Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  She seemed to have enjoyed a slumber of some hours, during which she had dreamed strange and complicated dreams — amongst others, one wherein she had headed a party of searchers, who found the body of Captain George Duke standing bolt upright in the little closet under the stairs of her grandmother’s cottage in a neighbouring village — when she was awakened suddenly by cautious tapping at the kitchen door. The clock upon the stairs chimed the quarter after eleven as she darted bolt upright in her chair, and with her eyes fixed in a stare that was almost apoplectic. It was only a quarter past eleven, and the slumbers which had seemed to occupy hours had only lasted twenty minutes.

  Honest Betty’s first impulse was to scream, as the best thing to be done under all extraordinary circumstances; but remembering that this was no ordinary time at the Black Bear, and that for the last five days all sorts of strange visitors had been coming at all kind of abnormal hours, she thought better of it, and going to the door quietly, unbolted it and looked out. A dark figure stood close against the threshold, so muffled in the garments it wore, and so shrouded by the hat slouched over its eyes, that, though there was a feeble new moon shining faintly high above the roofs of stables and outbuildings, the visitor, whoever he might be, was not easily to be recognized. The heart of Betty the cook sank within her; and a death-like chill, commencing at that indispensable organ, crept slowly upwards to the roots of her hair.

  It would have been some relief now to have screamed, but the capacity for that useful exercise was gone, and the terrified woman could only stand staring blankly at the figure on the threshold.

  How, if this mysterious visitor should be that horrible shadow or double of Captain George Duke, which had appeared three times before the murder.

  It had come, no doubt, to show the way to the hiding-place of the body, as is a common practice with the ghosts of murdered men, and it had selected Betty as the proper person to assist in the search.

  Even in the agony of her terror, a vision of possible glory shaped itself in the mind of this simple countrywoman, and she could but remember how she would doubtless rise in the estimation of all Compton after such an adventure. But as a humble-minded member of the corporation will refuse some civic honour, as a weight too ponderous for him to bear, so Betty, not feeling equal to the occasion, sacrificed the opportunity of future distinction, and sounded the prelude of a long scream.

  Before she could get beyond this prelude a heavy hand was clapped upon her open mouth, and a gruff voice asked her what she meant by making such a d — d fool of herself.

  Now as this is by no means the manner in which phantoms and apparitions are accustomed to conduct themselves — those shadowy folk generally confining themselves to polite pantomime and courteous beckonings towards the lonely places in which their business ordinarily lies — Betty took courage, and drawing a long breath of relief, asked her visitant what his business was, and if he wasn’t ashamed of himself for turning a poor girl’s “whole mask of blood.” Not deigning to enter into any discussion on this remarkable physical operation, the stranger pushed the cook aside, and strode past her into the great kitchen, which was dimly lighted by the expiring fire and one guttering tallow candle.

  Relieved from her first terror, Betty was now able to perceive that this mysterious stranger was a taller and a bigger man than George Duke, and that his figure bore no resemblance whatever to that of the murdered sailor.

  He stood with his back to the hearth, slowly unwinding a great woollen shawl from his neck, when she followed him into the kitchen. This done, he threw off his hat, pushed his great hand through his short grizzled hair, and stared defiantly at the girl.

  The stranger was the foreign-looking pedlar who had robbed Mrs. Pecker of her watch, purse, and silver spoons, in that very kitchen, six years before. Yes, he was the foreign-looking pedlar, but by no means the same prosperous individual he had appeared at that period. His hair, then hanging in sleek greasy blue-black ringlets, had lost its purple lustre, and was now coarse and grizzled, and cropped close to his head in a manner by no means becoming. His gaunt frame was strangely clad, his coat-sleeves torn from cuff to shoulder, only held together here and there by shreds of packthread, his dingy blue striped sailor’s shirt hanging in rags upon his broad chest, which was protected by neither coat nor waistcoat, for the first-named garment was too much tattered to meet across his breast, and the last was altogether missing. One foot was shod in a great leathern boot which came above the wayfarer’s knee, the other in an old shoe tied about his naked ankle with rags and packthread. The pedlar had been fat and comely to look upon six years before, but now his massive frame was strangely wasted, the torn coat and wretched shirt hanging loosely about a bony angular form. No earrings now glistened in his ears; no massive rings of rich barbaric gold adorned his big muscular hands. A gaunt terrible half-starved desperate-looking vagabond stood upon that hearth where once had stood the smart and prosperous foreign pedlar.

