Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  The servant who opened the door at the vicarage was a familiar figure in Mary’s girlhood — the same kindly face, a little broader and redder for the lapse of years, for the smart parlour-maid Mary remembered had now a middle-aged housekeeperish appearance, and the neatly parted hair upon the honest forehead was grey. She stared at the visitor with wide-open eyes. “Miss Tremayne,” she gasped at last, and the troubled surprise in her look and tone was indicative of the scandal there had been.

  Yes, Mr. Holditch was at home, and no doubt he would see Miss Tremayne, but she would find him sadly changed, sadly changed since he lost his wife.

  Phoebe led the way to a parlour opening into the garden, known as the study, where the vicar had his small collection of sermons and popular theology, and where he spent Saturday in preparing the Sunday discourses, which had grown longer and more hopelessly dull as his mental condition weakened.

  “Miss Tremayne, if you please, sir,” said Phoebe, in a loud voice and with appalling distinctness. “You remember Miss Tremayne who used to come here often to see my mistress.”

  The vicar rose suddenly with a flurried look, and stared at Mary rather helplessly, as he motioned her to a chair.

  “Of course I remember. Miss Tremayne, yes — there were Tremaynes at the Manor House when I came here — years and years ago. Tremayne, yes — a Cornish name — a good old Cornish name — though I am not a Cornishman I can respect the old names.”

  Mary took his hand and held it gently, while she looked in his face.

  “I think you must remember me, dear Mr. Holditch. Your wife was very kind to me. I was a little girl when you knew me first, a lonely little girl, and Mrs. Holditch was almost my only friend. I used to come to the vicarage to tea very often. I think you must remember, and I used to sit in the vicarage pew.”

  “Yes, a little girl — of course I remember you. I used to look down and see you there while I was preaching, like the picture in our drawing-room, ‘My First Sermon.’ We never had any children — Millicent would have liked a little girl. Her life was lonely in this big rambling old house. And you are Mary Tremayne! Come then, my dear, sit here by me, and tell me all about yourself. You ran away with a man whom nobody knew, and your father would not let anybody question him about you. It was all very dark, and my poor wife took it to heart, and ill-natured people said cruel things about you. The people in this parish are very ill-natured. I have been trying to please them ever since I came here, but they don’t care twopence for me, and the collections are so wretched that I am ashamed to write them for the verger to put on the door. They make me blush for my species.”

  “Tell me about your wife, dear Mr. Holditch. I was very fond of her, very grateful for all her kindness.”

  “She was kind to everyone. It was her nature, and she never wanted gratitude, luckily, for she wouldn’t have got it in this parish. She was fond of children, and she was particularly fond of you — because, as she used to say, you were a little lady, and because you had to lead a strange lonely life. She missed you after you went away. And after your poor father’s death, some horrid vulgar people came to his house — retired shopkeepers, a herd of boys and girls, who laughed in church if any little thing went wrong, and who played tennis on the green by the chapel — noisy, ill-bred wretches — and no associates for Millicent.”

  And then, in rather a rambling way, he told her about his wife’s last year, a gradual fading away, a weak heart, and then a sudden close of the sad, joyless life.

  Since then he had lived, just lived, longing for the call that was to summon him to the land of peace where his wife was waiting for him.

  “The land of the leal, Mary, that’s where we are all going — drifting, just drifting through a life that has very little real joy for any of us.”

  Phoebe reappeared to tell her master that tea was ready in the drawing-room, and would he bring Miss Tremayne there with him?

  “Yes, of course I will,” he answered, and then to Mary: “Phoebe looks after me; Phoebe is a kind, nice girl. She has been with us fourteen years, and she knows our ways.”

  He still used the plural pronouns, and sometimes forgot that he was alone.

