“Madame,” he said with some surprise, “may I ask—”
The late visitor came hurriedly from the door by which she stood, lifted her veil, and fell on her knees at his feet.
“Ellinor!”
“Yes. I am in mourning for Horace Margrave, my unhappy guardian. He died a week ago in Paris. He told me all. Henry, my friend, my husband, my benefactor, can you forgive me?”
Henry Dalton passed his hand rapidly across his eyes, and turned his face away from her.
Presently he raised her in his arms, and drew her to his breast.
“Ellinor,” he cried in a broken voice, “I have suffered so long and so bitterly that I can scarcely bear this great emotion. My dearest, my ever-beloved wife, are we indeed at last set free from the miserable secret which has blighted our lives? Horace Margrave—”
“Is dead, Henry. I once loved him very dearly. I freely forgave him the injury he did me. Tell me that you forgive him too.”
“From my inmost heart, Ellinor.”
MY FIRST HAPPY CHRISTMAS
ALL the other boys at Dr. Martinet’s, Market Kagster, in the county of York, had friends and relations; all the other boys went home for holidays; all the other boys had mothers, who came to see them, and who cried when they had the measles, and brought them sponge-cakes and oranges, and sent them great hampers, filled to bursting with plum-cakes, almonds and raisins, pork-pies, hardbake, Stilton cheese, dry withered apples, and lovely sleepy pears; all the other boys wrote ceremonious missives to their “honoured parents,” on thick post-paper, documents which were called holiday letters, but which looked like reprieves, or Chancery suits, or indictments for high treason, or last wills and testaments, or something equally awful — all the boys, except the two West-Indian pupils and myself. The two West-Indian pupils never wrote to their parents, because their parents were in Demerara, and I suppose the postage was too expensive; I never wrote to mine because they were —
When I was a very, very little fellow, scarcely able to remember anything, I remember being dressed in black. I remember being taken into a churchyard, in some great city (a churchyard so choked with tombstones that it seemed almost a wonder that they did not overflow the low walls, like a stony spring-tide, and tumble into the street), by a lady, who was very young and, I think, very pretty. I know I liked to look at her, because she was bright and radiant, like some lovely picture, and always seemed as if she would fade away. She, too, was dressed in black. I remember how she sat down by one of the tombstones, and took me in her arms, and told me in a very low voice, for she was crying all the while, that I could never have such Mends in the world as were lying buried here; that I could never know such love beneath heaven as was hidden under this little spot of earth; and that if ever, when I grew to be a man, I had any thought of doing a mean or a wicked action, I was to come first to this spot, and read that which was written on this stone, which I could not read now. This lady, I have learned since, was my aunt. Like all the brightest things I have ever known in this world, she vanished from it very soon after this, and I wore black clothes till I was seven years old; and when I was seven years old, I was sent to Dr. Martinet’s at Market Kagster, in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Looking back across the waste of many chequered years, I have no fault to find with Dr. Martinet. We were, on the whole, very happy at Market Kagster. We had a great deal of roast mutton; a great deal of boiled mutton; a fair allowance of an innocuous beverage, which was supposed to be milk-and-water; a great deal of propria qua, maribus, “Pinnock’s Goldsmith,”
“Enfield’s Speaker,” haircutting, and church. Twice every Sunday did we march down the centre aisle of St. Mary’s Church, Market Kagster, and twice every Sunday did we take notes of the vicar’s or the curate’s discourse, to be reproduced in our own form, for our evening edification. It is my private opinion, that both the vicar and the curate thoroughly detested us. Imagine four-and-thirty boys glaring at you throughout your discourse, and four-and-thirty pencils scribbling your words on scratchy paper, almost before they left your mouth. That’s what the vicar and the curate had to endure every Sunday from Dr. Martinet’s pews. On the whole, I say, I was not unhappy. During the half-year’s lessons and the half-year’s exercises, the half-year’s propria qua maribus and “Enfield’s Speaker,” bad marks and good marks, stolen feasts in dimly-lighted dormitories, prisoner’s base and fly-the-garter in the great bare playground, I was tolerably happy. But Christmas, that Christmas to which thirty-one out of four-and-thirty boys looked forward with such rapture —
Christmas, which, for those thirty-one young persons, meant home, and love, and roast turkey, and unlimited wedges of rich plum-pudding smothered with brandy-sauce, and inexhaustible brown-paper bags of chestnuts, and piles of golden oranges, and bilious attacks, and kisses under the mistletoe from pretty cousins, and blindman’s buffs, and hunt the slippers, and so many glorious things, which to myself and the two pupils from Demerara were nothing but strange words — Christmas was for me a sad and a bitter time. That genial and ancient allegorical person with rubicund face, snow-white, holly-crowned head, and brave, good-natured smile, was to me an evil-minded demon, who whispered, “For you I am not what I am to other people; I never can be the same to you that I am to other people; I come to you only to remind you of the love that is for ever lost to you; of the home which you have never known; of the dear little sisters and jovial young brothers you have, never had; of the bright fireside by which you have never sat; the kind words you have never heard; the motherly kisses that have never pressed your wretched lips; the tender prayers that have never been whispered above your pillow.” Is it a wonder, then, that I hated Christmas? Is it a wonder that I hated the dismal voices of the carol-singers, and the midnight music of the waits? Is it a wonder that, when, at our breaking-up party, I intoxicated myself with sherry negus, made of eighteenpenny Cape, I did not become joyous and good-humoured in my cups, as the other boys, but was low-spirited and quarrelsome, and apt to give offence to those young gentlemen who insisted upon telling me of the jolly time they meant to have of it this Christmas? I noticed that they were always going to have a jollier Christmas this Christmas than at any previous Christmas; and that, when they returned to school, they used to have high words as to which had most enjoyed himself during the vacation, and would even come to blows on the subject of plum-pudding and mince-pies.