  Betty was preparing to begin scream number two when the intruder thrust his hand suddenly into his pocket, and taking thence a great clasp-knife, exclaimed fiercely, —

  “As sure as I do stand here, woman, if you lift your voice above a whisper, I’ll put such a mark upon that wizen of yours as will stop your noise for ever.”

  He opened the knife with a sharp snap, like the report of a miniature pistol, and looked admiringly at the weapon — not as if he were thinking of it in connection with the particular threat he had just enunciated, but rather as if he were reflecting what a handy thing it was in a general way. Then remembering himself, he shut the knife with a second sharp snap, dropped it into his capacious pocket, and looked again at the cook.

  “Sit you down there,” he said, pointing to the chair upon which Betty bad dropped her work when she rose to open the door. “Sit you down there, my lass, and answer the questions I’ve got to ask — or—” He thrust his hand back into his pocket, by way of a finish to his sentence.

  Betty dropped into the chair indicated as submissively as if she had been before Mr. Montague Bowers, justice of the peace.

  “Where’s your missus, my lass?” asked the pedlar. “Ill abed.”

  “And your master?”

  Betty described Samuel’s whereabouts.

  “So,” muttered the man, “your missus is ill abed, and your master is in the white parlour, a-drinking wine with a gentleman. What gentleman?”

  Betty was not particularly good at remembering names; but after considerable reflection, she said that the gentleman was called Sir Lovel Summat.

  The pedlar burst into a big laugh — a harsh and hungry kind of cachinnation, which seemed to come from a half-starved frame — a hoarse grating noise, as of human machinery which had grown rusty and out of order.

  “Sir Lovel Summat,” he said, “it isn’t Mortimer, is it?”

  “Yes, it is,” replied Betty.

  The pedlar laughed again.

  “Sir Lovel Mortimer, is it? Well, that’s strange! Very strange, that of all nights out of three hundred and sixty odd as go to a year, Sir Lovel should pick this night for being at Compton-on-the-Moor. Has he often been here before?”

  “Never but once; and that were last Christmas. He’s a rare riotous gentleman, but pleasant-spoken, and uncommon free with his money,” said Betty, emboldened by the pedlar’s hoarse laughter. The cook-maid had never heard of that class of assassins who can “murder while they smile,” and fancied herself safe, now that the pedlar was disposed to be conversational.

  “Uncommon free with his money, is he?” repeated the tramp. “He’s a lucky dog to have money to buy folks good word. And he’s here to night? It’s a strange world. I know Sir Lovel Mortimer; and Sir Lovel Mortimer knows me — intimately.”

  Betty looked rather incredulous at this assertion.

  “Ay, you may stare, my lass,” muttered the pedlar; “but it’s gospel truth for all that. I suppose this barrownight of yours wears a fine gold-laced coat now, don’t he?”


  “It’s silver lace,” the girl answered; “and the handle of his sword shines like diamonds; and his eyes is blacker than his boots and brighter than the buckles in his lace cravat; and ain’t he a daring one too!” added Betty, recalling a skirmish she had had with Captain Fanny in a dark passage on the occasion of that gentleman having attempted to kiss her.

  “O, he’s a daring one, is he?” growled the stranger. “I’m afraid his daring will carry him a step too far one of these days, if he don’t take care what he’s about, and not make ill-friends with those that can blow him — ay, and has the will to do it, if he turns contrairy. I suppose he’s in high feather, eh, my lass?”

