Sally Pecker was the only member of the little party who took any especial notice of the weather. Darrell’s cheeks glowed with the crimson flush of pleasant excitement, his eyes shone with the light of hope and love; and if Millicent trembled and grew pale, she knew not whether it was from the bitter cold without, or that icy shuddering terror which filled her heart, and over which she had no control.
The coach was waiting before the door of the lodging-house, and Mrs. Pecker was putting the last finishing touches to the festooned bunches of Millicent’s brocaded gown, and the soft folds of the quilted petticoat beneath, when this feeling broke forth into words; and Mrs. George Duke, falling on her knees at Darrell’s feet, lifted up her clasped hands and appealed to him thus: —
“O, Darrell, Darrell, I feel as if this was a wicked thing that we are going to do! What evidence have I that George Duke is dead? and what right have I to give my hand to you, not knowing whether it may not still belong to another? Delay this marriage. “Wait, wait, and more certain news may reach us; for something tells me that we have no justification for the vows we are going to take to-day.”
She spoke with such a solemn fervour, with such an earnestness in every word, with a light that seemed almost the radiance of inspiration shining in her blue eyes, that Darrell Markham would have been led to listen to her almost as seriously as she had spoken, but for the interference of Mrs. Sarah Pecker. That aggrieved matron, however, showered forth a whole volley of indignant exclamations, such as “Stuff and nonsense, child!” and “Who ever heard such a pother about nothing?” and “I call it a most ingratitude to me, after my sitting at work at the wedding dress till my fingers froze upon my hands,” and a great deal more to the same effect. And then having talked herself breathless, the excited Sarah hustled Millicent and Darrell down the staircase, and into the coach, before either of them had time to remonstrate.
St. Mary’s church in the Strand — called at this time the new church in the Strand — had been selected by Darrell for the performance of the ceremony; and on the way thither Mrs. Pecker devoted herself to lamentations on the performance of this London wedding.
“Not so much as a bell ringing,” she said; “and if it had been at Compton, they’d have made the old steeple rock again, to do honour to the squire’s daughter.”
It was a brief drive from the lodging near Covent Garden to St. Mary’s church in the Strand. The broad stone flags before the sacred edifice were slippery with frozen sleet and mud, and Darrell had to support his cousin’s steps, half carrying her from the coach to the door. The church was dark in the wintry morning; and Romeo, breaking into the tomb of the Capulets, could scarcely have found himself in a gloomier building than that which Darrell entered with his shivering bride.
Mrs. Sarah Pecker lingered behind to give some directions to the coachman; having done which, she was about to follow the young people, when she was violently jostled by a stout porter, laden with parcels, who ran against her, and nearly knocked her down.
Indeed, the pavement being slippery, it is a question whether the dignified hostess of the Black Bear would not have entirely lost her footing but for the friendly interposition of a muscular though slender arm in a claret-coloured velvet coat-sleeve, which was thrust out to save her, while a foppish voice drawled a reproof to the porter.
Poor Sally Pecker, saved from the collision, was once more like to fall at the sound of this effeminate voice, for it was the very same which she had heard a month before in her best room at the Black Bear, and the arm which had saved her from falling was that of Sir Lovel Mortimer, the West-country baronet.
Mrs. Sarah would scarcely have recognized him had she not heard his voice, for he was wrapped in great woollen mufflers, which half buried the lower part of his face, and, instead of the flowing flaxen wig he IT usually affected, he wore to-day a brown George, which was by no means so becoming. But under his slouched beaver hat, and above the many folds of his woollen mufflers, shone the restless black eyes which, once seen, were not easily to be forgotten.
“Sir Lovel Mortimer!” exclaimed Mrs. Pecker, clasping her broad hands about the young man’s arm, and staring at him as one aghast.
