“The past is all forgiven long ago, dear Ringwood,” said his sister earnestly; “it would be ill for brother and sister if the love between them could not outlive old injuries, and be the brighter and the truer for old sorrows. You did not know what a cruel wrong you were doing me when you advised that wretched marriage. I have outlived the memory of my misery long ago. Ringwood, dear, I have led a tranquil life for years past, and it seems as if it had pleased God to set me free from the ties that seemed so heavy to bear.”
“You will be almost a rich woman after my death, Milly,” said her brother, with a more cheerful tone. “I have done a good deal in these last five years to improve the property, and you will find a hag full of guineas in the brass-handled bureau, where I keep all my papers and accounts. I think you may trust John Martin, the bailiff, and Lawson, and Thomas, and they will keep an eye upon the farm for your interest. You’ll have to grow a woman of business when I am gone, Milly, and it will be a fine change for you from yonder cottage in Compton High Street to this big house.”
“Ringwood, Ringwood, don’t speak of this!”
“But I must, Milly. It’s time to speak of these things when a man feels he has not an hour upon this side of the grave that he can call his own. I want you to promise me something, Millicent, before I die; for a promise made to a dying man is always binding.”
“Ringwood, dear, what is there I would not do for you?”
“I knew you wouldn’t refuse. Now listen. How long has Captain Duke been away?”
She thought by this sudden mention of her husband’s name that Ringwood’s mind was wandering.
“Seven years, dear, next January.”
“I thought so. Now, Milly, listen to me. When the month of January is nearly out, I want you to take a journey to London, and carry a letter from me to Darrell Markham.”
“I’ll do it, dear Ringwood, and would do more than that, if you wish. But why in January? Why not sooner?”
“Because it’s a fancy I have; a sick man’s fancy, perhaps. The letter is not written yet, but I’ll write it before I fall asleep again. Get me the pen and ink, Milly.”
“To-morrow, dearest, not to-night,” she pleaded; “you’ve been fatiguing yourself already with talking so much: write the letter to-morrow.”
“No, to-night,” he said impatiently; “this very night, this very hour. I shall fall into a fever of anxiety if I don’t write without a moment’s delay. It is but a few lines.”
His loving nurse thought it better to comply with his wishes than to irritate him by a refusal. She brought paper, pens, ink, sealing-wax, and seals, and a lighted candle, and arranged them on the little table by his bedside. She propped him up with pillows, so as to make his task as easy to him as possible, and then quietly withdrew to her seat by the hearth.
The reader knows how difficult penmanship was to Ringwood Markham even when in good health. It was a very hard task to him to-night. He laboured long and painfully with the spluttering quill pen, and wrote but a few lines after all. These he read and re-read with evident satisfaction; and then folding the big sheet of foolscap very carefully, he sealed it with a great splash of red wax and a weak impression of the Markham arms, and addressed in a feeble sprawling hand, with many blots, to Darrell Markham, Esq to be delivered to him by Millicent Duke at the close of January, 17 — .”
“I have done Darrell many a wrong,” he said, as he handed the letter to his sister; “but I think that this may repair all. It is my last will and testament, Milly; I shall make no other, for there is none to claim the property but you.”
“And you have left Darrell something, then?” she asked.
“Nothing but that letter. I trust to you to deliver it faithfully, and I know that Darrell will be content.”
* * * * *
Mrs. Sarah Pecker came to the Hall whenever she had a spare moment, to help Millicent in her task of nursing the dying man. She was with her at that last trying moment when the faint straws of life to which the young squire had clung floated one by one out of his feeble hands, and he sank into the unknown depths of Death’s pitiless ocean.
Friendly and loving faces were the last to fade away from the dying man’s eyes; soothing voices were the last to grow faint and strange upon his dull ears; gentle hands supported the fainting frame; cool fingers laid their touch upon the burning brow. It was better to die thus than to spill his blood on a sanded floor in ft tavern brawl, though he had been the most distinguished buck, duellist, bully, and swaggerer between Covent Garden and Pall Mall.
CHAPTER XII. CAPTAIN FANNY.