  Betty stared at him vaguely. The figure of speech was beyond her comprehension.

  “He’s in the white parlour,” she said, “along with master.”

  “Look you here, missus cook,” said the pedlar; “talking’s poor work on an empty stomach, and I haven’t had a mouthful to put into mine since the break of this, cold winter’s day; so I’ll trouble you for a bit of victuals and a drop of drink before we go on any further.”

  Seeing something like hesitation in the girl’s face, he brought his hand heavily down on the table with a terrible oath.

  “Fetch me what I want!” he roared; “d’ye hear? Do you think there’s anything in this house that I can’t have for the asking?”

  In her confusion and terror Betty brought a strange selection of food from the well-stocked pantry. She disappeared for a few minutes, during which she could hear the terrible guest growling threateningly in the kitchen, and then she came back to the hungry stranger laden with a cold sirloin, the carcase of a chicken which had been cooked for Captain Fanny’s dinner, a couple of raw onions, a bunch of dried herbs, half a jam tart, and a lump of fat bacon. But the pedlar had no mind to be critical. He pounced like some ravenous beast upon the viands set before him, hacking great slices off the joint with his clasp-knife, and not waiting for so much as a grain of salt to give relish to his food. He ate with such savage rapidity that his meal lasted a very short time, and then, after pushing the dish away from him with a satisfied grant, he gasped fiercely the one word, “Brandy.”’

  Betty shook her head. She explained to him that drink of any kind was impossible, as the bar was locked and the key in her master’s possession.

  “You’re a nice hospitable lot of people,” said the pedlar, rubbing his hand across his greasy mouth “Now look you here: it’s double business that has brought me all the way from the county of Hampshire to Compton-on-the-Moor, tramping through frost and snow, and sleeping under haystacks and in empty barns, until I’ve been as nigh being froze to death as ever a man was that lived to tell of it. That business is first and foremost to see your missus; and secondly, to meet a friend as I parted company with above a fortnight back, and as promised to meet me here, but I expect I’ve got here before him. Now that friend is a gentleman bred and born, and his name is Cap’en George Duke, of the Vulture,”

  Betty the cook clasped her hands imploringly.

  “Don’t!” she cried, “don’t! This makes two this blessed night; for him as is upstairs said he came here by appointment with the murdered gentleman.”

  “What murdered gentleman?”

  Betty told the story which had been so often told within the last five days. She told it in rather a gasping and unintelligible manner, but still with sufficient clearness to make the pedlar acquainted with the one great fact of the Captain’s murder.

  “His throat cut from ear to ear on the very same night as he came back,” said the man; “that’s an awkward business. He’d better have stopped where he was, I reckon. So there was no money took nor plate, and his pretty young wife is in Carlisle gaol for the murder. That’s a queer story. I always thought that George Duke had the devil’s luck and his own too, but it seems that his luck and the devil both failed him at last.”

  Now the reader may perhaps remember that, on the hearing of the murder, Captain Fanny had made an observation to the effect that the murdered man had been an unlucky fellow from first to last; whereby it may be perceived how very widely the opinions of two people may differ upon a given subject.

  “So Cap’en Duke is murderded — a bad look-out for me!” muttered the pedlar; “for I had a hold upon my gentleman as would have made his house mine and his purse mine to the end of my days. I’d best see your missus, without losing any more time, my lass. Is her room anywhere nigh the parlour where your master and the barrownight’s a-sittin’?”

  “No; missus’s room is at the other end of the corridor.”

  “Then go and tell her that him as come here six winters ago, and took the little present as she was kind enough to give him, has come back, and wants to see her without loss of time.”

  Sarah Pecker lay awake, with a great family Bible open upon the table by her bed. She lifted her head from the pillow as Betty ran, breathless, into the room, for she saw from the girl’s face that something had happened.