But away they went, away they went. Those who lived in the town were fetched by elder sisters, or aunts or uncles, or fathers or mothers; those who lived at a distance, had the best of it, perhaps, on this occasion, for they went off by the mail-coach, Highflyer, that plied between London and York, and departed from the academy with a flourish of the guard’s horn that went to the inmost hearts of the Demerara pupils and myself. Away they went, and we three little shivering boys were left all alone in the long, bare schoolroom; and we prowled about, told each other ghost-stories, till we dared not let go of each other’s jackets, in the snowy twilight; and scribbled on the other boys’ books; and played dismal games, in which our footsteps echoed in the empty room; and nibbled slate-pencil; and chewed the comers of copy-books; and, above all, talked in whispers of what we would do when we grew to be men, and to have wives and families of our own. We meant to keep a pretty tight hand upon our wives and families, I assure you; and one of the pupils from Demerara went so far as to hint that, if he found his future spouse at all contumacious, he should have recourse to corporal punishment. But we didn’t agree with him, and he was obliged to withdraw his motion.
As a rule, our Christmas-days bore a dismal likeness to each other, but there was one bright exception — one particular Christmas-day I have a special reason for remembering. It was a fine, clear, frosty day; such a Christmas-day as I don’t remember of late years — a day which seems to have gone out of fashion along with blue coats and brass buttons, stagecoaches, watchmen, five-act comedies, and the agricultural interest. A very cold day too, a not-to-be-trifled wit
h, thoroughgoing December day. The West-Indian pupils were as red about the tips of their noses as West-Indian pickles of the Chili nature. We shivered all church-time in the long, bare, empty pew, with the draught from the door cutting the figure of eight between our poor little legs, and we alternately scratched and blew upon the chilblains on our hands, except when the Doctor looked at us, when, by a powerful effort of nature, we sat pretenaturally still, and tried to look as if we defied the elements, and had never shivered in our lives. Now, opposite to our pew was situated the pew of a retired naval officer called Bowster. I have reason to believe that he was a half-pay lieutenant; but I know we all of ns thought, at Dr. Martinet’s, that he was an admiral at the very least, and we considered even that title an insufficient reward for his distinguished services. Drake, Nelson, and Bowster were all we knew of naval heroes; and Bowster was our favourite of the three. If anybody had told us that he had not been present at Trafalgar, or that Nelson could have won that victory without him, or that every man could have done his duty and come up to the expectations of England without him, I do not think that person’s life would have been worth much. We believed, I repeat, in Bowster; he was red, and stout, and jovial, and had a wooden leg, and, except in church, never was seen without a telescope, and displayed the Union Jack on a flagstaff at his country cottage three miles out of Market Kagster. He swore considerably, and talked in a very loud, gruff voice; and, moreover, had the reputation of being able to drink any man in the East Biding under the table, and get up sober himself; so he entirely came up to our ideal of the naval commander, and we worshipped him accordingly. Now, I remarked that on this particular Christmas-day, Admiral (I shall take the liberty of giving him the title which I then thought belonged to him) — Admiral Bowster stared, during the best part of the service, his very hardest — and he was by nature a hard starer — at myself and the West-Indian pupils; and once, when the church was coldest, and the wind was cutting the figure of eight most ferociously in and out between our legs, he (Bowster), in the very middle of the vicar’s sermon, winked deliberately at us three boys. Nobody but a man who had fought hand-to-hand with six Frenchmen at a time, and who had seconded Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar, could have done such a thing. My admiring consternation put me into quite a glow of heat, and my chilblains were easier for the rest of the sermon. But this was nothing. Picture my astonishment, and the astonishment of the two pupils from Demerara, when, as we were leaving the churchyard, the great Bowster, after exchanging the compliments of the season with our respected preceptor, suddenly exclaimed, in his most stentorian voice, “Should you have any particular objection, Doctor, to my taking those three young ones home with me?” We were three young ones, but he could not mean us; it was something too deliriously delightful to be believed at the first gasp. We all three held our breaths. “These boys?” said the Doctor interrogatively. “These boys, sir,” replied Bowster affirmatively, giving me such a slap upon the shoulder that I can recall the tingle of it at this moment. “ These boys, Doctor. My trap’s waiting for me; I’ll drive them over to my little box, give them their Christmas dinner, and send Jack Longshore home with them before ten to-night. Say yes, if the youngsters would like to go.” If the youngsters would like to go? We were all three crimson with suppressed delight and suspense. It couldn’t be true, even now. Dine with Bowster! Spend Christmas-day with Bowster! No, no; it was too wild a dream. The Doctor said he had no objection. No objection, indeed! no objection to saving three plates of beef, and three wedges of plum-pudding, and three half-pints of the most diminutive beer, by the transaction! I should rather think not.