Six years had passed since that Christmas-eve upon which the foreign-looking pedlar had robbed Mrs. Sarah Pecker, and worked such a wonderful change for the better in the fortunes and social status of her husband Samuel. Six years had passed away, and it was Christmas time once more. Again Betty the cookmaid was busy plucking geese and turkeys; and again Mrs. Sarah stood at her ample dresser rolling out the paste for Christmas pies; again the mighty coal fire roared halfway up the chimney, and the capacious oven was like a furnace, and only to be approached with due precaution, — a mysterious cavern out of which good things seemed for ever issuing — big sprawling crusty golden-brown loaves, steaming batches of pies, small regiments of flat cakes of so little account, as to be flung without ceremony upon the bare hearth to grow cool at their leisure, and other cakes and confections too numerous to mention. Again was the loitering carrier expected with groceries from the market town; again did rich streams of a certain spicy perfume unknown to court perfumers, and commonly known as the odour of rum-punch, issue from the half-open doors of the parlour and the innermost sanctuary of the bar.
But although these Christmas preparations differed in no manner from those of a Christmas six years before, there were changes at the Boar — changes which the reader has already been told of. Mrs. Pecker had grown wondrously subdued in voice and manner. Something almost of timidity mingled with this new manner of the portly Sarah’s — something of a perpetual uneasiness, a continual dread, no one knew of what. So changed, indeed, was she in this respect, that Samuel had sometimes need to cheer her and console her when she was what he called “low,” and was fain to administer modest glasses of punch or comfortable hot suppers as restoratives to her sinking spirits.
While things were thus with Sarah, her worthy husband had very much improved under his better-half’ s new manner of treatment.
He was no longer afraid of his own customers nor of his own voice. He no longer trembled or blushed when suddenly addressed in conversation. He could venture to draw himself a mug of his own ale without looking nervously across his shoulder all the while, after the manner of a dishonest waiter who tampers with his master’s tap. Samuel Pecker was a new man; still a little given to believe in ghosts, perhaps, and to shake his head and groan ominously when coffin-shaped cinders flew out of the fire; still a little doubtful as to going anywhere alone in the dark; but for all that a very lion of courage and audacity compared to what he had been before the foreign-looking pedlar threw Mrs. Pecker into a swoon.
The Bear was especially gay this Christmas-eve, for a party of gentlemen had ridden over from York, and were dining in the white parlour, a state apartment on the first floor. They were to sleep that night and spend their Christmas-day at the inn, and the turkey lying limp and helpless in Betty’s lap was intended for them.
“And isn’t one of ’em a handsome one too?” said the cook, pulling vigorously at the biggest feathers. “You should go in and have a look at un, missus, — such black eyes, that pierce you through and through like a streak of lightning! and little white hands, just for all the world like Mrs. Duke’s, and all covered with diamonds and such likes. And ain’t he a saucy one, too? and ain’t the others afraid of him? The other two were for leaving here after dinner; and when he said he should stay, one of ’em asked if the place was — something, I couldn’t catch the word; but the dark-eyed gentleman burst out laughing, and told him he was a l
ily-livered rascal, and not fit company for gentlemen; and the other rattled his glass on the table, and said the Captain was right — only he swore awful!” added Betty, with solemn horror.
While the cook was amusing her mistress with these details, Samuel put his head in at the kitchen door. “Them bloods in the white parlour are rare noisy ones,” he said; “they want half-a-dozen of the old port, and there’s only three of ‘em, and they’ve had Madeira and claret already. I wish you’d go up to ‘em, Sarah, and give ’em a hint that they might be a little quieter. I’ll go down for the wine, if you’ll put yourself straight while I’m getting it.”
Sarah complied, wiped the flour from her hands, smoothed her cap-ribbons, drew on her mittens, and adjusted her ample stomacher, by the time Samuel emerged from the cellar with two cobweb-shrouded black bottles under each arm.
“I’ve brought four, Sally,” he said, as he landed the precious burden on the kitchen table. “I’ll carry them up for you, and you can bring a few glasses.”
