“You may come in,” she gasped in a hoarse whisper, dropping into the nearest chair as she spoke. “Betty, go upstairs, girl. I’ll just hear what the man wants.” But the cook was by no means inclined to lose the conversation between her mistress and the pedlar, whatever it might be; and accustomed as she was to obey Sarah Pecker, for once in a way she ventured to hesitate.
“If it’s silk or laces you’re going to look at, ma’am,’ she said, “I learnt a deal about ’em in my last place, for missus was always buying of Jews and pedlars; and I can tell you if they’re worth what he asks for ‘em.”
“You’re very wise, my lass, I make no doubt,” answered the pedlar; “but I dare say your mistress can choose a silk gown for herself without the help of your advice. Get out of the kitchen! do you hear girl?”
“Well, I’m sure!” exclaimed Betty, tossing her head, and not stirring from her post beside Mrs. Pecker.
“Do you hear, girl?” said the pedlar, savagely—”go!”
“Not for your tellin’” answered Betty. “I don’t like leavin’ you alone with such as him, ma’am,” she said to her mistress. And then added in a whisper, intended for Sally’s ears alone, “There’s your silver watch hanging beside the chimney piece, and three teaspoons on the dresser.”
“Go, Betty,” said Mrs. Pecker, in almost the same hoarse whisper with which she had spoken before. ‘Go, girl; I shan’t be above ten minutes choosin’ a gown; and if the man wants to speak to me, he must have leave to speak.”
She rose with an effort from the chair into which she had fallen when the pedlar first put his head in at the kitchen door. She followed Betty down the passage, saw her safely into the hall, and then locked the door which separated the kitchen from the body of the house.
The pedlar was standing before the fire smoking a pipe when Mrs. Pecker returned to the kitchen. He had taken off his hat, and his long sleek black hair fell in greasy curls about his neck. He wore a claret-coloured coat, shabby and weather-stained, and high jack-boots, from which there issued a steam as he warmed his wet legs before the fire. “Have you made all safe?” he asked, as Mrs. Pecker re-entered the kitchen.
“Yes.”
“No chance of listeners creeping about? No eyes nor ears at keyholes?”
“No.”
“That’s comfortable. Now then, Sarah Pecker, listen to me.”
Whatever the pedlar had to say, or however long he was saying it, no one but the mistress of the Black Bear could have told. Betty, the cookmaid, with her eye and her ear alternately applied to the keyhole of the door at the end of the passage, could only perceive, by the aid of the first organ, the faint glimmer of the firelight in the kitchen; while by the help of the second, strain it how she might, she heard nothing but the gruff murmur of the pedlar’s voice.
By-and-by that gruff murmur ceased altogether, and Betty began to think that the man had gone; but still Mrs. Pecker did not come to unlock the door and announce the departure of her visitor.
For upwards of a quarter of an hour Betty listened, growing every moment more puzzled by this strange silence.
“The man must have gone,” she thought; “and missus has forgotten to call me back to the kitchen.”
She shook and rattled at the lock of the door.
“Please bring the key, ma’am,” she cried through the keyhole. “The last batch of pies will be spoiled if they’re not turned!” But still there was no answer.
“Missus! missus!” screamed the girl at the top of her voice. Not a sound came from the kitchen in reply to her appeal.
The girl stood still for a few minutes, with her heart beating loud and fast, wondering what this ominous silence could mean. Then a sudden terror seized her: she gave one sharp shrill scream, and hurried off as fast as her legs would carry her to look for Mr. Samuel Pecker.
Her fear was that this strange pedlar, with the barbarous rings in his ears, had made away with the ponderous Sarah, for the sake of the big watch and the silver spoons.
Samuel was seated in the wainscoted parlour, conversing with some of the Compton tradesmen, who were a little the worse for steaming punch and the influence of the season.
“Master! master!” cried the girl, thrusting her pale face in at the door, and troubling the festivity by her sudden and alarming appearance.
“What is it, Betty?” asked Samuel. Perhaps he, too, had taken some slight advantage of the season, and made himself merry, or, let us rather say, a shade less dismal than usual.
