Mr. Darkdale bestirred himself, for these postilions were palpably quickening their pace, a rather reckless proceeding in a pass so profoundly dark.
He took down one of the carriage-lamps, and lighting it with a match, shouted:
“Hallo! Look ahead!”
The warning light that sprang thus suddenly out of darkness, and the voice seemed hardly to act as a damper on the ardour of the postilions; and Maud heard distinctly those sounds to which, probably, quick-eared Mercy Creswell had referred.
She mistook them first for the laughter and vociferation of a rollicking party on their way home from a supper-party. But she soon perceived, with alarm, that they indicated something very different.
They were sounds of fury and terror. She heard a voice exerting itself in short gasps and shrieks, and declaiming with frightful volubility:
“I say Vivian’s my name! Murder, murder — my God! — two to one — they’re murdering me!” yelled this voice, which, disguised as it was with rage and terror, she nevertheless fancied she knew, and exactly as the chaise drove by, at a suddenly stimulated pace, the window was broken, and the jingling glass showered on the road close beside the wheels; and, in the flash of the lamp, Miss Vernon had a momentary glimpse of the cantering horses and the postilions lashing them, and of the hands and faces of men struggling within, and, as the strange phantasmagoria flew by,
“Hallo! I’m here — Daniel Darkdale. Pull up; stop. Hallo!” yelled Mr. Darkdale, grimly.
And he ran on in the direction in which the carriage had passed, shouting, as he followed, “I’m Daniel Darkdale. Hallo!”
There was a magic in this name, which brought the chaise, a very little way further on, to a sudden stop.
CHAPTER LIX.
MR. DARKDALE’S GUEST.
“This will never do,” said Mr. Darkdale, sharply, striding up to the carriage window, from which cries of “murder” were still proceeding. “What’s going on here?”
“Two assassins trying to murder me, here in this carriage, sir. For God’s sake, sir, see me safe out of this. They have pinioned me.”
Mr. Darkdale put his hand through the broken window and let it down a little, and then withdrawing it, let the window down altogether, and popped his head in, holding the lamp, which he still carried, close to the window, so as to light up the interior with a rather fierce and sudden glare.
“Who are you, sir?” he asked of the young man who, with a torn shirt-front, disordered hair and necktie, and a very pale face, across which a smear of blood showed rather ghastlily, was staring with wild eyes.
There were two powerful-looking men, sitting one at each side, hot and blown after the struggle. With these Mr. Darkdale exchanged a significant glance, and said:
“You’ll give me your names, you two. You know Mr. Darkdale, you know me — Daniel Darkdale?”
The two men exchanged a sheepish look, as if they would have winked at one another, and gave their names.
“I’m the constable of this county, sir,” said Mr. Darkdale, in a loud voice. “I’m pretty well known. I’ll set all this right. If they have injured you they shall be made examples of. They have secured your hands somehow?”
“Yes. I’m a cavalry officer. My name is Vivian — that is, it will do as well as another,” cried the gentleman, in high excitement, gabbling at that gallop which recognises no stop longer than a comma, and hardly that. “I had been down in that part of the country behind us a good way, you know, and I wanted to get back to my quarters; and this man had a carriage, and I could not get another” — the injured man was talking at such a pace that the foam appeared at the corners of his lips— “and he undertook to give me a lift to Chatham; and this other fellow — d —— them, they are both murderers, I say, get my arms out.” And he began to tug again.
“Wait a moment. I have a reason. You’ll say I’m right in a moment,” Mr. Darkdale, leaning in, sternly whispered in his ear.
He opened the door.
“I say, you come out, till I hear this gentleman’s complaint,” he said to the man next the door.
He obeyed, and walked a little to the rear of the chaise, and the officer sat close to the window next Mr. Darkdale.
“Don’t you be listening,” said Darkdale to the other. “Now, sir, we shan’t be overheard; tell me the rest, pray.”