“Hush, my good soul; you’ve no need to be so ready with my name,” he said, looking round him suspiciously as he spoke. “Why, what ails the woman?” he cried presently, as Sarah still stood staring at her deliverer’s face with the same uneasy bewildered wondering expression with which she had regarded him on his visit to Compton.
“O, sir, forgive a poor childless woman for looking over-hard at you. I’ve never been able to get your honour’s face out of my head since last Christmas night.”
Captain Fanny laughed gaily.
“I’m pretty well used to making an impression upon the fair sex,” he said; “and there are many who have taken care to get the pattern of my face by heart before this. Why, strike me blind, if it is not our worthy hostess of the Cumbrian village, where we ate such a glorious Christmas dinner. Now, what in the name of all that’s wonderful has brought you to London, ma’am?”
“A wedding, your honour.”
“A wedding! — your own, of course? Then I’m just in time to salute the bride.”
“The wedding of Mrs. George Duke with her first cousin, Mr. Darrell Markham.”
“Mrs. George Duke, the widow, whose husband is away at sea?”
“The same, sir.”
Captain Fanny pursed up his lips and gave a low but prolonged whistle. “So, so, Mrs. Pecker, that is the business which has brought you all the way from Cumberland to the Strand. A strange business, Mrs Pecker, a very strange business — but no affair of mine as you’ll say, perhaps. Pray present my best compliments to the bride and bridegroom, and good-day to you.”
He bowed gallantly to the innkeeper’s wife, and hurried off. Sarah Pecker stood looking after him with an eager yearning gaze; but his slender figure was soon lost amidst the crowd of pedestrians.
A shivering parson in a tumbled surplice read the marriage service, and a grim beadle gave Millicent to “this man,” in consideration of a crown-piece which Darrell gave him for his trouble. The trembling girl could not but glance behind her as the clergyman read that preliminary passage which called on anyone knowing any just cause or impediment why these two persons should not be joined together, to come forward and declare the same. She looked back with a foolish fear that she might see George Duke advance with his hand raised to arrest the ceremony.
One of the ponderous doors of the church was ajar, and a biting frozen wind blew in from the open street; but there was no Captain George Duke lurking in the shadow of the doorway, or hiding behind a pillar, ready to come forth and protest against the marriage.
Had the Captain of the Vulture been in waiting for this purpose, he must have lost no time in carrying it into effect; for the shivering parson gave brief opportunity for interference, and rattled through the solemn service at such a rate that Darrell and Millicent Were man and wife before Mrs. Pecker had recovered from the surprise of her unexpected encounter with Captain Fanny.
The snow was falling in real earnest when Millicent, Darrell, and Sarah took their seats that night in the comfortable interior of the York mail, and the chilly winter dawn broke next morning upon whitened fields and hedges, and far-off distances and hill-tops that shone out white against the blackness of the sky. All the air seemed thick with snow-flakes throughout that long homeward journey; but Darrell and Millicent might have been travelling through au atmosphere of melted sapphires and under a cloudless Italian heaven for aught they knew to the contrary; for the sometime wife and widow of George Duke had forgotten all old sorrows in the absorbing thought, that she and Darrell were to go henceforth and for ever side by side in life’s journey. This being so, it mattered little whether they went northward through the bleak January weather, or travelled some rose-bestrewn path under the impossible azure of the brightest skies that were ever painted on a fire-screen or a tea-board.
; So Millicent abandoned herself to the delight of Darrell’s presence, and had well-nigh forgotten that she had ever lived away from him. She was with him, sheltered and protected by his love, and all the vague doubts and terrors of the wedding morning had vanished out of her mind. It seemed as if she had left her fears in the stony London Church from which she had emerged as Darrell Markham’s wife. She had felt a shadowy apprehension of some shapeless trouble hovering near at hand, some unknown sorrow ready to fall upon her and crush her; but she felt this apprehension no longer. Nothing had occurred to interrupt the marriage. It seemed to her, therefore, as if the marriage, being permitted by Providence, must needs be happy.
