Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “My dearest, this is so good of you,” said Herrick, as he clasped her to his breast and kissed the shy, half-reluctant lips.

  “’Twas selfish curiosity brought me,” she answered. “I have been expiring with anxiety to hear about your play. My father’s newspapers told me so little, though they told me ’twas the best comedy that had been written for years; and it’s so hard we cannot write to each other freely. I have been pining for a letter.”

  “Dearest, the time is past for secret letters and stolen meetings. The hour has struck for boldness and liberty — for open, happy, unassailable love. Irene, you have told me more than once that you do not value wealth.”

  “And I tell you so again,” she answered.

  “And that you would freely renounce a great fortune to be my wife, the mistress of a modest unluxurious home, such as I am now able to support.”

  “I think you know that I would be happier with you in a hovel than with any other husband in a palace,” she said, in a low sweet voice that thrilled him, and with drooping eyelids, as if she were half ashamed at the boldness of her confession.

  “Then break your chains, Rena; fly with the lover who adores you; steal away in the early dawn to-morrow; steal across the park with foot as light and form as graceful as the young fawn’s yonder. Meet me at the wicket that opens on the road. I will have a carriage-and-four ready to receive you. I’ll whip you up in my arms and carry you off as Jove carried Europa, and we shall be well over the first stage to London before your gaolers discover their captive has escaped. I saw Parson Keith last night; he will be ready to marry us at ten o’clock to-morrow morning, and his ceremonial will be just as binding as if we were married by an archbishop.”

  “But can I disobey my father, prove myself an ungrateful daughter?” asked Irene, with a distressed air.

  She had been woman enough to know that this crisis in her life must come sooner or later; that love would not wait for ever. She had pondered upon this crucial question in many an hour of solitude, and now it had come and must be answered.

  “Dear love, you have to choose between that tyrannic father and me,” pleaded Herrick, with impassioned earnestness; “the time has come for that choice to be made. I have hung back hitherto, fearful to trust the future; but I am now assured of a literary career and of Sir Robert Walpole’s friendship and patronage. I can afford to tempt fortune so far as to take a wife. I am secure of keeping a roof over my darling’s head, and that the pinch of poverty shall never be hers.”

  “I am not afraid of poverty — I only fear to offend my father.”

  “That is a hazard which must be run, Irene. We have tried to be dutiful, both of us. I addressed him honourably as a suitor for your hand; urged upon him that my prospects were not hopeless, that I was industrious, patient, and had begun to earn my living. He rejected my proposals with contempt, treated me as harshly as ever miserly hidalgo in a Spanish comedy treated his daughter’s suitor. If you are ever to be mine, Rena, you must brave your father’s anger. You will never be mine with his consent, and ’tis ill waiting for dead men’s shoes, saying we will put off our happiness till the old man is in his coffin. Let us be happy in spite of him. When the deed is done, I have a way to win him to forgive us both.”

  “What way, Herrick?” she asked eagerly.

  “That is my secret, which I will reveal only to my wife.”

  “Ah, that is playing on my curiosity to win me to rebellion.”

  “Not rebellion, Rena; only natural revolt against an unendurable tyranny.”

  “Do you think he will ever forgive?”

  “He will, he must. He will have no right to be angry, from the moment he knows my secret.”

  “You torture me with your enigmas. Why will you not tell me?”

  “To my wife, my wife only,” he whispered, drawing her to his breast once again, and stifling her questions with kisses. “That secret is for none but my wife’s ear: but, as I am a man of honour, Irene, you will stand free of all reproach for undutifulness. You can look Squire Bosworth in the face and say, ‘I am no rebellious daughter;’ and if he has a spark of generosity in him he shall take you to his heart as I do now, and give you love for love.”

  “He is not ungenerous,” said Irene. “But I wish you would be less mysterious.”

  “There shall be no mysteries when I am your husband. And now, love, say that you will come. I have done my part towards your father as a man of honour. I have worked hard as journalist and politician for wife and home. Am I to be disappointed of my reward?”

