THE FIRST SCENE.
COMBE-RAVEN, SOMERSETSHIRE.
CHAPTER I.
THE hands on the hall-clock pointed to half-past six in the morning. The
house was a country residence in West Somersetshire, called Combe-Raven.
The day was the fourth of March, and the year was eighteen hundred and
forty-six.
No sounds but the steady ticking of the clock, and the lumpish snoring
of a large dog stretched on a mat outside the dining-room door,
disturbed the mysterious morning stillness of hall and staircase. Who
were the sleepers hidden in the upper regions? Let the house reveal
its own secrets; and, one by one, as they descend the stairs from their
beds, let the sleepers disclose themselves.
As the clock pointed to a quarter to seven, the dog woke and shook
himself. After waiting in vain for the footman, who was accustomed to
let him out, the animal wandered restlessly from one closed door
to another on the ground-floor; and, returning to his mat in great
perplexity, appealed to the sleeping family with a long and melancholy
howl.
Before the last notes of the dog's remonstrance had died away, the
oaken stairs in the higher regions of the house creaked under
slowly-descending footsteps. In a minute more the first of the female
servants made her appearance, with a dingy woolen shawl over her
shoulders--for the March morning was bleak; and rheumatism and the cook
were old acquaintances.
Receiving the dog's first cordial advances with the worst possible
grace, the cook slowly opened the hall door and let the animal out. It
was a wild morning. Over a spacious lawn, and behind a black plantation
of firs, the rising sun rent its way upward through piles of ragged
gray cloud; heavy drops of rain fell few and far between; the March
wind shuddered round the corners of the house, and the wet trees swayed
wearily.
Seven o'clock struck; and the signs of domestic life began to show
themselves in more rapid succession.
The housemaid came down--tall and slim, with the state of the spring
temperature written redly on her nose. The lady's-maid followed--young,
smart, plump, and sleepy. The kitchen-maid came next--afflicted with
the face-ache, and making no secret of her sufferings. Last of all, the
footman appeared, yawning disconsolately; the living picture of a man
who felt that he had been defrauded of his fair night's rest.
The conversation of the servants, when they assembled before the slowly
lighting kitchen fire, referred to a recent family event, and turned at
starting on this question: Had Thomas, the footman, seen anything of
the concert at Clifton, at which his master and the two young ladies had
been present on the previous night? Yes; Thomas had heard the concert;
he had been paid for to go in at the back; it was a loud concert; it
was a hot concert; it was described at the top of the bills as Grand;
whether it was worth traveling sixteen miles to hear by railway,
with the additional hardship of going back nineteen miles by road, at
half-past one in the morning--was a question which he would leave his
master and the young ladies to decide; his own opinion, in the meantime,
being unhesitatingly, No. Further inquiries, on the part of all the
female servants in succession, elicited no additional information of any
sort. Thomas could hum none of the songs, and could describe none of the
ladies' dresses. His audience, accordingly, gave him up in despair; and
the kitchen small-talk flowed back into its ordinary channels, until the
clock struck eight and startled the assembled servants into separating
for their morning's work.
A quarter past eight, and nothing happened. Half-past--and more signs
of life appeared from the bedroom regions. The next member of the family
who came downstairs was Mr. Andrew Vanstone, the master of the house.
Tall, stout, and upright--with bright blue eyes, and healthy, florid
complexion--his brown plush shooting-jacket carelessly buttoned awry;
his vixenish little Scotch terrier barking unrebuked at his heels;
one hand thrust into his waistcoat pocket, and the other smacking the
banisters cheerfully as he came downstairs humming a tune--Mr. Vanstone
showed his character on the surface of him freely to all men. An easy,
hearty, handsome, good-humored gentleman, who walked on the sunny side
of the way of life, and who asked nothing better than to meet all his
fellow-passengers in this world on the sunny side, too. Estimating
him by years, he had turned fifty. Judging him by lightness of heart,
strength of constitution, and capacity for enjoyment, he was no older
than most men who have only turned thirty.
