Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  The Captain took an old-fashioned, queerly-shaped leather case from his pocket, and opened it on the little table where he spread out a quantity of foreign jewellry that glittered and twinkled in the firelight. Arabesqued gold of wonderful workmanship glimmered in that rosy firelight, and strange outlandish many-coloured gems sparkled upon the dark oak table and reflected themselves deep down in the polished wood, like stars in a river.

  Millicent blushed as she bent over the trinkets, and stammered out some gentle grateful phrases. She was blushing to think how little she cared for all these gewgaws, and how her soul was set on another treasure which never could be hers — the forbidden treasure of Darrell’s deep and honest love.

  As she was thinking this, the Captain looked up at her, carelessly as it seemed, but in reality with a very searching glance in his flashing brown eyes.

  “O, by the bye,” he said, “how is that pretty fairhaired cousin of yours? Has he recovered from that affair? or was it his death?”

  There was a malicious sparkle in his eyes, as he watched his wife shiver at the sound of that cruel word “death.”

  “That’s another figure in the long score between you and me, my lady,” he thought.

  “He is much better. Indeed, he is nearly well,” Millicent said quietly.

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Never since the night on which you found me at his bedside.”

  She looked up at him calmly, almost proudly, as she spoke. It was a look that seemed to say, “I have a clear conscience, and, do what you will, you cannot make me blush or falter.”

  She had indeed a clear conscience. Many times Sarah Pecker had come to her, and said, “Your cousin is very low to-night, Miss Millicent; come and sit beside him, if it’s only for half au hour; to cheer him up a bit. Poor old Sally will be with you, and where she is, the hardest can’t say there’s harm.”

  But Millicent had always steadily refused, saying, “It would only make us both unhappy, Sally, dear. I’d rather not come.”

  None knew how, sometimes late at night, when the maid-servant had gone to bed, and the lights in the upper windows of Compton High Street had been one by one extinguished, this same inflexible Millicent would steal out, muffled in a long cloak of shadowy grey, and creep to the roadway under the Black Bear, to stand for ten minutes in the snow or rain, watching the faint light that shone from the window of the room where Darrell Markham lay.

  Once, standing ankle-deep in snow, she saw Sarah Pecker open the window to look out at the night, and heard her cousin’s voice asking if it were snowing.

  She burst into tears at the sound of this feeble voice. It seemed so long since she had heard it, she half fancied that she might never hear it again.

  One of the Vulture’s men brought the case of oranges and the cask of sherry from Marley to Compton upon the very night of the Captain’s return, and George Duke drank half a bottle of the liquid gold before he went to bed. He tried in vain to induce Millicent to taste the topaz-coloured liquor. She liked Sarah Pecker’s cowslip wine better than the finest sherry ever grown in the Peninsula.

  Early the next morning the Compton constable came to the cottage armed with a warrant for the apprehension of Captain George Duke on a charge of assault and robbery on the king’s highway. Pale with suppressed fury, the Captain strode into the little parlour where Millicent was seated at breakfast.

  “Pray, Mistress Millicent,” he said, “who has set on your pretty cousin to try and hang an innocent man, with the intent to make a hempen widow of you, as I suppose? What is the meaning of this?”

  “Of what, George?” she asked, bewildered by his manner.

  We told her the whole story of the warrant. “Of course,” he said, “you remember this Master Darrell’s crying out that it was I who shot him?”

  “I do, George; I thought then that it was some strange feverish fancy, and I think so now.”

  “I scarcely expected so much of your courtesy, Mistress Duke,” answered her husband. “Luckily for me, I can pretty easily clear myself from this mad-brained charge; but I am not the less grateful to Darrell Markham for his kind intent.”

  The constable took Captain Duke at once to the magistrate’s parlour, where he found Darrell Markham seated, pale from his long illness, and with his arm still in a sling.

  “Thank you, Mr. Markham, for this good turn,” said the Captain, folding his arms and placing himself against the doorway of the magistrate’s room; “we shall find an opportunity of squaring our accounts some of these days, I daresay.”

