Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Who is it, what is it?” asked Captain Duke, advancing into the very heart of the little crowd.

  “Your wife’s nearest kinsman and dearest friend, Captain, Miss Millicent’s first cousin, Darrell Markham! Murdered! murdered on the moorland road between this and Marley Water.”

  “Not above a mile from here, missus,” interposed the labourer who had picked up the wounded man.

  “Darrell Markham! my wife’s cousin, Darrell Markham! What did he come here for? What was he doing in Compton?” asked the Captain suspiciously. The dark brown eyes looked straight down at the still face lying on the letter-carrier’s shoulder, and dripping wet with the vinegar and water with which Mistress Pecker was bathing the sufferer’s forehead.

  “What did he come here for! He came here to be murdered! He came here to have his precious life taken from him upon Compton Moor, poor dear lamb, poor dear lamb!” sobbed Mrs. Pecker.

  During all this confusion, Lucas Jordan the surgeon slipped quietly behind the little crowd, and taking Darrell Markham’s arm in his hand, deliberately slashed open his coat-sleeve from the cuff to the shoulder with the scissors hanging at Mrs. Pecker’s waist.

  “A basin, Molly, and a silk handkerchief for a bandage,” he said quietly. Half-a-dozen silk handkerchiefs were produced from as many pockets and pressed upon the surgeon, while the terrified chambermaid brought him a basin in her shaking hands and held it under Darrell’s arm.

  “Steadily, my girl,” said the doctor, as he drew out a lancet and inserted it in the cold and rigid arm, after haying secured his bandage. The blood trickled slowly and fitfully from the vein. —

  “Is he dead, is he dead, Mr. Jordan?” cried Sarah Pecker.

  “No more than I am, ma’am — no more than I am, Mrs. Pecker,” answered the surgeon, who had been slashing away with Sarah’s big scissors, and making his examination while the bystanders looked on, aghast and admiring. “The gentleman has had the ill luck to get a pistol-bullet through his right arm, shivering the bone above the elbow; but we may be able to make a good job of the arm for all that. He has fainted from the loss of blood and the coldness of the night air. He’s had a baddish fall from his horse, I fancy, and is a good deal bruised and shaken, and there’s a scalp-wound at the back of his head from the sharp pebbles on the road; but there’s nothing more!”

  Nothing more! It seemed so little to these terrified people, who a minute before had thought Mr. Markham dead, that Mrs. Pecker, albeit unused to the melting mood, caught the surgeon’s hand between her two fat palms and covered it with kisses and tears.

  “So this is Darrell Markham,” said the Captain to himself thoughtfully; “Darrell the irresistible; Darrell the handsome; Darrell the brave; Darrell that was to have married his cousin Millicent, now my wife. Humph, a fair young man with auburn ringlets and a straight nose! No fear of his life, you say, doctor?” he asked aloud.

  “None, unless fever should supervene, which Heaver forbid!”

  “But if it should, how then?”

  “Every fear. With these excitable temperaments—”

  “His temperament is excitable?”

  “Extremely excitable! An accident such as this is very likely to result in fever. Mrs. Pecker, he must be kept very quiet; he must see no one — that is to say, no one whose presence can be in the least calculated to agitate him.”

  “I’ll keep watch at this door myself, doctor; and I should like to see,” said the worthy matron, glaring venge fully at her small spouse, “I should very much like to see the person that’ll dare to disturb him by so much as breathing.”

  The landlord of the Black Bear suspended his respiration on the instant, as if he imagined himself called upon to exist in future without the aid of that natural function.

  “We must get our patient upstairs at once, Mrs Pecker,” said the doctor “We must get him into your quietest room, and your most comfortable bed, and we must lose no time about it.”

  At the doctor’s direction, the letter-carrier and the farm-labourer resumed their station at the head and feet of Darrell Markham, the ostler assisting them. The three men had just raised him in their arms, when he lifted his left hand to his damp forehead and slowly opened his eyes.

  The three men stopped, and Mrs. Pecker screamed aloud, “O, be joyful, he isn’t dead! Master Darrell, speak to us, dear, and tell us you’re not dead.”

