Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “If it wasn’t for Mrs. Tadman driving and worrying after me all the time I’m at work, I don’t think I could stay there, mum,” Martha told her mistress. “It isn’t often I like to be fidgetted and followed; but anything’s better than being alone in that unked place.”

  “It’s rather dark and dreary, certainly, Martha,” Ellen answered with an admirable assumption of indifference; “but, as we haven’t any of us got to live there, that doesn’t much matter.”

  “It isn’t that, mum. I wouldn’t mind the darkness and the dreariness — and I’m sure such a place for spiders I never did see in my life; there was one as I took down with my broom to-day, and scrunched, as big as a small crab — but it’s worse than that: the place is haunted.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Sarah Batts.”

  “Sarah Batts! Why, how should she know anything about it? She hasn’t been here so long as you; and she came straight from the workhouse.”

  “I think master must have told her, mum.”

  “Your master would never have said anything so foolish. I know that he doesn’t believe in ghosts; and he keeps all his garden-seeds in the locked room at the end of the passage; so he must go there sometimes himself.”

  “O yes, mum; I know that master goes there. I’ve seen him go that way at night with a candle.”

  “Well, you silly girl, he wouldn’t use the room if he thought it was haunted, would he? There are plenty more empty rooms in the house.”

  “I don’t know about that, I’m sure, mum; but anyhow I know Sarah Batts told me that passage was haunted. ‘Don’t you never go there, Martha,’ she says, ‘unless you want to have your blood froze. I’ve heard things there that have froze mine.’ And I never should go, mum, if it wasn’t for moth — Mrs. Tadman’s worrying and driving, about the place being cleaned once in a way. And Sarah Batts is right, mum, however she may have got to know it; for I have heard things.”

  “What things?”

  “Moaning and groaning like, as if it was some one in pain; but all very low; and I never could make out where it came from. But as to the place being haunted, I’ve no more doubt about it than about my catechism.”

  “But, Martha, you ought to know it’s very silly and wicked to believe in such things,” Ellen Whitelaw said, feeling it her duty to lecture the girl a little, and yet half inclined to believe her. “The moanings and groanings, as you call them, were only sounds made by the wind, I daresay.”

  “O dear no, mum,” Martha answered, shaking her head in a decided manner; “the wind never made such noises as I heard. But I don’t want to make you nervous, mum; only I’d sooner lose a month’s wages than stay for an hour alone in the west wing.”

  It was strange, certainly; a matter of no importance, perhaps, this idle belief of a servant’s, these sounds which harmed no one; and yet all these circumstances worried and perplexed Ellen Whitelaw. Having so little else to think of, she brooded upon them incessantly, and was gradually getting into a low nervous way. If she complained, which she did very rarely, there was no one to sympathise with her. Mrs. Tadman had so many ailments of her own, such complicated maladies, such deeply-rooted disorders, that she could be scarcely expected to give much attention to the trivial sufferings of another person.

  “Ah, my dear,” she would exclaim with a groan, if Ellen ventured to complain of a racking headache, “when you’ve lived as long as I have, and gone through what I’ve gone through, and have got such a liver as I’ve got, you’ll know what bad health means. But at your age, and with your constitution, it’s nothing more than fancy.”

  And then Mrs. Tadman would branch off into a graphic description of her own maladies, to which Ellen was fain to listen patiently, wondering vaguely as she listened whether the lapse of years would render her as wearisome a person as Mrs. Tadman.

  She had no sympathy from anyone. Her father came to Wyncomb Farm once a week or so, and sat drinking and smoking with Mr. Whitelaw; but Ellen never saw him alone. He seemed carefully to avoid the chance of being alone with her, guiltily conscious of his part in the contriving of her marriage, and fearing to hear some complaint about her lot. He pretended to take it for granted that her fate was entirely happy, congratulated her frequently upon her prosperity, and reminded her continually that it was a fine thing to be the sole mistress of the house she lived in, instead of a mere servant — as he himself was, and as she had been at the Grange — labouring for the profit of other people.

