So entirely occupied were the domestics of the Black Bear in discussing their late distinguished visitor, that the news of a desperate highway robbery, accompanied by much violence, that had taken place near Carlisle on the night of December the twenty-third, made scarcely any impression upon them. Nor were they even very seriously affected by an attack upon the York mail, the tidings of which reached them two days after the departure of Sir Lovel and his companions.
The sojourn of a handsome young baronet at the Black Bear was a rare event, to be remembered and talked of for a twelvemonth at least; while violence, outrage, robbery, and murder upon the king’s highway were of everyday occurrence. London kept holiday every Monday morning, and went gipsying and sightseeing Tyburn wards. Thieves, retired from business, spade goodly fortunes by hunting down old comrades.
Children were hung without mercy for the stealing of three halfpence on that via sacra, the king’s highway; because the law — poor well-intentioned blundering monster as it was — could frame a statute, but could not make a distinction, and could only hang by the letter, where it might have pardoned according to the spirit.
So, in the kitchen at the Black Bear Mrs. Pecker’s retainers spent the few remaining December evenings in talking of the gay young visitors who had lately enlivened the hostelry by their presence; while Millicent Duke, looking fairer and paler than ever in her mourning gown, sat alone in the oak parlour at Compton Hall, with the brass-handled bureau open before her, trying to understand some farming accounts rendered by her bailiff.
Mrs. George Duke found faithful Sarah Pecker an inestimable comfort to her in her bereavement and accession to fortune. I think but for the help of that sturdy creature poor Millicent would have made Compton Hall and Compton farm a present to the stalwart Cumbrian bailiff, and would have gone quietly back to her cottage in the High Street, to wait for the coming of death or Captain George Duke, or any other calamity which was the predestined close of her joyless life. But Sarah Pecker was worth a dozen lawyers and half-a-dozen stewards. She attended at the reading of the will, in which her own name was recorded with a bequest of “fifty golden guineas, and a mourning ring containing my hair, in remembrance of much love and kindness, to cost ten guineas and no less.” She mastered all the bearings of that intricate document, in spite of the aforesaids,” and “hereinafter mentioneds,” and all the dreary technicalities which obscured its meaning, and knew more of it after one reading than even the lawyer who had drawn it up. She talked to Millicent about quarters of wheat, and hay, and turnips, till poor Mrs. Duke’s brain reeled, and she could only meditate with admiration on Sarah’s prodigious learning. The stalwart bailiff trembled before the mistress of the Black Bear, and went into long stammering explanations to account for a missing truss of hay that had been twisted into bands, lest he should be suspected of dishonesty in the transaction.
When all was duly settled and adjusted, Millicent Duke found herself almost a rich woman. She was rich enough, at any rate, to be considered a very wealthy person by the simple inhabitants of Compton-on-the-Moor.
The Hall was hers — the stout red-brick edifice, with its handsome heavy-framed windows, dating from the days of the Tudors, lighted by small diamond-shaped panes of glass, and bordered by flapping wreaths of ivy — ivy so old that its stems had grown gnarled and massive as the trunks of trees; the noble building, with its square stone-flagged entrance-hall and broad oaken staircase, up which you might have driven your coach and pair, had you been so foolishly inclined; the faded pictures and mouldering tapestry; the oak-panelled rooms, with their low ceilings, black oak like the wainscot, and their wide hearths and square open chimneys, built surely for traitors to hide in; the roomy rickety tumble - down, ivy - covered stables, crowned with weathercocks and dovecotes; the gardens and the shrubberies, with damp walks half choked with rank overgrowth, and tenanted by bold rabbits, who stared at you as an intruder if you ventured within their domain; the broad acres of meadow and arable land, not over rich, it is true, but sufficiently profitable withal — all these were the property of Millicent Duke, to have and to hold for herself alone; unless, indeed, the long missing husband, Captain George Duke, of the good ship Vulture, should return to claim a share in his wife’s newly acquired fortune.
The thought that there was & remote possibility, a shadowy chance of this, would send a cold chill to Millicent’s heart, and seem almost to stop its beating.
If he should come home! If, after all these years of fearful watching and waiting, these years of terror and suspense, in which she had trembled at the sound of every manly footstep, and shuddered at the sound of every voice which bore the faintest resemblance to that one voice which she dreaded to hear; if, after all, now that she had completely given him up — now that she was rich, and might perhaps by-and-by be happy — if, at this time of all others, the man who had been the scourge of her young life should return and claim her once more as his, to hold and to torture by the laws of God and man! A kind of distraction would take possession of her at the thought. She would deliver herself up to the horrible fancy until she could call up the image of the Captain of the Vulture standing on the threshold of the door, with the wicked vengeful light in his brown eyes, and the faint far-off breezy perfume of the ocean hovering about his chestnut hair. Then casting herself upon her knees, she would call upon Heaven to spare her from this terrible anguish — to strike her dead before that dreaded husband could return to claim her.
