Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘A bad man?’

  ‘Yes; he broke his mother’s heart.’

  ‘In what manner?’

  ‘He fell in love with a girl of low birth, whom he met in the course of a pedestrian tour in the West of England, and was going to marry her, I believe, when Mrs. Egerton got wind of the affair. She was a very proud woman — one of the most resolute masculine-minded women I ever knew. She went down into Devonshire where the girl lived immediately, and by some means or other prevented the marriage. How it was done I never heard; but it was not until a year afterwards that Angus Egerton discovered his mother’s part in the business. He came down to the Priory suddenly and unexpectedly at a late hour one night, and walked straight to his mother’s room. I have heard that old woman who has been showing us the house describe his ghastly face — she was Mrs. Egerton’s maid in those days — as he pushed her aside and went into the room where his mother was sitting. There was a dreadful scene between them, and at the end of it Angus Egerton walked out of the house, swearing never again to enter it while his mother lived. He has kept his word. Mrs. Egerton never crossed the threshold after that night, and refused to see anybody except her servants and her doctor. She lived this lonely kind of life for nearly three years, and then died of some slow wasting disease, for which the doctor could find no name.’

  ‘And where did Mr. Egerton go after leaving her that night?’

  ‘He slept at a little inn at Cumber, and went back to London next morning. He left England soon after that, and has lived abroad ever since.’

  ‘And you think him a very bad man?’

  ‘I consider his conduct to his mother a sufficient evidence of that.’

  ‘He may have believed himself deeply wronged.’

  ‘He must have known that she had acted in his interests when she prevented his committing the folly of a low marriage. She was his mother, and had been a most devoted and indulgent mother.’

  ‘And in the end contrived to break his heart — to say nothing of the girl who loved him, who was of course a piece of common clay, not worth consideration.’

  ‘I did not think you had so much romance, Augusta,’ said Mr. Darrell, laughing; ‘I suppose it is natural for a woman to take the part of unfortunate lovers, however foolish the affair may be. But I believe this Devonshire girl was quite unworthy of an honourable attachment on the part of any man. You see I knew and liked Mrs. Egerton, and I know how she loved her son. I cannot forgive him his conduct to her; nor have the reports of his life abroad been by any means favourable to his character. His career seems to have been a very wild and dissipated one.’

  ‘And he has never married?’

  ‘No, he has never married.’

  ‘He has been true, at least,’ Mrs. Darrell said in a low thoughtful tone.

  We had lingered in the little study while her husband had told his story. We went back to the hall now, and found Milly and Mr. Stormont looking rather listlessly at the old portraits of the Egerton race. I was anxious to see a picture of the last Mrs. Egerton, after what I had heard about her, and, at my request, the housekeeper showed me one in the drawing-room.

  She was very handsome, and wonderfully like her son. I could fancy those two haughty spirits in opposition.

  We spent another hour looking over the rest of the house — old tapestry, old pictures, old china, old furniture, secret staircases, carved chimneypieces, muniment chests, and the usual objects of interest to be found in such a place. After that we walked a little in the neglected garden, where there were old holly hedges that had grown high and wild for want of clipping, and where a curious old sun-dial had fallen down upon the grass in a forlorn way. The paths were all green and moss-grown, and the roses were almost choked with bindweed. I saw Mrs. Darrell gather one of these roses and put it in her breast. It was the first time I have ever seen her pluck a flower, though there was a wealth of roses at Thornleigh.

  So ended our visit to Cumber Priory; a place that was destined to be very memorable to some of us in the time to come.

  CHAPTER IV.

  MRS. THATCHER.

