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

not in Noel Vanstone’s handwriting; and, passing over them instantly, as immaterial to the object in view, turned the leaves of the letter, and transferred her attention to the opening sentences on the first page. She read these words:

“Dear Admiral Bartram⁠—When you open my Will (in which you are named my sole executor), you will find that I have bequeathed the whole residue of my estate⁠—after payment of one legacy of five thousand pounds⁠—to yourself. It is the purpose of my letter to tell you privately what the object is for which I have left you the fortune which is now placed in your hands.

“I beg you to consider this large legacy as intended⁠—”

She had proceeded thus far with breathless curiosity and interest, when her attention suddenly failed her. Something⁠—she was too deeply absorbed to know what⁠—had got between her and the letter. Was it a sound in the banqueting-hall again? She looked over her shoulder at the door behind her, and listened. Nothing was to be heard, nothing was to be seen. She returned to the letter.

The writing was cramped and close. In her impatient curiosity to read more, she failed to find the lost place again. Her eyes, attracted by a blot, lighted on a sentence lower in the page than the sentence at which she had left off. The first three words she saw riveted her attention anew⁠—they were the first words she had met with in the letter which directly referred to George Bartram. In the sudden excitement of that discovery, she read the rest of the sentence eagerly, before she made any second attempt to return to the lost place:

“If your nephew fails to comply with these conditions⁠—that is to say, if, being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my decease, he fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed him to marry, within six calendar months from that time⁠—it is my desire that he shall not receive⁠—”

She had read to that point, to that last word and no further, when a hand passed suddenly from behind her between the letter and her eye, and gripped her fast by the wrist in an instant.

She turned with a shriek of terror, and found herself face to face with old Mazey.

The veteran’s eyes were bloodshot; his hand was heavy; his list slippers were twisted crookedly on his feet; and his body swayed to and fro on his widely parted legs. If he had tested his condition that night by the unfailing criterion of the model ship, he must have inevitably pronounced sentence on himself in the usual form: “Drunk again, Mazey; drunk again.”

“You young Jezebel!” said the old sailor, with a leer on one side of his face, and a frown on the other. “The next time you take to night-walking in the neighborhood of Freeze-Your-Bones, use those sharp eyes of yours first, and make sure there’s nobody else night walking in the garden outside. Drop it, Jezebel! drop it!”

Keeping fast hold of Magdalen’s arm with one hand, he took the letter from her with the other, put it back into the open drawer, and locked the bureau. She never struggled with him, she never spoke. Her energy was gone; her powers of resistance were crushed. The terrors of that horrible night, following one close on the other in reiterated shocks, had struck her down at last. She yielded as submissively, she trembled as helplessly, as the weakest woman living.

Old Mazey dropped her arm, and pointed with drunken solemnity to a chair in an inner corner of the room. She sat down, still without uttering a word. The veteran (breathing very hard over it) steadied himself on both elbows against the slanting top of the bureau, and from that commanding position addressed Magdalen once more.

“Come and be locked up!” said old Mazey, wagging his venerable head with judicial severity. “There’ll be a court of inquiry tomorrow morning, and I’m witness⁠—worse luck!⁠—I’m witness. You young jade, you’ve committed burglary⁠—that’s what you’ve done. His honor the admiral’s keys stolen; his honor the admiral’s desk ransacked; and his honor the admiral’s private letters broke open. Burglary! Burglary! Come and be locked up!” He slowly recovered an upright position, with the assistance of his hands, backed by the solid resisting power of the bureau; and lapsed into lachrymose soliloquy. “Who’d have thought it?” said old Mazey, paternally watering at the eyes. “Take the outside of her, and she’s as straight as a poplar; take the inside of her, and she’s as crooked as Sin. Such a fine-grown girl, too. What a pity! what a pity!”

“Don’t hurt me!” said Magdalen, faintly, as old Mazey staggered up to the chair, and took her by the wrist again. “I’m frightened, Mr. Mazey⁠—I’m dreadfully frightened.”

“Hurt you?” repeated the veteran. “I’m a deal too fond of you⁠—and more shame for me at my age!⁠—to hurt you. If I let go of your wrist, will you walk straight before me, where I can see you all the way? Will you be a good girl, and walk straight up to your own door?”

Magdalen gave the promise required of her⁠—gave it with an eager longing to reach the refuge of her room. She rose, and tried to take the candle from the bureau, but old Mazey’s cunning hand was too quick for her. “Let the candle be,” said the veteran, winking in momentary forgetfulness of his responsible position. “You’re a trifle quicker on your legs than I am, my dear, and you might leave me in the lurch, if I don’t carry the light.”

They returned to the inhabited side of the house. Staggering after Magdalen, with the basket of keys in one hand and the candle in the other, old Mazey sorrowfully compared her figure with the straightness of the poplar, and her disposition with the crookedness of Sin, all the way across “Freeze-Your-Bones,” and all the way upstairs to her own door. Arrived at that destination,