“I had a duty to do, my dear — and I did it.”
After replying in those terms, he hesitated. Apparently, he had something more to say — something, perhaps, on the subject of that passing uneasiness of mind which had been produced by his interview with Mr. Clare, and which Magdalen’s questions had obliged him to acknowledge. A look at his wife decided his doubts in the negative. He only asked if she felt comfortable; and then turned away to leave the room.
“Must you go?” she asked.
“I have a letter to write, my dear.”
“Anything about Frank?”
“No: tomorrow will do for that. A letter to Mr. Pendril. I want him here immediately.”
“Business, I suppose?”
“Yes, my dear — business.”
He went out, and shut himself into the little front room, close to the hall door, which was called his study. By nature and habit the most procrastinating of letter-writers, he now inconsistently opened his desk and took up the pen without a moment’s delay. His letter was long enough to occupy three pages of notepaper; it was written with a readiness of expression and a rapidity of hand which seldom characterized his proceedings when engaged over his ordinary correspondence. He wrote the address as follows: “Immediate — William Pendril, Esq., Serle Street, Lincoln’s Inn, London” — then pushed the letter away from him, and sat at the table, drawing lines on the blotting-paper with his pen, lost in thought. “No,” he said to himself; “I can do nothing more till Pendril comes.” He rose; his face brightened as he put the stamp on the envelope. The writing of the letter had sensibly relieved him, and his whole bearing showed it as he left the room.
On the doorstep he found Norah and Miss Garth, setting forth together for a walk.
“Which way are you going?” he asked. “Anywhere near the postoffice? I wish you would post this letter for me, Norah. It is very important — so important that I hardly like to trust it to Thomas, as usual.”
Norah at once took charge of the letter.
“If you look, my dear,” continued her father, “you will see that I am writing to Mr. Pendril. I expect him here tomorrow afternoon. Will you give the necessary directions, Miss Garth? Mr. Pendril will sleep here tomorrow night, and stay over Sunday. — Wait a minute! Today is Friday. Surely I had an engagement for Saturday afternoon?” He consulted his pocketbook and read over one of the entries, with a look of annoyance. “Grailsea Mill, three o’clock, Saturday. Just the time when Pendril will be here; and I must be at home to see him. How can I manage it? Monday will be too late for my business at Grailsea. I’ll go to-day, instead; and take my chance of catching the miller at his dinner-time.” He looked at his watch. “No time for driving; I must do it by railway. If I go at once, I shall catch the down train at our station, and get on to Grailsea. Take care of the letter, Norah. I won’t keep dinner waiting; if the return train doesn’t suit, I’ll borrow a gig and get back in that way.”
As he took up his hat, Magdalen appeared at the door, returning from her interview with Frank. The hurry of her father’s movements attracted her attention; and she asked him where he was going.
“To Grailsea,” replied Mr. Vanstone. “Your business, Miss Magdalen, has got in the way of mine — and mine must give way to it.”
He spoke those parting words in his old hearty manner; and left them, with the old characteristic flourish of his trusty stick.
“My business!” said Magdalen. “I thought my business was done.”
Miss Garth pointed significantly to the letter in Norah’s hand. “Your business, beyond all doubt,” she said. “Mr. Pendril is coming tomorrow; and Mr. Vanstone seems remarkably anxious about it. Law, and its attendant troubles already! Governesses who look in at summerhouse doors are not the only obstacles to the course of true-love. Parchment is sometimes an obstacle. I hope you may find Parchment as pliable as I am — I wish you well through it. Now, Norah!”
Miss Garth’s second shaft struck as harmless as the first. Magdalen had returned to the house, a little vexed; her interview with Frank having been interrupted by a messenger from Mr. Clare, sent to summon the son into the father’s presence. Although it had been agreed at the private interview between Mr. Vanstone and Mr. Clare that the questions discussed that morning should not be communicated to the children until the year of probation was at an end — -and although under these circumstances Mr. Clare had nothing to tell Frank which Magdalen could not communicate to him much more agreeably — the philosopher was not the less resolved on personally informing his son of the parental concession which rescued him from Chinese exile. The result was a sudden summons to the cottage, which startled Magdalen, but which did not appear to take Frank by surprise. His filial experience penetrated the mystery of Mr. Clare’s motives easily enough. “When my father’s in spirits,” he said, sulkily, “he likes to bully me about my good luck. This message means that he’s going to bully me now.”
“Don’t go,” suggested Magdalen.
“I must,” rejoined Frank. “I shall never hear the last of it if I don’t. He’s primed and loaded, and he means to go off. He went off, once, when the engineer took me; he went off, twice, when the office in the City took me; and he’s going off, thrice, now you’ve taken me. If it wasn’t for you, I should wish I had never been born. Yes; your father’s been kind to me, I know — and I should have gone to China, if it hadn’t been for him. I’m sure I’m very much obliged. Of course, we have no right to expect anything else — still it’s discouraging to keep us waiting a year, isn’t it?”
Magdalen stopped his mouth by a summary process, to which even Frank submitted gratefully. At the same time, she did not forget to set down his discontent to the right side. “How fond he is of me!” she thought. “A year’s waiting is quite a hardship to him.” She returned to the house, secretly regretting that she had not heard more of Frank’s complimentary complaints. Miss Garth’s elabourate satire, addressed to her while she was in this frame of mind, was a purely gratuitous waste of Miss Garth’s breath. What did Magdalen care for satire? What do Youth and Love ever care for except themselves? She never even said as much as “Pooh!” this time. She laid aside her hat in serene silence, and sauntered languidly into the morning-room to keep her mother company. She lunched on dire forebodings of a quarrel between Frank and his father, with accidental interruptions in the shape of cold chicken and cheese-cakes. She trifled away half an hour at the piano; and played, in that time, selections from the Songs of Mendelssohn, the Mazurkas of Chopin, the Operas of Verdi, and the Sonatas of Mozart — all of whom had combined together on this occasion and produced one immortal work, entitled “Frank.” She closed the piano and went up to her room, to dream away the hours luxuriously in visions of her married future. The green shutters were closed, the easychair was pushed in front of the glass, the maid was summoned as usual; and the comb assisted the mistress’s reflections, through the medium of the mistress’s hair, till heat and idleness asserted their narcotic influences together, and Magdalen fell asleep.
It was past three o’clock when she woke. On going downstairs again she found her mother, Norah and Miss Garth all sitting together enjoying the shade and the coolness under the open portico in front of the house.
Norah had the railway timetable in her hand. They had been discussing the chances of Mr. Vanstone’s catching the return train and getting back in good time. That topic had led them, next, to his business errand at Grailsea — an errand of kindness, as usual; undertaken for the benefit of the miller, who had been his old farm-servant, and who was now hard pressed by serious pecuniary difficulties. From this they had glided insensibly into a subject often repeated among them, and never exhausted by repetition — the praise of Mr. Vanstone himself. Each one of the three had some experience of her own to relate of his simple, generous nature. The conversation seemed to be almost painfully interesting to his wife. She was too near the time of her trial now not