No Name

W >> Wilkie Collins >> No Name


Under these circumstances, what family claim had Captain Wragge on Mrs.
Vanstone?

None whatever. As the son of her mother's first husband, by that
husband's first wife, not even the widest stretch of courtesy could have
included him at any time in the list of Mrs. Vanstone's most distant
relations. Well knowing this (the letter proceeded to say), he had
nevertheless persisted in forcing himself upon her as a species of
family connection: and she had weakly sanctioned the intrusion,
solely from the dread that he would otherwise introduce himself to
Mr. Vanstone's notice, and take unblushing advantage of Mr. Vanstone's
generosity. Shrinking, naturally, from allowing her husband to be
annoyed, and probably cheated as well, by any person who claimed,
however preposterously, a family connection with herself, it had been
her practice, for many years past, to assist the captain from her own
purse, on the condition that he should never come near the house, and
that he should not presume to make any application whatever to Mr.
Vanstone.

Readily admitting the imprudence of this course, Mrs. Vanstone further
explained that she had perhaps been the more inclined to adopt it
through having been always accustomed, in her early days, to see
the captain living now upon one member, and now upon another, of her
mother's family. Possessed of abilities which might have raised him
to distinction in almost any career that he could have chosen, he
had nevertheless, from his youth upward, been a disgrace to all his
relatives. He had been expelled the militia regiment in which he once
held a commission. He had tried one employment after another, and had
discreditably failed in all. He had lived on his wits, in the lowest and
basest meaning of the phrase. He had married a poor ignorant woman, who
had served as a waitress at some low eating-house, who had unexpectedly
come into a little money, and whose small inheritance he had mercilessly
squandered to the last farthing. In plain terms, he was an incorrigible
scoundrel; and he had now added one more to the list of his many
misdemeanors by impudently breaking the conditions on which Mrs.
Vanstone had hitherto assisted him. She had written at once to the
address indicated on his card, in such terms and to such purpose as
would prevent him, she hoped and believed, from ever venturing near the
house again. Such were the terms in which Mrs. Vanstone concluded that
first part of her letter which referred exclusively to Captain Wragge.

Although the statement thus presented implied a weakness in Mrs.
Vanstone's character which Miss Garth, after many years of intimate
experience, had never detected, she accepted the explanation as a matter
of course; receiving it all the more readily inasmuch as it might,
without impropriety, be communicated in substance to appease the
irritated curiosity of the two young ladies. For this reason especially
she perused the first half of the letter with an agreeable sense of
relief. Far different was the impression produced on her when she
advanced to the second half, and when she had read it to the end.

The second part of the letter was devoted to the subject of the journey
to London.

Mrs. Vanstone began by referring to the long and intimate friendship
which had existed between Miss Garth and herself. She now felt it due to
that friendship to explain confidentially the motive which had induced
her to leave home with her husband. Miss Garth had delicately refrained
from showing it, but she must naturally have felt, and must still be
feeling, great surprise at the mystery in which their departure had been
involved; and she must doubtless have asked herself why Mrs. Vanstone
should have been associated with family affairs which (in her
independent position as to relatives) must necessarily concern Mr.
Vanstone alone.

Without touching on those affairs, which it was neither desirable nor
necessary to do, Mrs. Vanstone then proceeded to say that she would
at once set all Miss Garth's doubts at rest, so far as they related to
herself, by one plain acknowledgment. Her object in accompanying her
husband to London was to see a certain celebrated physician, and to
consult him privately on a very delicate and anxious matter connected
with the state of her health. In plainer terms still, this anxious
matter meant nothing less than the possibility that she might again
become a mother.

When the doubt had first suggested itself she had treated it as a mere
delusion. The long interval that had elapsed since the birth of her last
child; the serious illness which had afflicted her after the death
of that child in infancy; the time of life at which she had now
arrived--all inclined her to dismiss the idea as soon as it arose in her
mind. It had returned again and again in spite of her. She had felt the
necessity of consulting the highest medical authority; and had shrunk,
at the same time, from alarming her daughters by summoning a London
physician to the house. The medical opinion, sought under the
circumstances already mentioned, had now been obtained. Her doubt was
confirmed as a certainty; and the result, which might be expected to
take place toward the end of the summer, was, at her age and with her
constitutional peculiarities, a subject for serious future anxiety, to
say the least of it. The physician had done his best to encourage her;
but she had understood the drift of his questions more clearly than
he supposed, and she knew that he looked to the future with more than
ordinary doubt.