  Mary looked with sad eyes at the well-remembered room. Nothing had been changed, and there was no look of neglect, or sluttishness, only things were older and a little shabbier — the carpet and curtains a little paler, the chintz covers a little more faded. There were the bits of old English china that Mrs. Holditch had been proud of, relics all of them. There was the engraving of Millais’ picture over the mantelpiece, the little girl listening gravely to her first sermon, and the Landseer, the “Shepherd’s Prayer,” that Mary had especially loved. The picture was in the gallery at Warburton House. There were the muslin cushion-covers embroidered by industrious hands, and all the little useless things the mistress of the house had cherished, for old sake’s sake. Everything had the atmosphere of the Past-Days that were finished and people who were dead.

  Mary’s heart ached as she looked at the familiar room, remembering how she had been welcomed and made much of by that kind friend, who must needs have thought badly of her when she was gone.

  “I did not see much of your father after you had gone,” Mr. Holditch said. “You see, there was never much we could talk about without unpleasantness, for he had told me point-blank that all that I held sacred was meaningless for him. Meaningless — that was his word, Mary, and oh, my dear, where should I be if the Master I serve were only a shadow, and the world where I am to find Millicent were only a dream? Meaningless! I did not cross his threshold after my wife’s death. People told me his temper was soured by your leaving him in such a strange way. But no one said that he took it much to heart. We all knew that he was a hard man.”

  There was a silence while the old vicar sipped his second cup of tea, looking furtively at Mary now and then. At last, he said gently: “I have often wondered about you, why you went away, and what manner of man your husband may have been — but you have come back, and I am not going to embarrass you with over-much questioning.”

  “That will be kind of you — for there are questions I could not answer without pain — yet there is something I must tell you about myself. I had the good fortune to be of use to a rich man, cruelly afflicted, a man who had been a helpless invalid for a great many years when I entered his service. He was never a hard master, and he was the kindest and most interesting friend that any woman ever had. I had a liberal salary, more than I wanted for my own use, and he told me that I should be provided for, and never know want when he was gone. That was much to know, for I had known the lowest depths of poverty. I never thought of his wealth, or expected more than he had promised me. But when he died, I found that he had left me a great part of his fortune.”

  “You are a very lucky young woman.”

  “Yes, I suppose everybody would say that, but I was more overwhelmed than elated. I had lost my kindest friend, the one friend who really loved me, and to whom I had been necessary. I was able to make that afflicted life just a little happier, and he flung his riches into my lap; but his death left me a lonely woman. For me a great fortune can be only a great responsibility. I came here because I wanted to see the people I had known when I was a child, and who had been kind to me, for my own sake, when I was a lonely girl, the old servants who took care of me, and some of the fishermen’s wives that I knew, and I hope somehow I may be able to make their old age a little easier.”

  And then she told him how, in wandering about the old garden and orchard and the house where her father had lived and died, it had occurred to her that she might build almshouses for the fishermen’s widows, and a home for their fatherless children, on the ground that was well situated for such a purpose, sheltered by the cliff and facing the sun.

  The old man was delighted. And when she told him further that anything he wanted done for his church or his vicarage should be done at her cost without stint, he told her that God had put these blessed thoughts into her
mind, and that she had made him happier than he had ever felt since his wife left him. He walked to the inn beside her, and seemed a younger and a brisker man by a decade than when she found him in his library; and he prattled about the improvements that might be made in his church — nothing tremendous, restoration of roof or screen — only a stove that would keep his scanty congregation warm in winter, and some necessary repair of the organ which might cost fifty pounds or so, and an altar carpet, the present one being threadbare — and perhaps new surplices for the choir. As for the vicarage, he would ask for nothing. It would last his time, and he wanted no improvement that Millicent could not see.

  Mary went about next day looking for the familiar faces. There was a gap of years to be bridged over, and it seemed a much wider gap than she had expected. Some of the women she had been fond of were old women when she was a child, and it was not strange that these should be gone. But others whom she had known robust and in the prime of life were lying in the churchyard, and girls she remembered fresh and innocent had married badly, or had gone to the bad on their own account, and this was a grief.