  The worthy magistrate was not a little puzzled as to bow to deal with the case before him. Little as was known in Compton of Captain George Duke, it seemed incredible that so fine a gentleman and the husband of Squire Markham’s daughter could be guilty of highway robbery. But in those days highway robbery was a very common offence, and the public had been astonished by more than one strange discovery. Finer gentlemen than Captain Duke had tried to mend their desperate fortunes on the king’s highway.

  Darrell stated his charge in the simplest and most straightforward fashion. He had ridden away from the Black Bear to go to Marley Water. Three miles from Compton, a man whom he swore to have been no other than the accused, rode up to him and demanded his purse and watch. He drew his pistol from his belt, but while he was cocking it, the man, Captain Duke, fired, shot him in the arm, dragged him off his horse, and threw him into the mud. He remembered nothing more until he awoke in the hall at the Black Bear, and recognized the accused amongst the bystanders.

  The magistrate coughed dubiously.

  “Cases of mistaken identity have not been uncommon in the judicial history of this country,” he said, sententiously. “Can you swear, Mr. Markham, that the man who attacked you was Captain George Duke?”

  “If that man standing against the door is Captain Duke, I can solemnly swear that he is the man who robbed me.”

  “When you were found by the persons who picked you up, was your horse found also?”

  “No, the horse was gone.”

  “Would you know him again?”

  “Know him again? What, honest Balmerino? I should know him amongst a thousand.”

  “Hum!” said the magistrate, “that is a great point; I consider the horse a great point.”

  He pondered so long over his very important part of the case, that his clerk had occasion to nudge him respectfully and to whisper something in his ear before he went on again.

  “O, ah, yes, to be sure, of course,” he muttered helplessly; then clearing his throat, he said in his magisterial voice, “Pray, Captain Duke, what have you to say to this charge?”

  “Very little,” said the Captain quietly; “but before I speak at all, I should be glad if you would send for Mr. Samuel Pecker, of the Black Bear.”

  The magistrate whispered to the clerk, and the clerk nodded, on which the magistrate said, “Go, one of you, and fetch the aforesaid Samuel Pecker.”

  While one of the hangers-on was gone upon this errand, the worthy magistrate nodded over his Flying Post, the clerk mended the fire, and Mr. Darrell Markham and the Captain stared fiercely at each other — an ominous red glimmer burning in the sailor’s brown eyes.

  Mr. Pecker came, with a white face and limp disordered hair, to attend the magisterial summons. He had some vague idea that hanging by the neck till he was dead might be the result of this morning’s work; or that, happily escaping that last penalty of the law, he would suffer a hundred moral deaths at the hands of Sarah, his wife. He could not for a moment imagine that he could possibly be wanted in the magistrate’? parlour unless accused of some monstrous though unconsciously committed crime.

  He gave a faint gasp of relief when some one in the room whispered to him that he was required as a witness.

  “Now, Captain Duke,” said the magistrate, “what have you to say to this?”

  “Will you be good enough to ask Mr. Darrell Markham two or three questions?”

  The magistrate looked
at the clerk, the clerk nodded to the magistrate, and the magistrate nodded an assent to Captain Duke’s request.

  “Will you ask if he knows at what time the assault was committed?”

  Before the magistrate could interpose, Darrell Markham spoke.

  “I happen to be able to answer that question with certainty,” he said. “The wind was blowing straight across the moor, and I distinctly heard Compton church clock chime the three-quarters after seven as the man rode up to me.”

  “As I rode up to you?” asked George Duke.

  “As you, rode up to me,” answered Darrell.

  “Mr. Samuel Pecker, will you be so good as to tell the magistrate where I was at a quarter to eight o’clock upon the night of the 27th of October?”

  “You were in the parlour of the Bear, Captain,” answered Samuel, in short gasps; “and you came in and asked the time, which I went out to look at our eight-day on the stairs, and it were ten minutes to eight exact by father’s eight-day, as is never a minute wrong.”