“He asked for leave to take in that fellow, who said he wanted to go on to Chatham, and they wished to play ‘blind-hooky’ with me, and I like the game, and said yes, and they had cards, and I told them how I was used, very badly, I’ll tell you by-and-bye, and they seemed very agreeable, and I had been kept awake all night, last night, by half a dozen scoundrels drilling in the room next mine, with a couple of sergeants and a drum, you can’t conceive such an infernal noise, like so many ghosts out of hell, I knew very well why it was done, there’s a fellow, Major Spooner, he has been doing everything imagination can devise, by Heaven, to make the army too hot for me, but I think I have a way of hitting him rather hard, ha! ha! and when I was asleep, as sound as if I had made three forced marches without a halt, those two robbers, agents they are of the same villain, gambling, rascally murderers, tied my arms behind my back, and only for you, sir, I should have been robbed and murdered by this time.”
“I should not wonder, sir,” said Darkdale. “I should not wonder. But I have them pretty fast, now. I have their names, and I know their faces; I have seen them long ago; and I’ll have them up for it. Don’t you be listening; allow me, sir, to whisper a word in your ear. You’ll be at the next posting-house very soon, an hour or less. Those fellows are frightened, now, and they will try to make it up with you. Don’t you be such a muff. They would be very glad, now, to loose your hands; don’t you allow it. I’ll get up behind, so soon as they are in, without their knowing it, and I’ll have them arrested the moment we arrive, and I’ll have witnesses to see how they have tied your hands, and I’ll compel them to disclose their connexion with that blackguard, Major Spooner, and I’ll lay you twenty pounds they’ll split. Do you like my plan?”
“Uncommonly,” whispered the young man close to his ear.
“Well, when he gets in, do you pretend to be asleep, and if they try to undo the pinion, don’t you let them — hush! Mind what I say. We’ll pay the whole lot off.”
“Will you?” gasped the pinioned traveller. “By Heavens, then, I’ll do it, I’ll bear it, I say I will; anything to bring it home to Spooner, he’s so cunning; the villain, he’s as hard to catch as a ghost, never mind, I’ll have him yet, the scoundrel, I wish this thing wasn’t quite so tight, though, by Jove, it does hurt me, never mind, it is worth some trouble, we’ll catch them, it’s a serious thing, this outrage, and if you can show they aimed at my life, it will be a bad business for Spooner, ha! ha! and if I can’t hang him, whenever I get a fair chance, I’ll shoot him, by Heaven, I’ll shoot him — I’ll shoot him dead if it was in church!”
“Hush — don’t mind. Here comes the fellow. We understand one another — you and I — eh?”
“All right.” And the voluble gentleman, with his arms tied behind him, and extremely uncomfortable, would have run on again with a similar declamation, if Mr. Darkdale had not said, with a peremptory gesture of caution:
“They’ll hear us; not another word.”
He drew back, and walked toward the man whom he had just ejected from the carriage, and he said very low, and without turning his head, a few words in his ear, ending with:
“‘Twill be all right now; get on at the best lick you can. You must be there in forty-five minutes sharp.”
The man gave his orders to the postilions, and got into the carriage, and away they whirled at a great pace, flashing a fiery streak from their lamps along each brown trunk as they flew by on the close forest road.
Mr. Darkdale stood, lamp in hand, for a minute, watching the retreating equipage; and then turned and approached his own carriage, which he had left standing about a hundred paces in the rear.
CHAPTER LX.
ARRIVED.
“Well, what is it, Mr. Darkdale?” inquired Maud, eagerly, as soon as he had reached the side of the carriage.
“Two bailiffs, miss, in charge of an officer, arrested for debt, and something worse; they have had a bit of a row in the coach; he’s a troublesome fellow. I knew something about him; he has been up before, and I think there’s a criminal warrant this time.”
“Was he hurt?”
“A scratch, I fancy. It isn’t easy always keeping those dangerous cases from hurting themselves; he’s very strong, and always slipping away if he can. But they have him fast enough this time; and the road’s clear of them now; so I suppose I had best tell our postboys, miss, to get on?”
“Please do; it is growing late. How long will it take to reach Carsbrook?”
