for it." Answering in those terms, the elder man
fixed his colorless gray eyes on the younger with an expression which
added plainly, "There won't be room enough in this schooner much longer
for me and for you."

Launcelot Linzie had his reasons (apparently) for declining to let his
host offend him on any terms whatever.

"Thank you!" he rejoined, in a tone of satirical good humor. "It isn't
easy to keep my place on board your vessel. I can't help presuming
to enjoy myself as if I was the owner. The life is such a new one--to
_me!_ It's so delightfully easy, for instance, to wash yourself here.
On shore it's a complicated question of jugs and basins and tubs; one is
always in danger of breaking something, or spoiling something. Here you
have only to jump out of bed, to run up on deck, and to do this!"

He turned, and scampered to the bows of the vessel. In one instant he
was out of his night-gown, in another he was on the bulwark, in a third
he was gamboling luxuriously in sixty fathoms of salt-water.

Turlington's eyes followed him with a reluctant, uneasy attention as
he swam round the vessel, the only moving object in view. Turlington's
mind, steady and slow in all its operations, set him a problem to be
solved, on given conditions, as follows:

"Launcelot Linzie is fifteen years younger than I am. Add to that,
Launcelot Linzie is Natalie Graybrooke's cousin. Given those two
advantages--Query: Has he taken Natalie's fancy?"

Turning that question slowly over and over in his mind, Richard
Turlington seated himself in a corner at the stern of the vessel. He
was still at work on the problem, when the young surgeon returned to his
cabin to put the finishing touches to his toilet. He had not reached the
solution when the steward appeared an hour later and said, "Breakfast is
ready, sir!"

They were a party of five round the cabin table.

First, Sir Joseph Graybrooke. Inheritor of a handsome fortune made by
his father and his grandfather in trade. Mayor, twice elected, of a
thriving provincial town. Officially privileged, while holding that
dignity, to hand a silver trowel to a royal personage condescending to
lay a first stone of a charitable edifice. Knighted, accordingly, in
honor of the occasion. Worthy of the honor and worthy of the occasion.
A type of his eminently respectable class. Possessed of an amiable, rosy
face, and soft, silky white hair. Sound in his principles; tidy in his
dress; blessed with moderate politics and a good digestion--a harmless,
healthy, spruce, speckless, weak-minded old man.

Secondly, Miss Lavinia Graybrooke, Sir Joseph's maiden sister.
Personally, Sir Joseph in petticoats. If you knew one you knew the
other.

Thirdly, Miss Natalie Graybrooke--Sir Joseph's only child.

She had inherited the personal appearance and the temperament of her
mother--dead many years since. There had been a mixture of Negro
blood and French blood in the late Lady Graybrooke's family, settled
originally in Martinique. Natalie had her mother's warm dusky color, her
mother's superb black hair, and her mother's melting, lazy, lovely
brown eyes. At fifteen years of age (dating from her last birthday) she
possessed the development of the bosom and limbs which in England is
rarely attained before twenty. Everything about the girl--except her
little rosy ears--was on a grand Amazonian scale. Her shapely hand was
long and large; her supple waist was the waist of a woman. The indolent
grace of all her movements had its motive power in an almost masculine
firmness of action and profusion of physical resource. This remarkable
bodily development was far from being accompanied by any corresponding
development of character. Natalie's manner was the gentle, innocent
manner of a young girl. She had her father's sweet temper ingrafted on
her mother's variable Southern nature. She moved like a goddess, and she
laughed like a child. Signs of maturing too rapidly--of outgrowing her
strength, as the phrase went--had made their appearance in Sir
Joseph's daughter during the spring. The family doctor had suggested
a sea-voyage, as a wise manner of employing the fine summer months.
Richard Turlington's yacht was placed at her disposal, with Richard
Turlington himself included as one of the fixtures of the vessel.
With her father and her aunt to keep up round her the atmosphere of
home--with Cousin Launcelot (more commonly known as "Launce") to
carry out, if necessary, the medical treatment prescribed by superior
authority on shore--the lovely invalid embarked on her summer cruise,
and sprang up into a new existence in the life-giving breezes of
the sea. After two happy months of lazy coasting round the shores of
England, all that remained of Natalie's illness was represented by a
delicious languor in her eyes, and an utter inability to devote herself
to anything which took the shape of a serious occupation. As she sat
at the cabin breakfast-table that morning, in her quaintly-made sailing
dress of old-fashioned nankeen--her inbred childishness of manner
contrasting delightfully with the blooming maturity of her form--the man
must have been trebly armed indeed in the modern philosophy who could
have denied that the first of a woman's rights is the right of being
beautiful; and the foremost of a woman's merits, the merit of being
young!