"Thomas!" cried Mr. Vanstone, taking up his old felt hat and his thick
walking stick from the hall table. "Breakfast, this morning, at ten. The
young ladies are not likely to be down earlier after the concert last
night.--By-the-by, how did you like the concert yourself, eh? You
thought it was grand? Quite right; so it was. Nothing but crash-ban g,
varied now and then by bang-crash; all the women dressed within an
inch of their lives; smothering heat, blazing gas, and no room for
anybody--yes, yes, Thomas; grand's the word for it, and comfortable
isn't." With that expression of opinion, Mr. Vanstone whistled to his
vixenish terrier; flourished his stick at the hall door in cheerful
defiance of the rain; and set off through wind and weather for his
morning walk.
The hands, stealing their steady way round the dial of the clock,
pointed to ten minutes to nine. Another member of the family appeared on
the stairs--Miss Garth, the governess.
No observant eyes could have surveyed Miss Garth without seeing at once
that she was a north-countrywoman. Her hard featured face; her masculine
readiness and decision of movement; her obstinate honesty of look and
manner, all proclaimed her border birth and border training. Though
little more than forty years of age, her hair was quite gray; and she
wore over it the plain cap of an old woman. Neither hair nor head-dress
was out of harmony with her face--it looked older than her years: the
hard handwriting of trouble had scored it heavily at some past time.
The self-possession of her progress downstairs, and the air of habitual
authority with which she looked about her, spoke well for her position
in Mr. Vanstone's family. This was evidently not one of the forlorn,
persecuted, pitiably dependent order of governesses. Here was a woman
who lived on ascertained and honorable terms with her employers--a woman
who looked capable of sending any parents in England to the right-about,
if they failed to rate her at her proper value.
"Breakfast at ten?" repeated Miss Garth, when the footman had answered
the bell, and had mentioned his master's orders. "Ha! I thought what
would come of that concert last night. When people who live in the
country patronize public amusements, public amusements return the
compliment by upsetting the family afterward for days together. _You're_
upset, Thomas, I can see your eyes are as red as a ferret's, and your
cravat looks as if you had slept in it. Bring the kettle at a quarter to
ten--and if you don't get better in the course of the day, come to me,
and I'll give you a dose of physic. That's a well-meaning lad, if you
only let him alone," continued Miss Garth, in soliloquy, when Thomas had
retired; "but he's not strong enough for concerts twenty miles off. They
wanted _me_ to go with them last night. Yes: catch me!"
Nine o'clock struck; and the minute-hand stole on to twenty minutes past
the hour, before any more footsteps were heard on the stairs. At the
end of that time, two ladies appeared, descending to the breakfast-room
together--Mrs. Vanstone and her eldest daughter.
If the personal attractions of Mrs. Vanstone, at an earlier period of
life, had depended solely on her native English charms of complexion and
freshness, she must have long since lost the last relics of her fairer
self. But her beauty as a young woman had passed beyond the average
national limits; and she still preserved the advantage of her more
exceptional personal gifts. Although she was now in her forty-fourth
year; although she had been tried, in bygone times, by the premature
loss of more than one of her children, and by long attacks of illness
which had followed those bereavements of former years--she still
preserved the fair proportion and subtle delicacy of feature, once
associated with the all-adorning brightness and freshness of beauty,
which had left her never to return. Her eldest child, now descending the
stairs by her side, was the mirror in which she could look back and
see again the reflection of her own youth. There, folded thick on the
daughter's head, lay the massive dark hair, which, on the mother's, was
fast turning gray. There, in the daughter's cheek, glowed the lovely
dusky red which had faded from the mother's to bloom again no more. Miss
Vanstone had already reached the first maturity of womanhood; she had
completed her six-and-twentieth year. Inheriting the dark majestic
character of her mother's beauty, she had yet hardly inherited all its
charms. Though the shape of her face was the same, the features were
scarcely so delicate, their proportion was scarcely so true. She was not
so tall. She had the dark-brown eyes of her mother--full and soft, with
the steady luster in them which Mrs. Vanstone's eyes had lost--and yet
there was less interest, less refinement and depth of feeling in her
expression: it was gentle and feminine, but clouded by a certain quiet
reserve, from which her mother's face was free. If we dare to look
closely enough, may we not observe that the moral force of character
and the higher intellectual capacities in parents seem often to wear out
mysteriously in the course of transmission to children? In these days of
insidious nervous exhaustion and subtly-spreading nervous malady, is
it not possible that the same rule may apply, less rarely than we are
willing to admit, to the bodily gifts as well?