  “There were other people in the parlour that night who saw me and who heard me ask the question, were there not, Mr. Pecker?”

  “There were a many of ‘em,” replied Samuel; “which they saw you wind your watch by father’s eight-day; for it weren’t you, Captain Duke, as robbed Master Darrell, but I know who it were.”

  There was stupefaction in the court at this extraordinary assertion.

  “You know!” cried the magistrate; “then, pray, why have you withheld the knowledge from those entitled to hear it? This is very bad, Mr. Pecker; very bad indeed!”

  The unhappy Samuel felt that he was in for it.

  “It were no more Captain Duke than it were me,” he gasped; “it were the other.”

  “The other! What other?”

  “Him as stopped his horse at the door of the Black Bear, and asked the way to Marley Water.”

  Nothing could remove Samuel Pecker from his position. Questioned and cross-questioned by the magistrate, the clerk, and Darrell Markham, he steadfastly declared that a man so closely resembling Captain Duke as to deceive both himself and John Homerton the blacksmith had stopped at the Black Bear and asked the way to Marley.

  He gasped and stuttered and choked and bewildered himself, but he neither prevaricated nor broke down in his assertions, and he begged that John Homerton might be summoned to confirm his statement.

  John Homerton was summoned, and declared that, to the best of his belief, it was Captain Duke who stopped at the Black Bear, while he, Master Darrell Markham, and the landlord were standing at the door.

  But this assertion was shivered in a moment by an alibi. A quarter of an hour after the traveller had ridden off towards Marley, Captain Duke walked up to the inn from the direction of the High Street.

  Neither the magistrate nor the clerk had anything to say to this. The affair seemed altogether a mystery, for which the legal experience of the Compton worthies could furnish no parallel.

  If James Dobbs assaulted Farmer Hobbs, upon some question of wheat or turnips, it was easy to deal with him according to the precedent afforded by the celebrated case of Jones v. Smith; but the affair of to-day stood alone in the judicial records of Compton.

  While the magistrate and his factotum consulted together in whispers, without getting any nearer to a decision, George Duke himself came to their rescue.

  “I suppose, after the charge having broken down in this manner, I need not stop here any longer, sir?” he said.

  The magistrate caught at this chance of extrication.

  “The charge has broken down,” he replied, with solemn importance, “and as you observe, Captain Duke, and as indeed I was about to observe myself, we need not detain you any longer. You leave this room with as good a character as that with which you entered it,” he added, while a slight titter circulated amongst some of the bystanders at this rather ambiguous compliment. “I am sorry, Mr. Markham, that this affair is so involved in mystery. It is evidently a case of mistaken identity, one of the most difficult class of cases that the law ever has to deal with; but, as I said before, I consider the missing horse a great point — a very strong point.”

  The Captain and Darrell Markham left the room at the same time.

  “I have an account to settle with you, Mr. Markham, for this morning’s work,” Captain Duke whispered to his accuser.

  “I do not fight with highwaymen,” Darrell answered proudly.

  “What, you still dare to insinuate—”

  “I dare to say that I don’t believe in this story of George Duke and his double. I believe that you proved an alibi by some juggling with the clock at the Black Bear, and I most firmly believe that you are the man who shot me!”

  “You shall pay for this,” hissed the Captain through his set teeth; “you shall pay double for every insolent word, Darrell Markham, before you and I have done with each other.”

  He strode away, after flinging one dark wicked look at his wife’s cousin, and returned to the cottage, where Millicent, pale and anxious, was awaiting the result of the morning.

  Darrell Markham left Compton by the mail coach that very night; and, poorer by the loss of his horse, his watch, and purse, set forth once more to seek his fortunes in cruel stony-hearted London.

  CHAPTER V. MILLICENT MEETS HER HUSBAND’S SHADOW.

  A FORTNIGHT after Darrell’s departure the good ship Vulture was nearly ready for another cruise, and Captain Duke rode off to Marley Water to superintend the final preparations.