Having disclosed these particulars, Mrs. Vanstone requested that they
might be kept a secret between her correspondent and herself. She had
felt unwilling to mention her suspicions to Miss Garth, until those
suspicions had been confirmed--and she now recoiled, with even greater
reluctance, from allowing her daughters to be in any way alarmed about
her. It would be best to dismiss the subject for the present, and to
wait hopefully till the summer came. In the meantime they would all, she
trusted, be happily reunited on the twenty-third of the month, which Mr.
Vanstone had fixed on as the day for their return. With this intimation,
and with the customary messages, the letter, abruptly and confusedly,
came to an end.


For the first few minutes, a natural sympathy for Mrs. Vanstone was the
only feeling of which Miss Garth was conscious after she had laid the
letter down. Ere long, however, there rose obscurely on her mind a doubt
which perplexed and distressed her. Was the explanation which she had
just read really as satisfactory and as complete as it professed to be?
Testing it plainly by facts, surely not.

On the morning of her departure, Mrs. Vanstone had unquestionably left
the house in good spirits. At her age, and in her state of health, were
good spirits compatible with such an errand to a physician as the errand
on which she was bent? Then, again, had that letter from New Orleans,
which had necessitated Mr. Vanstone's departure, no share in occasioning
his wife's departure as well? Why, otherwise, had she looked up so
eagerly the moment her daughter mentioned the postmark. Granting the
avowed motive for her journey--did not her manner, on the morning when
the letter was opened, and again on the morning of departure, suggest
the existence of some other motive which her letter kept concealed?

If it was so, the conclusion that followed was a very distressing one.
Mrs. Vanstone, feeling what was due to her long friendship with Miss
Garth, had apparently placed the fullest confidence in her, on one
subject, by way of unsuspiciously maintaining the strictest reserve
toward her on another. Naturally frank and straightforward in all her
own dealings, Miss Garth shrank from plainly pursuing her doubts to
this result: a want of loyalty toward her tried and valued friend seemed
implied in the mere dawning of it on her mind.

She locked up the letter in her desk; roused herself resolutely to
attend to the passing interests of the day; and went downstairs again
to the breakfast-room. Amid many uncertainties, this at least was clear,
Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone were coming back on the twenty-third of the month.
Who could say what new revelations might not come back with them?


CHAPTER IV.

No new revelations came back with them: no anticipations associated with
their return were realized. On the one forbidden subject of their errand
in London, there was no moving either the master or the mistress of the
house. Whatever their object might have been, they had to all appearance
successfully accomplished it--for they both returned in perfect
possession of their every-day looks and manners. Mrs. Vanstone's spirits
had subsided to their natural quiet level; Mr. Vanstone's imperturbable
cheerfulness sat as easily and indolently on him as usual. This was
the one noticeable result of their journey--this, and no more. Had the
household revolution run its course already? Was the secret thus far
hidden impenetrably, hidden forever?

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for
centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the
surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed
over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has
been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the
substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the
thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas
who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of
revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a
secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.

How was the secret now hidden in the household at Combe-Raven doomed
to disclose itself? Through what coming event in the daily lives of
the father, the mother, and the daughters, was the law of revelation
destined to break the fatal way to discovery? The way opened (unseen by
the parents, and unsuspected by the children) through the first event
that happened after Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone's return--an event which
presented, on the surface of it, no interest of greater importance than
the trivial social ceremony of a morning call.

Three days after the master and mistress of Combe-Raven had come back,
the female members of the family happened to be assembled together
in the morning-room. The view from the windows looked over the
flower-garden and shrubbery; this last being protected at its outward
extremity by a fence, and approached from the lane beyond by a
wicket-gate. During an interval in the conversation, the attention of
the ladies was suddenly attracted to this gate, by the sharp sound of
the iron latch falling in its socket. Some one had entered the shrubbery
from the lane; and Magdalen at once placed herself at the window to
catch the first sight of the visitor through the trees.