  The blue eyes looked dimly at the scared faces crowding round.

  “He shot me. He robbed me of the letter to the king, and of my purse. He shot me in my arm.”

  “Who shot you, my darling? Who shot you, Master Darrell, dear?” cried Mrs. Pecker.

  The young man looked at her with a vacant stare; evidently half unconscious of where he was, and of the identity of those around him. Presently he withdrew his bloodshot eyes from her face, and his gaze wandered round amongst the other spectators. From the landlord to the chambermaid, from the chambermaid to the letter-carrier, from the letter-carrier to the doctor, from the doctor to Captain George Duke of his majesty’s ship the Vulture.

  The blue eyes opened to their widest distension with a wild stare.

  “That, that’s the man!”

  “What man, Master Darrell?”

  “The man who shot me.”

  “I thought we should have him delirious,” said the doctor, under his breath.

  Captain Duke’s dark eyebrows fell loweringly over his brown eyes, and a black shade spread itself about his handsome face.

  “You’re dreaming, darling,” said Mrs. Pecker, soothingly. “What man, dear, and where, where is he?”

  Darrell Markham slowly lifted his unwounded arm and pointed with a steady finger full at the dark face of the Captain of the Vulture.

  “There!” he said, half raising himself in the arms of the men supporting him, and with the effort he sank back once more unconscious.

  “I thought so,” muttered Captain Duke.

  “So did I, Captain,” responded the doctor. “We shall have him in a high fever, and then he may go off like the snuff of a candle.”

  “And he must be kept quiet?” asked the Captain, as they carried the wounded man up the wide oak staircase.

  “He must be kept quiet, Captain, or I’ll not answer for his life. I’ve known him from a boy, and I know any strong excitement will throw him into a brain-fever.”

  “Poor fellow! He’s a kinsman of mine, by my marriage with his cousin; though I’m afraid there’s not much love lost between us on that score. And this is the first time we’ve met. Strange!”

  “There’s a good deal in life that is strange, Captain Duke,” said the doctor sententiously.

  “There is, doctor,” answered the sailor. “So Darrell Markham, travelling from Compton to Marley Water, has been shot by a person or persons unknown. Very strange!”

  CHAPTER II. MILLICENT.

  MILLICENT DUKE sat alone in her little parlour on this autumn night, while the north-east wind howled and whistled without her dwelling, and shook every little square of glass in the narrow windows — she sat alone, trying to read Mr. Richardson’s last novel — a well-thumbed little volume, embellished with small oval engravings, which had been lent to her by the wife of the curate of Compton-on-the-Moor. But fond as she was of Mr. Richardson’s romances, the Captain’s wife was unable to concentrate her attention on the little volume; her thoughts wandered away from poor Clarissa and wicked Lovelace; the book dropped out of her hand, and she fell a-musing over the low fire, and listening to the wind disporting itself in the chimney. It is something to be able to look at Mrs. Millicent Duke, as she sits quietly by her lonely hearth, with one white hand supporting her small head, and with her elbow leaning on the stiff horsehair-cushioned arm of the chair in which she is seated.

  It is a very fair and girlish face upon which the fitful firelight trembles; now illumining one cheek with a soft red glow, now leaving it in shadow as the flame shoots up in sudden brightness, or dies out of the scattered embers on the hearth.
It is a very fair and girlish face, with delicate features and dark blue eyes in the soft depths of which there lurks a shadow — a shadow as of tears long dried, hut not forgotten. There are pensive lines too about the mouth, which do not tell of an entirely happy youth. Looking at that pensive mouth, those sad and thoughtful eyes, it is not difficult to divine that Sorrow and Millicent Duke have met each other face to face, and have been companions and bedfellows before to-night. But in spite of this pensive sadness which overshadows her beauty, or perhaps by very virtue of this sadness, which refines the beauty it overshadows, Millicent Duke is a very pretty girl. It is not easy to think of her as a married woman; there is such an air of extreme youth about her, such a girlish, almost childish timidity in her manner, that, as her husband — not too loving or tender a husband at the best of times — is apt to say, “it is as difficult to deal with Millicent as with a baby, for you never know when she may begin whimpering — like a spoilt child as she is.” There are people in Compton-on-the-Moor who remember the time when the spoilt child never whimpered, and when a gleam of spring sunshine was scarcely a brighter or more welcome thing to fall across a man’s pathway than the radiant face of Millicent Markham; but this was in the good days long departed, when her father, the squire, was living, and when the fair young girl had been wont to ride about the country roads on her pretty white pony, accompanied and protected by her first cousin and dearest friend, Darrell Markham.