The mother and daughter slowly descended the stairs together--the first
dressed in dark brown, with an Indian shawl thrown over her shoulders;
the second more simply attired in black, with a plain collar and cuffs,
and a dark orange-colored ribbon over the bosom of her dress. As they
crossed the hall and entered the breakfast-room, Miss Vanstone was full
of the all-absorbing subject of the last night's concert.
"I am so sorry, mamma, you were not with us," she said. "You have been
so strong and so well ever since last summer--you have felt so many
years younger, as you said yourself--that I am sure the exertion would
not have been too much for you."
"Perhaps not, my love--but it was as well to keep on the safe side."
"Quite as well," remarked Miss Garth, appearing at the breakfast-room
door. "Look at Norah (good-morning, my dear)--look, I say, at Norah.
A perfect wreck; a living proof of your wisdom and mine in staying at
home. The vile gas, the foul air, the late hours--what can you expect?
She's not made of iron, and she suffers accordingly. No, my dear, you
needn't deny it. I see you've got a headache."
Norah's dark, handsome face brightened into a smile--then lightly
clouded again with its accustomed quiet reserve.
"A very little headache; not half enough to make me regret the concert,"
she said, and walked away by herself to the window.
On the far side of a garden and paddock the view overlooked a stream,
some farm buildings which lay beyond, and the opening of a wooded,
rocky pass (called, in Somersetshire, a Combe), which here cleft its way
through the hills that closed the prospect. A winding strip of road was
visible, at no great distance, amid the undulations of the open ground;
and along this strip the stalwart figure of Mr. Vanstone was now
easily recognizable, returning to the house from his morning walk. He
flourished his stick gayly, as he observed his eldest daughter at the
window. She nodded and waved her hand in return, very gracefully and
prettily--but with something of old-fashioned formality in her manner,
which looked strangely in so young a woman, and which seemed out of
harmony with a salutation addressed to her father.
The hall-clock struck the adjourned breakfast-hour. When the minute hand
had recorded the lapse of five minutes more a door banged in the bedroom
regions--a clear young voice was heard singing blithely--light, rapid
footsteps pattered on the upper stairs, descended with a jump to the
landing, and pattered again, faster than ever, down the lower flight.
In another moment the youngest of Mr. Vanstone's two daughters (and two
only surviving children) dashed into view on the dingy old oaken stairs,
with the suddenness of a flash of light; and clearing the last three
steps into the hall at a jump, presented herself breathless in the
breakfast-room to make the family circle complete.
By one of those strange caprices of Nature, which science leaves still
unexplained, the youngest of Mr. Vanstone's children presented no
recognizable resemblance to either of her parents. How had she come by
her hair? how had she come by her eyes? Even her father and mother had
asked themselves those questions, as she grew up to girlhood, and
had been sorely perplexed to answer them. Her hair was of that purely
light-brown hue, unmixed with flaxen, or yellow, or red--which is
oftener seen on the plumage of a bird than on the head of a human being.
It was soft and plentiful, and waved downward from her low forehead
in regular folds--but, to some tastes, it was dull and dead, in its
absolute want of glossiness, in its monotonous purity of plain light
color. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were just a shade darker than her
hair, and seemed made expressly for those violet-blue eyes, which assert
their most irresistible charm when associated with a fair complexion.