  “Again!” she cried, when the cook had told her of the man waiting below; “again! How cruel, how cruel, that he should come at such a time as this; when my mind is full of the thoughts of poor Miss Millicent, and when I’ve been praying night and day for something to happen to clear her dear name. It does seem hard.”

  “There’s many things in this life that seems hard,” said a voice close against the half-open door, as the gaunt pedlar strode unceremoniously into the room. “Starvation’s hard, and a long tramp through the snow with scarce a shoe to your foot is bard, and many things more as I could mention. You may go, young woman,” he added, addressing himself to Betty, and pointing to the door, “you may go; and remember that what I’ve got to say is more interesting to your missus than to you, so you’ve no need to listen outside; but just keep a look-out, and give us warning if either your master or his guest leave the white parlour. You understand; so go.”

  Lest, after all, she should fail in comprehending him, the pedlar laid his rough hand upon that particular part of Mistress Betty’s anatomy commonly called the scruff of the neck, and put her outside the room. This done, he locked the door, walked across the chamber, and seated himself deliberately in an arm-chair by the sick woman’s bed.

  “Well, Mistress Sally,” he said, staring about the room as he addressed Mrs. Pecker, as if looking for any articles of value that might lurk here and there in the shadowy light; “I suppose you scarcely looked to see me in such trim as this?”

  He held up his gaunt arm and shook the torn coat-sleeve and the wretched rags of linen, to draw her attention to the state of his garments.

  “I scarcely looked to see you at all after these six years,” Sarah answered, meekly.

  “O, you didn’t, didn’t yon, mistress? — Mistress Pecker, as I believe they call you hereabouts? No thanks to you for the compliment you paid my good sense. You thought that, after happening to come by chance into this part of the country, and finding you living in clover in this place, with money put by in the bank maybe, and silver plate, and good victuals, and prime old wine, and the Lord knows what — yon thought I was such a precious fool, after seein’ all this, as to take about fifteen poundworth of property, and go away contented, and stay away for six year. You thought all that, did you, my lady?”

  People had called Sarah Pecker a shrew. If they could have seen the white entreating face turned towards the stranger, the hand lifted with such an appealing gesture, they might perhaps have altered their opinion of her.

  “I thought,” she said, falteringly—” I thought you might be pitiful enough, knowing what I had suffered from you in years gone by, and seeing that it had pleased Providence to give me peace and comfort at last — I thought even your hard heart might have taken compassion upon me, and that you would have been content to take all I had to give and to have gone quietly away for ever.”

  The pedlar looked at her with a fierce scornful smile. He lifted his arm for the second time, and this time he pushed back the rags and
showed his wasted flesh.

  “Does this look like as if I should have much compassion on you?” he cried savagely—” on you, wallowing here in comfort and luxury, with good food to eat and good wine to drink, and fires to warm you, and clothes to wear, and money in your pocket? Why, if I was to sit here from now till daylight talking to you, I could never make you understand what I’ve passed through in the six infernal years since I last came to this place.”

  “You’ve been away at sea?”

  “Never you mind where I’ve been. I haven’t been where men learn pitifulness, and compassion, and such fine sentiments as you’ve just been talking of. I’ve been where men are treated worse than dogs, and where they learn to be worse than the fiercest bloodhound that ever turned against his master. I’ve been where human beings are more dangerous to each other than savage beasts; where men use their knives oftener than their tongues; and where, if ever there was a bit of love or pity in a poor wretch’s heart, it gets trampled out and changed to hate. That’s where I’ve been.”

  “And you’ve come here to me to ask for money,” said Sarah, looking shudderingly at the man’s gloomy desperate face.

  “Yes.”

  “How much will satisfy you?”

  “A hundred pound.”

  She shook her head despairingly.

  “I haven’t thirty,” she said; “every farthing I own in the world is in that box yonder on the chest of drawers with the brass handles. The key’s in the pocket of the gown that’s hanging on the bed-post. You can take what there is, and welcome; but I’ve no more.”