  Up to this time Mr. Carley had had some reason to be disappointed with the result of his daughter’s marriage, so far as his own prosperity was affected thereby. Not a sixpence beyond that one advance of the two hundred pounds had the bailiff been able to extort from his son-in-law. It was the price that Mr. Whitelaw had paid for his wife, and he meant to pay no more. He told William Carley as much one day when the question of money matters was pushed rather too far — told him in the plainest language.

  This was hard; but that two hundred pounds had saved the bailiff from imminent destruction. He was obliged to be satisfied with this advantage, and to bide his time.

  “I’ll have it out of the mean hound sooner or later,” he muttered to himself as he walked homewards, after a social evening with the master of Wyncomb.

  One evening Mr. Carley brought his daughter a letter. It was from Gilbert Fenton, who was quite unaware of Ellen’s marriage, and had written to her at the Grange. This letter afforded her the only pleasure she had known since fate had united her to Stephen Whitelaw. It told her that Marian Holbrook was living, and in all probability safe — though by no means in good hands. She had sailed for America with her father; but her husband was in hot pursuit of her, and her husband was faithful.

  “I have schooled myself to forgive him,” Gilbert went on to say, “for I know that he loves her — and that must needs condone my wrongs. I look forward anxiously to their return from America, and hope for a happy reunion amongst us all — when your warm friendship shall not be forgotten. I am waiting impatiently for news from New York, and will write to you again directly I hear anything definite. We have suffered the torments of suspense for a long weary time, but I trust and believe that the sky is clearing.”

  This was not much, but it was more than enough to relieve Ellen Carley’s mind of a heavy load. Her dear young lady, as she called Marian, was not dead — not lying at the bottom of that cruel river, at which Ellen had often looked with a shuddering horror, of late, thinking of what might be. She was safe, and would no doubt be happy. This was something. Amid the wreck of her own fortunes, Ellen Whitelaw was unselfish enough to rejoice in this.

  Her husband asked to see Mr. Fenton’s letter, which he spelt over with his usual deliberate air, and which seemed to interest him more than Ellen would have supposed likely — knowing as she did how deeply he had resented Marian’s encouragement of Frank Randall’s courtship.

  “So she’s gone to America with her father, has she?” he said, when he had perused the document twice. “I shouldn’t have thought anybody could have persuaded her to leave that precious husband of hers. And she’s gone off to America, and he after her! That’s rather a queer start, ain’t it, Nell?” Mrs. Whitelaw did not care to discuss the business with her husband. There was something in his tone, a kind of veiled malice, which made her angry.

  “I don’t suppose you care whether she’s alive or dead,” she said impatiently; “so you needn’t trouble yourself to talk about her.”

  “Needn’t I? O, she’s too grand a person to be talked of by such as me, is she? Never mind, Nell; don’t be cross. And when Mrs. Holbrook comes back to England, you shall go and see her.”

  “I will,” answered Ellen; “if I have to walk to London to do it.”

  “O, but you sha’n’t walk. You shall go by rail. I’ll spare you the money for that, for once in a way, though I’m not over fond of wasting money.”

  Day by day Mr. Whitelaw’s habits grew more secluded and morose. It is not to be sup
posed that he was troubled by those finer feelings which might have made the misery of a better man; but even in his dull nature there may have been some dim sense that his marriage was a failure and mistake; that in having his own way in this matter he had in nowise secured his own happiness. He could not complain of his wife’s conduct in any one respect. She was obedient to his will in all things, providing for his comfort with scrupulous regularity, industrious, indefatigable even. As a housekeeper and partner of his fortunes, no man could have desired a better wife. Yet dimly, in that sluggish soul, there was the consciousness that he had married a woman who hated him, that he had bought her with a price; and, being a man prone to think the worst of his fellow-creatures, Mr. Whitelaw believed that, sooner or later, his wife meant to have her revenge upon him somehow. She was waiting for his death perhaps; calculating that, being so much her senior, and a hard-working man, he would die soon enough to leave her a young widow. And then, of course, she would marry Frank Randall; and all the money which he, Stephen, had amassed, by the sacrifice of every pleasure in life, would enrich that supercilious young coxcomb.