But it was here exactly that the promise of her face failed of
performance in the most startling manner. The eyes, which should have
been dark, were incomprehensibly and discordantly light; they were of
that nearly colorless gray which, though little attractive in itself,
possesses the rare compensating merit of interpreting the finest
gradations of thought, the gentlest changes of feeling, the deepest
trouble of passion, with a subtle transparency of expression which no
darker eyes can rival. Thus quaintly self-contradictory in the upper
part of her face, she was hardly less at variance with established ideas
of harmony in the lower. Her lips had the true feminine delicacy of
form, her cheeks the lovely roundness and smoothness of youth--but the
mouth was too large and firm, the chin too square and massive for her
sex and age. Her complexion partook of the pure monotony of tint which
characterized her hair--it was of the same soft, warm, creamy fairness
all over, without a tinge of color in the cheeks, except on occasions
of unusual bodily exertion or sudden mental disturbance. The whole
countenance--so remarkable in its strongly opposed characteristics--was
rendered additionally striking by its extraordinary mobility. The large,
electric, light-gray eyes were hardly ever in repose; all varieties of
expression followed each other over the plastic, ever-changing face,
with a giddy rapidity which left sober analysis far behind in the race.
The girl's exuberant vitality asserted itself all over her, from head to
foot. Her figure--taller than her sister's, taller than the average of
woman's height; instinct with such a seductive, serpentine suppleness,
so lightly and playfully graceful, that its movements suggested, not
unnaturally, the movements of a young cat--her figure was so perfectly
developed already that no one who saw her could have supposed that she
was only eighteen. She bloomed in the full physical maturity of twenty
years or more--bloomed naturally and irresistibly, in right of her
matchless health and strength. Here, in truth, lay the mainspring of
this strangely-constituted organization. Her headlong course down the
house stairs; the brisk activity of all her movements; the incessant
sparkle of expression in her face; the enticing gayety which took the
hearts of the quietest people by storm--even the reckless delight in
bright colors which showed itself in her brilliantly-striped morning
dress, in her fluttering ribbons, in the large scarlet rosettes on her
smart little shoes--all sprang alike from the same source; from the
overflowing physical health which strengthened every muscle, braced
every nerve, and set the warm young blood tingling through her veins,
like the blood of a growing child.
On her entry into the breakfast-room, she was saluted with the customary
remonstrance which her flighty disregard of all punctuality habitually
provoked from the long-suffering household authorities. In Miss Garth's
favorite phrase, "Magdalen was born with all the senses--except a sense
of order."
Magdalen! It was a strange name to have given her? Strange, indeed;
and yet, chosen under no extraordinary circumstances. The name had been
borne by one of Mr. Vanstone's sisters, who had died in early youth;
and, in affectionate remembrance of her, he had called his second
daughter by it--just as he had called his eldest daughter Norah, for his
wife's sake. Magdalen! Surely, the grand old Bible name--suggestive of
a sad and somber dignity; recalling, in its first association, mournful
ideas of penitence and seclusion--had been here, as events had turned
out, inappropriately bestowed? Surely, this self-contradictory girl had
perversely accomplished one contradiction more, by developing into a
character which was out of all harmony with her own Christian name!
"Late again!" said Mrs. Vanstone, as Magdalen breathlessly kissed her.
"Late again!" chimed in Miss Garth, when Magdalen came her way next.
"Well?" she went on, taking the girl's chin familiarly in her hand, with
a half-satirical, half-fond attention which betrayed that the youngest
daughter, with all her faults, was the governess's favorite--"Well?
and what has the concert done for _you?_ What form of suffering has
dissipation inflicted on _your_ system this morning?"