After a few minutes, the figure of a gentleman became visible, at the
point where the shrubbery path joined the winding garden-walk which led
to the house. Magdalen looked at him attentively, without appearing, at
first, to know who he was. As he came nearer, however, she started in
astonishment; and, turning quickly to her mother and sister, proclaimed
the gentleman in the garden to be no other than "Mr. Francis Clare."

The visitor thus announced was the son of Mr. Vanstone's oldest
associate and nearest neighbor.

Mr. Clare the elder inhabited an unpretending little cottage, situated
just outside the shrubbery fence which marked the limit of the
Combe-Raven grounds. Belonging to the younger branch of a family of
great antiquity, the one inheritance of importance that he had derived
from his ancestors was the possession of a magnificent library, which
not only filled all the rooms in his modest little dwelling, but lined
the staircases and passages as well. Mr. Clare's books represented the
one important interest of Mr. Clare's life. He had been a widower for
many years past, and made no secret of his philosophical resignation to
the loss of his wife. As a father, he regarded his family of three sons
in the light of a necessary domestic evil, which perpetually threatened
the sanctity of his study and the safety of his books. When the boys
went to school, Mr. Clare said "good-by" to them--and "thank God"
to himself. As for his small income, and his still smaller domestic
establishment, he looked at them both from the same satirically
indifferent point of view. He called himself a pauper with a pedigree.
He abandoned the entire direction of his household to the slatternly old
woman who was his only servant, on the condition that she was never to
venture near his books, with a duster in her hand, from one year's
end to the other. His favorite poets were Horace and Pope; his chosen
philosophers, Hobbes and Voltaire. He took his exercise and his fresh
air under protest; and always walked the same distance to a yard, on the
ugliest high-road in the neighborhood. He was crooked of back, and quick
of temper. He could digest radishes, and sleep after green tea.
His views of human nature were the views of Diogenes, tempered by
Rochefoucauld; his personal habits were slovenly in the last degree; and
his favorite boast was that he had outlived all human prejudices.

Such was this singular man, in his more superficial aspects. What
nobler qualities he might possess below the surface, no one had ever
discovered. Mr. Vanstone, it is true, stoutly asserted that "Mr. Clare's
worst side was his outside"--but in this expression of opinion he
stood alone among his neighbors. The association between these two
widely-dissimilar men had lasted for many years, and was almost close
enough to be called a friendship. They had acquired a habit of
meeting to smoke together on certain evenings in the week, in the
cynic-philosopher's study, and of there disputing on every imaginable
subject--Mr. Vanstone flourishing the stout cudgels of assertion, and
Mr. Clare meeting him with the keen edged-tools of sophistry. They
generally quarreled at night, and met on the neutral ground of the
shrubbery to be reconciled together the next morning. The bond of
intercourse thus curiously established between them was strengthened
on Mr. Vanstone's side by a hearty interest in his neighbor's
three sons--an interest by which those sons benefited all the more
importantly, seeing that one of the prejudices which their father had
outlived was a prejudice in favor of his own children.

"I look at those boys," the philosopher was accustomed to say, "with
a perfectly impartial eye; I dismiss the unimportant accident of their
birth from all consideration; and I find them below the average in every
respect. The only excuse which a poor gentleman has for presuming to
exist in the nineteenth century, is the excuse of extraordinary ability.
My boys have been addle-headed from infancy. If I had any capital to
give them, I should make Frank a butcher, Cecil a baker, and Arthur
a grocer--those being the only human vocations I know of which are
certain to be always in request. As it is, I have no money to help them
with; and they have no brains to help themselves. They appear to me
to be three human superfluities in dirty jackets and noisy boots; and,
unless they clear themselves off the community by running away, I don't
myself profess to see what is to be done with them."