“Betty, what is it?” he repeated, drawing himself into an erect position and looking defiantly at the girl, as much as to say, —
“Who says I have been drinking?”
The cookmaid stood in the doorway silently staring at the assembly, and breathing hard.
“What is the matter, Betty?”
“Missus, sir.”
Something — surely it was not a ray of joy? — some pale flicker of that feeble spirit-lamp, which the parson of the parish told Samuel was his soul — illuminated the innkeeper’s countenance as he said interrogatively,—” Taken bad, Betty?”
“No, sir; but a pedlar, sir — a strange man, dark and fierce-like — asked to see missus, and was told to go about his business, for there was constables, but wouldn’t, and offered missus silk gowns; and she turned me out of the kitchen — likewise locked the passage-door — which that’s an hour ago and more, and — please, sir, I think he must have — run away with missus.”
Another ray, scarcely so feeble as the first, lit up the landlord’s face as Betty gasped out the last of these semi-detached sentences.
“Your missus is rather heavy, Betty,” he murmured thoughtfully; “is the pedlar a big man?”
“He’d have made two, of you, sir,” answered the girl.
‘ “So he might, Betty; but two of me wouldn’t be much agen Sarah.”
He seemed so very much inclined to sit down and discuss the matter philosophically, that the girl almost lost patience with him.
“The passage-door is locked, sir, and I can’t burst it open: hadn’t we better take a lantern and go round to the kitchen t’other way?”
Samuel nodded.
“You’re right, Betty,” he said; “get the lantern and I’ll come round with you. But if the man has run away with your missus, Betty,” he added argumentatively, “there’s such a many roads and by-roads round Compton, that it wouldn’t be over much good going after them.”
Betty did not wait to consider this important point. She lighted a bit of candle in an old horn lantern, and led the way into the yard.
They found Purvis the carrier standing at the back door.
“I’ve knocked nigh upon six times,” he said, “and can’t get no answer.”
Betty opened the door and ran into the kitchen, followed by Samuel and the carrier.
There was no sign of the foreign pedlar; and stretched upon the hearth in a dead swoon lay Mrs. Sarah Pecker.
They lifted her up, and dashed vinegar and cold water over her face and head. There were soma feathers lying at one end of the dresser, which Betty had plucked from a fat goose only an hour before. Some of these, burned under Sarah’s nostrils, restored her to consciousness.
“I’ll lay a crown-piece,” said Betty, “that the watch and silver spoons are gone!”
Mrs. Pecker revived very slowly; but when at last she did open her eyes, and saw the meek Samuel patiently awaiting her recovery, she burst into a sudden flood of tears, and flinging her stout arms about his neck, indifferent to the presence of either Betty or the carrier, cried out passionately, —
“You’ve been a good husband to me, Samuel Pecker, and I haven’t been an indulgent wife to you; but folks are punished for their sins in this world as well as in the next, and I’ll try and make you more comfortable for the future; for I love you truly, my dear — indeed I do!”
This unwonted show of emotion almost frightened Samuel. His weak blue eyes opened to their widest extent in a watery stare, as he l
ooked at his tearful wife “SARAH!” he said; “good gracious, don’t! I don’t want you to be better to me: I’m quite happy as we are. You may be a little sharp-spoken like now and then, but I’m used to it now, Sally, and I should feel half lost with a wife that didn’t contradict me.”
“The spoons and the watch is gone,” exclaimed Betty, who had been inspecting the premises; “and missus’s purse, I daresay. I knew that pedlar came here with a bad meaning.”
“He did! he did!” cried Sarah Pecker.
It was thought a very strange thing by-and-by, in the village of Compton-on-the-Moor, that the mere fact of having been robbed of ten or fifteen pounds’ worth of property by a dishonest pedlar should have worked a reformation in the temper and maimers of Mrs. Sarah Pecker as regarded Samuel her husband; but so it was, nevertheless. Christmas passed away. Hard frosts succeeded drizzling rains, and the fitful February sunshine melted January’s snows, releasing tender young snowdrops and crocuses from their winter bondage. Milder breezes, as the winter months fell back into the past, blew across Compton Moor; spring blossoms burst into bloom in sheltered nooks beneath the black hedges, and the hedges themselves grew green in the fickle April weather; and still Sarah was mild of speech and pleasant of manner to her astonished husband.