"Suffering!" repeated Magdalen, recovering her breath, and the use of
her tongue with it. "I don't know the meaning of the word: if there's
anything the matter with me, I'm too well. Suffering! I'm ready for
another concert to-night, and a ball to-morrow, and a play the day
after. Oh," cried Magdalen, dropping into a chair and crossing her hands
rapturously on the table, "how I do like pleasure!"
"Come! that's explicit at any rate," said Miss Garth. "I think Pope must
have had you in his mind when he wrote his famous lines:
"'Men some to business, some to pleasure take, But every woman is at
heart a rake.'"
"The deuce she is!" cried Mr. Vanstone, entering the room while Miss
Garth was making her quotation, with the dogs at his heels. "Well;
live and learn. If you're all rakes, Miss Garth, the sexes are turned
topsy-turvy with a vengeance; and the men will have nothing left for
it but to stop at home and darn the stockings.--Let's have some
breakfast."
"How-d'ye-do, papa?" said Magdalen, taking Mr. Vanstone as boisterously
round the neck as if he belonged to some larger order of Newfoundland
dog, and was made to be romped with at his daughter's convenience. "I'm
the rake Miss Garth means; and I want to go to another concert--or a
play, if you like--or a ball, if you prefer it--or anything else in the
way of amusement that puts me into a new dress, and plunges me into a
crowd of people, and illuminates me with plenty of light, and sets me in
a tingle of excitement all over, from head to foot. Anything will do, as
long as it doesn't send us to bed at eleven o'clock."
Mr. Vanstone sat down composedly under his daughter's flow of language,
like a man who was well used to verbal inundation from that quarter. "If
I am to be allowed my choice of amusements next time," said the worthy
gentleman, "I think a play will suit me better than a concert. The girls
enjoyed themselves amazingly, my dear," he continued, addressing his
wife. "More than I did, I must say. It was altogether above my mark.
They played one piece of music which lasted forty minutes. It stopped
three times, by-the-way; and we all thought it was done each time, and
clapped our hands, rejoiced to be rid of it. But on it went again, to
our great surprise and mortification, till we gave it up in despair, and
all wished ourselves at Jericho. Norah, my dear! when we had crash-bang
for forty minutes, with three stoppages by-the-way, what did they call
it?"
"A symphony, papa," replied Norah.
"Yes, you darling old Goth, a symphony by the great Beethoven!" added
Magdalen. "How can you say you were not amused? Have you forgotten the
yellow-looking foreign woman, with the unpronounceable name? Don't you
remember the faces she made when she sang? and the way she courtesied
and courtesied, till she cheated the foolish people into crying encore?
Look here, mamma--look here, Miss Garth!"
She snatched up an empty plate from the table, to represent a sheet of
music, held it before her in the established concert-room position,
and produced an imitation of the unfortunate singer's grimaces and
courtesyings, so accurately and quaintly true to the original, that
her father roared with laughter; and even the footman (who came in
at that moment with the post-bag) rushed out of the room again, and
committed the indecorum of echoing his master audibly on the other side
of the door.
"Letters, papa. I want the key," said Magdalen, passing from the
imitation at the breakfast-table to the post-bag on the sideboard with
the easy abruptness which characterized all her actions.
Mr. Vanstone searched his pockets and shook his head. Though his
youngest daughter might resemble him in nothing else, it was easy to see
where Magdalen's unmethodical habits came from.
"I dare say I have left it in the library, along with my other keys,"
said Mr. Vanstone. "Go and look for it, my dear."
"You really should check Magdalen," pleaded Mrs. Vanstone, addressing
her husband when her daughter had left the room. "Those habits of
mimicry are growing on her; and she speaks to you with a levity which it
is positively shocking to hear."
"Exactly what I have said myself, till I am tired of repeating it,"
remarked Miss Garth. "She treats Mr. Vanstone as if he was a kind of
younger brother of hers."
