Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  The day of terror was past. Denzil’s convalescence was proceeding slowly, but without retrograde stages. His youth and temperate habits had helped his recovery from a wound which in the earlier stages looked fatal. He was now able to sit up in an armchair, and talk to his visitor, when Sir John rode twenty miles to see him; but only once did his lips shape the name that had been so dear, and that occasion was at the end of a visit which Sir John announced as the last.

  “Our goods are packed and ready for shipping,” he said. “My daughter and I will begin our journey to Montpelier early next week.”

  It was the first time Sir John had spoken of his daughter in that sick-room.

  “If she should ever talk of me, in the time to come,” Denzil said — speaking very slowly, in a low voice, as if the effort, mental and physical, were almost beyond his strength, and holding the hand which Sir John had given him in saying good-bye—”tell her that I shall ever remember her with a compassionate affection — ever hold her the dearest and loveliest of women — yes, even if I should marry, and see the children of some fair and chaste wife growing up around me. She will ever be the first. And tell her that I know she forswore herself in the court; and that she was the innocent dupe of that villain — never his consenting companion. And tell her that I pity her even for that so misplaced affection which tempted her to swear to a lie. I knew, sir, always, that she loved him and not me. Yes, from the first. Indeed, sir, it was but too easy to read that unconscious beginning of unholy love, which grew and strengthened like some fatal disease. I knew, but nursed the fond hope that I could win her heart — in spite of him. I fancied that right must prevail over wrong; but it does not, you see, sir, not always — not — —” A faintness came over him; whereupon his mother, re-entering the room at this moment, ran to him and restored him with the strong essence that stood handy among the medicine bottles on the table by his chair.

  “You have suffered him to talk too much,” she said, glancing angrily at Sir John. “And I’ll warrant he has been talking of your daughter — whose name must be poison to him. God knows ’tis worse than poison to me!”

  “Madam, I did not come to this house to hear my daughter abused — —”

  “It would have better become you, Sir John Kirkland, to keep away from this house.”

  “Mother, silence! You distress me worse than my illness — —”

  “This, madam, is my farewell visit. You will not be plagued any more with me,” said Sir John, lifting his hat, and bowing low to Lady Warner.

  He was gone before she could reply.

  * * * * *

  The baggage was ready — clothes, books, guns, plate, and linen — all necessaries for an exile that might last for years, had been packed for the sea voyage; but the trunks and bales had not yet been placed in the waggon that was to convey them to the Tower Wharf, where they were to be shipped in one of the orange-boats that came at this season from Valencia, laden with that choice and costly fruit, and returned with a heterogeneous cargo. At Valencia the goods would be put on board a Mediterranean coasting vessel, and landed at Cette.

  Sir John began to waver about his destination after having heard from Henriette of her father’s possible embassy. Certainly if Fareham were to be employed in foreign diplomacy, Paris seemed a likely post for a man who was so well known there, and had spent so much of his life in France. And if Fareham were to be at Paris, Sir John considered Montpelier, remote as it was from the capital, too near his enemy.

  “He has proved himself an indomitable villain,” thought the Knight. “And I could not always keep as close a watch upon my daughter as I have done in the last six weeks. No. If Fareham be for France, I am for some other country. I might take her to Florence, and put the Apennines between her and that daring wretch.”

  It may be, too, that Sir John had another reason for lingering, after all was ready for the journey. He may have been much influenced by Angela’s concern about his grandchildren, and may have hesitated at leaving them alone in England with only salaried guardians.

  “Their father concerns himself very little about them, you see,” he told Angela, “since he can entertain the project of a foreign embassy, while those little wretches are pining in a lonely barrack in Oxfordshire.”

  “Indeed, sir, he is a fond father. I would wager my life that he is deeply concerned about them.”

  “Oh, he is an angel, on your showing! You would blacken your sister’s character to make him a saint.”

  The next day was fine and sunny, a temperature as of April, after the morning frost had melted. There was a late rose or two still lingering in the sheltered Buckinghamshire valley, though it wanted but a fortnight of Christmas. Angela and her father were sitting in a parlour that faced the iron gates. Since their return from London Sir John had seemed uneasy when his daughter was out of his sight; and she, perceiving his watchfulness and trouble, had been content to abandon her favourite walks in the lanes and woods and to the “fair hill of Brill,” whence the view was so lovely and so vast, on one side reaching to the Welsh mountains, and on another commanding the nearer prospect of “the great fat common of Ottmoor,” as Aubrey calls it, “which in some winters is like a sea of waters.” For her father’s comfort, noting the sad wistful eyes that watched her coming in and going out, she had resigned herself to spend long melancholy hours within doors, reading aloud till Sir John fell asleep, playing backgammon — a game she detested worse even than shove-halfpenny, which latter primitive game they played sometimes on the shovel-board in the hall. Life could scarcely be sadder than Angela’s life in those grey winter days; and had it not been for an occasional ride across country with her father, health and spirits must alike have succumbed to this monotony of sadness.

  This morning, as on many mornings of late, the subject of the boy and girl at Chilton had been discussed with the Knight’s tankard of home-brewed and his daughter’s chocolate.

