“When he came?”
“Yes.”
“Nigh upon an hour.”
“Only an hour — only an hour,” groaned Sarah: “if it had pleased Providence to have taken his life before that hour, what a happy release for them two poor innocent creatures in yonder room!”
“Ah, what a release indeed!” echoed Samuel. “He’s sittin’ with his back to the door: if somebody could go behind him sudden with a kitchen poker,” added the innkeeper, looking thoughtfully at Sarah’s stout arm; “but then,” he continued, reflectively, “there’d be the body; and that would be against it. If you come to think of it, the leading inconvenience of a murder is that there’s generally a body. But I suppose it’s only right it should be so; for if it wasn’t for bodies, murders would be uncommon easy.”
Sarah did not appear particularly struck by the brilliancy of her husband’s discourse; she sat in her own particular arm-chair before the old-fashioned fireplace, with her hands clasped upon her knees, rocking herself to and fro, and repeating mournfully, —
“O, if it had but pleased Providence to take him before that hour! — if it had but pleased Providence!” She remembered afterwards that as she said these words there was a feeling in her heart tantamount to an inarticulate prayer that some species of sudden death might overtake the traveller in the common parlour.
Neither Sarah nor her husband waited upon the newly-married pair. The chambermaid took in the dishes, and brought them out again almost untouched. Mr and Mrs. Pecker sat in the bar, and the few customers who came to the Black Bear that night were sent into a little sitting-room next to the oak parlour, and on the opposite side of the hall to that chamber in which the solitary traveller drank his rum-punch.
It was striking eight by Compton church, and by the celebrated eight-day oaken clock that had belonged to Samuel Pecker’s mother, when this traveller came out of the common parlour, and after paying his score and wrapping a thick cashmere shawl about his neck, strode out into the snowy night.
He paid his score to the girl who had taken him the punch, and he did not approach the bar, in the inner-most recesses of which Sarah Pecker sat with her knitting-needles lying idle in her lap, and her husband staring hopelessly at her from the other side of the fireplace.
“He’s gone to the Hall, Samuel,” said Mrs. Pecker, as the inn-door closed with a sonorous bang, and shut the traveller out into the night. “Who’s to tell her, poor dear? — who’s to tell her?”
Samuel shook his head vaguely.
“How pleasant it would be if he could lose himself in the snow any way between this and Compton Hall!” he said thoughtfully. “I’ve read somewheres in a book of somewheres in foreign parts, where there’s travellers and dogs, and where they’re always a-doin’ it, only the dogs save ‘em; besides which there was the old woman hat left Winstell market late on a Christmas night, that year as we had so many snowstorms, and was never heard of again.”
Mrs. Pecker not appearing to take any special comfort from these rather obscure remarks, Samuel relapsed into melancholy silence.
Sarah sat in her old position, rocking herself to and fro, only murmuring now and then, —
““Who’s to tell her? Poor innocent child! she was against marrying Master Darrell from the first to the last; and it was me that helped to drive her to it.”
Half an hour after the departure of the traveller, Darrell Markham opened the door of the oak parlour, and Millicent came out into the hall equipped for walking.
Her new husband’s loving hands had adjusted the wrappers that were to protect her from the piercing cold; her husband’s strong arm was to support her in the homeward walk, and guide her footsteps through the snow. To walk home through the winter night with him was better than to ride in the grandest carriage that ever was built for a queen. No more loneliness — no more patient endurance of a dull and joyless life. A happy future stretched before her, as fair to look upon as a long flower-begemmed vista in the wood she had played in when she was a child.
Sarah took up her knitting-needles, and made a show of being busy, as Millicent and Darrell came out into the hall, but she was not to escape so easily.
“Sally dear, you’ll bid me good night, won’t you?” Millicent said tenderly.
Mrs. Pecker came out of her retreat in the bar, and once more took her old master’s daughter in her arms.