"You are kind to us in everything else, papa; and you make kind
allowances for Magdalen's high spirits--don't you?" said the quiet
Norah, taking her father's part and her sister's with so little show
of resolution on the surface that few observers would have been sharp
enough to detect the genuine substance beneath it.
"Thank you, my dear," said good-natured Mr. Vanstone. "Thank you for a
very pretty speech. As for Magdalen," he continued, addressing his wife
and Miss Garth, "she's an unbroken filly. Let her caper and kick in the
paddock to her heart's content. Time enough to break her to harness when
she gets a little older."
The door opened, and Magdalen returned with the key. She unlocked the
post-bag at the sideboard and poured out the letters in a heap. Sorting
them gayly in less than a minute, she approached the breakfast-table
with both hands full, and delivered the letters all round with the
business-like rapidity of a London postman.
"Two for Norah," she announced, beginning with her sister. "Three for
Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all for papa.
You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, don't you?" pursued
Magdalen, dropping the postman's character and assuming the daughter's.
"How you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish
there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your nice
old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the answers;
and how many of the answers you will leave until tomorrow after all!
_The Bristol Theater's open, papa,_" she whispered, slyly and suddenly,
in her father's ear; "I saw it in the newspaper when I went to the
library to get the key. Let's go to-morrow night!"
While his daughter was chattering, Mr. Vanstone was mechanically sorting
his letters. He turned over the first four in succession and looked
carelessly at the addresses. When he came to the fifth his attention,
which had hitherto wandered toward Magdalen, suddenly became fixed on
the post-mark of the letter.
Stooping over him, with her head on his shoulder, Magdalen could see the
post-mark as plainly as her father saw it--NEW ORLEANS.
"An American letter, papa!" she said. "Who do you know at New Orleans?"
Mrs. Vanstone started, and looked eagerly at her husband the moment
Magdalen spoke those words.
Mr. Vanstone said nothing. He quietly removed his daughter's arm
from his neck, as if he wished to be free from all interruption. She
returned, accordingly, to her place at the breakfast-table. Her father,
with the letter in his hand, waited a little before he opened it; her
mother looking at him, the while, with an eager, expectant attention
which attracted Miss Garth's notice, and Norah's, as well as Magdalen's.
After a minute or more of hesitation Mr. Vanstone opened the letter.
His face changed color the instant he read the first lines; his cheeks
fading to a dull, yellow-brown hue, which would have been ashy
paleness in a less florid man; and his expression becoming saddened and
overclouded in a moment. Norah and Magdalen, watching anxiously, saw
nothing but the change that passed over their father. Miss Garth alone
observed the effect which that change produced on the attentive mistress
of the house.
It was not the effect which she, or any one, could have anticipated.
Mrs. Vanstone looked excited rather than alarmed. A faint flush rose on
her cheeks--her eyes brightened--she stirred the tea round and round in
her cup in a restless, impatient manner which was not natural to her.
Magdalen, in her capacity of spoiled child, was, as usual, the first to
break the silence.
"What _is_ the matter, papa?" she asked.
"Nothing," said Mr. Vanstone, sharply, without looking up at her.
"I'm sure there must be something," persisted Magdalen. "I'm sure there
is bad news, papa, in that American letter."
"There is nothing in the letter that concerns _you_," said Mr. Vanstone.
It was the first direct rebuff that Magdalen had ever received from her
father. She looked at him with an incredulous surprise, which would have
been irresistibly absurd under less serious circumstances.
Nothing more was said. For the first time, perhaps, in their lives, the
family sat round the breakfast-table in painful silence. Mr. Vanstone's
hearty morning appetite, like his hearty morning spirits, was gone. He
absently broke off some morsels of dry toast from the rack near him,
absently finished his first cup of tea--then asked for a second, which
he left before him untouched.
"Norah," he said, after an interval, "you needn't wait for me. Magdalen,
my dear, you can go when you like."
His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately followed
their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert himself in his
family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably has its effect; and
the will of that easy-tempered man is Law.