  She is peculiarly sad this bitter autumn night. The shrill wind whistling at the latticed casements makes her shiver to the heart; she draws the skirt of her grey silk petticoat over her shoulders, and drags the heavy chair nearer to the low fire. She has sent her one servant a strapping country wench, to bed long ago, and she cannot get any more fuel to heap upon the wide hearth The was candles have burnt low down in the quaint old silver candlesticks; ten, eleven, twelve have struck, with long dreary intervals between each time of striking from the tower of Compton church, and still there is no sign of Captain Duke’s return.

  “He is happier with them than with me,” she said mournfully. “Who can wonder? Their talk amuses him and makes him smile; I can only weary him with my wretched pale face.” She looked up as she spoke at an oval mirror on the wainscot opposite to her, and saw this sad pale face reflected by the faint light of the low fire and the expiring candles. “And they once called me a pretty girl!” she murmured, with a sigh, as she contemplated the pale reflection; “I had a colour in my cheeks then, and Darrell used to tell me I had stolen the roses from the Dutch garden. I think he would scarcely know me now!”

  The long hour after midnight dragged itself out, and as one o’clock struck with a dismal sound that vibrated drearily along the empty street, Millicent heard the sharp stroke of her husband’s footstep on the pavement. She sprang from her chair hurriedly, and ran out into the narrow passage; but just as she was about to withdraw the bolts, she paused suddenly, and laid her hand upon her heart. “What is the matter with me to-night — what is the matter, I wonder?” she murmured; “I feel as if some great sorrow were coming, yet what new sorrow can come to me?”

  Her husband knocked impatiently at the door with his sword-hilt, as she fumbled nervously with the bolts, c “Were you listening at the door, Millicent, that you open it so quickly?” he asked, as he entered.

  “I heard your footstep in the street, George, and hurried to let you in. You are very late,” she added, as he strode into the parlour, and flung himself into the chair she had been sitting in.

  “O, a complaint, of course,” he said, with a sneer. “I’ve a great deal to keep me at home, certainly,” he muttered, looking round—”a crying wife and a bad fire, and half-an-inch of guttering candle.” He turned his back upon Millicent, and bent over the embers, trying to warm his hands with the red light left in them. His wife seated herself at the slender-legged polished mahogany table, and taking up Mr. Richardson’s neglected novel, pretended to read it by the last glimmer of the two candles.

  Presently the Captain spoke, without once turning round to look at his companion, without changing his stooping posture over the fire-place, without once addressing her by name—” There’s been an accident down there!” he said briefly.

  “An accident!” cried Millicent. She dropped her book, and looked up with an expression of vague alarm. “An accident! O, I am sorry; but what accident?” Though there was au accent of gentle pity in her voice, there was still a slight bewilderment in her manner, as if she were so preoccupied by some sad thoughts of her own as scarcely to be able to understand her husband’s words.

  As he did not answer her first question, she asked again, “What accident, George?”

  “A man has been half killed by highwaymen on Compton Moor.”

  “But not really killed, George — not killed?” she asked anxiously, hut still with that half-preoccupied manner, as if, in spite of herself, she could not quite concentrate her mind upon the subject of which her husband was speaking.

  “Not killed, no; but all but killed, don’t I tell you?” said the Captain. “It’s just the toss-up of a guinea whether he lives or dies. And a handsome fairhaired lad enough,” he added, half to himself—” a handsome, fair-faced, fair-haired lad enough. Poor devil!”

