Chapter 3

“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.”