“Jump in then, boys,” said the noble Bowster, “and I’ll drive you home at such a rate, that you won’t know whether the wind’s hot or cold. Jump in.”
We were at the gate of the churchyard, and everybody was coming out of church, but we set up such a shout of delight as our feeble lungs would allow us, as that most glorious of naval commanders hoisted us into his old rumbling four-wheeled chaise, and with one smack of his whip, and one jerk of the reins, started his fat brown waddling pony into a rapid trot. It was as much as we could do to lift our caps to the Doctor, standing at the churchyard gates, before we were far away on the white country road, flying past the glittering, icicle-fringed hedges, and nodding to the red-faced farmers and fat farmers’ wives driving past us in market-carts, crowded with rosy children, going to spend Christmas-day in the town. Before we were fully alive to the wild rapture of the ride, the ride was over, and we were there. There, at the pretty cottage, with the old-fashioned bow-windows and deep window-seats, the bright-red curtains, and curions cabinets, crowded with South-Sea shells and ocean wonders, stuffed tropical birds and curious seaweeds, Indian china and Chinese ivory boxes, which nobody ever opened, nor which, anybody opening could ever shut. The dear pretty cottage, with the stuffed crocodile in the hall, shot by the gallant Bowster ever so far beyond the second cataract of the Nile; the oil-painting of Bowster and Mrs. Bowster — dead and gone, poor tiling, for many a year, as the noble commander told us; the pretty drawing-room, and the snug dining-room, the table glistening with diamond-cut glass and old-fashioned silver; and, above all, Bowster himself, radiant and red, and loud and hearty, stumping here and there with his honoured wooden leg, and telling his pretty niece how his heart had been moved by our red noses and chilly looks in the parish church, and how it had suddenly occurred to him in the middle of the sermon, to take us home with him to dinner; “And that was when I winked at you, boys; that was the reason I winked at you,” the jolly old seaman roared out, as he told his pretty niece and housekeeper (she was very proud of being his housekeeper) to take care of us, while he went to see about the wine.
The last time I was in Market Kagster, I went to look for this dear old cottage, but, alas, it was no more; they were building a great grim Elizabethan workhouse on the site of the old thatched-roofed, gabled, rambling, tumble-down hospitable place; and all I could learn of Admiral Bowster was from a certain stone record in the parish church, set up by his grateful, affectionate, and sorrowful niece.
But, as I tell you of these things, they come back to me, and I am a boy in a jacket again; and here is dear old Bowster coming back to the dining-room, with a bottle in each hand, and another bottle under each arm, and a corkscrew in his mouth. He took the corkscrew out of his mouth, and set to work to use that instrument with a will. “This,” he said, as he drew cork number one, “is Madeira, boys; and Madeira’s a very good thing in its way, especially when it has made the distance between England and Calcutta three times, as this Madeira has, boys; and this, boys, is Port,” he continued, drawing cork number two; “and Port is no such bad stuff, either, when it’s Comet Port of the year 18 — , and has been bought at the sale of a marquis’s cellar; and this, boys,” he added, going on to number three, “is French brandy, as mild as milk, and as pale as East-Indian ale; and number four, boys, is Schiedam; and that’s all, boys, and you shall taste them everyone (to say nothing of the rum-punch my little girl here shall help me to brew by and by) before you go home to-night.”