  “No, love,” she answered, “you shall not be cheated. I will be your wife; even at the risk of never seeing my father’s face again.”

  He thanked and blest her, in a rapture of love and gratitude; and then came a reiteration of his instructions. She was to creep out of the house before the servants were up; they rose at daybreak, but she must be before them. There was a glass door in the white parlour where they had all dined together — Lavendale, Herrick, the Squire, and his daughter — so often last year. This door opened into the garden, and was fastened with bolts which could be easily withdrawn; especially if Irene would but take the trouble to oil the fastenings over-night, to guard against any tell-tale scrooping of the iron. Then, cloaked and warmly clad, she was to skirt the shrubberies and cross the park to the wicket-gate. There Herrick and his coach would be in readiness; and all the rest was a question of fleet horses and quick relays, of which it was the lover’s business to make sure over-night.

  “I shall ride to Esher and on to Kingston, and make all preparations before ten o’clock,” he said.

  Irene was not like Lady Judith. She never thought of her gowns, or asked how she was to carry away her clothes. Not more than the lilies of the field did she consider her raiment in this solemn crisis of her life. She only knew that soon after daybreak to-morrow morning she would be in her lover’s arms, speeding away along the London road to be wedded and made one with him for ever. That she was to leave a noble inheritance and all her frocks and furbelows behind her troubled her not the least. She had no lust for finery, or to shine and dazzle in some new sphere. Blindly, and with a childlike confidence, she threw herself into her lover’s arms, believing him wisest and best among all mankind.

  So in the gray cold October dawn those two met at the wicket-gate, the coach and four horses standing ready a little way along the road. There had been nothing to hinder Irene’s flight, albeit her sharpest gaoler, Mrs. Layburne, lay wakeful and restless as the girl’s light foot passed her chamber-door. Irene heard the short dry cough, and the quick impatient sigh that followed; and she knew that her father’s mysterious housekeeper was lying there, sleepless and suffering.

  “My glorious girl,” cried Herrick, as he hurried her to the carriage, “I half feared your courage might fail you.”

  “There was no fear of that, Herrick,” she answered quietly; “but I felt myself a rebel and an undutiful daughter as I crept past my father’s room.”

  “You will not think that to-morrow.”

  “To-morrow! What do you mean by to-morrow?”

  “Only that I intend to beard the lion in his den, Irene, or in other words to ask the Squire’s pardon as soon as you are so fast my wife that no fury of his can part us. We will not behave as most runaway lovers do, go and hide themselves and wait for Providence to melt the paternal heart. We will go straight to the tyrant, and say, ‘You see, love is stronger than self-interest. It is not your fortune we want, but your love;’ and if he has a heart he will forgive us both, Irene.”

  “I hope he will,” she murmured despondently.

  “You hope, but you don’t believe. Well, we shall see. And now tell me, sweet, how is the Squire’s housekeeper, Mrs. Layburne?”

  “Very ill. Indeed, Herrick, I fear the poor soul has not many weeks, or perhaps many days, to live. It is a sad and lonely ending. She shuns all sympathy, and waits for death in a proud silence which has an awful air. Alas, I fear she lacks all the
consolations of piety. I have offered to read to her, to pray with her; but she refused with open scorn. She will have nothing to say to Mademoiselle, who is all kindness. Bridget detests her, and yet tries to nurse her and to do all she can to lessen her sufferings: but it is an unthankful office. My father looks miserable, and I think the presence of that dying woman in the house overshadows his life. He has not been to London for weeks. He sits alone in his study, reading or writing, as if he were waiting for Mrs. Layburne’s death. Mademoiselle and I have hardly seen him from day to day, yet last year we were all three so happy together. He used always to dine and spend his evenings with us; but now he dines alone, and is shut up in his study till midnight.”

  The horses were tearing along the London road, past breezy commons and low-wooded hills, between which flashed now and then a distant glimpse of the river — a silvery streak across the gray of the autumn landscape. Herrick put his head out of the coach window once in a quarter of an hour, to survey the road behind him; but there was no sign of pursuit. The chances were that Irene’s absence would not be discovered till eight o’clock, the usual breakfast-hour; and it was not yet seven. They had a clear hour before them.