The trio in the white parlour was certainly rather a riotous one. A pair of massive wax candles burned in solid silver candlesticks upon the polished oaken table, which was strewed with nut-shells, raisin-stalks, orange-peel, and nut-crackers, and amply garnished with empty bottles and glittering diamond-cut wine glasses. One of the party had flung himself back on his chair, and had planted his spurred heels upon this very dessert table, while he amused himself by peeling an orange and throwing the rind at his opposite neighbour, who, more than half tipsy, sat with his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands, staring vacantly at his tormentor The third member of the little party, and he who seemed far the most sober of the three, lounged with his back to the fire and his elbow leaning on the mantelpiece? and paused in the midst of some anecdote which he had been telling as Mrs. Pecker entered the room. His flashing black eyes, and his small white teeth, which glittered as he spoke, lit up his face, which, in spite of his evident youth, was wan and haggard — the face of a man prematurely old from excitement and dissipation; for the hand of Time during the last six years had drawn many a wrinkle about the restless eyes and determined mouth of Sir Lovel Mortimer, Baronet, alias Captain Fanny, highwayman, and, on occasion, housebreaker.
Heaven knows what there was in the appearance of any one of the party in the white parlour to overawe or agitate the worthy mistress of the Black Bear, but it is a sure thing that a faint and dusky pallor crept over Sarah Pecker’s face as she set the wine and glasses upon the table. She seemed nervous and uneasy under the strange dazzle of Captain Fanny’s black eyes. It has been said that they were not ordinary eyes; indeed, there was something in them which the physiognomists of to-day would no doubt have set themselves industriously at work to define and explain. They were not restless only. There was a look in them almost of terror — not of a terror of to-day or yesterday, but of some dim far-away time too remote for memory — the trace of some shock to the nervous system received long before the mind had power to note its force, but which had left its lasting seal upon one feature of the face.
Sarah Pecker dropped and broke one of her best wine glasses under the strange influence of these restless eyes. They fixed her gaze as if they had possessed some magnetic power. She followed every motion of them earnestly, almost inquiringly, till the highwayman addressed her.
“We have the extreme honour of being waited upon by the landlady of the Bear in her own gracious person, have we not?” he said gallantly, admiring his small jewelled hand as he spoke. He was but a puny wasted stripling this dashing captain, and it was only the extreme vitality in himself that preserved him from insignificance.
Now, at any other time, Sarah Pecker would have dropped a curtsey, smoothed her muslin apron, and asked the guests whether their dinner had been to their liking; if their rooms were comfortable; the wine agreeable to their taste, and some other such hospitable questions; but to-night she seemed tongue-tied, as if the restless light in the Captain’s eyes had almost magnetized her into silence.
“Yes,” she murmured, “I am Sarah Pecker.”
“And a very comfortable and friendly creature you look, Mrs. Pecker,” answered Captain Fanny, with a sublime air of patronage. “A recommendation in your own person to the hospitable shelter of the Bear. And, egad, madam! Compton-on-the-Moor has need of some pleasant place of entertainment for the unlucky traveller who finds himself by mischance in its dreary neighbourhood. Was there ever such a place, lads?” he added, turning to his two companions.
But Mrs. Sarah Pecker had been born in the village of Compton, and was by no means disposed to stand by and hear her native place so contemptuously spoken of. Turning her face a little away from the dashing knight of the road, as if it were easier to her to speak when out of the radius of those unquiet eyes, she said with some dignity, —
“Compton-on-the-Moor may be a retired place, gentlemen, being nigh upon a week’s journey from London, but it is a pleasant village in summer time, and there are a great many noble families about.”
“Ah! by the bye,” replied Captain Fanny, “we took notice of a big redbrick square-built house, standing amongst some fine timber upon a bit of rising ground half a mile on the other side of the village. A dull old dungeon enough it looked, with half the windows shut Up. Who does that belong to?”
“It is called Compton Hall, sir,” answered Sarah, “and it did belong to young Squire Ringwood Markham.”
“Ringwood Markham! A fair-faced lad with blue eyes and a small waist?”
“The same, sir.”
“I knew him six years ago in London.”
“Very likely, sir. Poor Master Ringwood had his fling of London life, and very little he got by it, poor boy. He’s gone now, sir. He was only buried three weeks ago.”
“Dead!” murmured Captain Fanny. “Poor Markham! I didn’t think to hear such news as that of him. But he and a good many of us have had a fancy for burning the candle at both ends, and I suppose we’ve no right to grumble if it burns out quickly.”
The young man said this in a musing tone that was not without a touch of melancholy. But he roused himself from this meditative mood in the next moment, and addressed Mrs. Pecker with his accustomed vivacity. “And Compton Hall belonged to Ringwood Markham?” he said.
