Mrs. Lecount

“ From Norah Vanstone to Mr. Pendril. “Portland Place, Wednesday.
“DEAR MR. PENDRIL,
“Pray don’t think I am ungrateful for your kindness. Indeed, indeed I am not! But I must see Mrs. Lecount. You were not aware when you wrote to me that I had received a few lines from Magdalen—not telling me where she is, but holding out the hope of our meeting before long. Perhaps Mrs. Lecount may have something to say to me on this very subject. Even if it should not be so, my sister—do what she may—is still my sister. I can’t desert her; I can’t turn my back on any one who comes to me in her name. ”

“ Noel Vanstone or Mrs. Lecount, take advantage of it. It is very important to my present object that we should become acquainted with each other—as the purely accidental result of our being near neighbors. I want you to smooth the way toward this end if you can, before Mrs. Wragge and I come to you. Pray throw away no chance of observing Mrs. Lecount, in particular, very carefully. Whatever help you can give me at the outset in blindfolding that woman’s sharp eyes will be the most precious help I have ever received at your hands. ”

“ Lecount. “There is only one obstacle now left between this woman and the attainment of her end. That obstacle is your life. After the discovery we have made upstairs, I leave you to consider for yourself what your life is worth.”
At those terrible words, the ebbing resolution in him ran out to the last drop. “Don’t frighten me!” he pleaded; “I have been frightened enough already.” He rose, and dragged his chair after him, round the table to Mrs. Lecount’s side. He sat down and caressingly kissed her hand. “You good creature!” he said, in a sinking voice. “You excellent Lecount! ”

“ Lecount to say. She has endeavored to express herself in the most conciliatory language she could select; she had tried to avoid giving unnecessary pain, by addressing Miss Vanstone (as a matter of courtesy) by the family name; and she trusts these concessions, which speak for themselves, will not be thrown away.—Such is the substance of the letter, and so it ends.
I draw two conclusions from this little document. First—that it will lead to serious results. Secondly—that Mrs. Lecount, with all her politeness, is a dangerous woman to deal with. I wish I saw my way safe before me. ”

“ Lecount, "to express the regret with which both my master and I have heard of Miss Bygrave's illness. Is there no improvement?"
"No, ma'am," replied the captain, as briefly as possible. "My niece is no better."
"I have had some experience, Mr. Bygrave, in nursing. If I could be of any use—"
"Thank you, Mrs. Lecount. There is no necessity for our taking advantage of your kindness."
This plain answer was followed by a moment's silence. The housekeeper felt some little perplexity. What had become of Mr. Bygrave's elaborate courtesy, and Mr. Bygrave's many words? Did he want to offend her? ”

“ He held fast by the fence, and stared at her.
"Try to possess your mind, sir, of what I say," proceeded Mrs. Lecount. "I have come here not as your enemy, but as your friend. I have been tried by sickness, I have been tried by distress. Nothing remains of me but my heart. My heart forgives you; my heart, in your sore need—need which you have yet to feel-places me at your service. Take my arm, Mr. Noel. A little turn in the sun will help you to recover yourself."
She put his hand through her arm and marched him slowly up the garden walk. ”

“ Mrs. Lecount privately considered the question by the help of her own knowledge obtained in London. She soon reached the obvious conclusion. After writing to her sister in the first instance, Magdalen had now, in all probability, followed the letter in person. There was little doubt that the friends she had gone to visit in London were her sister and Miss Garth.
“Not her uncle and aunt, sir,” resumed Mrs. Lecount, composedly. “A secret for your private ear! She has no uncle and aunt. Another little turn before I explain myself—another little turn to compose your spirits.” ”

“ First, to distrust every word Mrs. Lecount says to you. Secondly, to exert all your fascinations, and make sure of Mr. Noel Vanstone, dating from to-day. I will give you the opportunity when we leave the carriage and take our walk at Dunwich. Wear your hat, wear your smile; do your figure justice, lace tight; put on your neatest boots and brightest gloves; tie the miserable little wretch to your apron-string—tie him fast; and leave the whole management of the matter after that to me. Steady! here is Mrs. Wragge: we must be doubly careful in looking after her now. Show me your cap, Mrs. Wragge! ”