We drew our breath again; we had heard of that wonderful kingdom in which sucking-pigs run about ready roasted, with knives and forks stuck into their cracklings, but we thought that Admiral Bowster’s cottage rather surpassed it, if anything. And O, the dinner, such a dinner, and such a long dinner! Only the admiral and his pretty niece, with a very young lieutenant, who sat next to her, and had so much to say to her that he didn’t care a bit, foolish fellow, for all the good things smoking before him; only, I say, the admiral, his niece, the young lieutenant, an old navy surgeon, from Market Kagster, and we three boys. Such a dinner! Boast beef — so big a sirloin, that I could not see the admiral sitting behind it, but only heard his voice across it, gruff and loud, making the very bunches of horse-radish shiver with its manly thunder. Boast beef, and boiled turkey with oyster-sauce, and tongue, and a monster plum-pudding all ablaze with burnt brandy, and a great dish of minc
e-pies, ablaze with more brandy, so that the second course looked like the opening scene in a pantomime, all blue fire and forked flame. And there sat the dear old admiral piling up our plates with first beef, and then turkey, plum-pudding on the top of mince-pies, and mince-pies on a stratum of plum-pudding, and never desisting till we cried out that we had been helped twice to everything, and had unfastened the last button of our waistcoats.
O, such a dinner! We drank Madeira as quite a common beverage before we had done, and every time we drank the admiral’s health, we cried, “Hip, hip, hurrah!” till we made the plates and dishes rattle again. I know the navy surgeon once ventured to suggest that Madeira was rather a trying beverage for schoolboys; but dear old Bowster put him down by asking him whether he disliked Madeira when he was a schoolboy, which retort we thought the very highest order of wit, and applauded till we shook the table, while the admiral went to get another bottle. Good gracious me! we were generally such shy boys, that to say good-day to us was to inflict upon us the greatest moral torture, if you expected us to bid you good-morning in return; but under the influence of Bowster, and Bowster’s Madeira, and Bowster’s plum-pudding and burnt brandy, we became three lions; and we told the company over dessert (as well as we could, with our mouths alternately filled with chestnuts, figs, almonds and raisins, macaroons and oranges) our opinion of Dr. Martinet, and the Latin grammar, and the Martinet mutton, and the great quantity of fat we had to eat, counterbalanced by a minimum of lean; and we expounded our views of life in general, and how we meant to be sailors every one of us; and I know I informed the admiral kindly, that when I had a ship — which of course I should a year or so after entering the navy — I should call it the Bowster, or the Gallant Bowster. And this simple, honest hero-worship, offered from a schoolboy’s happy heart, so gratified the hearty seaman, that he tapped a special bottle of the dead-and-gone Marquis of Something’s port, that we might christen his majesty’s ship, the Gallant Bowster, with all the honours. It was at this stage of the entertainment I began to experience so peculiar a sensation, that I find some little difficulty, at this distance of time, in describing it correctly. In the first place, my ideas of time and space were entirely overthrown, and I had great difficulty in making myself quite clear as to whether to-day was yesterday or to-morrow. Then Bowster — goodness me! how wavy and fluctuating Bowster became in his personal appearance! One moment Bowster would recede from me and from his own mahogany at so rapid a rate, that when I looked at him, I saw him glaring dimly at me from the farthest end of a lane of decanters and black bottles half a mile long. This was rather bewildering; but this was nothing to Bowster, when instead of receding he advanced upon me with a frightful velocity, like a jovial red railway engine, bearing down upon me at the rate of sixty miles an hour. And then the West-Indian pupils! If they would have appeared the same number for two consecutive minutes, I would have forgiven them; but they wouldn’t. One minute there they were, serene and smiling, rather pale, but very happy, and only their normal number, two; the next time I looked their way there were four of them at the least; and three minutes afterwards, these dreadful boys swelled, dilated, and multiplied in such a manner, that I found myself face to face with a closely-packed regiment of yellow-faced and frizzy-haired natives of the island of Demerara, formed in square. I think we went into the drawing-room; and I know that, in crossing the hall, somebody, whose name I forget, fell into a scuttle of coals; and, strange to say, my shins were sore all the evening; and then the admiral’s niece sang us a song, such a sweet pretty song, about love, and truth, and fidelity, which the young lieutenant said was the sweetest song that was ever written; but as she sang, it all of a sudden changed into the “Bay of Biscay,” and there was the dear old admiral leading the chorus, and we singing at the top of our treble voices, how “she lay, all the day, in the bay-ee o-of Bi-iscay, O!” O dear, happy, never-to-be-forgotten Christmas! How many changes and chances have I experienced since that departed time! How many a sad December, how many a bitter grief, to take the brightness out of the glistening holly, and the sweetness out of the rich plum-pudding; to make turkey an abomination, and all the genial, festive sounds so many strokes upon a funeral bell! How many a cruel shock to change the face of that joyous time into a pale and saddened mourning visage, awful to look upon, and far too terrible to recall! But never, while I live, shall I forget that 25th of December, and that glorious old Bowster roaring out the brave seafaring ditty, in his great, honest, bass voice, never more to be heard beneath the stars.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1067