  It was a hard thing to think of, and Stephen pondered upon the expediency of letting off Wyncomb Farm, and sinking all his savings in the purchase of an annuity. He could not bring himself to contemplate selling the house and lands that had belonged to his race for so many generations. He clung to the estate, not from any romantic reverence for the past, not from any sentimental associations connected with those who had gone before him, but from the mere force of habit, which rendered this grim ugly old house and these flat shelterless fields dearer to him than all the rest of the universe. He was a man to whom to part with anything was agony; and if he loved anything in the world, he loved Wyncomb. The possession of the place had given him importance for twenty years past. He could not fancy himself unconnected with Wyncomb. His labours had improved the estate too; and he could not endure to think how some lucky purchaser might profit by his prudence and sagacity. There had been some fine old oaks on the land when he inherited it, all mercilessly stubbed-up at the beginning of his reign; there had been tall straggling hedgerows, all of a tangle with blackberry bushes, ferns, and dog-roses, hazel and sloe trees, all done away with by his order. No, he could never bring himself to sell Wyncomb. Nor was the purchase of an annuity a transaction which he was inclined to accomplish. It was a pleasing notion certainly, that idea of concentrating all his hoarded money upon the remaining years of his life — retiring from the toils of agriculture, and giving himself up for the rest of his days to an existence of luxurious idleness. But, on the other hand, it would be a bitter thing to surrender his fondly-loved money for the poor return of an income, to deprive himself of all opportunity of speculating and increasing his store.

  So the annuity scheme lay dormant in his brain, as it were, for the time being. It was something to have in reserve, and to carry out any day that his wife gave him fair cause to doubt her fidelity.

  In the mean time he went on living his lonely sulky kind of life, drinking a great deal more than was good for him in his own churlish manner, and laughing to scorn any attempt at remonstrance from his wife or Mrs. Tadman. Some few times Ellen had endeavoured to awaken him to the evil consequences that must needs ensue from his intemperate habits, feeling that it would be a sin on her part to suffer him to go on without some effort to check him; but her gently-spoken warnings had been worse than useless.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XLIII

  MR. WHITELAW MAKES AN END OF THE MYSTERY

  Mrs. Whitelaw had been married about two months. It was bright May weather, bright but not yet warm; and whatever prettiness Wyncomb Farm was capable of assuming had been put on with the fresh spring green of the fields and the young leaves of the poplars. There were even a few hardy flowers in the vegetable-garden behind the house, humble perennials planted by dead and gone Whitelaws, which had bloomed year after year in spite of Stephen’s utilitarian principles. It was a market-day, the household work was finished, and Ellen was sitting with Mrs. Tadman in the parlour, where those two spent so many weary hours of their lives, the tedium whereof was relieved only by woman’s homely resource, needlework. Even if Mrs. Whitelaw had been fond of reading, and she only cared moderately for that form of occupation, she could hardly have found intellectual diversion of that kind at Wyncomb, where a family Bible, a few volumes of the Annual Register, which had belonged to some half-dozen different owners before they came from a stall in Malsham market to the house of Whitelaw, a grim-looking old quarto upon domestic medicine, and a cookery-book, formed the entire library. When the duties of the day were done, and the local weekly newspaper had been read — an intellectual refreshment which might be fairly exhausted in ten minutes — there remained nothing to beguile the hours but the perpetual stitch — stitch — stitch of an industriously-disposed sempstress; and the two women used to sit throughout the long afternoons with their work-baskets before them, talking a little now and then of the most commonplace matters, but for the greater part of their time silent. Sometimes, when the heavy burden of Mrs. Tadman’s society, and the clicking of needles and snipping of scissors, grew almost unendurable, Ellen would run out of the house for a brief airing in the garden, and walk briskly to and fro along the narrow pathway between the potatoes and cabbages, thinking of her dismal life, and of the old days at the Grange when she had been full of gaiety and hope. There was not perhaps much outward difference in the two lives. In her father’s house she had worked as hard as she worked now; but she had been free in those days, and the unknown future all before her, with its chances of happiness. Now, she felt like some captive who paces the narrow bounds of his prison-yard, without hope of release or respite, except in death.