  It had been Milly’s habit to devote one day a week to visiting among the poor, before she went to Albury Lodge; and she now resumed this practice, I accompanying her upon her visits. I had been used to going about among the cottagers at home, and I liked the work. It was very pleasant to see Milly Darrell with these people — the perfect confidence and sympathy between them and her, the delight they seemed to take in her bright cheering presence. I was struck by their simple natural manner, and the absence of anything like sycophancy to be observed in them. One day, when we had been to several cottages about the village, Milly asked me if I could manage rather a long walk; and on my telling her that I could, we started upon a lonely road that wound across the moor in a direction I had never walked in until that day. We went on for about two miles without passing a human habitation, and then came to one of the most desolate-looking cottages I ever remember seeing. It was little better than a cabin, and consisted only of two rooms — a kind of kitchen or dwelling-room, and a dark little bedchamber opening out of it.

  ‘I am not going to introduce you to a very agreeable person, Mary,’ Milly said, when we were within a few paces of this solitary dwelling; ‘but old Rebecca is a character in her way, and I make a point of coming to see her now and then, though she is not always very gracious to me.’

  It was a warm bright summer’s day, but the door and the single window of the cottage were firmly closed. Milly knocked with her hand, and a thin feeble old voice called to her to ‘come in.’

  We went in: the atmosphere of the place was hot, and had an unpleasant doctor’s-shoppish kind of odour, which I found was caused by some herbs in a jar that was simmering over a little stove in a corner. Bunches of dried herbs hung from the low ceiling, and on an old-fashioned lumbering chest of drawers that stood in the window there were more herbs and roots laid out to dry.

  ‘Mrs. Thatcher is a very clever doctor, Mary,’ said Milly, as if by way of introduction; ‘all our servants come to her to be cured when they have colds and coughs. — And how are you this lovely summer weather, Mrs. Thatcher?’

  ‘None too well, miss,’ grumbled the old woman; ‘I don’t like the summer time; it never suited me.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ said Milly gaily; ‘I thought everybody liked summer.’

  ‘Not those that live as I do, Miss Darrell. There’s no illness in summer — no colds, nor coughs, nor sore-threats, nor suchlikes. I don’t know that I shouldn’t starve outright, if it wasn’t for the ague; and even that is nothing now to what it used to be.’

  I was quite horror-struck by this ghoulish speech; but Milly only laughed gaily at the old woman’s candour.

  ‘If the doctors were as plain-spoken as you, I daresay they’d say pretty much the same kind of thing, Mrs. Thatcher,’ she said. ‘How’s your grandson?’

  ‘O, he’s well enough, Miss Darrell. Naught’s never in danger. — Peter, come here, and see the young ladies.’

  A poor, feeble, pale-faced, semi-idiotic-looking boy came slowly out of the dark little bedroom, and stood grinning at us. He had the white sickly aspect of a creature reared without the influence of air and light; and I pitied him intensely as he stood there staring and grinning in that dreadful hopeless manner.

  ‘Poor Peter!’ He’s no better, I’m afraid,’ said Milly gently.

  ‘No, miss, nor never will be. He knows more than people think, and has queer cunning ways of his own; but he’ll never be any better or wiser than he is now.’

  ‘Not if you were to take as much pains with him as you do with the patients who pay you, Mrs. Thatcher?’ asked Milly.

  ‘I’ve taken pains with him,’ answered the woman, with a scowl. ‘I took to him kindly enough when he was a little fellow; but he’s grown up to be nothing but a plague and a burden to me.’

  The boy left off grinning, and his poor weak chin sank lower on his narrow chest. His attitude had been a s
tooping one from the first; but he drooped visibly under the old woman’s reproof.

  ‘Can he employ himself in no way?’

  ‘No, miss; except in picking the herbs and roots for me sometimes. He can do that, and he knows one from t’other.’

  ‘He’s of some use to you, at any rate, then,’ said Milly.

  ‘Little enough,’ the old woman answered sulkily. ‘I don’t want help; I’ve plenty of time to gather them myself. But I’ve taught him to pick them, and it’s the only thing he ever could learn.’

  ‘Poor fellow! He’s your only grandchild, isn’t he, Mrs. Thatcher?’