The other two persons present at the table were the two gentlemen who
have already appeared on the deck of the yacht.

"Not a breath of wind stirring!" said Richard Turlington. "The weather
has got a grudge against us. We have drifted about four or five miles in
the last eight-and-forty hours. You will never take another cruise with
me--you must be longing to get on shore."

He addressed himself to Natalie; plainly eager to make himself agreeable
to the young lady--and plainly unsuccessful in producing any impression
on her. She made a civil answer; and looked at her tea-cup, instead of
looking at Richard Turlington.

"You might fancy yourself on shore at this moment," said Launce. "The
vessel is as steady as a house, and the swing-table we are eating our
breakfast on is as even as your dining-room table at home."

He too addressed himself to Natalie, but without betraying the anxiety
to please her which had been shown by the other. For all that, _he_
diverted the girl's attention from her tea-cup; and _his_ idea instantly
awakened a responsive idea in Natalie's mind.

"It will be so strange on shore," she said, "to find myself in a room
that never turns on one side, and to sit at a table that never tilts
down to my knees at one time, or rises up to my chin at another. How I
shall miss the wash of the water at my ear, and the ring of the bell
on deck when I am awake at night on land! No interest there in how the
wind blows, or how the sails are set. No asking your way of the sun,
when you are lost, with a little brass instrument and a morsel of pencil
and paper. No delightful wandering wherever the wind takes you, without
the worry of planning beforehand where you are to go. Oh how I shall
miss the dear, changeable, inconstant sea! And how sorry I am I'm not a
man and a sailor!"

This to the guest admitted on board on sufferance, and not one word of
it addressed, even by chance, to the owner of the yacht!

Richard Turlington's heavy eyebrows contracted with an unmistakable
expression of pain.

"If this calm weather holds," he went on, addressing himself to Sir
Joseph, "I am afraid, Graybrooke, I shall not be able to bring you back
to the port we sailed from by the end of the week."

"Whenever you like, Richard," answered the old gentleman, resignedly.
"Any time will do for me."

"Any time within reasonable limits, Joseph," said Miss Lavinia,
evidently feeling that her brother was conceding too much. She spoke
with Sir Joseph's amiable smile and Sir Joseph's softly-pitched voice.
Two twin babies could hardly have been more like one another.

While these few words were being exchanged among the elders, a private
communication was in course of progress between the two young people
under the cabin table. Natalie's smartly-slippered foot felt its way
cautiously inch by inch over the carpet till it touched Launce's boot.
Launce, devouring his breakfast, instantly looked up from his plate,
and then, at a second touch from Natalie, looked down again in a violent
hurry. After pausing to make sure that she was not noticed, Natalie
took up her knife. Under a perfectly-acted pretense of toying with it
absently, in the character of a young lady absorbed in thought, she
began dividing a morsel of ham left on the edge of her plate, into six
tiny pieces. Launce's eye looked in sidelong expectation at the divided
and subdivided ham. He was evidently waiting to see the collection of
morsels put to some telegraphic use, previously determined on between
his neighbor and himself.

In the meanwhile the talk proceeded among the other persons at the
breakfast-table. Miss Lavinia addressed herself to Launce.

"Do you know, you careless boy, you gave me a fright this morning? I was
sleeping with my cabin window open, and I was awoke by an awful splash
in the water. I called for the stewardess. I declare I thought somebody
had fallen overboard!"

Sir Joseph looked up briskly; his sister had accidentally touched on an
old association.

"Talk of falling overboard," he began, "reminds me of an extraordinary
adventure--"

There Launce broke in, making his apologies.

"It shan't occur again, Miss Lavinia," he said. "To-morrow morning I'll
oil myself all over, and slip into the water as silently as a seal."

"Of an extraordinary adventure," persisted Sir Joseph, "which happened
to me many years ago, when I was a young man. Lavinia?"

He stopped, and looked interrogatively at his sister. Miss Graybrooke
nodded her head responsively, and settled herself in her chair, as if
summoning her attention in anticipation of a coming demand on it. To
persons well acquainted with the brother and sister these proceedings
were ominous of an impending narrative, protracted to a formidable
length. The two always told a story in couples, and always differed
with each other about the facts, the sister politely contradicting
the brother when it was Sir Joseph's story, and the brother politely
contradicting the sister when it was Miss Lavinia's story. Separated one
from the other, and thus relieved of their own habitual interchange
of contradiction, neither of them had ever been known to attempt the
relation of the simplest series of events without breaking down.

