Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

He is rather a good-looking fellow, this milkman, and he has a very curly head of flaxen hair, preposterously light eyebrows, and dark hazel eyes, which form rather a piquant contrast. I don’t suppose Mrs. Moper and Liza think him bad-looking, for they beg him to sit down, and the scullerymaid thrusts the black stocking, on which she was heretofore engaged, into a table-drawer, and gives her hair a rapid extemporary smoothing with the palms of her hands. Mr. Bugden’s man seems by no means disinclined for a little friendly chat: he tells them how new he is to the business; how he thinks he should scarcely have chosen cowkeeping for his way of life, if he’d known as much about it as he does now; how there’s many things in the milk business, such as horses’ brains, warm water and treacle, and such-like, as goes against his conscience; how he’s quite new to London and London ways, having come up only lately from the country.

  “Whereabouts in the country?” Mrs. Moper asks. “Berkshire,” the young man replies.

  “Lor’,” Mrs. Moper says, “never was any thing so remarkable. Poor Moper come from Berkshire, and knowed every inch of the country, and so I think do I, pretty well. What part of Berkshire, Mr. — Mr. — ?”

  “Volpes,” suggested the young man.

  “What part of Berkshire, Mr. Volpes?”

  Mr. Volpes looks, strange to say, rather at a loss to answer this very natural and simple inquiry. He looks at Mrs. Moper, then at Liza, and lastly at the pails. The pails seem to assist his memory, for he says, very distinctly, “Burley Scuffers.”

  It is Mrs. Moper’s turn to look puzzled now, and she exclaims Burley—”

  “Scuffers,” replies the young man. “Burley Scuffers, market town, fourteen miles on this side of Reading. The ‘Chicories,’ Sir Yorrick Tristram’s place, is a mile and a half out of the town.”

  There’s no disputing such an accurate and detailed description as this. Mrs. Moper says it’s odd, all the times she’s been to Reading—”which I wish I had as many sovereigns,” she mutters in parenthesis — never did she remember passing through “Burley Scoffers.”

  “It’s a pretty little town, too,” says the milkman; “there’s a lime-tree avenue just out of the High Street, called Porkbutchers’ Walk, as is crowded with young people of a Sunday evening after church.”

  Mrs. Moper is quite taken with this description; and says, the very next time she goes to Reading to see poor Moper’s old mother, she will make a point of going to Burley Scuffers during her stay.

  Mr. Volpes says, he would if he were she, and that she couldn’t employ her leisure time better.

  They talk a good deal about Berkshire; and then Mrs. Moper relates some very interesting facts relative to the late Mr. Moper, and her determination, “which upon his dying bed it was his comfort so to think,” never to marry again; at which the milkman looks grieved, and says the gentlemen will be very blind indeed to their own interests if they don’t make her change her mind some day; and somehow or other (I don’t suppose servants often do such things), they get to talking about their master and their mistress. The milkman seems quite interested in this subject, and, forgetting in how many houses the innocent liquid he dispenses may be required, he sits with his elbows on the kitchen-table, listening to Mrs. Moper’s remarks, and now and then, when she wanders from her subject, drawing her back to it with an adroit question. She didn’t know much about the Count, she said, for the servants was most all of ’em new; they only brought two people with them from South America, which was Monsieur St. Mirotaine, the chef, and the Countess’s French maid, Mademoiselle Finette. But she thought Monsieur de Marolles very ‘aughty, and as proud as he was ‘igh, and that madame was very unhappy, “though it’s hard to know with them furriners, Mr. Volpes, what is what,” she continues; “and madame’s gloomy ways may be French for happiness, for all I knows.”

  “He’s an Englishman, the Count, isn’t he?” asks Mr. Volpes.

  “A Englishman! Lor’ bless your heart, no. They’re both French; she’s of Spanish igstraction, I believe, and they lived since their marriage mostly in Spanish America. But they t always speaks to each other in French, when they do speak; which them as waits upon them says isn’t often.”

  “He’s very rich, I suppose,” says the milkman.

  “Rich!” cries Mrs. Moper, “the money as that man has got they say is fabellous; and he’s a regular business man too, down at his bank every day, rides off to the City as punctual as the clock strikes ten. Lor’, by the bye, Mr. Volpes,” says Mrs. Moper suddenly, “you don’t happen to know of a tempory tiger, do you?”