“O, Miss Milly, Miss Milly,” she cried, “I’m a little dull and a little cast down like to-night, and I’m all of a tremble, dear. I haven’t strength to talk to you: only remember in any trouble, my darling, always remember to send for Sally Pecker, and she’ll stand by you to the last.”
“Sally, Sally, what is it?” asked Millicent tenderly; “I know something is wrong. Is it anything that has happened to you, Sally?”
“No, no, no, dear.”
“Or to any one connected with you?”
“No, no.”
“Then what is it, Sally?”
“O, don’t ask me; don’t, for pity’s sake, ask me, Miss Millicent;” and, without another word, Sarah Pecker broke from the embrace of the soft arms which were locked lovingly about her neck, and ran back into the bar for shelter.
“I couldn’t tell her, Samuel,” she whispered in her husband’s ear—” I couldn’t tell her though I tried. The words was on my lips, but something rose in my throat and choked all the voice I had to say ’em with. Now, look you here, Samuel, and mind you do what I tell you faithful, without making any stupid mistakes.”
“I will, Sarah; I’ll do it faithful, if it’s to walk through fire and water; though that ain’t likely, fire and water not often coming together, as I can see.”
“You’ll get the lantern, Samuel, and you’ll go with Mr. Darrell and Miss Millicent to light them to the Hall; and when you get there you won’t come away immediately, but you’ll wait and see what happens, and bring me back word, especially—”
“Especially what, Sarah?”
“If they find him there.”
“I’ll do it faithful, Sarah. I often bring you the wrong groceries from market, and I know I’m trying to the mildest temper; but I’ll do this faithful, for my heart’s in it.”
So Millicent and Darrell went out into the snowy night, as the traveller had gone before them.
Samuel Pecker attended with the lantern, always dexterously contriving to throw a patch of light exactly on that one spot in the road where it was most unlikely for Darrell and Millicent to tread. A very will-o’-the-wisp was the light from Samuel’s lantern; now shining on the topmost twig of a leafless hedge, now glimmering at the bottom of a ditch, now far ahead, now shooting off to the left, now darting suddenly to the extreme right, but never shedding one ray upon the way that he and his companions had to go. The feathery snowflakes drifting on the moors shut out the winter sky till all the atmosphere seemed blind and thick with woolly cloud. The snow lay deep on every object in the landscape — house-top and window-ledge, chimney and porch, hedge and ditch, tree and gate-post, village street and country road, all melted and blotted away in one mass of unsullied whiteness; so that each familiar spot seemed changed, and a new world just sprung out of chaos could hardly have been more strange to the inhabitants of the old one.
Compton Hall was situated about half a mile from the village street, and lay back from the high road, with a waste of neglected shrubbery and garden before it. The winding carriage-way, leading from the great wooden entrance-gates to the house, was half choked by the straggling and unshorn branches of the shrubs that grew on either side of it. There were few carriage folks about Compton-on-the-Moor, and the road had been little used save by foot-passengers.
At the gate Darrell Markham stopped and took the lantern from Mr. Pecker’s hand.
“The path is rather troublesome here,” he said; “perhaps I’d better light the way myself, Samuel.”
It was thus that the light of the lantern being cast upon the pathway straight before them, Millicent happened to percei
ve footsteps upon the snow.
These footsteps were those of a man, and led from the gates towards the house: the feet could but just have trodden the path, for the falling snow was fast filling in the traces of them.
“Who can have come to the Hall so late?” exclaimed Millicent.
She happened to look at Samuel Pecker as she spoke.
The innkeeper stood staring helplessly at her, his teeth audibly chattering in the quiet night.
Darrell Markham laughed at his wife’s alarm.
“Why, Milly,” he said, “the poor little hand resting on my arm trembles as if you were looking at the footmarks of a ghost — though I suppose, by the bye, that ghostly feet scarce leave any impression behind them. Come, Milly, come, I see the light of a fire in your father’s favourite parlour. Come, dearest, this cold night is chilling you to the heart.”
