Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “But you can get more,” answered the man; “you can ask Mr. Samuel Pecker.”

  “No, no!”

  “You won’t ask him?”

  “Not for one penny.”

  “Very good, mistress; then I will. I’ll ask him fast enough; and if he sets any value on his faithful wife, he’ll give me what I ask, when I tell him—”

  “O, Thomas, Thomas!”

  She raised her hands imploringly, and clung about the man as if to stop him from uttering some dreaded word; but he flung her back upon the pillow.

  “I’ll tell him that I’m your lawful husband, Thomas Masterson; and that at one word from me you’ll have to pack out of this house, and tramp wherever I please to take you.”

  For a moment poor Sally lay back upon the pillow, her whole frame convulsed by tempestuous sobs. Then suddenly raising herself, she looked the man fall in the face, and said deliberately, —

  “Tell him, then, Thomas Masterson! Tell him as how you’re my lawful husband as deceived and deluded me when I was a poor ignorant girl — as beat and halfstarved me — as took me away from friends and home. Tell him that you’re my lawful husband, as stole my dear and only child away from me while I was asleep, and as stayed away for seventeen long years, to come back at the last and claim me when I was a good man’s happy wife, not for any love of me, but with the hope to rob my true and faithful husband of his money. Tell him that you’re Thomas Masterson, smuggler and thief. But let me tell you first, that if you dare to come between him and me, I’ll bring those up against you as will make you pay a dear price for your cruelty.”

  The pedlar tried to laugh at this speech, but failed signally in the attempt.

  “You’ve your old high spirit, Mrs. Sarah,” he said; “and even sickness hasn’t taken it out of you, You won’t ask Samuel Pecker for the money?”

  “Not for one farthing.”

  “Suppose I had a secret to sell, and wanted a hundred pounds for the price of it, would you raise the money?”

  “A secret?”

  “Yes. You spoke just now of your son, as you were so uncommon fond of. Suppose I could tell you where he is — within easy reach of you — would you give me a hundred pounds for the information?” Sarah shook her head mournfully.

  “I know you, Thomas Masterson,” she said; “it’s poor work to try and deceive me.”

  “Look here,” answered the pedlar; “you’re uncommon suspicious to-night; but I know if you take your Bible oath you won’t break it. Swear to me upon this book, that if I tell you where your son is, and bring him and you together, you’ll let me have the hundred pounds within a week.”

  He closed the Bible and placed it in her hands: she pressed her lips upon the cover of the volume.

  “I swear,” she said, “by this blessed book.”

  “Very good. Your son is now sitting with Samuel Pecker in the parlour at the other end of the corridor. He calls himself Sir Lovel Mortimer, and a very dashing gallant fine-spoken gentleman he is; but his friends, companions, and the Bow Street runners call him Captain Fanny, and he is one of the most notorious highwaymen who ever played fast and loose with Jack Ketch.”

  CHAPTER XXII. MOTHER AND SON.

  SAMUEL PECKER and his guest, seated over their wine in the white parlour, between the hours of eleven and twelve, were startled by the violent ringing of the bell communicating with Sarah’s bedchamber. Samuel was too good a husband not to recognize the vibration of that particular bell; and Samuel was too true to the instincts of the past not to quail a little as he heard it. Without stopping to apologize to his distinguished visitor, he hurried from the room and along the corridor to Sarah’s chamber. The pedlar had left this apartment under the convoy of Betty, who had been ordered by Mrs. Pecker to find the gaunt-looking wanderer sleeping room in one of the garrets in the roof, or in some loft over the stable.

  Sarah was alone, therefore, when the landlord entered the room in answer to the loud summons of the bell.

  “Samuel,” she said, clasping her hands upon her forehead, as if to steady the bewilderment of the brain within, “have I been mad or dreaming? Who have you yonder in the white parlour?”

  “The gentleman that came at Christmas, Sarah; the gentleman —— — —”

  “The eyes — the restless, restless black eyes, like my baby’s,” cried Sarah, in a voice that was almost a shriek. “I ought to have known him by his eyes. I ought to have known—”

  Her terrified husband thought that she was raving in some paroxysm of delirium.