  “A temporary tiger!” Mr. Volpes looks considerably puzzled.

  “Why, you see, the Count’s tiger, as wasn’t higher than the kitchen table I do believe, broke his arm the other day. He was a-hangin’ on to the strap behind the cab, a-standin’ upon nothing, as them boys will, when the vehicle was knocked agen an omnibus, and his arm bein’ wrenched sudden out of the strap, snapped like a bit of sealing-wax; and they’ve took him to the hospital, and he’s to come back as soon as ever he’s well; for he’s a deal thought on, bein’ a’most the smallest tiger at the West-end. So, if you happen to know of a boy as would come temporary, we should be obliged by your sending him round.”

  “Did he know of a boy as would come temporary?” Mr. Budgen’s young man appeared so much impressed by this question, that for a minute or two he was quite incapable of answering it. He leaned his elbows on the kitchen table, with his face buried in his hands and his fingers twisted in his flaxen hair, and when he looked up there was, strange to say, a warm flush over his pale complexion, and something like a triumphant sparkle in his dark brown eyes.

  “Nothing could fall out better,” he said; “nothing, nothing!”

  “What, the poor lad breaking his arm?” asked Mrs. Moper, in a tone of surprise.

  “No, no, not that,” said Mr. Budgen’s young man, just a little confused; “what I mean is, that I know the very boy to suit you — the very boy, the very boy of all others to undertake the business. Ah,” he continued in a lower voice, “and to go through with it, too, to the end.”

  “Why, as to the business,” replied Mrs. Moper, “it ain’t overmuch, hangin’ on behind, and lookin’ knowin’, and givin’ other tigers as good as they bring, when waitin’ outside the Calting or the Anthinium; which tigers as is used to the highest names in the peerage familiar as their meat and drink, will go on contemptuous about our fambly, callin’ the bank ‘the shop,’ and a-askin’, till they got our lad’s blood up (which he had had his guinea lessons from the May Fair Mawler, and were better left alone), when the smash was a-comin’, or whether we meant to give out three-and-sixpence in the pound like a honest house, or do the shabby thing and clear ourselves by a compensation with our creditors of fourpence-farthing? Ah,” continued Mrs. Moper, gravely, “many’s the time that child have come home with his nose as big as the ‘ead of a six-week old baby, and no eyes at all as any one could discover, which he’d been that knocked about in a stand-up fight with a lad three times his weight and size.”

  “Then I can send the boy, and you’ll get him the situation?” said Mr. Budgen’s young man, who did not seem particularly interested in the rather elaborate recital of the exploits of the invalid tiger.

  “He can have a character, I suppose?” inquired the lady.

  “Oh, ah, to be sure. Budgen will give him a character.”

  “You will impress upon the youth,” said Mrs. Moper, with great dignity, “that he will not be able to make this his permanence ‘ome. The pay is good, and the meals is reg’lar, but the situation is tempory.”

  “All right,” said Mr. Budgen’s assistant; “he doesn’t want a situation for long. I’ll bring him round myself this evening — good afternoon;” with which very brief farewell, the flaxen-haired, dark-eyed milkman strode out of the kitchen.

  “Hum!” muttered the cook, “his manners has not the London polish: I meant to have ast him to tea.”

  “Why, I’m blest,” exclaimed the scullery
maid suddenly, “if he haven’t been and gone and left his yoke and pails behind him! Well, of all the strange milkmen I ever come a-nigh, if he ain’t the strangest!”

  She might have thought him stranger still, perhaps, this light-haired milkman, had she seen him hail a stray cab in Brook Street, spring into it, snatch off his flaxen locks, whose hyacinthine waves were in the convenient form known by that most disagreeable of words, a wig; snatch off also the holland blouse common to the purveyors of milk, and rolling the two into a bundle, stuff them into the pocket of his shooting jacket, before throwing himself back into the corner of the vehicle, to enjoy a meditative cigar, as his charioteer drives his best pace in the direction of that transpontine temple of Esculapius, Mr. Darley’s surgery. Daredevil Dick has made the first move in that fearful game of chess which is to be played between him and the Count de Marolles.

  CHAPTER VI. SIGNOR MOSQUETTI RELATES AN ADVENTURE.