Something had indeed chilled her to the heart, but it was no external influence of the January Weather. Some indefinable instinctive terror had taken possession of her on seeing those footmarks in the snow. Darrell led her to the house. A terrace built of honest red brick, and surmounted by grim stone vases of hideous shape, ran along the façade of the mansion in front of the windows on the ground floor. Darrell and Millicent ascended some side steps leading to this terrace, followed by Mr. Pecker.
To reach the front door they had to pass several windows; amongst others that window from which the fire-light shone. Passing this it was but natural they should look for a moment at the chamber within.
The light from a newly kindled fire was flickering upon the sombre oaken panelling; and close beside the hearth, with his back to the window, sat the same traveller whom Samuel Pecker had last seen beneath his own roof. The uncertain flame of the fire, shooting up for a moment in a vivid blaze, only to sink back and leave all in shadow, revealed nothing but the mere outline of this man’s figure, and revealed even that but dimly, yet at the very first glance through the uncurtained window Millicent Duke uttered a great cry, and falling on her knees in the snow, sobbed aloud, —
“My husband! My husband, returned alive to make me the guiltiest and most miserable of women!”
She grovelled on the snowy ground, hiding her face in her hands and wailing piteously.
Darrell lifted her in his arms and carried her into the house. The traveller had heard the cry, and stood upon the hearth, with his back to the fire, facing the open door; and the traveller was in sorry truth the Captain of the Vulture — that person of all others upon earth whose presence was most terrible to Darrell and Millicent.
In the dusky shadow of that fire-lit room there was little change to be seen in the face or person of George Duke. The same curls of reddish auburn fell about his shoulders, escaped from the careless ribbon that had knotted them behind; the same steady light burned in the hazel-brown eyes, and menaced mischief as of old. Seen by this half-light, seven years seemed to have made no change whatever in the Captain of the Vulture.
“What’s this, what’s the meaning of all this?” he exclaimed, as Darrell Markham carried his helpless burden into the oak parlour. “What does it mean?”
Darrell laid his cousin on a couch beside the hearth on which the Captain stood, before he answered this question.
“It means this, George Duke,” he said at last; “it means, that if ever you were pitiful in your life, you should be pitiful to this poor girl to-night.”
The Captain of the Vulture laughed aloud. “Pitiful,” he cried; “I never yet heard that a woman needed any great pity on having her husband restored to her after upwards of seven years’ separation.”
Darrell looked at him half contemptuously, half compassionately.
“Can you guess nothing?” he said.
“No.”
“Can you imagine no fatal result of your long absence from this place; many people — every one — thinking you dead?”
“No.”
“Can you think of nothing likely to have happened — remembering, as you must, that this poor girl married you in obedience to her father’s commands, and against her own wishes?”
“No.”
“Can you guess nothing?”
“How if I don’t choose to guess, Master Darrell Markham? How if I say that whatever you want me to know you must speak out word for word, however much cause you and my lady there may have to be ashamed to tell it. I’ll help you by no guesses, I can tell you. Speak out! what is it?”
He stirred the fire with the toe of his boot, striking the coals into a blaze, in order that the light might shine upon his rival’s face, and that whatever trouble or humiliation Darrell Markham might have to undergo might not be lost to him.
“What is it?” he repeated savagely.
“It is this, George Duke: — but before I speak another word, remember that whatever has been done was done in opposition to — your wife.”
The acute pain he suffered in calling the woman he loved by this name was not lost on Captain Duke. Darrell could see his anguish reflected in the malicious sparkle of those cruel brown eyes, and nerved himself against affording another triumph to his rival.
“Remember,” he said, “through all, that she is blameless.”
“Suppose we leave her and her blamelessness out of the question, and drop sentiment, Mr. Markham,” answered the Captain, “until you’ve told me what ha3 been done.”
“Millicent Duke, being persuaded by her brother in a letter written on his dying bed, being further persuaded by every creature in this place, all believing you to be dead, being persuaded by her old nurse and by me, who used every prayer I knew to win her consent, against her own wish and in opposition to her own better judgment, was married to me three days ago in London.”