  Of all the dogs she had loved she found only one, in the cottage of one of her best friends, a fisherman who had been always a model of steadiness and industry, and whose wife was a worthy helpmeet. Here Mary found an old retriever that had been a puppy ‘ when she was a little girl — a joyous black puppy, a ball of curly hair that rolled on the grass at her feet, full of fun and mischief, a creature for whom mere existence seemed rapture, and who used to go for long rambles among the gorse bushes on the cliff with her.

  “To think you should remember Dinah after all these years, miss,” said Susan Nicolls, moved with wonder that anything in her humble home should be remembered, “and you living in London where there is so much to see and so much going on. Yes, this is poor old Dinah!” She pointed to something black and woolly, lying across the hearth, that might have easily been mistaken for an old rug.

  Mary stooped down to pat the dog, and Dinah awoke at the light touch, and looked at her with eyes that did not see much of this world’s beauty.

  “She’s getting blinder every day,” Mrs. Nicolls said, “and Ben is thinking of doing away with her.”

  “What!” cried Mary. “Killing her?” She thought with a sudden pang of her own beloved Zamiel, left behind with the Sloane Square dog-doctor for a course of treatment against canker.

  “Yes, miss, the poor old thing aren’t much good even to herself, and baby tumbles over her, so that it’s hardly safe to leave her lying about — and the children tease her, so she hasn’t got a happy time.”

  “Never mind,” Mary said, “she shall be my pensioner, and she shall live as long as she likes.”

  “She’s thirteen years old, miss.”

  Mary sat in the sunny cottage window for a long time talking with Mrs. Nicolls. She had so many questions to ask, and was so anxious to know about the people she had known, whether Mrs. Holditch’s particular protégées or her own friends, the latter not always having been spotless characters.

  Alas! she had been away only six years and so many she had known were lying in the churchyard, or in their wild and wandering grave under the waves that looked so joyous on this sunny morning.

  Some had given way to drink and had fallen upon evil days; but these were not many, for the Cornish are a sober race. But the sea that Mary loved had made many widows and orphans, and she heard of several whom she had known comfortably off in their queer old stone cottages who were now in the Union.

  “I am going to build a house for them. They are not going to stop in the Union,” Mary said. And then she told Mrs. Nicolls her plan, and that worthy person rejoiced exceedingly, and offered a list of widows who would have filled any average set of almshouses. Mary told her she would find room for them all, and she spent the same bright noontide hours of the following day in a long conference with the little agent, who was anxious to sell her the house, and his cousin, a clever young man, who had been soundly educated as an architect, and had quite a considerable reputation in Launceston, where he had done a good deal of honest work in originating villa residences in the environs of the town for retired shopkeepers and small gentry.

  He was a modest young man, who loved his profession as ardently as if he had been Leonardo da Vinci, and he had a young wife and a year-old baby, and would rather have talked of the baby than of himself, but his cousin was loud in his praise.

  “He has got the ideas, you see, ma’am,” he said, and then he tapped his own forehead. “They are all there. He is brimming over with original ideas. You’ve only to look at some of the houses he has built upon awkward bits of ground with the added drawback of shortness of funds.”

  Mr. Brownlow sighed.

  “That’s the rub, madam. That’s where every architect has to move in fetters. We are always pulled up by the question of cost. The best feature in the whole scheme may be your roof, picturesque and commanding, and with plenty of room in it — not a tricky bit of sham without meaning in it, that can be run up cheap — but a solid seventeenth-century bit of work with deep gables, and clustered chimneys. But you’re pulled up short because the client can’t afford it. So you have to flatten your gables and shorten your chimney stack — and you are ashamed of the result. And if, while you are watching the work and putting your brains into it, such as they are, you see the way to a great improvement that will better the whole design, you are pulled up short again. That would be an extra — and a heavy extra. But there’s no margin for extras. It isn’t the architect’s mind, madam, that settles the shape of a house — it’s the client’s pocket.”