"It was five years before I knew you, Richard," proceeded Sir Joseph.

"Six years," said Miss Graybrooke.

"Excuse me, Lavinia."

"No, Joseph, I have it down in my diary."

"Let us waive the point." (Sir Joseph invariably used this formula as a
means of at once conciliating his sister, and getting a fresh start for
his story.) "I was cruising off the Mersey in a Liverpool pilot-boat. I
had hired the boat in company with a friend of mine, formerly notorious
in London society, under the nickname (derived from the peculiar brown
color of his whiskers) of 'Mahogany Dobbs.'"

"The color of his liveries, Joseph, not the color of his whiskers."

"My dear Lavinia, you are thinking of 'Sea-green Shaw,' so called from
the extraordinary liveries he adopted for his servants in the year when
he was sheriff."

"I think not, Joseph."

"I beg your pardon, Lavinia."

Richard Turlington's knotty fingers drummed impatiently on the table. He
looked toward Natalie. She was idly arranging her little morsels of
ham in a pattern on her plate. Launcelot Linzie, still more idly, was
looking at the pattern. Seeing what he saw now, Richard solved the
problem which had puzzled him on deck. It was simply impossible that
Natalie's fancy could be really taken by such an empty-headed fool as
that!

Sir Joseph went on with his story:

"We were some ten or a dozen miles off the mouth of the Mersey--"

"Nautical miles, Joseph."

"It doesn't matter, Lavinia."

"Excuse me, brother, the late great and good Doctor Johnson said
accuracy ought always to be studied even in the most trifling things."

"They were common miles, Lavinia."

"They were nautical miles, Joseph."

"Let us waive the point. Mahogany Dobbs and I happened to be below in
the cabin, occupied--"

Here Sir Joseph paused (with his amiable smile) to consult his
memory. Miss Lavinia waited (with _her_ amiable smile) for the coming
opportunity of setting her brother right. At the same moment Natalie
laid down her knife and softly touched Launce under the table. When
she thus claimed his attention the six pieces of ham were arranged as
follows in her plate: Two pieces were placed opposite each other, and
four pieces were ranged perpendicularly under them. Launce looked, and
twice touched Natalie under the table. Interpreted by the Code agreed
on between the two, the signal in the plate meant, "I must see you in
private." And Launce's double touch answered, "After breakfast."

Sir Joseph proceeded with his story. Natalie took up her knife again.
Another signal coming!

"We were both down in the cabin, occupied in finishing our dinner--"

"Just sitting down to lunch, Joseph."

"My dear! I ought to know."

"I only repeat what I heard, brother. The last time you told the story,
you and your friend were sitting down to lunch."

"We won't particularize, Lavinia. Suppose we say occupied over a meal?"

"If it is of no more importance than that, Joseph, it would be surely
better to leave it out altogether."

"Let us waive the point. Well, we were suddenly alarmed by a shout on
deck, 'Man over-board!' We both rushed up the cabin stairs, naturally
under the impression that one of our crew had fallen into the sea: an
impression shared, I ought to add, by the man at the helm, who had given
the alarm."

Sir Joseph paused again. He was approaching one of the great dramatic
points in his story, and was naturally anxious to present it as
impressively as possible. He considered with himself, with his head a
little on one side. Miss Lavinia considered with _herself_, with _her_
head a little on one side. Natalie laid down her knife again, and again
touched Launce under the table. This time there were five pieces of ham
ranged longitudinally on the plate, with one piece immediately under
them at the center of the line. Interpreted by the Code, this signal
indicated two ominous words, "Bad news." Launce looked significantly
at the owner of the yacht (meaning of the look, "Is he at the bottom of
it?"). Natalie frowned in reply (meaning of the frown, "Yes, he is").
Launce looked down again into the plate. Natalie instantly pushed all
the pieces of ham together in a little heap (meaning of the heap, "No
more to say").

"Well?" said Richard Turlington, turning sharply on Sir Joseph. "Get on
with your story. What next?"

Thus far he had not troubled himself to show even a decent pretense of
interest in his old friend's perpetually-interrupted narrative. It was
only when Sir Joseph had reached his last sentence--intimating that the
man overboard might turn out in course of time not to be a man of the
pilot-boat's crew--it was only then that Turlington sat up in his chair,
and showed signs of suddenly feeling a strong interest in the progress
of the story.

Sir Joseph went on:

"As soon as we got on deck, we saw the man in the water, astern. Our
vessel was hove up in the wind, and the boat was lowered. The master and
one of the men took the oars. All told, our crew were seven in number.
Two away in the boat, a third at the helm, and, to my amazement, when
I looked round, the other four behind me making our number complete.
At the same moment Mahogany Dobbs, who was looking through a telescope,
called out, 'Who the devil can he be? The man is floating on a hen-coop,
and we have got nothing of the sort on board this pilot-boat.'"