  They changed horses at Kingston, and were crossing Wimbledon Common at eight. The strong fresh horses tore down the hill into Wandsworth, and now Herrick felt that his prize was won. From Wandsworth to the ferry between Lambeth and Westminster was but half an hour’s drive. The Abbey clock was striking nine as they stepped into the ferry-boat.

  A hackney coach was waiting for them on the other side, bespoken by Durnford before he left London on the previous day, a coach which carried them to Curzon Street in a quarter of an hour, and there was Parson Keith in his surplice, ready to begin the ceremony.

  How solemn and how sweet the service sounded to those true lovers, as they stood side by side before the communion-table, in the shabby little chapel which was to be the scene of so many a clandestine union, of so many a love-match doomed to end in mutual aversion! But here Fate promised a more consistent future. Here was no transient passion, born but to die, no will-o’-the-wisp love, leading the lovers over swamps and perilous places, to expire in a quagmire, but a pure and steady flame that would light their pathway to the close of life.

  Durnford left the chapel with his bride on his arm, half expecting to meet Squire Bosworth on the threshold, just half an hour too late to hinder the marriage. He would be likely to guess that the runaway couple would go straight to Parson Keith. But there was no furious father, only the jarvey nodding on his box, and a handful of vagabonds and idlers demanding largesse from the bridegroom, a scurvy crew who always gathered from the adjacent alleys to stare at the gentry whom Mr. Keith made happy.

  “To Lord Lavendale’s, Bloomsbury Square,” said Herrick; and then when they were seated side by side in the coach, he told Irene how Lavendale had insisted that they should lodge at his house till they had one of their own, and that they were to take as much time as ever they could in finding one.

  “He has given me a suite of rooms, where we shall be as much alone as if we had a house all to ourselves,” he said.

  They found the rooms prepared for them, the servants in attendance, and an excellent breakfast of chicken and iced champagne on the table. Lavendale was discreetly absent. The butler told Mr. Durnford that his lordship was not expected home till the evening.

  After breakfast, Durnford proposed that Irene should do a little shopping, and then it occurred to the bride for the first time that all her wardrobe was at Fairmile Court.

  “And I am to cost you money at the very beginning!” she said dolefully.

  “Dearest, it will be bliss to spend my money in such sweet service.”

  “Ah, but wait! I have twenty guineas in my purse, which my father gave me a week ago, my quarterly allowance of pocket-money. That will buy all I shall want for the present; and I daresay he will let me have my clothes from Fairmile. However angry he may be, he will scarcely insist upon keeping my clothes.”

  “It would assuredly be a petty form of resentment. Well, dearest, may I go shopping with you? or would you rather go alone in a chair?”

  “I would rather go with you.”

  “Then we’ll just walk quietly into Holborn, as if we were an old married couple.”

  Irene put on her cloak and hood in front of a Venetian glass, while Herrick walked up and down the room and glanced somewhat uneasily from the windows, expecting the Squire’s arrival.

  They had breakfasted in a leisurely fashion, and it was now two o’clock. There had been ample time for Mr. Bosworth to go to Parson Keith, and having obtained his information from the parson, who knew the destination of the newly-married couple, to come on to Bloomsbury Square. Yet there was still no sign of pursuit. Nor did anything occur all that afternoon to interrupt the serenity of the bride and bridegroom. They went together to the mercer’s and to the milliner’s, and Irene made her purchases on a very modest scale, and well within the limits of her pocket-money, while her husband discreetly waited at the door of the shop, and exercised a patience rare after the halcyon days of the honeymoon.

  “How good you are to wait for me!” said Irene, as she rejoined him; “shopkeepers are so slow, and they pester one so to buy more than one wants.”

  “If you were like Mrs. Skerritt, who haunts every sale-room and bids for everything she sees, your catalogue of wants would not be completed half so easily,” answered Herrick; “jealous though I am of your absence, I must own you have been vastly quick.”