"What can have happened?" whispered Norah, as they closed the
breakfast-room door and crossed the hall.
"What does papa mean by being cross with Me?" exclaimed Magdalen,
chafing under a sense of her own injuries.
"May I ask--what right you had to pry into your father's private
affairs?" retorted Miss Garth.
"Right?" repeated Magdalen. "I have no secrets from papa--what business
has papa to have secrets from me! I consider myself insulted."
"If you considered yourself properly reproved for not minding your own
business," said the plain-spoken Miss Garth, "you would be a trifle
nearer the truth. Ah! you are like all the rest of the girls in the
present day. Not one in a hundred of you knows which end of her's
uppermost."
The three ladies entered the morning-room; and Magdalen acknowledged
Miss Garth's reproof by banging the door.
Half an hour passed, and neither Mr. Vanstone nor his wife left the
breakfast-room. The servant, ignorant of what had happened, went in to
clear the table--found his master and mistress seated close together in
deep consultation--and immediately went out again. Another quarter of an
hour elapsed before the breakfast-room door was opened, and the private
conference of the husband and wife came to an end.
"I hear mamma in the hall," said Norah. "Perhaps she is coming to tell
us something."
Mrs. Vanstone entered the morning-room as her daughter spoke. The
color was deeper on her cheeks, and the brightness of half-dried tears
glistened in her eyes; her step was more hasty, all her movements were
quicker than usual.
"I bring news, my dears, which will surprise you," she said, addressing
her daughters. "Your father and I are going to London to-morrow."
Magdalen caught her mother by the arm in speechless astonishment. Miss
Garth dropped her work on her lap; even the sedate Norah started to her
feet, and amazedly repeated the words, "Going to London!"
"Without us?" added Magdalen.
"Your father and I are going alone," said Mrs. Vanstone. "Perhaps,
for as long as three weeks--but not longer. We are going"--she
hesitated--"we are going on important family business. Don't hold
me, Magdalen. This is a sudden necessity--I have a great deal to do
to-day--many things to set in order before tomorrow. There, there, my
love, let me go."
She drew her arm away; hastily kissed her youngest daughter on the
forehead; and at once left the room again. Even Magdalen saw that
her mother was not to be coaxed into hearing or answering any more
questions.
The morning wore on, and nothing was seen of Mr. Vanstone. With the
reckless curiosity of her age and character, Magdalen, in defiance of
Miss Garth's prohibition and her sister's remonstrances, determined to
go to the study and look for her father there. When she tried the door,
it was locked on the inside. She said, "It's only me, papa;" and waited
for the answer. "I'm busy now, my dear," was the answer. "Don't disturb
me."
Mrs. Vanstone was, in another way, equally inaccessible. She remained
in her own room, with the female servants about her, immersed in endless
preparations for the approaching departure. The servants, little used
in that family to sudden resolutions and unexpected orders, were
awkward and confused in obeying directions. They ran from room to room
unnecessarily, and lost time and patience in jostling each other on
the stairs. If a stranger had entered the house that day, he might have
imagined that an unexpected disaster had happened in it, instead of an
unexpected necessity for a journey to London. Nothing proceeded in its
ordinary routine. Magdalen, who was accustomed to pass the morning at
the piano, wandered restlessly about the staircases and passages, and in
and out of doors when there were glimpses of fine weather. Norah, whose
fondness for reading had passed into a family proverb, took up book
after book from table and shelf, and laid them down again, in despair of
fixing her attention. Even Miss Garth felt the all-pervading influence
of the household disorganization, and sat alone by the morning-room
fire, with her head shaking ominously, and her work laid aside.
"Family affairs?" thought Miss Garth, pondering over Mrs. Vanstone's
vague explanatory words. "I have lived twelve years at Combe-Raven; and
these are the first family affairs which have got between the parents
and the children, in all my experience. What does it mean? Change? I
suppose I'm getting old. I don't like change."