  “Sarah,” he said—” Sarah, what is it?”

  “The eyes,” she repeated—”the eyes of the child you’ve heard me tell of; the child I lost long before I knew you, Samuel; the child whose cruel father was my first husband, Thomas Masterson.”

  “But what of him to-night, Sarah?”

  “Ay, what of him to-night?” she repeated wildly, pushing the hair off her forehead with both her feverish hands; “what of him to-night? Who is there in the white parlour?”

  “Sir Lovel Mortimer,” answered Samuel, more and more convinced that his wife was distraught by the fever.

  “Sir Lovel Mortimer, known to his friends, companions, and the Bow Street runners as Captain Fanny,” said Sarah slowly, repeating the words of Thomas Masterson; “let me see him.”

  Samuel stared aghast.

  “Let me see him,” she repeated.

  “See him — Sir Lovel Mortimer — the West-country baronet?”

  “The youth with the black eyes; the poor unhappy boy; the — Let me see him, let me see him.”

  Samuel shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. We know that he was a simple and faithful creature. If his sick wife had asked him to carry the moon to her bedside, he would, no doubt, have made some feeble attempt to gratify her. It was a small thing, then, to shuffle along the corridor and request the baronet to visit the invalid’s chamber. Sir Lovel might, perhaps, be skilled in bloodletting and pharmacy, as some country gentlemen were in those days, thought the landlord, and he might be able to reduce this terrible fever and delirium. Samuel accordingly did as his wife bade him, and went and brought the West-country baronet to her chamber.

  It did indeed seem as if his presence had some soothing influence upon the sick woman, for Sarah quietly motioned him to a seat by her bedside, and then turning with a white but tranquil face to Samuel Pecker, bade him leave the room.

  Being left alone with the young highwayman, she lay perfectly still for some moments, looking — ah, Heaven only knows with what vague maternal love and yearning! — at the sharp profile of that young face, worn thin by many a midnight brawl and revel, until at last the restless gentleman fairly lost patience.

  I don’t suppose you sent for me for the pleasure of staring at me, ma’rm,” he said. “I’m no ill-looking fellow, perhaps; but I’m not like the waxen images in Westminster Abbey, only good to be looked at. It’s getting late, and I’ve had a weary day of it,” he added, with a yawn: “have you nothing to say to me?”

  “I have heard ill news to-night,” said Sarah, slowly; “sorrowful news of an only child that I thought was dead and gone.”

  Captain Fanny made no reply. He thought the speaker’s wits were bewildered, and that it was best to let her have her say without making any attempt to question or contradict her. But the next words she uttered brought the blood to his face and set his heart (which was not that of a coward) beating at a gallop.

  “There has been one here to-night,” she said, “who has told me who and what you are.”

  Who and what he was! This sick woman, in this lonely wayside inn, in a quiet Cumbrian village, where he thought himself safe in playing the baronet and fine gentleman — safe in hiding from the justice that was rarely off his track — this feeble woman know him and might denounce him. From his very boyhood his life had been a game of fast and loose with the gallows, and after those few brief heart-beats of surprise he recovered himself and was able to make light of the danger.


  “You know me?”

  “Yes; you are a highwayman, and they call you Captain Fanny.”

  He clutched her wrist in his thin nervous hand.

  “You’ll not peach upon me?”

  She shook her head, looking at him with a mournful smile.

  “Of all the creatures on this wide earth,” she said, “I should be the last to do that.”

  “Not that it would so much matter,” he muttered, speaking not to Sarah, but to himself. “A few months — maybe a few weeks — more or less. It wouldn’t matter, if it wasn’t for Jack Ketch. I’d rather make an end of it quietly, without the help of the hangman.”

  “Henry Masterson,” said the sick woman, “tell me where and how your life has been spent.”