  ON the evening which follows the very afternoon during which Richard Marwood made his first and only essay in the milk-trade, the Count and Countess de Marolles attend a musical party — I beg pardon, I should, gentle reader, as you know, have said a soirée musicale — at the house of a lady of high rank in Belgrave Square. London was almost empty, and this was one of the last parties of the season; but it is a goodly and an impressive sight to see — even when London is, according to every fashionable authority, a perfect Sahara — how many splendid carriages will draw up to the awning my Lady erects over the pavement before her door, when she announces herself “at home;” how many gorgeously dressed and lovely women will descend therefrom, scenting the night air of Belgravia with the fragrance wafted from their waving tresses and point-d’Alen on-bordered handkerchiefs; lending a perfume to the autumn violets struggling out a fading existence in Dresden boxes on the drawing-room balconies; lending the light of their diamonds to the gas-lamps before the door, and the light of their eyes to help out the aforesaid diamonds; sweeping the autumn dust and evening dews with the borders of costly silks, and marvels of Lyons and Spitalfields, and altogether glorifying the ground over which they walk.

  On this evening one range of windows, at least, in Belgrave Square is brilliantly illuminated. Lady Londersdon’s Musical Wednesday, the last of the season, has been inaugurated with éclat by a scena from Signora Scorici, of Her Majesty’s Theatre and the Nobility’s Concerts; and Mr. Argyle Fitz-Bertram, the great English basso-baritono, and the handsomest man in England, has just shaken the square with the buffo duet from the Cenerentola — in which performance he, Argyle, has so entirely swamped that amiable tenor Signor Maretti, that the latter gentleman has serious thoughts of calling him out to-morrow morning; which idea he would carry into execution if Argyle Fitz-Bertram were not a crack shot, and a pet pupil of Angelo’s into the bargain.

  But even the great Argyle finds himself — with the exception of being up to his eyes in a slough of despond, in the way of platonic flirtation with a fat duchess of fifty — comparatively nowhere. The star of the evening is the new tenor, Signor Mosquetti, who has condescended to attend Lady Londersdon’s Wednesday. Argyle, who is the best-natured fellow as well as the most generous, and whose great rich voice wells up from a heart as sound as his lungs, throws himself back into a low easy-chair — it creaks a little under his weight, by the bye — and allows the duchess to flirt with him, while a buzz goes round the room; Mosquetti is going to sing. Argyle looks lazily out of his half-closed dark eyes, with that peculiar expression which seems to say—”Sing your best, old fellow! My g in the bass clef would crush your half-octave or so of falsetto before you knew where you were, or your `Pretty Jane’ either. Sing away, my boy! we’ll have `Scots wha hae’ by-and-by. I’ve some friends down in Essex who want to hear it, and the wind’s in the right quarter for the voice to travel. They won’t hear you five doors off. Sing your best.”

  Just as Signor Mosquetti is about to take his place at the piano, the Count and Countess de Marolles advance through the crowd about the doorway.

  Valerie, beautiful, pale, calm as ever, is received with consider able empressement by her hostess. She is the heiress of one of the most ancient and aristocratic families in France, and is moreover the wife of one of the richest men in London, so is sure of a welcome throughout Belgravia.

  “Mosquetti is going to sing,” murmurs Lady Londersdon; “you were charmed with him in the Lucia, of course? You have lost Fitz-Bertram’s duet. It was charming; all the chandeliers were shaken by his lower notes; charming, I assure you. He’ll sing again after Mosquetti: the Duchess of C. is éprise, as you see. I believe she is perpetually sending him diamond rings and studs; and the Duke, they do say, has refused to be responsible for her account at Storr’s.”

  Valerie’s interest in Mr. Fitz-Bertram’s conduct is not very intense; she bends her haughty head, just slightly elevating her arched eyebrows with the faintest indication of well-bred surprise; but she is interested in Signor Mosquetti, and avails herself of the seat her hostess offers to her near Erard’s grand piano. The song concludes very soon after she is seated; but Mosquetti remains near the piano, talking to an elderly gentleman, who is evidently a connoisseur.

  “I have never heard but one man, Signor Mosquetti,” says this gentleman, “whose voice resembled yours.”

  There is nothing very particular in the words, but Valerie’s attention is apparently arrested by them, for she fixes her eyes intently on Signor Mosquetti, as tough awaiting his reply.

  “And he, my lord?” says Mosquetti, interrogatively.