The meek landlord of the Black Bear walked about as one in a strange but delicious dream. He had the key of his cellars in his own possession, and was allowed to drink such portions of his own liquors as he thought fit; and Samuel did not abuse the unwonted privilege, for he was naturally a sober man. He was no longer snubbed and humiliated before the face of his best customers. His tastes were consulted, his wishes were deferred to. Nice little dinners were prepared for him by Sarah’s own hands, and the same hands would even deign to mix for him a nightcap of steaming rum-punch, fragrant as the perfumed groves of Araby the blest. Mr. Pecker was almost master in his own house. Sometimes this new state of things seemed well nigh too much for him. Once he went to his wife, and said to her, imploringly, —
“Sarah, speak sharp to me, will you, please; for I feel as if I wasn’t quite right in my head.”
CHAPTER IX. SIR LOVEL MORTIMER’S DRUNKEN SERVANT.
IT has been said that Ringwood Markham was a milksop. In days when men’s swords were oftener out of the scabbard than in, the young squire had little chance of winning much respect from the braggarts and roysterers who were his boon companions in the gaming-houses and taverns that he loved to frequent, except by the expenditure of those golden guineas which his father had hoarded in the quiet economical life the Markham family had led at Compton Hall before the death of the old squire. The Hall property, which was by no means inconsiderable, was so tightly tied up that Ringwood was powerless either to sell or mortgage it; and as he saw his father’s savings melting away, he felt that the time was not far distant when he must either go back to Compton, turn country gentleman, and live upon his estate, or else sink to the position of a penniless adventurer, hanging about the purlieus of the scenes in which he had once lorded it pleasantly over half-a-dozen shabby toad-eaters, and the obsequious waiters of twenty different taverns.
Ringwood Markham had never been in love. He was one of those men who, unassailed by the tempests of passion that wreck sterner souls, sink in some pitiful quicksand of folly. With no taint of profligacy in his own lymphatic nature, he was led by his vanity to ape the vices of the most profligate among his vicious companions. With an utter distaste for drinking, he had learned to become a drunkard; without any real passion for play, he had half ruined himself at the gaming-table; but, do what he would, he was still a girlish coxcomb, and men laughed at his pretty face, his silky golden hair, and small waist.
Darrell Markham and his cousin Ringwood had met once or twice in London, but the old quarrel still rankled in the heart of the young squire; and the coolness between the two men had never been abated. Darrell felt a contempt for Millicent’s brother which he took little pains to conceal; and it was only Ringwood’s terror of his cousin that kept him from showing the hatred which had been engendered on the day of the one brief encounter between the kinsmen. Darrell’s Sphere of action lay far away from the taverns and coffeehouses in which the young squire wasted his useless life. He had, indeed, sought to drown his regrets in the whirlpool of fashionable dissipation; but had discovered very speedily that his wounds were too deep to be healed by any such treatment, and that it was a vain waste of time and substance to seek consolation in the temples of modish folly, inasmuch as his sorrow accompanied him wherever he went, and was not to be drowned by the noise of any tea-garden orchestra or the rattle of tavern dice. So, finding that memory was’ not to be drowned in a punch-bowl, and that the image of Millicent Duke was too deeply engraven on his heart to be put to flight by the factitious charms of any painted madam in London, Darrell reconciled himself to Sorrow, and accepted Memory as his friend and companion, and was all the better man, perhaps, for that sad companionship.
True to the memory of the past, he was true also to the duties of the present. He had ambitious dreams that consoled him in those lonely hours in which his cousin Millicent’s mournful face stole between him and the pages of some political pamphlet. He had high hopes for a future, which might be brilliant, even if it could never be happy. And perhaps even when he fancied himself most hopeless, there lurked in some secret corner of his mind a dim foreshadowing of a day on which the good ship Vulture should go down under a tattered and crime-stained flag, and he and Millicent be left high and dry upon the shore of life.