The diamond earring, the fellow of which Captain Duke had taken from his wife on the night of their parting at Marley Water, had been religiously kept by her in a little red morocco-covered jewel-box. She was too simple and conscientious a creature to dream of disobeying her husband’s commands. She looked sometimes at the solitary trinket, and seldom looked at it without praying that she might never see its fellow. She wished George Duke no harm. Her only wish was that she and he might never meet again. She would willingly have sold the Compton property, and would have sent him every farthing yielded by its sale, had she known him to be living, so that he had but remained away from her.
Millicent was the only person in Compton who entertained any doubt of Captain Duke’s decease. The seven years which had elapsed since his departure — years of absence, unbroken by a single line from himself, or by the smallest news of him from any accidental source; the common occurrence of wreck and disaster upon the seas; the suspicions entertained by many as to the Captain’s unlawful mode of life, all pointed to one conclusion — he was dead. He had gone to the bottom of the sea -with his own vessel, or had been hewn down by the cutlass of a Frenchman or the scimitar of a Moorish pirate. The story of Millicent’s meeting with her husband’s shadow upon the pier at Marley Water had never been forgotten, and the recollection of that story confirmed the inhabitants of Compton in their opinion as to the fate of George Duke.
Of course Millicent told her faithful friend Sarah Pecker of the letter written by Ringwood a few nights before his death, and to be delivered by her to Darrell Markham.
The two women looked long and inquisitively at the folded sheet of foolscap, with its sprawling red seal, wondering what mysterious lines were written on the paper: but the wishes of Millicent’s dead brother were sacred; and early in January Mrs. Duke began to think of her formidable journey to London.
She had never been farther away from home than on the occasion of a brief visit to the city of York, and the thought of finding her way to the great metropolis filled her with something almost approaching terror. I doubt if an Englishwoman of this present year of grace would think as much of a voyage to Calcutta as poor Millicent thought of this southward journey; but her staunch friend Sarah was ready to stand by her in this as in every other crisis of life.
“You don’t suppose you’re going to find Mr. Darrell Markham all by yourself, do you, Miss Millicent?” asked Sarah, when the business was discussed.
“Why, who should go with me, Sally dear?”
“Ah, who indeed?”
answered Sarah, rather sarcastically; “who but Sally Pecker, of the Black Bear, that nursed you when you was a baby; who else, I should like to know?”
“You, Sally?”
“Yes, me. I’d send Samuel with you, Miss Millicent dear — for there’s something respectable in the looks of a man, and we could put him into one of the old Markham liveries, and call him your servant; but, Lord have mercy on us! what a lost baby that poor husband of mine would be in the city of London! I cannot Bend him to the market town for a few groceries without knowing before the time comes that he’ll bring raisins instead of sugar, or have his pocket picked while he stands staring at some merry-andrew. No, Miss Millicent; Samuel Pecker’s the best of men, but the best of men may be a blessed baby in the way of business; and you don’t want a helpless infant to put you in the right way for finding Mr. Darrell. So you must take me with you, my dear, and make the best of a bad bargain.”
“My dear good kind faithful Sally! But what will they do without you at the Bear? It will be near upon a fortnight’s journey to London and back, allowing for some loss of time in town. What will they do without you, Sally?”
“Why, do their best, Miss Millicent, to be sure; and a pretty muddle I shall find the place in when I come back, I dare say. But don’t let the thought of that worry you, Miss Milly; I shan’t mind it a bit. I sometimes fancy things go too smooth at the Bear, and I think the servants do their work well for sheer provocation.”
Sarah Pecker was so thoroughly determined upon accompanying Millicent, that Mrs. George Duke yielded with a good grace, thanked her stout protectress, and set to work to trim a mourning hat with ruches and streamers of black crape. It was Sarah who devised the trimmings for this coquettish little hat, and it was Sarah who found some jet ornaments amongst a chestful of clothes which had belonged to Millicent’s mother, wherewith to adorn Mrs. Duke’s fair neck and arms.
“There is no need for Mr. Darrell to find you changed for the worse in these seven years, Miss Milly,” Sarah remarked, as she fastened the jet necklace round Millicent’s slender throat. “These black clothes are vastly becoming to your fair skin; and I scarce think that our Darrell will be ashamed of his country cousin, for all the fine London madams he may have seen since he left Compton.”
Mrs. Sarah Pecker had a natural and almost religious horror of the fair inhabitants of the metropolis, whom she dignified with the generic appellation of “London madams.” She firmly believed the feminine portion of the population of that unknown city to be, without exception, frivolous, dissipated, faro-playing, pug-dog worshipping, play-going, masquerade-haunting, painted, patched, and bedizened creatures, whose sole end and aim was to lure honest young country squires from legitimate attachments to rosy-cheeked kinswomen at home.