Fortunately for the boys, Mr. Vanstone's views were still fast
imprisoned in the ordinary prejudices. At his intercession, and through
his influence, Frank, Cecil, and Arthur were received on the foundation
of a well-reputed grammar-school. In holiday-time they were mercifully
allowed the run of Mr. Vanstone's paddock; and were humanized and
refined by association, indoors, with Mrs. Vanstone and her daughters.
On these occasions, Mr. Clare used sometimes to walk across from his
cottage (in his dressing-gown and slippers), and look at the boys
disparagingly, through the window or over the fence, as if they were
three wild animals whom his neighbor was attempting to tame. "You and
your wife are excellent people," he used to say to Mr. Vanstone. "I
respect your honest prejudices in favor of those boys of mine with all
my heart. But you are _so_ wrong about them--you are indeed! I wish to
give no offense; I speak quite impartially--but mark my words, Vanstone:
they'll all three turn out ill, in spite of everything you can do to
prevent it."

In later years, when Frank had reached the age of seventeen, the same
curious shifting of the relative positions of parent and friend between
the two neighbors was exemplified more absurdly than ever. A civil
engineer in the north of England, who owed certain obligations to Mr.
Vanstone, expressed his willingness to take Frank under superintendence,
on terms of the most favorable kind. When this proposal was received,
Mr. Clare, as usual, first shifted his own character as Frank's father
on Mr. Vanstone's shoulders--and then moderated his neighbor's parental
enthusiasm from the point of view of an impartial spectator.

"It's the finest chance for Frank that could possibly have happened,"
cried Mr. Vanstone, in a glow of fatherly enthusiasm.

"My good fellow, he won't take it," retorted Mr. Clare, with the icy
composure of a disinterested friend.

"But he _shall_ take it," persisted Mr. Vanstone.

"Say he shall have a mathematical head," rejoined Mr. Clare; "say he
shall possess industry, ambition, and firmness of purpose. Pooh! pooh!
you don't look at him with my impartial eyes. I say, No mathematics, no
industry, no ambition, no firmness of purpose. Frank is a compound of
negatives--and there they are."

"Hang your negatives!" shouted Mr. Vanstone. "I don't care a rush
for negatives, or affirmatives either. Frank shall have this splendid
chance; and I'll lay you any wager you like he makes the best of it."

"I am not rich enough to lay wagers, usually," replied Mr. Clare; "but
I think I have got a guinea about the house somewhere; and I'll lay you
that guinea Frank comes back on our hands like a bad shilling."

"Done!" said Mr. Vanstone. "No: stop a minute! I won't do the lad's
character the injustice of backing it at even money. I'll lay you five
to one Frank turns up trumps in this business! You ought to be ashamed
of yourself for talking of him as you do. What sort of hocus-pocus you
bring it about by, I don't pretend to know; but you always end in making
me take his part, as if I was his father instead of you. Ah yes! give
you time, and you'll defend yourself. I won't give you time; I won't
have any of your special pleading. Black's white according to you.
I don't care: it's black for all that. You may talk nineteen to the
dozen--I shall write to my friend and say Yes, in Frank's interests, by
to-day's post."

Such were the circumstances under which Mr. Francis Clare departed for
the north of England, at the age of seventeen, to start in life as a
civil engineer.

From time to time, Mr. Vanstone's friend communicated with him on the
subject of the new pupil. Frank was praised, as a quiet, gentleman-like,
interesting lad--but he was also reported to be rather slow at acquiring
the rudiments of engineering science. Other letters, later in date,
described him as a little too ready to despond about himself; as having
been sent away, on that account, to some new railway works, to see
if change of scene would rouse him; and as having benefited in every
respect by the experiment--except perhaps in regard to his professional
studies, which still advanced but slowly. Subsequent communications
announced his departure, under care of a trustworthy foreman, for some
public works in Belgium; touched on the general benefit he appeared to
derive from this new change; praised his excellent manners and address,
which were of great assistance in facilitating business communications
with the foreigners--and passed over in ominous silence the main
question of his actual progress in the acquirement of knowledge. These
reports, and many others which resembled them, were all conscientiously
presented by Frank's friend to the attention of Frank's father. On
each occasion, Mr. Clare exulted over Mr. Vanstone, and Mr. Vanstone
quarreled with Mr. Clare. "One of these days you'll wish you hadn't laid
that wager," said the cynic philosopher. "One of these days I shall have
the blessed satisfaction of pocketing your guinea," cried the sanguine
friend. Two years had then passed since Frank's departure. In one year
more results asserted themselves, and settled the question.

