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

room, all eagerly looking at her together, saw the dress rising and falling faster and faster over her bosom⁠—saw the hand in which she lightly held the manuscript at the outset close unconsciously on the paper and crush it, as she advanced nearer and nearer to the end⁠—but detected no other outward signs of what was passing within her. As soon as she had done, she silently pushed the manuscript away, and put her hands on a sudden over her face. When she withdrew them, all the four persons in the room noticed a change in her. Something in her expression had altered, subtly and silently; something which made the familiar features suddenly look strange, even to her sister and Miss Garth; something, through all after years, never to be forgotten in connection with that day⁠—and never to be described.

The first words she spoke were addressed to Mr. Pendril.

“May I ask one more favor,” she said, “before you enter on your business arrangements?”

Mr. Pendril replied ceremoniously by a gesture of assent. Magdalen’s resolution to possess herself of the instructions did not appear to have produced a favorable impression on the lawyer’s mind.

“You mentioned what you were so kind as to do, in our interests, when you first wrote to Mr. Michael Vanstone,” she continued. “You said you had told him all the circumstances. I want⁠—if you will allow me⁠—to be made quite sure of what he really knew about us⁠—when he sent these orders to his lawyer. Did he know that my father had made a will, and that he had left our fortunes to my sister and myself?”

“He did know it,” said Mr. Pendril.

“Did you tell him how it happened that we are left in this helpless position?”

“I told him that your father was entirely unaware, when he married, of the necessity for making another will.”

“And that another will would have been made, after he saw Mr. Clare, but for the dreadful misfortune of his death?”

“He knew that also.”

“Did he know that my father’s untiring goodness and kindness to both of us⁠—”

Her voice faltered for the first time: she sighed, and put her hand to her head wearily. Norah spoke entreatingly to her; Miss Garth spoke entreatingly to her; Mr. Clare sat silent, watching her more and more earnestly. She answered her sister’s remonstrance with a faint smile. “I will keep my promise,” she said; “I will distress nobody.” With that reply, she turned again to Mr. Pendril; and steadily reiterated the question⁠—but in another form of words.

“Did Mr. Michael Vanstone know that my father’s great anxiety was to make sure of providing for my sister and myself?”

“He knew it in your father’s own words. I sent him an extract from your father’s last letter to me.”

“The letter which asked you to come for God’s sake, and relieve him from the dreadful thought that his daughters were unprovided for? The letter which said he should not rest in his grave if he left us disinherited?”

“That letter and those words.”

She paused, still keeping her eyes steadily fixed on the lawyer’s face.

“I want to fasten it all in my mind,” she said, “before I go on. Mr. Michael Vanstone knew of the first will; he knew what prevented the making of the second will; he knew of the letter and he read the words. What did he know of besides? Did you tell him of my mother’s last illness? Did you say that her share in the money would have been left to us, if she could have lifted her dying hand in your presence? Did you try to make him ashamed of the cruel law which calls girls in our situation Nobody’s Children, and which allows him to use us as he is using us now?”

“I put all those considerations to him. I left none of them doubtful; I left none of them out.”

She slowly reached her hand to the copy of the instructions, and slowly folded it up again, in the shape in which it had been presented to her. “I am much obliged to you, Mr. Pendril.” With those words, she bowed, and gently pushed the manuscript back across the table; then turned to her sister.

“Norah,” she said, “if we both of us live to grow old, and if you ever forget all that we owe to Michael Vanstone⁠—come to me, and I will remind you.”

She rose and walked across the room by herself to the window. As she passed Mr. Clare, the old man stretched out his claw-like fingers and caught her fast by the arm before she was aware of him.

“What is this mask of yours hiding?” he asked, forcing her to bend to him, and looking close into her face. “Which of the extremes of human temperature does your courage start from⁠—the dead cold or the white hot?”

She shrank back from him and turned away her head in silence. She would have resented that unscrupulous intrusion on her own thoughts from any man alive but Frank’s father. He dropped her arm as suddenly as he had taken it, and let her go on to the window. “No,” he said to himself, “not the cold extreme, whatever else it may be. So much the worse for her, and for all belonging to her.”

There was a momentary pause. Once more the dripping rustle of the rain and the steady ticking of the clock filled up the gap of silence. Mr. Pendril put the instructions back in his pocket, considered a little, and, turning toward Norah and Miss Garth, recalled their attention to the present and pressing necessities of the time.

“Our consultation has been needlessly prolonged,” he sail, “by painful references to the past. We shall be better employed in settling our arrangements for the future. I am obliged to return to town this evening. Pray let me hear how I can best assist you; pray tell me what trouble and what responsibility I can take off your hands.”

For the moment, neither Norah nor Miss Garth seemed to be capable of answering him. Magdalen’s reception of the news which annihilated