No Name, Wilkie Collins [reading the story of the TXT] 📗

task to conceal. The return of Mr. Bartram would, in all probability, produce a change in the life of the house; and from change of any kind, no matter how trifling, something might be hoped. The nephew might be accessible to influences which had failed to reach the uncle. In any case, the two would talk of their affairs over their dinner; and through that talk⁠—proceeding day after day in her presence⁠—the way to discovery, now absolutely invisible, might, sooner or later, show itself.

At last the bell rang, the door opened, and the two gentlemen entered the room together.

Magdalen was struck, as her sister had been struck, by George Bartram’s resemblance to her father⁠—judging by the portrait at Combe-Raven, which presented the likeness of Andrew Vanstone in his younger days. The light hair and florid complexion, the bright blue eyes and hardy upright figure, familiar to her in the picture, were all recalled to her memory, as the nephew followed the uncle across the room and took his place at table. She was not prepared for this sudden revival of the lost associations of home. Her attention wandered as she tried to conceal its effect on her; and she made a blunder in waiting at table, for the first time since she had entered the house.

A quaint reprimand from the admiral, half in jest, half in earnest, gave her time to recover herself. She ventured another look at George Bartram. The impression which he produced on her this time roused her curiosity immediately. His face and manner plainly expressed anxiety and preoccupation of mind. He looked oftener at his plate than at his uncle, and at Magdalen herself (except one passing inspection of the new parlormaid, when the admiral spoke to her) he never looked at all. Some uncertainty was evidently troubling his thoughts; some oppression was weighing on his natural freedom of manner. What uncertainty? what oppression? Would any personal revelations come out, little by little, in the course of conversation at the dinner-table?

No. One set of dishes followed another set of dishes, and nothing in the shape of a personal revelation took place. The conversation halted on irregularly, between public affairs on one side and trifling private topics on the other. Politics, home and foreign, took their turn with the small household history of St. Crux; the leaders of the revolution which expelled Louis Philippe from the throne of France marched side by side, in the dinner-table review, with old Mazey and the dogs. The dessert was put on the table, the old sailor came in, drank his loyal toast, paid his respects to “Master George,” and went out again. Magdalen followed him, on her way back to the servants’ offices, having heard nothing in the conversation of the slightest importance to the furtherance of her own design, from the first word of it to the last. She struggled hard not to lose heart and hope on the first day. They could hardly talk again tomorrow, they could hardly talk again the next day, of the French Revolution and the dogs. Time might do wonders yet; and time was all her own.

Left together over their wine, the uncle and nephew drew their easy-chairs on either side of the fire; and, in Magdalen’s absence, began the very conversation which it was Magdalen’s interest to hear.

“Claret, George?” said the admiral, pushing the bottle across the table. “You look out of spirits.”

“I am a little anxious, sir,” replied George, leaving his glass empty, and looking straight into the fire.

“I am glad to hear it,” rejoined the admiral. “I am more than a little anxious myself, I can tell you. Here we are at the last days of March⁠—and nothing done! Your time comes to an end on the third of May; and there you sit, as if you had years still before you, to turn round in.”

George smiled, and resignedly helped himself to some wine.

“Am I really to understand, sir,” he asked, “that you are serious in what you said to me last November? Are you actually resolved to bind me to that incomprehensible condition?”

“I don’t call it incomprehensible,” said the admiral, irritably.

“Don’t you, sir? I am to inherit your estate, unconditionally⁠—as you have generously settled it from the first. But I am not to touch a farthing of the fortune poor Noel left you unless I am married within a certain time. The house and lands are to be mine (thanks to your kindness) under any circumstances. But the money with which I might improve them both is to be arbitrarily taken away from me, if I am not a married man on the third of May. I am sadly wanting in intelligence, I dare say, but a more incomprehensible proceeding I never heard of!”

“No snapping and snarling, George! Say your say out. We don’t understand sneering in Her Majesty’s Navy!”

“I mean no offense, sir. But I think it’s a little hard to astonish me by a change of proceeding on your part, entirely foreign to my experience of your character⁠—and then, when I naturally ask for an explanation, to turn round coolly and leave me in the dark. If you and Noel came to some private arrangement together before he made his will, why not tell me? Why set up a mystery between us, where no mystery need be?”

“I won’t have it, George!” cried the admiral, angrily drumming on the table with the nutcrackers. “You are trying to draw me like a badger, but I won’t be drawn! I’ll make any conditions I please; and I’ll be accountable to nobody for them unless I like. It’s quite bad enough to have worries and responsibilities laid on my unlucky shoulders that I never bargained for⁠—never mind what worries: they’re not yours, they’re mine⁠—without being questioned and cross-questioned as if I was a witness in a box. Here’s a pretty fellow!” continued the admiral, apostrophizing his nephew in red-hot irritation, and addressing himself to the dogs on the hearthrug for want of a