The travellers reached York on the third day from that of the wedding; and here it was decided that they should finish the journey in a postchaise, instead of waiting for the lumbering branch coach that travelled between York and Compton.
It was twilight when the four horses of the last relay swept across the white moorland and dashed into the narrow Compton High Street. Past the forge and the little cottage Millicent had lived in so long — past the village shop, the one great emporium where all the requirements of Compton civilization were to be purchased — past groups of idle children, who whooped and hallooed at the postchaise for no special reason, but from a vague conviction that any persons travelling in such a vehicle must be necessarily magnates of the land, and bent upon some errand of festivity and rejoicing — past every familiar object in the old place, until the horses drew up, with a suddenness that sent the lumbering chaise rocking from side to side, before the door of the Black Bear, and under the windows of that very room in which Darrell Markham had lain so long a weary invalid, pining for one glance of the beloved eyes, one tender touch from the beloved hand.
The reason of this arrangement was that Mrs. Pecker, knowing the scanty accommodation to be obtained at Compton Hall, had sent on an express from York to bid Samuel prepare the best dinner that had ever been eaten within the walls of the Black Bear, to do honour to Mr and Mrs Darrell Markham.
In her eagerness to ascertain if this message had been duly acted upon, Sarah was the first to spring from the postchaise, leaving Darrell and Millicent to alight at their leisure.
She found Samuel upon the door-step; not the easy self-assured, brisk and cheerful Samuel of late years, but the pale-faced vacillating feeble-minded being of the old dispensation; an unhappy creature, who looked at his ponderous better-half with a deprecating glance, which seemed to say, “Don’t be violent, Sarah; it is not my fault.”
But Mrs. Pecker was in too great a hurry to notice these changes. She dashed past her husband into the spacious hall, and glanced with considerable satisfaction towards an open door, through which was to be seen the oak parlour, where, on a snowy table-cloth, glittered the well-polished plate of the Pecker family, under the light of half-a-dozen wax candles.
“The dinner’s ready, Samuel?” she said.
“Done to a turn, Sarah,” he replied dolefully. “A turkey, bigger than the one we cooked at Christmas; a sirloin; a pair of capons, boiled; a plum pudding, and a dish of Christmas pies. I hope, poor things, they may enjoy it!” added Mr. Pecker, in a tone that was positively funereal.
Mrs. Sarah Pecker turned sharply round upon her husband, and stared with something of her old glance of contempt at his pale scared face.
“Enjoy it!” she said; “I should think they would enjoy it, indeed, after the cold journey they’ve had since breakfast-time this morning. Why, Samuel Pecker,” she added, looking at her dismal spouse more earnestly than before, “what on earth is the matter with you? When I want you to be most brisk and cheerful, and to have everything bright and joyful about the place to do honour to Miss Milly and her loving husband, my own handsome Master Darrell, here you are quaking and quavering, and seemingly took with one of your old fits of the doldrums. What’s the matter with you, man? and why don’t you go out and bring Mrs. Markham and her husband in, and offer your congratulations?”
Samuel shook his head mournfully.
“Wait a bit, Sarah,” he said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper, “wait a bit! It will all come in good time, and I dare say it’s all for the best; but I was took aback at first by it, and it threw me a little backward with the cooking, for it seemed as if neither me nor Betty could put any heart into the basting or the gravies afterwards. It seemed hard, you know, Sarah, when it first came upon me all of a sudden; and the more I think of it the harder it seems.”
“What seems hard? — What! what!” cried Sarah, some indistinct terror chilling her very blood; “what is it, Samuel? — have you lost your speech?”
It seemed indeed for a moment as if Mr. Pecker had been suddenly deprived of the use of that faculty. He shook his head from side to side, swallowed and gasped alternately, and then grasping Sarah by the arm, pointed with his disengaged hand to another half-open door exactly opposite to that of the room in which the dinner-table was laid.