  ‘Yes, he’s the only one, miss, and he’d need be. I don’t know how I should keep another. You can’t remember my daughter Ruth? She was as pretty a girl as you’d care to see. She was housemaid at Cumber priory in Mrs. Egerton’s time, and she married the butler. They set up in business in a little public-house in Thornleigh village, and he took to drinking, till everything went to rack and ruin. My poor girl took the trouble to heart more than her husband did, a great deal; and I believe it was the trouble that killed her. She died three weeks after that boy was born, and her husband ran away the day after the funeral, and has never been heard of since. Some say he drowned himself in the Clem; but he was a precious deal too fond of himself for that. He was up to his eyes in debt, and didn’t leave a sixpence behind him; that’s how Peter came to be thrown on my hands.’

  ‘Come here, Peter,’ said Milly softly; and the boy went to her directly, and took the hand she offered him.

  ‘You’ve not forgotten me, have you, Peter? Miss Darrell, who used to talk to you sometimes a long time ago.’

  The boy’s vacant face brightened into something like intelligence.

  ‘I know you, miss,’ he said; ‘you was always kind to Peter. It’s not many that I know; but I know you.’

  She took out her purse and gave him half-a-crown.

  ‘There, Peter, there’s a big piece of silver for your own self, to buy whatever you like — sugar-sticks, gingerbread, marbles — anything.’

  His clumsy hand closed upon the coin, and I have no doubt he was pleased by the donation; but he never took his eyes from Milly Darrell’s face. That bright lovely face seemed to exercise a kind of fascination upon him.

  ‘Don’t you think Peter would be better if you were to give him a little more air and sunshine, Mrs. Thatcher?’ Milly asked presently; ‘that bedroom seems rather a dark close place.’

  ‘He needn’t be there unless he likes,’ Mrs. Thatcher answered indifferently. ‘He sits out of doors whenever he chooses.’

  ‘Then I should always sit out-of-doors on fine days, if I were you,

  Peter,’ said Milly.

  After this she talked a little to Mrs. Thatcher, who was by no means a sympathetic person, while I sat looking on, and contemplating the old woman with a feeling that was the reverse of admiration.

  She was of a short squat figure, with broad shoulders and no throat to speak of, and her head seemed too big for her body. Her face was long and thin, with large features, and a frame of scanty gray hair, among which a sandy tinge still lingered here and there; her eyes were of an ugly reddish-brown, and had, I thought, a most sinister expression. I must have been very ill, and sorely at a loss for a doctor, before I could have been induced to trust my health to the care of Mrs. Rebecca Thatcher.

  I told Milly as much while we were walking homewards, and she admitted that Rebecca Thatcher was no favourite even among the country people, who believed implicitly in her skill.

  ‘I’m afraid she tells fortunes, and dabbles in all sorts of superstitious tricks,’ Milly added gravely; ‘but she is so artful, there is no way of finding her out in that kind of business. The foolish country girls who consult her always keep her secret, and she manages to put on a fair face before our rector and his curate, who believe her to be a respectable woman.’

  The days and weeks slipped by very pleasantly at Thornleigh, and the end of those bright midsummer holidays came only too soon. It seemed a bitter thing to say ‘good-bye’ to Milly Darrell, and to go back alone to a place which must needs be doubly dull and dreary to me without her. She had been my only friend at Albury Lodge; loving her as I did, I had never cared to form any other friendship.

  The dreaded day came at last — dreaded I know by both of us; and I said ‘good-bye’ to my darling so quietly, that I am sure none could have guessed the grief I felt in this parting. Mrs. Darrell was very kind and gracious on this occasion, begging that I would come back to Thornleigh at Christmas — if they should happen to spend their Christmas there.

  Milly looked up at her wonderingly as she said this.

  ‘Is there any chance of our spending it elsewhere, Augusta?’ she asked.

  Mrs. Darrell had persuaded her stepdaughter to use this familiar

  Christian name, rather than the more formal mode of address.

  ‘I don’t know, my dear. Your papa has sometimes talked of a house in town, or we might be abroad. I can only say that if we are at home here, we shall be very much pleased to see Miss Crofton again.’