“About an hour, miss.”
Maud leaned back in the carriage, the unpleasant excitement of their recent adventure still tingling in her nerves.
Could it be that Captain Vivian had got into a scrape, and was really in the hands of bailiffs? A sad hearing for poor Ethel Tintern; rather a shock even to Maud.
“Do you know anything of that officer those people were taking away in the carriage?” inquired the young lady, suddenly, of her attendant, so soon as they were again in motion.
“I may, miss, or I mayn’t. I could not say for certain, unless I was to see him,” answered the servant.
“Have you ever seen an officer named Vivian, who is tall, and has light hair; a young man, rather good-looking?” persisted Maud.
“Well, I — I think I did,” she replied, watching Maud’s face. “I have seen some one like that. Veevian? Yes. He used to call hisself Veevian.”
“The person who passed us by, who said they were murdering him — how horrible his voice was! — said his name was Vivian. You heard him, of course?”
“Well, I made shift to hear; but there was a noise, you know,” answered Mercy Creswell, evasively.
“Oh, you must have heard him call out that his name was Vivian; you are not at all deaf,” said the young lady, irritated.
“I did hear something like it, for certain,” she replied.
Miss Mercy would have been very glad to know, while under these examinations, what the extent of Miss Vernon’s information actually was, for however willing she might be to tell stories, she was especially averse to being found out at this particular juncture. The sense of this inconvenience a good deal embarrassed her accustomed liberty of speech.
All this time Maud was possessed by the suspicion that, for some reason or other, Mercy Creswell was deliberately deceiving her, and that she knew just as much as Darkdale did about this Mr. Vivian. More than ever she disliked being assigned this particular attendant, and more and more puzzled she became in her search for her mother’s motive.
For awhile she looked from the window. The wood had gradually thinned, and now but a few scattered and decayed firs stretched their bleached boughs under the moonbeams, and stooped over the peat.
“Why should you try to deceive me?” said Miss Vernon, suddenly turning to Mercy Creswell, who, with her mouth screwed together, and her cunning eyes looking from her window upon the moonlit prospect, was busy with her own thoughts.
“Me deceive you? La, Miss Maud! Why should I deceive you, above all? I would not, for no consideration, miss. I hope I have a conscience, miss. I’d be sorry, I assure you, Miss Maud.”
“Why, then, did you not tell me, at once, that you knew something about that gentleman, Mr. Vivian? You know as much about him as Mr. Darkdale does.”
“Well now, indeed, I do not, miss, no sich thing. I may ‘a seen him, and I think I did at Lady Mardykes; he’s a cousin, or something, to her.”
“Oh, really? A relation of Lady Mardykes.”
“Yes, miss. If it be the same I mean.”
Maud mused for a minute or two.
“How far are we now from Carsbrook?” she asked.
“Well, miss, I’d say little more than three mile. Here’s the finger-post, and down there, among the trees, is the Red Lion, and there we’ll get into the right road, without another turn, right on to the house.”
“I’m not sorry,” said Maud, looking from the windows with more interest than before. “It has been a long journey. You were at Carsbrook this morning?”
“Yes, miss,” said the maid, who had gradually grown to look careworn and pallid, as they neared their destination.
“Was Lady Mardykes there?”
“No, miss,” answered Mercy.
“She was expected there, wasn’t she?”
“Expected there?” repeated Miss Creswell. “Let me think. Oh, la! yes, to be sure, she was expected.”
“How soon?”
“How soon? ‘Twill be tomorrow morning. Oh, yes, tomorrow morning. Tomorrow’s Tuesday? Yes, tomorrow morning, for certain.”
They were now driving through a pretty wooded country. On the left was a great park wall, grey and moss-streaked, mantled here and there with ivy, and overlapped by grand old trees. On the right were hedgerows, and many a sloping field; and, a little in advance, the chimneys and gables of a village, and the slender spire of a rural church, white in the moonlight.
“We’re near home now, miss,” said Mercy.
“Oh,” said Maud, looking out more curiously. “What wall is that?”