“ I lived for many years as governess in the family of the late Mr. Andrew Vanstone, of Combe-Raven, and I come here in the interest of his orphan daughters.”
Mrs. Lecount’s hands, which had been smoothly sliding one over the other up to this time, suddenly stopped; and Mrs. Lecount’s lips, self-forgetfully shutting up, owned they were too thin at the very outset of the interview.
“I am surprised you can bear the light out-of-doors without a green shade,” she quietly remarked; leaving the false Miss Garth’s announcement of herself as completely unnoticed as it she had not spoken at all. ”

“ It is impossible to attack the state of his faculties: there is no case to go into court with, so far.
“Can we declare that he acted under undue influence; or, in plainer terms, under the influence of Mrs. Lecount?
“There are serious difficulties, again, in the way of taking this course. We cannot assert, for example, that Mrs. Lecount has assumed a place in the will which she has no fair claim to occupy. She has cunningly limited her own legacy, not only to what is fairly due her, but to what the late Mr. Michael Vanstone himself had the intention of leaving her. ”

“ In any matter with which your sister is concerned, you may want an old friend's advice, and an old friend's protection against your own generous impulses. If I could have helped you in this way, I would; but Mrs. Lecount gave me indirectly to understand that the subject to be discussed was of too delicate a nature to permit of my presence. Whatever this objection may be really worth, it cannot apply to Miss Garth, who has brought you both up from childhood. I say, again, therefore, if you see Mrs. Lecount, see her in Miss Garth's company. ”

“ The curiosity of which she was the object did not escape the penetration of Mrs. Lecount. “I did well,” she thought, “to arm myself in good time with the means of reaching my end. If I let the grass grow under my feet, one or the other of those women might get in my way.” Roused by this consideration, she produced her traveling-bag from a corner, as soon as the last of the servants had entered the room; and seating herself at the end of the table opposite Noel Vanstone, looked at him for a moment, with a steady, investigating attention. ”

“ After he had put two dresses on the bed, he was obliged to search in the inner recesses of the wardrobe before he could find a third. When he produced it, Mrs. Lecount made a sign to him to stop. The end was reached already; he had found the brown Alpaca dress.
"Lay it out on the bed, sir," said Mrs. Lecount. "You will see a double flounce running round the bottom of it. Lift up the outer flounce, and pass the inner one through your fingers, inch by inch. If you come to a place where there is a morsel of the stuff missing, stop and look up at me." ”

“ As a man of honor and a man of observation, you can’t tell me that! Your housekeeper’s superficial civility has not hidden your housekeeper’s real feeling. My niece has seen it, and so have you, and so have I. My niece, Mr. Vanstone, is a sensitive, high-spirited girl; and she has positively declined to cultivate Mrs. Lecount’s society for the future. Don’t misunderstand me! To my niece as well as to myself, the attraction of your society, Mr. Vanstone, remains the same. Miss Bygrave simply declines to be an apple of discord (if you will permit the classical allusion) cast into your household. ”

“ Noel Vanstone, to whom all large-minded motives under heaven were inscrutable mysteries, saw the small-minded motive at the bottom of his housekeeper’s conduct with as instantaneous a penetration as if he had been a man of the highest ability. Mrs. Lecount left him for the night, foiled, and knowing she was foiled—left him, with the tigerish side of her uppermost, and a low-lived longing in her elegant finger-nails to set them in her master’s face.
She was not a woman to be beaten by one defeat or by a hundred. ”

“ Having told the truth thus far, Mrs. Lecount next proceeded to say that her master was in possession of evidence which would justify him in putting the law in force; that he knew the conspiracy with which he was threatened to be then in process of direction against him at Aldborough; and that he only hesitated to protect himself in deference to family considerations, and in the hope that the elder Miss Vanstone might so influence her sister as to render it unnecessary to proceed to extremities. ”