  I thanked her, kissed Milly once more, and so departed — to be driven to the station in state in the barouche, and to look sadly back at the noble old house in which I had been so happy.

  Once more I returned to the dryasdust routine of Albury Lodge, and rang the changes upon history and geography, chronology and English grammar, physical science and the elements of botany, until my weary head ached and my heart grew sick. And when I came to be a governess, it would of course be the same thing over and over again, on a smaller scale. And this was to be my future, without hope of change or respite, until I grew an old woman worn-out with the drudgery of tuition!

  CHAPTER V.

  MILLY’S LETTER.

  The half-year wore itself slowly away. There were no incidents to mark the time, no change except the slow changes of the seasons; and my only pleasures were letters from home or from Emily Darrell.

  Of the home letters I will not speak — they could have no interest except for myself; but Milly’s are links in the story of a life. She wrote to me as freely as she had talked to me, pouring out all her thoughts and fancies with that confiding frankness which was one of the most charming attributes of her mind. For some time the letters contained nothing that could be called news; but late in September there came one which seemed to me to convey intelligence of some importance.

  ‘You will be grieved to hear, my darling Mary,’ she wrote, after a little playful discussion of my own affairs, ‘that my stepmother and I are no nearer anything like a real friendship than we were when you left us. What it is that makes the gulf between us, I cannot tell; but there is something, some hidden feeling in both our minds, I think, which prevents our growing fond of each other. She is very kind to me, so far as perfect non-interference with my doings, and a gracious manner when we are together, can go; but I am sure she does not like me. I have surprised her more than once looking at me with the strangest expression — a calculating, intensely thoughtful look, that made her face ten years older than it is at other times. Of course there are times when we are thrown together alone — though this does not occur often, for she and my father are a most devoted couple, and spend the greater part of every day together — and I have noticed at those times that she never speaks of her girlhood, or of any part of her life before her marriage. All that came before seems a blank page, or a sealed volume that she does not care to open. I asked some trifling question about her father once, and she turned upon me almost angrily.

  “I do not care to speak about him, Milly,” she said; “he was not a good father, and he is best forgotten. I never had a real friend till I met my husband.”

  ‘There is one part of her character which I am bound to appreciate. I believe that she is really grateful and devoted to papa, and he certainly seems thoroughly happy in her society. The marriage had the effect which I felt sure it must have — it has divided us two most c
ompletely; but if it has made him happy, I have no reason to complain. What could I wish for beyond his happiness?

  ‘And now, Milly, for my news. Julian Stormont has been here, and has asked me to be his wife.

  ‘He came over last Saturday afternoon, intending to stop with us till Monday morning. It was a bright warm day here, and in the afternoon he persuaded me to walk to Cumber Church with him. You remember the way we drove through the wood the day we went to the Priory, I daresay; but there is a nearer way than that for foot passengers, and I think a prettier one — a kind of cross-cut through the same wood. I consented willingly enough, having nothing better to do with myself, and we had a pleasant walk to church, talking of all kinds of things. As we returned Julian grew very serious, and when we were about half way upon our journey, he asked me if I could guess what had brought him over to Thornleigh. Of course I told him that I concluded he had come as he usually did — for rest and change after the cares of business, and to talk about business affairs with papa.

  ‘He told me he had come for something more than that. He came to tell me that he had loved me all his life; that there was nothing my father would like better than our union if it could secure my happiness, as he hoped and believed it might.

  ‘I think you know, Mary, that no idea of this kind had ever entered my mind. I told Julian this, and told him that, however I might esteem him as my cousin, he could never be nearer or dearer to me than that. The change in his face when he heard this almost frightened me. He grew deadly pale, but I am certain it was anger rather than disappointment that was uppermost in his mind. I never knew until then what a hard cruel face it could be.

  “Is this irrevocable, Emily?” he asked, in a cold firm voice; “is there no hope that you will change your mind by and by?”

  “No, Julian; I am never likely to do that.”

  “There is some one else, then, I suppose,” he said.