  She called the young highwayman by a name which ne had not heard for seventeen years, and the faint hectic flush faded away from his hollow cheeks, leaving them white as the coverlet upon Sarah’s bed.

  “You wonder that I know your name,” said Mrs. Pecker; “but, O, my boy, my boy, the wonder was that when I saw you this Christmas lately past, I did not guess the reason of my trouble at the sight of you. As if there could be but one reason for that trouble! As if there could be more than one face in all the world to set my heart a-beating as it beat that night! As if I could feel what I felt then at sight of any face but one, and that the one that was a baby’s face four-and-twenty years ago, and looked up at me out of my own baby’s cradle.”

  The young man drew his breath in short fierce gasps, and turning suddenly upon Sarah, spoke to her in a thick husky voice.

  “What do you mean?” he said; “what do you mean? I have heard my father say that I was born in Cumberland, and that he deserted my mother, carrying me away with him when I was but a child in arms. What is it you mean by this wild talk?”

  The Bible, which Sarah had kissed a short time before, lay open on the table by the bedside. She stretched out her hand and laid it upon the page, as she said solemnly, —

  “I mean, Henry Masterson, that I was the wretched wife and mother whom that bad man deserted, and th3t you are my only child.”

  The young man dropped his head upon the coverlet and sobbed aloud, his mother weeping over him and caressing him all the while with unspeakable tenderness.

  “My boy! my boy!” she cried; “have they told me the truth? Is it true—”

  “That I am a thief and a highwayman? Yes, mother; and that I have never been honest since my babyhood, or lived with honest people since I can remember. My father cuffed me and beat me, and half-starved me and neglected me, and left me for days and days together in some wretched den, while he sought his own fortune, and well-nigh forgot that such a creature as his son lived upon the earth: but he did not forget to teach me to steal, and I was quick to learn my lesson. I ran away from him when I was ten years old, and lived with gipsies and tramps, and thieves and vagabonds and beggars, till I was cleverer at all their wicked businesses than those that were three times my age; and they made much of me and pampered me for my pretty looks and my cleverness, till I left them for a higher way of life, and fell in with a man who was my master first and my servant afterwards; but who, from first to last, was the one to stifle every whisper of conscience and to laugh at any hope I ever had of being a better man. The history of my life would fill twenty volumes, mother, but you might read the moral of it in three lines. It’s been a straight race for the gallows from beginning to end.”

  He had lifted his head to say all this. The tears he had shed were already half dried by the fever of his flushed cheeks, and his eyes glittered with a burning light.

  “Tell me, my boy,” said Sarah, clinging fondly about this new-found son, “tell me, is there any danger — any danger for your life?”

  He shook his head mournfully.

  “I’ve never cared much how or when I risked it,” he answered. “I’ve well-nigh thrown it away for a wager before this; but I feel to-night as if I should like to keep it for your sake, mother.”

  “And is there any danger?”

  “Every danger, if they scent out my whereabouts just yet awhile. But if I can only cheat the gallows for two months longer, Master Jack Ketch will be cozened of his dues.”

  “As how, my darling?”

  “Because a learned physician in London told me a couple of weeks ago, after sounding my chest and knocking me about till I was fairly out of patience, that my lungs are for the most part gone, and that I have not three months to live.”

  Sarah looked in his face; and in the hollow wasted cheeks, the parched lips, burnt pale with fever, the glassy lustre of the great black eyes, the pinched and sharpened aspect of every feature, she saw the signs and tokens from which it needed no physician’s skill to read the dismal verdict — Death.

  CHAPTER XXIII. THE FINDING OF THE BODY.

  THE body of George Duke was found.

  Nigh upon two months had passed since that January night on which Millicent Duke rushed half distraught into the hall at the Black Bear to tell her horrible story; for nigh upon two months the unhappy lady had languished in Carlisle gaol, waiting the spring assizes, and the assembling of those grave and learned gentlemen, and those wise and honourable jurymen, who were to decide whether that feeble hand had been lifted to destroy the life of a fellow-creature.