  This particular spring day had begun brightly, the morning had been sunny and even warm; but now, as the afternoon wore away, there were dark clouds, with a rising wind and a sharp gusty shower every now and then. Ellen took a solitary turn in the garden between the showers. It was market-day; Stephen Whitelaw was not expected home till tea-time, and the meal was to be eaten at a later hour than usual.

  The rain increased as the time for the farmer’s return drew nearer. He had gone out in the morning without his overcoat, Mrs. Tadman remembered, and was likely to get wet through on his way home, unless he should have borrowed some extra covering at Malsham. His temper, which of late had been generally at its worst, would hardly be improved by this annoyance.

  There was a very substantial meal waiting for him: a ponderous joint of cold roast beef, a dish of ham and eggs preparing in the kitchen, with an agreeable frizzling sound, a pile of hot buttered cakes kept hot upon the oven top; but there was no fire in the parlour, and the room looked a little cheerless in spite of the well-spread table. They had discontinued fires for about a fortnight, at Mr. Whitelaw’s command. He didn’t want to be ruined by his coal-merchant’s bill if it was a chilly spring, he told his household; and at his own bidding the fire-place had been polished and garnished for the summer. But this evening was colder than any evening lately, by reason of that blusterous rising wind, which blew the rain-drops against the window-panes with as sharp a rattle as if they had been hailstones; and Mr. Whitelaw coming in presently, disconsolate and dripping, was by no means inclined to abide by his own decision about the fires.

  “Why the —— haven’t you got a fire here?” he demanded savagely.

  “It was your own wish, Stephen,” answered Mrs. Tadman.

  “My own fiddlesticks! Of course I didn’t care to see my wood and coals burning to waste when the sun was shining enough to melt any one. But when a man comes home wet to the skin, he doesn’t want to come into a room like an ice-house. Call the girl, and tell her to light a blazing fire while I go and change my clothes. Let her bring plenty of wood, and put a couple of logs on top of the coals. I’m frozen to the very bones driving home in the rain.”

  Mrs. Tadman gave a plaintive sigh as she departed to obey her kinsman.

 
“That’s just like Stephen,” she said; “if it was you or me that wanted a fire, we might die of cold before we got leave to light one; but he never grudges anything for his own comfort!”

  Martha came and lighted a fire under Mrs. Tadman’s direction. That lady was inclined to look somewhat uneasily upon the operation; for the grate had been used constantly throughout a long winter, and the chimney had not been swept since last spring, whereby Mrs. Tadman was conscious of a great accumulation of soot about the massive old brickwork and ponderous beams that spanned the wide chimney. She had sent for the Malsham sweep some weeks ago; but that necessary individual had not been able to come on the particular day she wished, and the matter had been since then neglected. She remembered this now with a guilty feeling, more especially as Stephen had demanded a blazing fire, with flaring pine-logs piled half-way up the chimney. He came back to the parlour presently, arrayed in an old suit of clothes which he kept for such occasions — an old green coat with basket buttons, and a pair of plaid trousers of an exploded shape and pattern — and looking more like a pinched and pallid scarecrow than a well-to-do farmer. Mrs. Tadman had only carried out his commands in a modified degree, and he immediately ordered the servant to put a couple of logs on the fire, and then drew the table close up to the hearth, and sat down to his tea with some appearance of satisfaction. He had had rather a good day at market, he condescended to tell his wife during the progress of the meal; prices were rising, his old hay was selling at a rate which promised well for the new crops, turnips were in brisk demand, mangold enquired for — altogether Mr. Whitelaw confessed himself very well satisfied with the aspect of affairs.

  After tea he spent his evening luxuriantly, sitting close to the fire, with his slippered feet upon the fender, and drinking hot rum-and-water as a preventive of impending, or cure of incipient, cold. The rum-and-water being a novelty, something out of the usual order of his drink, appeared to have an enlivening effect upon him. He talked more than usual, and even proposed a game at cribbage with Mrs. Tadman; a condescension which moved that matron to tears, reminding her, she said, of old times, when they had been so comfortable together, before he had taken to spend his evenings at the Grange.