“O, that’s what you wanted me to guess, is it?” exclaimed the Captain; “by the heaven above me, I thought as much! Now you come here and listen to me, Mistress Millicent Markham, Mrs. George Duke, Mrs. Darrell Markham, or whatever you may please to call yourself. Come here, I say.”
She had been lying on the sofa, never blest by one moment’s unconsciousness, but acutely sensible of every word that had been said. Her husband caught hold of her wrist with a rough jerk, and lifted her from the sofa.
“Listen to me, will you,” he said, “my very dutiful and blameless wife! I am going to ask you a few questions. Do you hear?”
“Yes.”
She neither addressed him by his name nor looked at him as he spoke. Gentle as she was, tender and loving as she was to every animate thing, she made no show of gentleness to him, nor any effort to conceal her shuddering abhorrence of him.
“When your brother died he left you this property, did he not?”
“He did.”
“And he left nothing to your cousin, Mr. Darrell, yonder?”
“Nothing — but his dear love.”
“Never mind his dear love. He didn’t leave an acre of land or a golden guinea, eh?”
“He did not.”
“Good! Now, as I don’t choose to hold any communication with a gentleman who persuades another man’s wife to marry him in her husband’s absence, against her own wish, and in opposition to her better judgment, I use his own words, mark you — you will be so good as to tell your fine cousin, Mr. Darrell Markham, this: Tell him that, as your husband, I claim a share in your fortune, whatever it may be; and that as to this little matter of à marriage, in which you have been so blameless, I shall know how to settle accounts with you upon that point, without any interference from him. Tell him this, and tell him also that the sooner he takes himself out of this house the pleasanter it will be for all parties.”
Millicent stood with her hands clasped tightly together, and her fixed eyes staring into vacancy, while he spoke, and it seemed as if she neither heard nor comprehended him. When he had done speaking, she turned round, and, looking him full in the face, cried out, “George Duke, did you stay away these seven years on purpose to destroy me, body and soul?”
“I stayed away
seven years, because ten months after I sailed from Marley Water I was cast away upon a desert island in the Pacific,” he answered doggedly.
“Captain Duke,” said Darrell, “since my presence here can only cause pain to your unhappy wife, I leave this house. I shall call upon you to-morrow to account for your words; but in the mean time, remember that I am yonder poor girl’s sole surviving kinsman, and, by the heaven above me, if you hurt but a hair of her head, you had better have left your bones to rot on one of the islands of the Pacific, than have come back here to account to Darrell Markham!”
“I’m not afraid of you, Mr. Markham. I know how to treat that innocent lady there, without taking a lesson from you or any one else. Good night to you.”
He nodded with an insolent gesture in the direction of the door.
“To-morrow,” said Darrell.
“To-morrow, at your service,” answered the Captain.
“Stop!” cried Millicent, as her cousin was leaving the room; “my husband took an earring from me when we parted at Marley, and bade me ask him for it on his return. Have you that trinket?” she asked the Captain.
She looked him in the face with an earnest, halfterrified gaze. She remembered the double of George Duke, seen by her upon Marley pier, in the winter moonlight.
The sailor took a small canvas bag from his waistcoat pocket. The bag contained a few pieces of gold and silver money, and the diamond earring which Millicent had given George Duke on the night of their parting.
“Will that satisfy you, my lady?” he asked, handing her the gem.
“Yes,” she answered, with a long heavy sigh; and then going straight to her cousin, she put her two icy hands into his, and addressed him thus:
“Farewell, Darrell Markham, we must never, never meet again. Heaven forgive us both for our sin; for Heaven knows we were innocent of evil intent. I will obey this man in all reasonable things, and will share my fortune with him and do my duty to him to my dying day; but I can never again be what I was to him before he left this place seven years ago; I can never be his wife again. Good night.”
She put her cousin from her with a solemn gesture, which, with the simple words that she had spoken, seemed to him like a dissolution of their marriage.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 61
