No Name by Wilkie Collins (good books for 7th graders TXT) 📕

thoughtlessness? Servants and small clerks, to whom shillings and sixpences are of consequence. Did you ever hear of Rothschild or Baring dropping a fourpenny-piece down a gutter-hole? Fourpence in Rothschild’s pocket is safer than fourpence in the pocket of that woman who is crying stale shrimps in Skeldergate at this moment. Fortified by these sound principles, enlightened by the stores of written information in my commercial library, I have ranged through the population for years past, and have raised my charitable crops with the most cheering success. Here, in book Number One, are all my Districts mapped out, with the prevalent public feeling to appeal to in each: Military District, Clerical District, Agricultural District; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in Number Two, are my cases that I plead: Family of an officer who fell at Waterloo; Wife of a poor curate stricken down by nervous debility; Widow of a grazier in difficulties gored to death by a mad bull; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in Number Three, are the people who have heard of the officer’s family, the curate’s wife, the grazier’s widow, and the people who haven’t; the people who have said yes, and the people who have said no; the people to try again, the people who want a fresh case to stir them up, the people who are doubtful, the people to beware of; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in Number Four, are my Adopted Handwritings of public characters; my testimonials to my own worth and integrity; my Heartrending Statements of the officer’s family, the curate’s wife, and the grazier’s widow, stained with tears, blotted with emotion; et cetera, et cetera. Here, in numbers five and six, are my own personal subscriptions to local charities, actually paid in remunerative neighborhoods, on the principle of throwing a sprat to catch a herring; also, my diary of each day’s proceedings, my personal reflections and remarks, my statement of existing difficulties (such as the difficulty of finding myself T. W. K. in this interesting city); my outgivings and incomings; wind and weather; politics and public events; fluctuations in my own health; fluctuations in Mrs. Wragge’s head; fluctuations in our means and meals, our payments, prospects, and principles; et cetera, et cetera. So, my dear girl, the Swindler’s Mill goes. So you see me exactly as I am. You knew, before I met you, that I lived on my wits. Well! have I, or have I not, shown you that I have wits to live on?”

“I have no doubt you have done yourself full justice,” said Magdalen, quietly.

“I am not at all exhausted,” continued the captain. “I can go on, if necessary, for the rest of the evening.⁠—However, if I have done myself full justice, perhaps I may leave the remaining points in my character to develop themselves at future opportunities. For the present, I withdraw myself from notice. Exit Wragge. And now to business! Permit me to inquire what effect I have produced on your own mind? Do you still believe that the rogue who has trusted you with all his secrets is a rogue who is bent on taking a mean advantage of a fair relative?”

“I will wait a little,” Magdalen rejoined, “before I answer that question. When I came down to tea, you told me you had been employing your mind for my benefit. May I ask how?”

“By all means,” said Captain Wragge. “You shall have the net result of the whole mental process. Said process ranges over the present and future proceedings of your disconsolate friends, and of the lawyers who are helping them to find you. Their present proceedings are, in all probability, assuming the following form: the lawyer’s clerk has given you up at Mr. Huxtable’s, and has also, by this time, given you up, after careful inquiry, at all the hotels. His last chance is that you may send for your box to the cloakroom⁠—you don’t send for it⁠—and there the clerk is tonight (thanks to Captain Wragge and Rosemary Lane) at the end of his resources. He will forthwith communicate that fact to his employers in London; and those employers (don’t be alarmed!) will apply for help to the detective police. Allowing for inevitable delays, a professional spy, with all his wits about him, and with those handbills to help him privately in identifying you, will be here certainly not later than the day after tomorrow⁠—possibly earlier. If you remain in York, if you attempt to communicate with Mr. Huxtable, that spy will find you out. If, on the other hand, you leave the city before he comes (taking your departure by other means than the railway, of course) you put him in the same predicament as the clerk⁠—you defy him to find a fresh trace of you. There is my brief abstract of your present position. What do you think of it?”

“I think it has one defect,” said Magdalen. “It ends in nothing.”

“Pardon me,” retorted the captain. “It ends in an arrangement for your safe departure, and in a plan for the entire gratification of your wishes in the direction of the stage. Both drawn from the resources of my own experience, and both waiting a word from you, to be poured forth immediately in the fullest detail.”

“I think I know what that word is,” replied Magdalen, looking at him attentively.

“Charmed to hear it, I am sure. You have only to say, ‘Captain Wragge, take charge of me’⁠—and my plans are yours from that moment.”

“I will take tonight to consider your proposal,” she said, after an instant’s reflection. “You shall have my answer tomorrow morning.”

Captain Wragge looked a little disappointed. He had not expected the reservation on his side to be met so composedly by a reservation on hers.

“Why not decide at once?” he remonstrated, in his most persuasive tones. “You have only to consider⁠—”

“I have more to consider than you think for,” she answered. “I have another object in view besides the object you know of.”

“May I ask⁠—?”

“Excuse me, Captain Wragge⁠—you may not ask.