  “You shall not be pulled up short in this work, Mr. Brownlow,” Mary said gaily. “My almshouses are to be lovely to look at, and comfortable to live in, and I want you to give your best thoughts and a great deal of your time to the work. Be as original as ever you like; only remembering that the health and comfort of the women who are to live in them must be your first consideration at every point.”

  And then she showed him roughly her plan of the ground. The old house was to stand unchanged. And, leaving that as a central figure, there should be fifteen cottages on each side of it, so planned as to seem part of an original design, and to make with the central building three sides of a quadrangle. There was to be a fountain and a large stone basin in the middle of the open space.

  “The old house will be for my orphans,” Mary said, “and the thirty cottages will be for my widows, and in one of the wings you will have to contrive a quaint little house for a chaplain, unless we put him and his wife and children in the Orphanage.”

  Mr. Brownlow favoured the latter idea. He did not want to interfere with the balance of his two sides of cottages. Then he talked of some Tudor work in the Convent of the Good Shepherd at Hammersmith — one of the latest achievements of an architect whom he had greatly admired.

  “I’m afraid we mustn’t attempt anything Tudor here,” Mr. Brownlow said rather sadly. “We have to keep to the spirit of the old house, which is a late Jacobean — but even that will allow us to be picturesque. I shall be happy to go to work upon three or four sketches — just a tentative plan of what could be done with our ground — if you will be kind enough to tell me roughly about how much you are prepared to spend upon the buildings.”

  “You have no occasion to consider money, Mr. Brownlow. I am doing this as a labour of love. I am building my houses for some dear old people I knew when I was a child, and I shall not count the cost.”

  Henry Brownlow turned pale with emotion. He had never had such a client — had never hoped to have such a client — had never dreamed of one. He felt he had come to a turning point in his life. And then his heart seemed to stop beating.

  “Is she mad?” he asked himself. “She must be mad. Nobody but a lunatic ever talked like that. It is a regular case of mania.”

  And then he looked at his cousin, whom he despised on æsthetic grounds, but rather respected as a business-like person.


  “Where may I send my sketches, madam? Or may I wait on you with them?”

  “I should prefer that, if you please. Mr. Stubbs is coming to me this evening to arrange about the purchase of the property, for I am not yet in actual possession; and if you could show me any rough sketches by that time, I should be very glad.”

  “She hasn’t even bought the place — no money!” thought Henry. “It’s as clear as daylight. Mad as a March hare.” Yet on looking earnestly at his client he could see no sign of lunacy in the clear, calm face, nor in the simple black costume, so exquisitely neat in every detail.

  If she were indeed a mad woman she wore no straws in her hair. Nothing eccentric in form or colour hinted at a mind distraught.

  “I’ll make my sketch, anyhow,” he thought. “I’m on fire to do it. I’ll waste a sheet of Bristol board on her, if she’s as mad as forty hatters.”

  He walked home with the Jack-of-all-trades, who was putting him up for a day or two, and who was elated at the thought of having secured him a big job.

  “Do you know anything about her?” Henry asked him. “She talked very big. But a solitary young woman staying at that homely old inn doesn’t sound like a millionaire.”

  “She’s as rich as she can stick, my boy. My wife got hold of her maid the other day when she came to my place with a note. It was tea-time, and my wife coaxed her into the parlour, and made much of her. She has been left an immense fortune, and one of the show houses in the West End and a place in Hampshire. She’s simply rolling, Henry, and you are a lucky dog for having got hold of her. You’ll make twenty times the money out of her that I shall with just my paltry commission. She is to pay three thousand of the best for the house and land, and made no more fuss about it than if she was buying a pair of gloves.”

  “But have you seen the colour of her money?”

  “I have seen her cheque on the Union Bank of London, which I sent on to the solicitors who are preparing the conveyance. I suppose she’s not very business-like, as she hasn’t employed anybody to look into the title; but I know it’s a good one, for the estate has been in one family for the last two hundred years.”