  “But pray who is Mrs. Skerritt?” asked Irene. “Stay, she is the lady who was so kind to you. I should like to know her.”

  “Nay, love, I think it were better not, though there are great ladies who ask her to their houses, and pretend to adore her — Lady Mary Montagu, for instance. But my young wife must choose her friends with the utmost discretion.”

  “I wish for no friends whom you do not care for,” said his bride; “and now, Herrick, when am I to see the new comedy? It is hard that all the town should have admired my husband’s play, while I know so little about it.”

  “Shall we go to Drury Lane this evening?”

  “I should love to go.”

  “Then you shall. Lavendale has hired a box for the run of my play — he always does things in a princely style — and we can have it all to ourselves this evening. ‘Twill be our first public appearance as man and wife, and all the town will guess we are married, and will envy me my prize.”

  They dined, or pretended to dine, at four, and then Lavendale’s chariot drove them to Drury Lane.

  What a delight it was for Irene to sit by her lover-husband’s side, and watch and listen while the story of the play unfolded itself — to hear the audience laugh and applaud at each brisk retort, each humorous or fondly tender fancy! The play was a story of love and lovers, the old, old story which has been telling itself ever since creation, and which yet seems ever new to the actors in it. There were wit and passion and freshness and manly spirit in Herrick’s play, but there was not a single indecency; and the older school of wits and scribblers wondered exceedingly how so milk-and-waterish a comedy could take the town. Mrs. Manley, in a dark little box yonder, whispering behind her fan to a superannuated buck in a periwig that reached his knees, protested that the play was the tamest she had ever sat out.

  “Tamer than The Conscious Lovers,” she said, “though poor Dick lived in such fear of his wife that he dared never give free scope to his wit, lest Mrs. Molly should take offence at him. O, for the days of Etherege and Wycherley!”

  “Nay, I protest,” said the buck, adjusting a stray curl with his pocket-comb, and ogling the house with weak elderly eyes; “the play may be decent, but it is not tame. Those scenes between Nancy and Wilks are vastly fine. Stap my vitals if I have not been between laughing and crying all the evening; and this is the seventh time I have seen the piece. I wonder who that pretty creature is in my Lord Lavendale’s box, in a plain gray gown and a che
rry-coloured hood? She is the finest woman — present company excepted — I have ogled for a decade.”

  “The gentleman sitting beside her is the author of the play,” said Mrs. Manley, screwing up her eyes to peer across the width of the pit. “She is some vizard Miss that ought to be sitting in the slips, I’ll be sworn.”

  “Nay, I’ll take my oath she is a modest woman.”

  “But to sit alone in a box with a bachelor, and a notorious rake into the bargain — Lavendale’s boon companion!”

  “O, you are talking of the days before the deluge. Mr. Durnford has turned sober, and sits in Parliament. He is one of the doughtiest knights in Sir Robert’s phalanx — a rising man, madam; and as for Lavendale, he too has turned sober. One hardly ever meets him at White’s, or any of the other chocolate-houses. I am told he is dying.”

  “When he is dead you may tell me of his sobriety and I will believe you,” retorted the bluestocking, “but till then forgive me if I doubt your veracity or your information. It was only last June I saw Lavendale at Vauxhall intriguing with Lady Judith Topsparkle. I almost knocked against them in one of the dark walks, and a woman who saunters in a dark walk at midnight, hanging on the arm of a former lover—”

  “Is in a fair way to forget her duty to a latter husband,” asserted the buck, regaling himself with a pinch of smoked rappee out of the handle of his clouded cane.

  Three or four of Durnford’s acquaintance came to the box in the course of the evening, and were duly presented to his bride, whom they had all recognised as the beauty and heiress of Arlington Street, a star that had flashed upon the town for a brief space, to disappear into rustic obscurity.

  “I feared, Mrs. Bosworth, that this poor little smoky town of ours was never again to be illumined by your beauty,” said Mr. Philter, who was one of the first to press an entrance into the box.