“The park wall, miss.”
“It would not be easy to climb that; higher, I think, than Roydon wall.”
“It is very high, miss.”
“And how soon is Miss Max expected to arrive?”
“Miss Medwyn?” exclaimed the maid, laughing, all at once, in spite of herself.
“Why do you laugh? Miss Medwyn is coming here, and I thought she would have been here to-day,” said Maud, a little haughtily.
“Like enough, miss,” said Mercy, drying her eyes. “La, ha, ha, ha! it is funny — I beg your pardon, miss. I suppose she will — time enough. But she was not here when I left this morning.”
“We’ll hear all about it when we reach the house. I suppose there is nothing like a dance, or anything of that kind, while Lady Mardykes is away?”
“Oh, la! yes, miss. No end of dancing and music and everything that way,” answered Mercy, with a great sigh, and a haggard look, after her brief merriment. “There’s a — what do you call it? — of singing and music tonight.”
“A concert?”
“Yes, that’s it, miss, a concert. A concert of music. La! they does it so beautiful, you wouldn’t believe. I wish Miss Medwyn was here to try her pipe at it. Hoo, hoo, hoo — la! I beg your pardon — she’s so staid and wise, miss!”
Mercy was stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth to stifle her laughter. But this time it was over quickly.
At this moment the postilions wheeled their horses to the left, and pulled them up, calling lustily, “Gate, gate!”
“So we have arrived,” said Maud, letting down the window, and looking out with the curiosity of long-deferred expectation.
The leaders’ heads seemed almost touching the bars of a great iron gate, over which burned a solitary lamp, acting, lighthouse fashion, rather as a warning than as an effectual light.
They were under the shadow of gigantic elms, that threw their branches from side to side; the carriage-lamps dimly lighted a few clusters of their dark foliage, and the light over the gate showed, for a few feet round and above it, the same moveless leafage.
“We shan’t be long reaching the house?” she inquired of Mr. Darkdale, who was walking by the window toward the gate, for she remembered “approaches” three miles long after you enter the gate, deceiving you with a second journey before you reach the hall-door.
“Not five minutes, miss,” said the man, hardly turning his head as he passed.
Was he growing a little gruffer, she thought, as they approached their destination?
Darkdale was talking earnestly in a low tone with the man who had come to the gate at th
eir summons; and then he called: “Be alive, now — open the gate.” In a minute more they were driving up the approach at a rapid pace under rows of trees. Suddenly the shadowy road they followed turned to the right, and took a direction parallel to the high road; about a hundred yards on, they drove up to the front of the house, along which this road, expanding before it into a courtyard, passes. And now they pull up before the steps of the hall-door. And the horses stand drooping their heads, and snorting, and sending up each a thin white vapour, through which the metal buckles of their harness glimmer faintly in the moonlight.
Mr. Darkdale was already on the steps ringing the bell.
CHAPTER LXI.
IN THE HOUSE.
Maud was looking at the house — a huge structure of the cagework sort, which stood out in the light broad and high, its black V’s and X’s and I’s traced in black oak beams, contrasting like gigantic symbols with the smooth white plaster they spanned and intersected, and which showed dazzlingly in the moon’s intense splendour, under which also many broad windows were sparkling and glimmering.
A footman in livery stood before the open door, in the shadow of a deep porch, and Maud observed that Mr. Darkdale seemed to speak to him as one in authority, and by no means as one servant to another.
Maud was looking from the carriage window; and the hall was full of light, which came out with a pleasant glow, showing the gilt buttons and gold lace on the servant’s livery, flushing the white powder on his head, and making Mr. Darkdale look blacker against its warm light. Some figures, gentlemen in evening dress, and ladies in brilliant costume, passed and repassed a little in perspective. There came from the interior, as the hall-door stood partly open, the sounds of violins and other instruments, and the more powerful swell of human voices.
Mr. Darkdale turned and ran down the steps, and at the carriage window said:
“There’s a concert going on, and a great many of the people moving about in the hall. Perhaps you had better come in by a different way?”
Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu Page 600