  “Indeed, sir, it would be a cruel thing for us to abandon them. At Montpelier we shall be a fortnight’s journey from England; and if either of those dear creatures should fall ill, dangerously ill, perhaps, their father beyond the seas, and we, too, absent — oh, sir, figure to yourself Henriette or George dying among strangers! A cold or a fever might carry them off in a few days; and we should know nothing till all was over.”

  Sir John groaned and paced the room, agitated by the funereal image.

  “Why, what a raven thou art, ever to croak dismal prophecies. The children are strong and well, and have careful custodians. I can have no dealings with their father. Must I tell you that a hundred times, Angela? He is a consummate villain: and were it not that I fear to make a bigger scandal, he or I should not have survived many hours after that iniquitous sentence.”

  A happy solution of this difficulty, which distressed the Knight much more than his stubbornness allowed him to admit, was close at hand that morning, while Angela bent over her embroidery frame, and her father spelt through the last London Gazette that the post had brought him.

  The clatter of hoofs and roll of wheels announced a visit; and while they were looking at the gate, full of wonder, since their visitors were of so small a number, a footman in the Fareham livery pulled the iron ring that hung by a chain from the stone pillar, and the bell rang loud and long in the frosty air. The Fareham livery! Twice before the Fareham coaches and liveries had taken that quiet household by surprise; but to-day terror rather than surprise was in Angela’s mind as she stood in front of the window looking at the gate.

  Could Fareham be so rash as to face her father, so daring as to seek a farewell interview on the eve of departure? No, she told herself; such folly was impossible. The visitor could be but one person — Henriette. Even assured of this in her own mind, she did not rush to welcome her niece, but stood as if turned to stone, waiting for the opening of the gate.

  Old Reuben, having seen the footman, went himself to admit the visitors, with his grandson and slave in attendance.

  �
��It must be her little ladyship,” he said, taking his young mistress’s view of the case. “Lord Fareham would never dare to show his deceiving face here.”

  A shrill voice greeted him from the coach window before he reached the gate.

  “You are the slowest old wretch I ever saw!” cried the voice. “Don’t you know that when visitors of importance come to a house they expect to be let in? I vow a convent gate would be opened quicker.”

  “Indeed, your ladyship, when your legs are as old as mine — —”

  “Which I hope they never will be,” muttered Henriette, as she descended with a languid slowness from the coach, assisted on either side by a footman; while George, who could not wait for her airs and graces, let himself out at the door on the off side just as Reuben succeeded in turning the key.

  “So you are old Reuben!” he said, patting the butler on the shoulder with the gold hilt of his riding-whip. “And you were here, like a vegetable, all through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth?”

  “Yes, your lordship, from the raising of Hampden’s regiment.”

  “Ah, you shall tell me all about it over a pipe and a bottle. You must be vastly good company. I am come to live here.”

  “To live here, your honour?”

  “Yes; sister and I are to live here while my father represents his Majesty beyond seas. I hope you have good stabling and plenty of room. My ponies and Mistress Henriette’s Arab horse will be here to-morrow. I doubt I shall have to build a place for my hawks; but I suppose Sir John will find me a cottage for my Dutch falconer.”

  “Lord, how the young master do talk!” exclaimed Reuben, with an admiring grin.

  The boy was so rapid in his speech, had such vivacity and courage in his face, such a spring in every movement, as if he had quicksilver in his veins, Reuben thought; but it was only the quicksilver of youth, that Divine ichor which lasts for so brief a season.

  “It made me feel twenty years younger only to hear him prattle,” Reuben said afterwards.

  Sir John and his daughter had come to meet the children by this time, and there were fond embracings, in the midst of which Henriette withdrew herself from her grandfather’s arms, and retired a couple of paces, in order to drop him the Jennings curtsy, sinking almost to the ground, and then rising from billows of silk, like Venus from the sea, and handing him a letter, with a circular sweep of her arm, learnt in London from her Parisian dancing mistress, an apprentice of St. André’s, not from the shabby little French cut-caper from Oxford.

  “My father sends you this letter, sir.”

  “Is your father at Chilton?”

  “No, sir. He was with us the day before yesterday, to bid us good-bye before he started upon his foreign embassy,” replied Henriette, struggling with her tears, lest she should seem a child, and not the woman of fashion she aspired to be. “He left us early in the afternoon to ride back to London, and he takes barge this afternoon to Gravesend, to embark for Archangel, on his way to Moscow. I doubt you know he is to be his Majesty’s Ambassador at Muscovy?”

  “I know nothing but what you told me t’other day, Henriette,” the Knight answered, as they went to the house, where George began to run about on an exploration of corridors, and then escaped to the stables, while Henriette stood in front of the great wood fire, and warmed her hands in a stately manner.

  Angela had found no words of welcome for her niece yet. She only hugged and kissed her, and now occupied herself unfastening the child’s hood and cloak. “How your hands shake, auntie. You must be colder than I am; though that leathern coach lets in the wind like a sieve. I suppose my people will know where to dispose themselves?” she added, resuming her grand air.

  “Reuben will take care of them, dearest.”