It was a cheerless and foggy morning that welcomed Millicent and her sturdy protectress to the great metropolis. Mrs. Pecker, putting her head out of the coach window at the village of Islington, saw a thick mass of blackness and cloud looming in a valley before her, and was told by a travelled passenger that it (the blackness and the cloud) was London. It was at a ponderous roomy rambling old inn, in the heart of the City, that Millicent Duke and Sarah were deposited, with the one small trunk that formed all their luggage. Mrs. Pecker entered into conversation with a smart-looking chambermaid, who brought the travellers a very indifferent breakfast. She asked a few questions about the town, while Millicent, worn out with the fatigue of the night journey, fell asleep on a hard uncomfortable looking sofa, and in the course of conversation took care to inform the chambermaid that the pretty fair-faced lady in mourning, who looked so girlish and innocent as she lay asleep, was one of the richest women in all Cumberland, find might have travelled post all the way from Compton to Snow Hill, had she been pleased so to spend her money. Mrs. Pecker, who had at first rather inclined towards the chambermaid, as a simple plain-spoken young person, took offence at the Cool way in which she received this information, and classed her forthwith amongst the “London madams.”
“Cumbrian gentry count for little with you, I make no doubt,” Sarah remarked, with ironical humility; “but there are many in Cumberland who could buy up your fine town folks, and leave enough for themselves after they’d made the bargain.”
After having administered this dignified reproof to the chambermaid, who (no doubt penetrated and abashed) seemed in a great hurry to get out of the room, Sarah condescended to ask the way to St. James’s Square, which she evidently expected to find somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood.
She was told that a coach or a chair would take her to the desired locality, which was at the Court end of London, and much too far for her to walk, more especially as she was a stranger, and not likely to find her way thither.
Mrs. Pecker stared hard at the chambermaid, as if she would very much have liked to convict her of giving a false direction; but being unable to do so, submitted to be advised, and ordered a coach to be ready in an hour.
The “London madams” Mrs. Pecker saw from the coach window, as she and her fair charge were driven from the City to St. James’s, looked rather pinched and blue-nosed in the bitter January morning. The snow upon the pavement was a black compound unknown at Compton, and the darkness of the foggy atmosphere rendered the worthy Sarah rather uneasy as to the possible speedy advent of an earthquake.
The hostess of the Black Bear had neither read Mr. Creech’s translation from Horace, nor Mr. Alexander Pope’s quotation from the same, but she had resolutely determined on this her visit to London to preserve her dignity by a stolid and unmoved demeanour. Not to admire was all the art she knew! She resolved that, from the whispering gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral to the merry-andrews in Bartholomew Fair, from the waxworks in Westminster Abbey to the wild beasts in the Tower, nothing she beheld should wring an exclamation of surprise from her tightly compressed lips. Although the distance between Eastcheap and Pall Mall appeared to her almost illimitable, she scrupulously preserved her equanimity, and looked from the coach window at the crowded London streets with as calm and critical an eye as that with which she would have examined à field of wheat in her native Cumberland.
All the busy panorama of the metropolis passed before the eyes of Millicent Duke as a dim and cloudy picture, in which no figure was distinct or palpable. She might have been driven close beside a raging fire, and yet have never beheld the flames; or across a cataract, without hearing the roar of the boisterous waters. One thought and one image filled her heart and brain, and she had neither eyes nor fears for the busy world outside the coach windows, or for Sarah Pecker on the seat opposite to her.
She was going to see Darrell Markham.
For the first time after seven years — for the first time since she stood beside the bed upon which he lay insensible, with blood-bedabbed hair and pale lips that only uttered wandering words — she was to see him again — to see him — and perhaps to find him changed! So changed in that long-lapse of time, that it would seem as if the old Darrell was dead and gone, and only a stranger, with some trick of his face, left in his stead.
And amongst all the other changes time had worked in this dear cousin, it might be that the old hopeless love had faded out, and that a newer and brighter image had replaced Millicent’s own pale face in Darrell Markham’s heart. He was still unmarried. She knew as much as that by his letters to Sarah Pecker, which always came at intervals of about three months to tell of his own whereabouts, and to ask for tidings of Compton. Perhaps it was his poverty that had kept him so long a bachelor! A sudden crimson rushed to Mrs. Duke’s face as she thought of this. If this were indeed so, would it be more than cousinly — would it be more than her duty to share her own ample fortune with her dearest friend and nearest of kin, and to bid him marry the woman of his choice and be happy?
She made a picture of herself, with her pale face and mourning gown, bestowing her blessing and half of her estate upon Darrell and some defiant brunette beauty, with glowing cheeks and lustrous eyes altogether un
like her own. She acted over the imaginary scene, and composed a pretty self-abnegating, appropriate little speech with which to address the happy bride and bridegroom. It was so affecting a picture that Mrs. Duke wept quietly for five minutes with her face turned towards the opposite window to that out of which Mrs. Pecker was looking.
The tears were still in her eyes when the coach stopped before the big town mansion of Darrell Markham’s Scottish patron. That old feeling at her heart seemed to stop its beating, as the coachman’s loud rap resounded from the massive brazen knocker. The blinds were all down, and wisps of loose straw lay about the doorsteps.
“My lord is out of town, perhaps,” said Mrs. Pecker, “and Mr. Darrell with him. O, Miss Milly, if we have had our journey for nothing!”
Millicent Duke had no power to reply. The doubt suggested by Mrs. Pecker was unspeakably painful to her. She was prepared for sudden death, but not for slow torture. For seven years she had lived in comparative contentment without seeing Darrell Markham; she felt now that she could scarcely exist seven minutes without looking at that familiar face.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 58