“ Whether my fair relative’s future intentions in this quarter point toward Mischief or Money, is more than I can yet say. In either case, I venture to predict that she will find an awkward obstacle in Mrs. Lecount.
So much for my information to the present date. The manner in which it was received by Miss Vanstone showed the most ungrateful distrust of me. She confided nothing to my private ear but the expression of her best thanks. A sharp girl—a devilish sharp girl. But there is such a thing as bowling a man out once too often; especially when the name of that man happens to be Wragge. ”

“ Anything that publicly assumed to be a marriage was a marriage (he had heard) in Scotland. How excessively tiresome of Lecount to sit there and say she knew nothing about it! Was he to stay long in London by himself, with nobody but Mr. Loscombe to speak to? Would Lecount come back to him as soon as she had put those important papers in the admiral’s own hands? Would Lecount consider herself still in his service? The good Lecount! the excellent Lecount! ”

“ Women are always in a hurry. Lecount is always in a hurry. I have got the afternoon before me—I’ll take the afternoon to consider it.”
He fretfully put away the blotting-book and the sketch of the advertisement on the chair which Mrs. Lecount had just left. As he returned to his own seat, he shook his little head solemnly, and arranged his white dressing-gown over his knees with the air of a man absorbed in anxious thought. Minute after minute passed away; the quarters and the half-hours succeeded each other on the dial of Mrs. Lecount’s watch, and still Noel Vanstone remained lost in doubt ”

“ Lecount an early riser?"
"No. Lecount is lazy in the morning. I hate lazy women! If you were in my place, what should you say to her?"
"I should say nothing," replied Captain Wragge. "I should return at once by the back way; I should let Mrs. Lecount see me in the front garden as if I was taking a turn before breakfast; and I should leave her to suppose that I was only just out of my room. If she asks you whether you mean to come here today, say No. Secure a quiet life until circumstances force you to give her an answer. Then tell the plain truth—say that Mr. Bygrave's niece and Mrs. ”

“ You have nothing to dread from the elder of the two; she patiently accepts the hard lot which you, and your father before you, have forced on her. The younger sister’s conduct is the very opposite of this. She has already declined to submit to your father’s decision, and she now refuses to be silenced by Mrs. Lecount’s letter. Take my word for it, she is capable of giving you serious trouble if you persist in making an enemy of her.”
Noel Vanstone changed color once more, and began to fidget again in his chair. ”

“ Wragge, turning from a lamb to a lioness, as she gradually realized the indignity offered to the Cashmere Robe. "You nasty foreigner, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
Pursued by this valedictory address, Mrs. Lecount reached the house door, and opened it without interruption. She glided rapidly along the garden path, passed through the gate, and finding herself safe on the Parade, stopped, and looked toward the sea.
The first object which her eyes encountered was the figure of Mr. Bygrave standing motionless on the beach—a petrified bather, with his towels in his hand! ”

“ Lecount acknowledged the virtues of Iodine, in the briefest possible form of words, and withdrew into the innermost sanctuary of her own thoughts. “Some mystery here,” said the housekeeper to herself. “A lady who looks the picture of health; a lady who suffers from a complicated nervous malady; and a lady whose hand is steady enough to use her needle and thread—is a living mass of contradictions I don’t quite understand. Do you make a long stay at Aldborough, sir?” she added aloud, her eyes resting for a moment, in steady scrutiny, on the captain’s face. ”

“ Wragge, as the housekeeper reached her closing sentence. "And, oh my heart alive, how nicely she's dressed!"
"I see I disturb you," pursued Mrs. Lecount, artfully availing herself of the Oriental Cashmere Robe as a means ready at hand of reaching the end she had in view—"I see I disturb you, ma'am, over an occupation which, I know by experience, requires the closest attention. Dear, dear me, you are un picking the dress again, I see, after it has been made! This is my own experience again, Mrs. Bygrave. Some dresses are so obstinate! Some dresses seem to say to one, in so many words, 'No! ”