No Name - Wilkie Collins (free e books to read online .TXT) 📗

having a sister who is utterly unworthy of her. Does this discovery⁠—an unpleasant discovery, I grant you⁠—destroy all those good qualities in Miss Vanstone for which I love and admire her? Nothing of the sort⁠—it only makes her good qualities all the more precious to me by contrast. If I am to have a drawback to contend with⁠—and who expects anything else in this world?⁠—I would infinitely rather have the drawback attached to my wife’s sister than to my wife. My wife’s sister is not essential to my happiness, but my wife is. In my opinion, sir, Mrs. Noel Vanstone has done mischief enough already. I don’t see the necessity of letting her do more mischief, by depriving me of a good wife. Right or wrong, that is my point of view. I don’t wish to trouble you with any questions of sentiment. All I wish to say is that I am old enough by this time to know my own mind, and that my mind is made up. If my marriage is essential to the execution of your intentions on my behalf, there is only one woman in the world whom I can marry, and that woman is Miss Vanstone.”

There was no resisting this plain declaration. Admiral Bartram rose from his chair without making any reply, and walked perturbedly up and down the room.

The situation was emphatically a serious one. Mrs. Girdlestone’s death had already produced the failure of one of the two objects contemplated by the secret trust. If the third of May arrived and found George a single man, the second (and last) of the objects would then have failed in its turn. In little more than a fortnight, at the very latest, the banns must be published in Ossory church, or the time would fail for compliance with one of the stipulations insisted on in the Trust. Obstinate as the admiral was by nature, strongly as he felt the objections which attached to his nephew’s contemplated alliance, he recoiled in spite of himself, as he paced the room and saw the facts on either side immovably staring him in the face.

“Are you engaged to Miss Vanstone?” he asked, suddenly.

“No, sir,” replied George. “I thought it due to your uniform kindness to me to speak to you on the subject first.”

“Much obliged, I’m sure. And you have put off speaking to me to the last moment, just as you put off everything else. Do you think Miss Vanstone will say yes when you ask her?”

George hesitated.

“The devil take your modesty!” shouted the admiral. “This is not a time for modesty; this is a time for speaking out. Will she or won’t she?”

“I think she will, sir.”

The admiral laughed sardonically, and took another turn in the room. He suddenly stopped, put his hands in his pockets, and stood still in a corner, deep in thought. After an interval of a few minutes, his face cleared a little; it brightened with the dawning of a new idea. He walked round briskly to George’s side of the fire, and laid his hand kindly on his nephew’s shoulder.

“You’re wrong, George,” he said; “but it is too late now to set you right. On the sixteenth of next month the banns must be put up in Ossory church, or you will lose the money. Have you told Miss Vanstone the position you stand in? Or have you put that off to the eleventh hour, like everything else?”

“The position is so extraordinary, sir, and it might lead to so much misapprehension of my motives, that I have felt unwilling to allude to it. I hardly know how I can tell her of it at all.”

“Try the experiment of telling her friends. Let them know it’s a question of money, and they will overcome her scruples, if you can’t. But that is not what I had to say to you. How long do you propose stopping here this time?”

“I thought of staying a few days, and then⁠—”

“And then of going back to London and making your offer, I suppose? Will a week give you time enough to pick your opportunity with Miss Vanstone⁠—a week out of the fortnight or so that you have to spare?”

“I will stay here a week, admiral, with pleasure, if you wish it.”

“I don’t wish it. I want you to pack up your traps and be off tomorrow.”

George looked at his uncle in silent astonishment.

“You found some letters waiting for you when you got here,” proceeded the admiral. “Was one of those letters from my old friend, Sir Franklin Brock?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was it an invitation to you to go and stay at the Grange?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To go at once?”

“At once, if I could manage it.”

“Very good. I want you to manage it; I want you to start for the Grange tomorrow.”

George looked back at the fire, and sighed impatiently.

“I understand you now, admiral,” he said. “You are entirely mistaken in me. My attachment to Miss Vanstone is not to be shaken in that manner.”

Admiral Bartram took his quarterdeck walk again, up and down the room.

“One good turn deserves another, George,” said the old gentleman. “If I am willing to make concessions on my side, the least you can do is to meet me halfway, and make concessions on yours.”

“I don’t deny it, sir.”

“Very well. Now listen to my proposal. Give me a fair hearing, George⁠—a fair hearing is every man’s privilege. I will be perfectly just to begin with. I won’t attempt to deny that you honestly believe Miss Vanstone is the only woman in the world who can make you happy. I don’t question that. What I do question is, whether you really know your own mind in this matter quite so well as you think you know it yourself. You can’t deny, George, that you have been in love with a good many women in your time? Among the rest of them, you have been in love with Miss Brock. No longer ago than this time last year there was a sneaking