  “I am very sorry,” Millicent murmured gently; and as her husband did not stir from his seat by the fire, or address her further, she took up her book once more, and began again poring over the small, old-fashioned type. There was a pause, during which the Captain kicked the last spark out of the expiring embers; and then George Duke turned and looked at his wife as she sat bending over the light. After watching her for a few minutes with an angry expression in his handsome brown eyes, he cried with a scornful laugh,—”Heaven bless these novel-reading women! The death of a fellow-creature is little enough to them so long as Miss Clarissa is reconciled to her lover, and Mistress Pamela’s virtue is rewarded in the sixth volume! Here’s a tender compassionate creature for you! She cries over Sir Charles Grandison, and doesn’t so much as ask me who it is that is lying between death and life in the blue room down at the Black Bear!”

  Mistress Duke looked up at her husband with a deprecating glance, as if she were used to hard words, and used to warding them off by apologetic speeches.

  “I beg your pardon, George,” she said hesitatingly. “Indeed lam not unfeeling. I am sorry for this poor wounded, half-dying man, whoever he may he. If I could do anything to serve him, or to comfort him, I would do it. I would do it at whatever cost to myself. What more can I say, George?”

  “And they talk about a woman’s curiosity!” cried the Captain, with a mocking laugh; “even now she doesn’t ask me who the wounded man is.”

  “His name can make little difference in my pity for him, George. Poor creature! I am very sorry for him, whoever he may be. Is he any friend of yours? Is he any one I know, George?”

  Her husband paused for a few moments before he answered this question. Millicent had risen from her seat and stood by the table trying to revive the drooping wick of the candle that had survived its fellow. The Captain turned his chair completely round, and watched her pale face as he said, slowly and distinctly, —

  “The man is some one you know — and he is no friend of mine.”

  “Who is he, George?”

  “Your first cousin, Darrell Markham!”

  She uttered a cry; not a shrill scream, but a faint pitiful cry; and lifted her hands to her head. She remained in this attitude for some minutes, quite still, quite silent, and then sank quietly into her old position by the table. Her husband watched her all the time with a sneering smile and a mischievous glitter in his eyes.

  “Darrell, my cousin Darrell dead?”

  “Not dead, Mistress Millicent; not quite so bad as that. Your dear fair-haired pretty-face cousin is not dead, my sweet loving wife; he is only — dying.”

  “Lying in the blue room at the Black Bear;” she repeated the words he had said a few minutes before, in a distracted ma
nner, very painful to witness.

  “Lying in the blue room at the Bear. Yes, the blue room, No. 4, on the long corridor. You know the chamber well enough. Have you not been to the old inn times and often to see your father’s old housekeeper, the mariner’s widow — at least the innkeeper’s wife?”

  “Trembling between life and death,” repeated Millicent, in the same half-conscious tone, so piteous to hear.

  “He was! Heaven knows how he may be now. That was half-an-hour ago; the scale may be turned by this time; he may be dead!”

  As George Duke said the last word, his wife sprang from her seat, and, without once looking at him, ran hurriedly to the outer door. She had her hand upon the bolts, when she cried out in a tone of anguish, “O, no, no, no!” and dropped down on her knees, with her head leaning against the lock of the door.

  The Captain of the Vulture followed her into the passage, and watched her with hard unpitying eyes.

  “You were going to run to him!” he said, as she fell on her knees by the outer door.

  For the first time since Darrell Markham’s name had been mentioned, Millicent looked at her husband; not mournfully, not reproachfully, least of all fearfully; bold, bright, and defiant, her blue eyes looked up to his.

  “I was.”

  “Then why not go? You see I am not cruel; I do not stop you. You are free. Go! Go to your cousin — and — your lover, Mistress Duke. Shall I open the door for you?”

  She lifted herself with an effort upon her feet, still leaning for support against the street-door. “No,” she said, “I will not go to him; I could do him no good; I might agitate him; I might kill him!”

  The Captain bit his under lip, and the triumphant light faded from his brown eyes.

  “But understand this, George Duke,” said Millicent, in a tone that was strange to her husband’s ears, “it is no fear of you which keeps me here; it is no dread of your cruel words or more cruel looks that holds me from going to his side; for if I could save him by my presence from one throb of pain — if I could give him by my love and devotion one moment’s peace and comfort, and the town of Compton were one raging fire, I would walk through that fire to do it.”