The one person present who happened to notice Richard Turlington's
face when those words were pronounced was Launcelot Linzie. He--and he
alone--saw the Levant trader's swarthy complexion fade slowly to a
livid ashen gray; his eyes the while fixing themselves on Sir Joseph
Graybrooke with a furtive glare in them like the glare in the eyes of a
wild beast. Apparently conscious that Launce was looking at him--though
he never turned his head Launce's way--he laid his elbow on the table,
lifted his arm, and so rested his face on his hand, while the story went
on, as to screen it effectually from the young surgeon's view.

"The man was brought on board," proceeded Sir Joseph, "sure enough, with
a hen-coop--on which he had been found floating. The poor wretch was
blue with terror and exposure in the water; he fainted when we lifted
him on deck. When he came to himself he told us a horrible story. He was
a sick and destitute foreign seaman, and he had hidden himself in the
hold of an English vessel (bound to a port in his native country) which
had sailed from Liverpool that morning. He had been discovered, and
brought before the captain. The captain, a monster in human form, if
ever there was one yet--"

Before the next word of the sentence could pass Sir Joseph's lips,
Turlington startled the little party in the cabin by springing suddenly
to his feet.

"The breeze!" he cried; "the breeze at last!"

As he spoke, he wheeled round to the cabin door so as to turn his back
on his guests, and hailed the deck.

"Which way is the wind?"

"There is not a breath of wind, sir."

Not the slightest movement in the vessel had been perceptible in the
cabin; not a sound had been audible indicating the rising of the breeze.
The owner of the yacht--accustomed to the sea, capable, if necessary,
of sailing his own vessel--had surely committed a strange mistake! He
turned again to his friends, and made his apologies with an excess of
polite regret far from characteristic of him at other times and under
other circumstances.

"Go on," he said to Sir Joseph, when he had got to the end of his
excuses; "I never heard such an interesting story in my life. Pray go
on!"

The request was not an easy one to comply with. Sir Joseph's ideas
had been thrown into confusion. Miss Lavinia's contradictions (held in
reserve) had been scattered beyond recall. Both brother and sister were,
moreover, additionally hindered in recovering the control of their own
resources by the look and manner of their host. He alarmed, instead
of encouraging the two harmless old people, by fronting them almost
fiercely, with his elbows squared on the table, and his face expressive
of a dogged resolution to sit there and listen, if need be, for the rest
of his life. Launce was the person who set Sir Joseph going again. After
first looking attentively at Richard, he took his uncle straight back to
the story by means of a question, thus:

"You don't mean to say that the captain of the ship threw the man
overboard?"

"That is just what he did, Launce. The poor wretch was too ill to work
his passage. The captain declared he would have no idle foreign vagabond
in his ship to eat up the provisions of Englishmen who worked. With his
own hands he cast the hen-coop into the water, and (assisted by one of
his sailors) he threw the man after it, and told him to float back to
Liverpool with the evening tide."

"A lie!" cried Turlington, addressing himself, not to Sir Joseph, but to
Launce.

"Are you acquainted with the circumstances?" asked Launce, quietly.

"I know nothing about the circumstances. I say, from my own experience,
that foreign sailors are even greater blackguards than English sailors.
The man had met with an accident, no doubt. The rest of his story was a
lie, and the object of it was to open Sir Joseph's purse."

Sir Joseph mildly shook his head.

"No lie, Richard. Witnesses proved that the man had spoken the truth."

"Witnesses? Pooh! More liars, you mean."

"I went to the owners of the vessel," pursued Sir Joseph. "I got from
them the names of the officers and the crew, and I waited, leaving the
case in the hands of the Liverpool police. The ship was wrecked at the
mouth of the Amazon, but the crew and the cargo were saved. The men
belonging to Liverpool came back. They were a bad set, I grant you. But
they were examined separately about the treatment of the foreign sailor,
and they all told the same story. They could give no account of their
captain, nor of the sailor who had been his accomplice in the crime,
except that they had not embarked in the ship which brought the rest of
the crew to England. Whatever may have become of the captain since, he
certainly never returned to Liverpool."

"Did you find out his name?"

The question was asked by Turlington. Even Sir Joseph, the least
observant of men, noticed that it was put with a perfectly unaccountable
irritability of manner.

"Don't be angry, Richard." said the old gentleman. "What is there to be
angry about?"