  “He, poor fellow, is dead.” Now indeed Valerie, pale with a pallor greater than usual, listens as though her whole soul hung on the words she heard.

  “He is dead,” continued the gentleman. “He died young, in the zenith of his reputation. His name was — let me see — I heard him in Paris last; his name was—”

  “De Lancy, perhaps, my lord?” says Mosquetti.

  “It was De Lancy; yes. He had some most peculiar and at the same time most beautiful tones in his voice, and you appear to me to have the very same.”

  Mosquetti bowed at the compliment. “It is singular, my lord,” he said; “but I doubt if those tones are quite natural to me. I am a little of a mimic, and at one period of my life I was in the habit of imitating poor De Lancy, whose singing I very much admired.”

  Valerie grasps the delicate fan in her nervous hand so tightly that the group of courtiers and fair ladies, of the time of Louie Quatorze, dancing nothing particular on a blue cloud, are crushed out of all symmetry as she listens to this conversation. “I was, at the time I knew De Lancy, merely a chorus-singer at the Italian Opera, Paris.”

  The listeners draw nearer, and form quite a circle round Mosquetti, who is the lion of the night; even Argyle Fitz-Bertram pricks up his ears, and deserts the Duchess in order to hear this conversation.

  “A low chorus-singer,” he mutters to himself. “So help me, Jupiter, I knew he was a nobody.”

  “This passion for mimicry,” said Mosquetti, “was so great that I acquired a sort of celebrity throughout the Opera House, and even beyond its walls. I could imitate De Lancy better, perhaps, than any one else; for in height, figure, and general appearance I was said to resemble him.”

  “You do,” said the gentleman; “you do very much resemble the poor fellow.”

  “This resemblance one day gave rise to quite an adventure, which, if I shall not bore you—” he glanced round.

  There is a general murmur. “Bore us! No! Delighted, enraptured, charmed above all things!” Fitz-Bertram is quite energetic in this omnes business, and says, “No, no!” — muttering to himself afterwards, “So help me, Jupiter, I knew the fellow was a nuisance!”

  “But the adventure! Pray let us hear it!” cried eager voices.

  “Well, ladies and gentlemen, I was a careless reckless fellow; quite content to put on a pair of russet boots which half swallowed me, and a green cotton-velvet tunic short in the sleeves and tight across the chest, and t
o go on the stage and sing in a chorus with fifty others, as idle as myself, in other russet boots and cotton-velvet tunics, which, as you know, is the court costume of a chorus-singer from the time of Charlemagne to the reign of Louis XV. I was quite happy, I say, to lounge on to the stage, unknown, unnoticed, badly paid and worse dressed, provided when the chorus was finished I had my cigarette, dominoes, and my glass of cognac in a third-rate cafè. I was playing one morning at those eternal dominoes — (and never, I think,” said Mosquetti, parenthetically, “had a poor fellow so many double-sixes in his hand) — when I was told a gentleman wanted to see me. This seemed too good a joke — a gentleman for me! It couldn’t be a limb of the law, as I didn’t owe a farthing — no Parisian tradesman being quite so demented as to give me credit. It was a gentleman — a very aristocratic-looking fellow; handsome — but I didn’t like his face; affable — and yet I didn’t like his manner.”

  Ah, Valerie! you may well listen now!

  “He wanted me, he said,” continued Mosquetti, “to decide a little wager. Some foolish girl, who had seen De Lancy on the stage, and who believed him the ideal hero of romance, and was only in too much danger of throwing her heart and fortune at his feet, was to be disenchanted by any stratagem that could be devised. Her parents had intrusted the management of the affair to him, a relation of the lady’s. Would I assist him? Would I represent De Lancy, and play a little scene in the Bois de Boulogne, to open the eyes of this silly boarding-school miss — would I, for a consideration? It was only to act a little stage play off the stage, and was for a good cause. I consented; and that evening at half-past ten o’clock, under the shadow of the winter night and the leafless trees, I—”

  “Stop, stop! Signor Mosquetti!” cry the bystanders. “Madame! Madame de Marolles! Water! Smelling-salts. Your flacon, Lady Emily: she has fainted!”

  No; she has not fainted; this is something worse than faint in this convulsive agony, in which the proud form writhes, while the white and livid lips murmur strange and dreadful words.