“Yes, sir; and Compton Hall estate, which brings in an income of six or seven hundred a year.”
“And who does the Hall belong to now, then?” asked Captain Fanny.
“To his sister, sir, Mistress Millicent that was. Mrs. Duke.”
“Mrs. Duke! The wife of a sailor — one George Duke?”
“The widow of Captain George Duke, sir.”
“The widow! What, is George Duke dead?”
“Little doubt of that, sir. The Captain sailed from Marley Water seven years ago come January, and neither he nor his ship, the Vulture, have ever been heard of since.”
“And the widow of George Duke has come into a property worth six or seven hundred a year?”
“Yes, sir; the Hall estate must be worth that, if it’s worth a farthing.”
“And the only proof she has ever had of George Duke’s death is his seven years’ absence from Compton-on-the-Moor?”
“She could scarcely need a stronger proof, I should think, sir.”
“Couldn’t she!” exclaimed the young man with a laugh. “Why, Mrs. Sarah Pecker, I have seen so much of the strange chances and changes of this world, that I seldom believe a man is dead unless I see him put into his coffin, the lid screwed down upon him, and the earth shovelled into his grave: and even then there are some folks such slippery customers that I should scarcely be surprised to meet them at the gate of the churchyard. The world is wide enough outside Compton-on-the-Moor; and your sailor is a roving blade, who is apt to take his own pleasure abroad, forgetful of any one who may be waiting for him at home. Who knows that Captain Duke may not come back to-morrow to claim his wife and her fortune?”
“The Lord forbid!” said Mrs. Pecker earnestly; �
��I would rather not be wishing ill to any one: but sooner than poor Miss Millicent should see him come back to break her heart and waste her money, I would pray that the Captain of the Vulture may lie drowned and dead under the foreign seas.”
“A pious wish!” cried Captain Fanny, laughing. “However, as I don’t know the gentleman, Mrs. Pecker, I don’t mind saying, Amen. But as to seven years’ absence being proof enough to make a woman a widow, that’s a common mistake and a vulgar one, Mrs. Sarah, which I scarcely expected to hear of from a woman of your sense. Seven years — why, husbands have come back after seventeen!”
Mrs. Pecker made no answer to this. If her face was paler even than it had been before, it was concealed from observation as she bent over the dessert table collecting the used glasses upon her tray.
When she had left the room, and the three young men were once more alone, Captain Fanny burst into a peal of ringing laughter.
“Here’s news!” he cried: “split me, lads, here’s a joke! George Duke dead and gone, and George Duke’s widow with an estate that produces seven hundred a year. If that fool, Sulky Jeremiah, hadn’t quarrelled with his best friends, and given us the slip in that cursed ungrateful maimer, here would have been a chance for him!”
CHAPTER XIII. THE END OF JANUARY.
CAPTAIN FANNY, otherwise Sir Lovel Mortimer, did not leave the Black Bear until the morning after Christmas-day, when he and his two companions rode blithely off through the frosty December sunlight, after expressing much content with the festive fare provided by Mrs. Pecker; after paying the bill without so much as casting a glance at the items; after remembering the ostler, the chambermaid, the boots, and every other member of the comfortable establishment who had any claim to advance upon the generosity of the West-country baronet.
A noble gentleman, they said, in the kitchen at the Black Bear, handsome and free-spoken, reckless as a prince with his golden guineas and broad crown pieces — comfortable and substantial coins, sadly out of fashion now, but much affected in those homely days. A perfect gentleman, with charmingly lackadaisical, and no doubt high-bred manners, such as were of course common to the nobility alone. And then his eyes — those large shining black restless eyes, unquiet as midnight stars reflected on a storm-tossed ocean, and almost as wonderful. I do not mean that they said exactly these words in the kitchen at the Bear, but they said a great deal more or less to this effect about Captain Fanny’s lustrous orbs. Betty the cook made one remark, the utter inanity of which drew upon her the reprobation and ridicule of her fellow-servants. This foolish woman declared that Sir Lovel Mortimer’s eyes reminded her of the night on which the strange pedlar stole the spoons. She grew alarmingly obscure and unintelligible when asked if the baronet’s eyes reminded her of the spoons or the pedlar; and could only vaguely protest that they brought it all back to her mind somehow. —
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 57