  “I shall sail on the thirtieth, Milly,” he said, the day he left Compton; “and as I shan’t have time to ride over here and say good-bye to you, I should like you to come to Marley, and see me before I start.”

  “I will come, if you wish me to come, George,” she answered quietly. She was always gentle and obedient, something as a child might have been to a hard taskmaster, but in no way like a wife who loved her husband.

  “Very good. There’s a branch coach passes through here three times a week from York to Carlisle; it stops at Marley Water. You can come by that, Millicent.”

  “Yes, George.”

  The snow never melted upon Compton Moor throughout the dark January days. Millicent felt a strange dull aching pain at her heart as she stood before the door of the Black Bear, waiting for the Carlisle coach, and watching the dreary expanse of glistening white that stretched far away to the chill leaden-hued horizon, darkening already in the early winter afternoon. She had seen it often under the tremulous moonlight when Darrell Markham was lying on his sick bed. Dismal as that sad time had been, she looked back to it with a sigh. He was near her then, she thought, and now he was lost in the wild vortex of terrible London — sucked into that great Maelstrom of which she was so ignorant — far away from her and all thoughts of her — happy, it might be, amongst pleasant friends and companions, beautiful women and lighthearted men — lost to her perhaps for ever.

  Mrs. Sarah Pecker cried out indignantly at this wintry journey.

  “What does the Captain mean by it,” she said, “sending of a poor delicate lamb like you four-and-twenty mile in an old fusty stage-coach upon such a afternoon as this? If he wants you to catch your death, Miss Milly, he’s a-going the right way to bring about his wicked wishes.”

  The great heavy lumbering broad-shouldered coach drove up while Mrs. Pecker was still holding forth upon this subject. One or two of the inside passengers looked out and asked for brandy-and-water while the horses were being changed. Some of the outsides clambered down from the roof of the vehicle, and went into the Black Bear to warm themselves at the blazing fire in the parlour, and drink glasses of raw spirits. One man seated upon the box refused to alight, when asked to do so by another passenger. He sat with his face turned away from the inn, looking straight out upon the snowy moorland, while his fellow-travellers refreshed themselves; and he preserved the same attitude so long as the coach stopped.

  Even if this man’s face had been turned towards the little group at th
e door of the Black Bear, they would have had considerable difficulty in distinguishing his features, for he wore his three-cornered hat slouched over his eyes, and the collar of his thick horseman’s coat drawn close up to his ears.

  “He’s a grim customer up yonder,” said the man who had spoken to this outside passenger, designating him by a jerk of the head—” a regular grim customer. I wonder what he is, and where he’s going to.”

  Mistress Pecker assisted Millicent into the coach, settled her in a warm corner, and wrapped her camlet cloak about her.

  “You’d better have one of Samuel’s comforters for your throat, Miss Milly,” she said, “and one of his coats to wrap about your feet. It’s bitter weather for such a journey.”

  Millicent declined the coat and the comforter; but she kissed her old nurse as the coachman drew his horses together for the start.

  “God bless you, Sally,” she said; “I wish the journey was over and done with, and that I was back again with you.”

  The coach drove off before Mrs. Pecker could reply. “Poor dear child,” said the innkeeper’s wife, “to think of her going out alone and friendless on such a day as this. She wishes she was back with us, she says. I sometimes think there’s a look in her pool mournful blue eyes, as if she wished she was lying quiet and calm in Compton churchyard.”

  The high road from Compton to Marley Water wound its way across bleak and sterile moors, passing now and then a long straggling village or a lonely farm-house. The journey was longer by this road than by the moorland bridle-path, and it had been dark soma time when the stage-coach drove over the uneven pavement of the High Street of Marley Water.

  Millicent found her husband waiting for her at the inn where the coach stopped.

  “You’re just in time, Milly,” he said; “the Vulture sails to-night.”

  Captain Duke was stopping at a tavern on the quay. He put Millicent’s arm in his, and led her through the narrow High Street.