In the summer succeeding that Christmas upon the eve of which the foreign-looking pedlar had robbed Mrs. Sally Pecker of three silver spoons, a Tompion watch, seven pounds twelve shillings and fourpence in money, and her senses; while the mowers were busy about Compton in the warm June weather, Ringwood Markham was occupying a shabby lodging in the neighbourhood of Bedford Street, Covent Garden. The young squire’s purse was getting hourly lower; but though he had been obliged to leave his handsome lodgings and dismiss the man who had served him as valet for a couple of years, flattering his weaknesses, wearing his waistcoats, and appropriating casual handfuls of his loose silver; though he could no longer afford to spend a twenty-pound note upon a tavern supper, or to shatter his wine-glass upon the wall behind him after proposing a toast, Ringwood Markham still contrived to wear a peach-blossom coat with glittering silver lace, and to show his elegant person and pretty girlish face at his favourite haunts.
He spent half the day in bed, and rose an hour or two after noon, to lounge till dusk in a dirty satin, dressing-gown, which was variegated as much with wine-stains as with the embroidered flowers that had been worked by Millicent’s patient fingers years before. His dinner was brought from a neighbouring tavern, together with a beer-stained copy of the Flying Post, in which Ringwood patiently spelt out the news, in order that he might be enabled to swagger and display his stale information to the companions of the evening. It was while the young idler was poring over this very journal, with the June sunlight streaming into his shabby chamber, whore the finery worn the previous night lay side by side with the relics of the morning’s breakfast in the shape of an empty chocolate-cup and the remains of a roll — it was during Ringwood’s dinner-hour that he was disturbed by the slipshod servant maid of the lodging-house, who came to tell him that a gentleman, one calling himself Mr. Darrell Markham, was below, and wished to speak with him.
Ringwood glanced instinctively to the space above the mantelshelf, upon which there was a great display of pistols, rapiers, and other implements of warfare, and then, in rather a nervous tone of voice, told the servant girl to show the visitor upstairs.
Darrell’s rapid step was heard upon the landing before the girl could leave the room.
“It is no time for ceremony, Ringwood,” he said, dashing into the apartment, “nor for any old feeling of ill-will: I have come to talk to you about your sister.”
“About Millicent?”
Mr. Ringwood Markham
’s countenance betrayed a powerful sense of relief as Darrell declared the object of his visit.
“Yes, about Mrs. George Duke. If your sister were dead and buried, Ringwood Markham, I doubt if you would have heard the news.”
“Millicent was always a poor correspondent,” pleaded the squire, who wasted the best part of a day in scrawling a few ill-shaped characters and ill-spelt words over half a page of letter-paper; “but what’s wrong?”
“I scarce know if that which has happened may be well or ill for my poor cousin,” answered Darrell. “Captain Duke has been away a year and a half, and no word of tidings of either him or his ship has reached Compton.”
Mr. Ringwood Markham opened his eyes and breathed hard by way of expressing strong emotion. He was so essentially selfish that he was a bad hypocrite. He was so utterly indifferent to his fellow-men that he had never taught himself to affect an interest in other people’s affairs.
Darrell Markham was walking rapidly up and down the room, his spurs clattering upon the worm-eaten boards.
“I only got the news to-day,” he replied, “in a letter from Sally Pecker. I had not heard from Compton for upwards of eight months, nor had I sought for any news, for it does me little good to have the old place brought to my mind; and to-day I got this letter from Sally, who says that the Captain’s return has long ceased to be looked for in Compton, except by Millicent, who still seems to expect him.”
“And what do you think: of all this?” asked Ringwood.
“What do I think? Why, that Captain George Duke, and his ship the Vulture, have met the fate that all who sail under false colours deserve. I know of those who can tell of a vessel, with the word ‘Vulture’ painted on her figurehead, that has been seen off the coast of Morocco, with the black flag flying at the fore, and a crew of Africans chained down in the hold. I know of those who can tell of a wicked traffic between the Moorish coast and the West India Islands, and who speak of places where the coming of George Duke is more dreaded than the yellow fever. Good heavens! can it be that this man has met his fate, and that Millicent is free?”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 54