  The Captain’s body was found in a dismal pond behind the stables at Compton Hall. How the hiding-place had come to be overlooked in that general search which had been made immediately after the murder, no one was able to say. Every man who had assisted in that search declared emphatically that he had looked everywhere; and yet it seemed clear enough that no one had looked here; for, as the end of March drew nigh, and the inhabitants of Compton were busy talking of Mrs. Duke’s approaching trial, the draught-horses on the Compton Hall farm refused to drink the stagnant water of this pool, and a vile miasma rising from its shallow bosom set the slow brains of the farm-labourers at work to discover the cause of the mischief. A dismal horror was brought to the light of day by this search. The body of a man, rotted out of all semblance to humanity, was found lying at the bottom of that stagnant pool, as it had doubtless lain ever since that night in January when the falling snow blotted out the traces of the murderer’s feet, and fell like a sheltering curtain upon the footsteps of crime.

  The stable-yard lay behind the prim flower-beds and straight walks of the little pleasure-ground below the garden chamber in which George Duke had been murdered. Between the stable-yard and this neglected flower garden there was no barrier but a quickset hedge and a little wicket-gate. From this gate to the pond behind the stables the distance was about thirty yards.

  It was a likely enough place, therefore, for the murderer to choose for the concealment of his victim; but whoever had dragged the body of George Duke from the garden chamber to this pool, must have had another task to perform before his hideous work was done. Every piece of water in Compton had been frozen over on that January night; so the murderer must have broken a hole in the ice before throwing the body into the pond; and this hole being frozen over the next morning by daybreak, and the pond, moreover, being thickly covered with a bed of snow, it was scarcely so strange that those who searched for the body should have overlooked this hiding-place.

  The remains were carried into one of the empty chambers in Compton Hall, and a coroner’s inquest was there held upon them.

  The particulars of the murder were already so well know to all present that there was no need to recapitulate them. So there was little evidence to be heard, except such brief statements as were made by the farm-labourers relative to the finding of the body.

  No one seemed for an instant to entertain a doubt that this was the body of George Duke, although there was little enough about these decomposed remains by which to prove identity. The few rotting rags of clothing still hanging about the corpse consisted only of the shreds of a shirt, breeches, and stockings. There was no trace of the shabby coat with the naval buttons, the three-cornered hat,
waistcoat, and boots which the Captain had worn on the night of his return to Compton. Yet these things had disappeared at the time of the murder.

  The coroner’s jury took no pains to unravel this branch of the dismal mystery. Neither did they puzzle themselves by attempting to understand how feeble Millicent Duke could have contrived to drag the body of a strong man from the garden chamber to the pond behind the stables. Justice in those days did her work briefly enough. The coroner’s jury pronounced a verdict to the effect that a body — supposed to be the missing body of George Duke — had been found in a pond on the premises belonging to Compton Hall.

  Two months had passed since Millicent’s examination before Mr. Justice Bowers, and nothing had been seen of Darrell Markham. Brief letters came now and then for Sarah Pecker, telling her how the young man was hard at work for the good of his cousin; but each of these letters was less hopeful that the last, and Sarah began to despair of any help from that quarter for the hapless prisoner languishing in Carlisle gaol.

  Sarah had travelled to that city several times to see her old master’s daughter, and on every occasion had found Mrs. Duke equally calm and resigned. She was pale and thin and faded, it is true, but less altered than Sally had thought to find her by this long imprisonment.

  Once, and once only, Millicent uttered some words that struck a shivering horror to the very heart of the listener.

  It was towards the close of her dreary incarceration that Mrs. Duke thus terrified her honest-hearted friend. Sarah had been reading Darrell’s last letter — in which, though evidently wrestling hard with despair, he promised that he would labour to the very death to clear his cousin’s name — when Millicent began wringing her hands and crying mournfully:

  “Why does Darrell take this trouble for me? Let the worst that can befall me; I am prepared to suffer my fate with patience. And after all, Sarah after all, who can tell that I am really guiltless of George Duke’s blood?”