  “Why, your voice shakes like your hands; and oh, how white you are. But you are glad to see us, I hope?”

  “Gladder than I can say, Henriette.”

  “I am glad you don’t call me Papillon. I have left off that ridiculous name, which I ought never to have permitted.”

  “I doubt, mistress, you who know so much know what is in this letter,” said Sir John, staring at Fareham’s superscription as if he had come suddenly upon an adder.

  “Nay, sir, I only know that my father was shut in his library for a long time writing, and was as white as my aunt is now when he brought it to me. ‘You and George, and your gouvernante and servants, are to go to the Manor Moat the day after to-morrow,’ he said, ‘and you are to give this letter into your grandfather’s hand.’ I have done my duty, and await your Honour’s pleasure. Our gouvernante is not the Frenchwoman. Father dismissed her for neglecting my education, and walking out after dark with Daniel Lettsome. ’Tis only Priscilla, who is something between a servant and a friend, and who does everything I tell her.”

  “A pretty gouvernante!”

  “Nay, sir, she is as plain as a pikestaff; that is one of her merits. Mademoiselle thought herself pretty, and angled for a rich husband. Please be so good as to read your letter, grandfather, for I believe it is about us.”

  Sir John broke the seal, and began to read the letter with a frowning brow, which lightened as he read. Angela stood with her niece clasped in her arms, and watched her father’s countenance across the silky brown head that nestled against her bosom.

  “SIR, — Were it not in the interests of others, who must needs hold a place in your affection second only to that they have in my heart, I should scarce presume to address you; but it is to the grandfather of my children I write, rather than to the gentleman whom I have so deeply offended. I look back, sir, and repent the violence of that unhappy night; but know no change in the melancholy passion that impelled me to crime. It would have been better for me had I been the worst rake-hell at Whitehall, than to have held myself aloof from the modish vices of my day, only to concentrate all my desires and affections there, where it was most sinful to place them.

  “Enough, sir. Did I stand alone I should have found an easy solution of all difficulties, and you, and the lady my madness has so insulted, would have been rid for ever of the despicable wretch who now addresses you.

  “I had to remember the dear innocents who bring you this letter, and it was of them I thought when I humbled myself to turn courtier in order to obtain the post of Ambassador to Muscovy — in which savage place I shall be so remote from all who ever knew me in this country, that I shall be as good as dead; and you would have as much compunction in withholding your love and protection from my boy and girl as if they were de facto orphans. I send them to you, sir, unheralded. I fling them into the bosom of your love. They are rich, and the allowance that will be paid you for them will cover, I apprehend, all outlays on their behalf, or can be increased at your pleasure. My lawyers, whom you know, will be at your service for all communications; and they will spare you the pain of correspondence with me.

  “I leave the nurture, education, and happiness of these, my only son and daughter, solely in your care and authority. They have been reared in over-much luxury, and have been spoiled by injudicious indulgence. But their faults are trivial faults, and are all on the surface. They are truthful, and have warm and generous hearts. I shall deem it a further favour if you will allow their nurse, or nurse-gouvernante, Mrs. Priscilla Baker, to remain with them, as your servant, and subject to your authority. Their horses, ponies, hawks, and hounds, carriages, etc., must be accommodated, or not, at your pleasure. My girl is greatly taken up with the Arab horse I gave her on her last birthday, and I should be glad if your stable could shelter him. I subscribe myself, perhaps for the last time, sir,

  “Your obedient servant, and a penitent sinner,

  “FAREHAM.”

  When he had come to the end of the letter, reading slowly and thoughtfully,

  Sir John handed it to his daughter, in a dead silence.

  She tried to read; but at sight of the beloved writing a rush of tears blinded her, and she gave the letter back to her father.

  “I cannot read i
t, sir,” she sobbed; “tell me only, are we to keep the children?”

  “Yes. Henceforward they are our children; and it will be the business of our lives to make them happy.”

  “If you cry, tante, I shall think you are vexed that we have come to plague you,” said Henriette, with a pretty, womanly air. “I am very sorry for his poor lordship, for he also cried when he kissed us; but he will have skating and sledging in Muscovy, and he will shoot bears; so he will be very happy.”

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  IN A DEAD CALM.

  The great bales and chests, and leather trunks, on the filling whereof Sir John’s household had bestowed a week’s labour, were all unpacked and cleared out of the hall, to make room for a waggon load of packages from Chilton Abbey, which preliminary waggon was followed day after day by other conveyances laden with other possessions of the Honourable Henriette, or the Honourable George. The young lady’s virginals, her guitar, her embroidery frames, her books, her “babies,” which the maids had packed, although it was long since she had played with them; the young gentleman’s guns and whips, tennis rackets, bows and arrows, and a mass of heterogeneous goods; there seemed no end to the two children’s personal property, and it was well that the old house was sufficiently spacious to afford a wing for their occupation. They brought their gouvernante, and a valet and maid, the falconer, and three grooms, for whom lodgings had to be found out-of-doors. The valet and waiting-woman spent some days in distributing and arranging all that mass of belongings; but at the end of their labour the children’s rooms looked more cheerful than their luxurious quarters at Chilton, and the children themselves were delighted with their new home.