Two days after Mr. Vanstone's return from London, he was called away
from the breakfast-table before he had found time enough to look over
his letters, delivered by the morning's post. Thrusting them into one
of the pockets of his shooting-jacket, he took the letters out again,
at one grasp, to read them when occasion served, later in the day.
The grasp included the whole correspondence, with one exception--that
exception being a final report from the civil engineer, which notified
the termination of the connection between his pupil and himself, and the
immediate return of Frank to his father's house.

While this important announcement lay unsuspected in Mr. Vanstone's
pocket, the object of it was traveling home, as fast as railways could
take him. At half-past ten at night, while Mr. Clare was sitting in
studious solitude over his books and his green tea, with his favorite
black cat to keep him company, he heard footsteps in the passage--the
door opened--and Frank stood before him.

Ordinary men would have been astonished. But the philosopher's composure
was not to be shaken by any such trifle as the unexpected return of his
eldest son. He could not have looked up more calmly from his learned
volume if Frank had been absent for three minutes instead of three
years.

"Exactly what I predicted," said Mr. Clare. "Don't interrupt me by
making explanations; and don't frighten the cat. If there is anything
to eat in the kitchen, get it and go to bed. You can walk over to
Combe-Raven tomorrow and give this message from me to Mr. Vanstone:
'Father's compliments, sir, and I have come back upon your hands like a
bad shilling, as he always said I should. He keeps his own guinea, and
takes your five; and he hopes you'll mind what he says to you another
time.' That is the message. Shut the door after you. Good-night."

Under these unfavorable auspices, Mr. Francis Clare made his appearance
the next morning in the grounds at Combe-Raven; and, something doubtful
of the reception that might await him, slowly approached the precincts
of the house.

It was not wonderful that Magdalen should have failed to recognize
him when he first appeared in view. He had gone away a backward lad of
seventeen; he returned a young man of twenty. His slim figure had now
acquired strength and grace, and had increased in stature to the medium
height. The small regular features, which he was supposed to have
inherited from his mother, were rounded and filled out, without having
lost their remarkable delicacy of form. His beard was still in its
infancy; and nascent lines of whisker traced their modest way sparely
down his cheeks. His gentle, wandering brown eyes would have looked to
better advantage in a woman's face--they wanted spirit and firmness to
fit them for the face of a man. His hands had the same wandering habit
as his eyes; they were constantly changing from one position to another,
constantly twisting and turning any little stray thing they could
pick up. He was undeniably handsome, graceful, well-bred--but no close
observer could look at him without suspecting that the stout old family
stock had begun to wear out in the later generations, and that Mr.
Francis Clare had more in him of the shadow of his ancestors than of the
substance.

When the astonishment caused by his appearance had partially subsided,
a search was instituted for the missing report. It was found in the
remotest recesses of Mr. Vanstone's capacious pocket, and was read by
that gentleman on the spot.

The plain facts, as stated by the engineer, were briefly these: Frank
was not possessed of the necessary abilities to fit him for his new
calling; and it was useless to waste time by keeping him any longer in
an employment for which he had no vocation. This, after three years'
trial, being the conviction on both sides, the master had thought it the
most straightforward course for the pupil to go home and candidly place
results before his father and his friends. In some other pursuit, for
which he was more fit, and in which he could feel an interest, he would
no doubt display the industry and perseverance which he had been
too much discouraged to practice in the profession that he had now
abandoned. Personally, he was liked by all who knew him; and his future
prosperity was heartily desired by the many friends whom he had made in
the North. Such was the substance of the report, and so it came to an
end.

Many men would have thought the engineer's statement rather too
carefully worded; and, suspecting him of trying to make the best of
a bad case, would have entertained serious doubts on the subject of
Frank's future. Mr. Vanstone was too easy-tempered and sanguine--and too
anxious, as well, not to yield his old antagonist an inch more ground
than he could help--to look at the letter from any such unfavorable
point of view. Was it Frank's fault if he had not got the stuff in him
that engineers were made of? Did no other young men ever begin life
with a false start? Plenty began in that way, and got over it, and
did wonders afterward. With these commentaries on the letter, the
kind-hearted gentleman patted Frank on the shoulder. "Cheer up, my lad!"
said Mr. Vanstone. "We will be even with your father one of these days,
though he _has_ won the wager this time!"