“Look there!” he ejaculated in a hoarse whisper close to Sarah’s ear.
Following the direction of Samuel’s extended hand, Mrs. Pecker looked into a room which was generally devoted to the ordinary customers at the Bear, but which on this winter’s evening had but one occupant.
This solitary individual was a man wearing a dark-blue travel-stained coat, jack-boots, and loose brown curling hair tied with a ribbon. His back was turned to Sarah and her husband, and he was bending over the sea-coal fire with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his hands. While Mrs. Sarah Pecker stood as if transfixed, staring silently at this traveller, Darrell followed Millicent into the hall, and thence into the oak parlour, closing the door behind him.
“O, Samuel, Samuel! how shall I ever tell her?” exclaimed Mrs. Pecker.
She turned towards the oak parlour, as if she would have gone straight to Millicent; but Samuel caught her by the arm.
“Let ’em have their dinner first, Sarah,” he said pleadingly. “It’ll seem hard enough whenever it comes; but it might seem harder if it came upon an empty stomach.”
CHAPTER XVI. THE THIRD APPEARANCE OF THE CAPTAIN’S DOUBLE.
WHILE the wedding-dinner was being eaten in the oak parlour, Mrs. Sarah Pecker and her husband sat looking at each other with pale anxious faces within the sacred precincts of the bar.
In vain had Millicent and Darrell implored their old and faithful friend to sit down and partake of the good cheer which had been prepared at her expense.
“No, Miss Milly dear,” she said, “it isn’t for me to sit at the same table with Squire Markham’s daughter and — and — her — cousin. In trouble and sorrow, dear — and surely trouble and sorrow seem to be the lot of all of us — I’ll be true to you to the end of life; and if I could save your young life from one grief, dear, I think I’d throw away my own to do it.”
She took Millicent in her stout arms as she spoke, and covered the fair head with passionate tears and kisses.
“O, Miss Milly, Miss Milly,” she cried, “it seems as if I was strong enough to save you from anything; but I’m not, my dear — I’m not!”
It was Millicent’s turn to chide and comfort the stout-hearted Sarah. She had completely forgotten all her own doubts and fears, and was so happy in this return to Compton with the devoted lover of her youth, the fond protector of her childhood. The past, with all its sorrow, seemed to have faded from her like a forgotten dream, and the fair horizon of the future shone upon her bright and cloudless as a summer morning. She looked at Sarah with wondering eyes, astonished at the honest creature’s unwonted emotion.
“Why, Sally dear,” she said, “you seem quite out of spirits this evening.”
“I am a little worn and harassed, Miss Milly; but never you mind that — never you think of me, dear; only remember that if I could save you from grief and trouble, I’d give my life to do it.”
Mrs. Pecker hurried from the room before Millicent could question her further; but her ominous words had left a vague sense of
apprehension in the breast of Darrell’s loving wife. The bright look of perfect happiness had faded from her face when she seated herself opposite her husband, at the table which Samuel had caused to be loaded with such substantial fare as might have served to regale a party of stalwart farmers at an audit dinner.
The traveller sitting over the fire in the common parlour was still alone. He had been served with a bowl of rum-punch; but Mr. Samuel Pecker had not waited upon him in person.
“You haven’t spoke to him, then, Samuel?” asked Mrs. Pecker.
“No, Sarah, no; nor he to me. I saw him a-comin’ in at the door like a evil spirit, as I’ve half a mind he is; but I hadn’t the courage to face him, so I crept into the passage quietly and listened agen the door, while he was askin’ all sorts of questions about Compton Hall, and poor Miss Milly, and one thing and another. And at first I was in hopes it was my brain as was unsettled, and that it was me as was in a dream like, and not him as was come back; and then he ordered a bowl of rum-punch, and then I knew it was him, for you know, Sarah, rum-punch was always his liquor.”
“How long was it before we got home, Samuel?”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 60
