Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  An old woman opened the door. My lord was evidently out of town. Mrs. Pecker directed the coachman to inquire for Mr. Darrell Markham. The great Carved doorway, the iron extinguishers upon the railings, the attenuated iron lamp-frame, the figure of the old woman standing on the threshold, all reeled before Millicent’s eyes, and she did not hear a word that was said. She only knew that the coach door was opened, and that Sarah Pecker told her to alight; that she tottered up the steps, across the threshold of the door, and into a noble stone-flagged hall, at the end of which a feeble handful of burning coals struggled for life in a grate wide enough to have held well nigh half a ton.

  A stout gentleman, wrapped to the chin in a furred coat, and wearing high leather boots bespattered with mud and snow, was standing against this fire, with his back to Millicent, reading a letter. His hat, gloves, riding-whip, and half-a-dozen unopened letters lay on a table near him.

  Millicent Duke only saw a blurred and indistinct figure of a man, who seemed one wavy mass of coat and boats; and a fire that resolved itself into a circle of lurid brightness, like the red eye of a demon. Sarah Pecker had not alighted from the coach; the old woman stood curtsying to Mrs. Duke, and pointing to the gentleman by the fireplace. Millicent had a confused idea that she was to ask this gentleman to conduct her to Darrell Markham. His head was bent over a letter, the contents of which he could scarcely decipher in the dim light from the dirty window-panes and the struggling fire. Millicent was almost afraid to interrupt him in the midst of this occupation.

  While she stood for a moment deliberating how she might best address him, he crumpled the letter into his pocket, and, turning suddenly, stood face to fade with her.

  The stout gentleman was Darrell Markham.

  CHAPTER XIV. RINGWOOD’S LEGACY.

  OF all the changes Millicent had ever dreamed of, none had come about. But this one change, of which she had never dreamed, had certainly come to pass. Darrel Markham had grown stouter within the past seven years; not unbecomingly so, of course. He had only changed from a stripling into a stalwart broad-chested, and soldierly-looking fellow, whose very presence inspired poor helpless Millicent with a feeling of safety. He clasped his poor little shivering cousin to his breast, and covered her cold forehead with kisses.

  Yet I doubt, if even George Duke’s handsome sinister face could have peeped in at the half-open hall-door at that very moment, whether the Captain of the Vulture would have had just cause for either anger or alarm.

  It was a brotherly embrace which drew Millicent’s slender form to that manly heart — it was a brother’s protecting affection that showered kisses thick and fast upon her blushing face; and a brother’s sheltering arm that crushed the pretty mourning hat which Mrs. Pecker had been at so much pains to trim.

  Poor Sally Pecker! if she could only have known how little Darrell Markham saw of the crape ruches and streamers, the jet necklace and bracelets, and all the little coquetries she had prepared for his admiration! He only saw the soft blue eyes, with the old pleading look he remembered long ago, when Ringwood and he were apt to fall to quarrelling with each other at Compton Hall, and the anxious trembling girl would creep between them, to make peace. Millicent’s eyes were tearless now, and such a mist was before Darrell’s sight that he could scarcely distinguish the happy face looking up at him from under the crushed mourning hat.

  “Bless you, my darling! bless you!” he said again and again, seeming indeed to have little more to say than this; but a great deal of inarticulate language in the way of kisses to supply his want of words.

  “Bless you, bless yon, my own precious Milly!”

  Nor did Mrs. George Duke do very much on this occasion to establish a character for eloquence, for, after a great deal of blushing and trembling, she could only look shyly up at her cousin, and say, —

  “Why, Darrell, how stout you have grown!”

  Only a moment before Mr. Markham had felt a very great inclination to cry, but as these simple faltering words dropped from his cousin’s lips, he laughed aloud, and opening a door near at hand led her into my Lord C—’s library, where the dust lay thick upon furniture and books, and the oaken window-shutters were only half open.

  “My Millicent,” he said, “my dearest girl! what a happy chance that I should have ridden into town on this snowy morning to fetch some letters of too great importance to be trusted to an ordinary messenger! I have spent Christmas with my lord in Buckinghamshire, and it was but an accident my coming here to-day.”

  He took the mourning hat from Millicent’s head, and cast it ignominiously on the floor. Then smoothing his cousin’s pale golden ringlets with gentle caressing hands, he looked long and earnestly at her face.

  “My darling,” he said, “all these weary years have not made an hour’s change in you!”

  “And in you, Darrell—”

  “In me! why, I am stouter, you say, Milly.”

  “Yes, yes, a little stouter; but I don’t mean that!” She hesitated, and stood twisting one of the buttons of his furred coat round and round with her slender fingers, her head bent, and the dim light from the halfopened shutters slanting upon her golden-tinted hair. Innocent and confiding, a pale saint crowned with a pale aureole, she looked too celestial a creature for foggy London and St. James’s Square.

  “What then, Millicent?” said Darrell.

  “I mean that you must be changed in other things — changed in yourself. I have dawdled away my quiet life at Compton, with no event to break these seven years but the death of my poor brother; but you have lived in the world, Darrell, the gay and great world, where, as I have always read, all is action, and the sufferings or pleasures of a lifetime are often crowded into a few brief months. You must have seen so many changes that you must needs be changed yourself. I fancy that we country people fall into the fashion of imitating the nature about us. Our souls copy the slow growth of the trees that shelter us, and our hearts are changeless as the quiet rivers that flow past our villages. That must be the reason why we change so little. But you, in this busy turbulent London — you, who must have made so many acquaintances, so many friends — noble and brilliant men — amiable and beautiful women—”

  As in a lady’s letter a few brief words in the post-script generally contain the whole gist of the epistle, so, perhaps, in this long speech of Mrs. George Duke’s the drift of the exordium lay in the very last sentence.

  At any rate it was to this sentence that Darrell Markham replied:

  “The loveliest woman in all London has had little charm for me, Millicent; there is but one beautiful face in all the world that Darrell Markham ever cared to look upon, and that he sees to-day for the first time after seven years.”

  “Darrell, Darrell!”

  The joy welling up to her heart shone out from under the shelter of her drooping lashes. He was unchanged, then, and there was no dark town-bred beauty to claim her old lover. She was a married woman herself, and George Duke might return tomorrow; but it seemed happiness enough to know that she was not to hear Darrell Markham’s wedding bells yet awhile.

  “I was coming to Compton at the beginning of next month to see you, Milly.”

  “To see me?”

  “Yes; to remind you of an old promise, broken once but not forgotten. To claim you as my wife.”

  “Me, Darrell — a married woman?”

  “A married woman!” he cried passionately; “no, Millicent, a widow by every evidence of common sense. Free to marry by the law of the land. But tell me, dearest, what brought you to town?”

  “This, Darrell.”

  She took her dead brother’s letter from her pocket, and gave it to him.

  “Three nights before his death, my poor brother Ringwood wrote this,” she said, “and at the same time bade me put it with my own hand into yours. I hope, Darrell, it contains some legacy, even though it were to set aside Ringwood’s will, and leave you the best part of the fortune. It is more fitting that you should be the owner of it than I.�
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  Darrell Markham stood with the letter in his band, looking thoughtfully at the superscription.

  Yes, there it was, the sprawling straggling penmanship which he had so often laughed at; the ill-shaped letters and the ill-spelt words, all were there; but the hand was cold that had held the pen, and the sanctity of death was about poor Ringwood’s letter, and changed the scrawl into a holy relic.

  “He wrote to me before he died, Millicent? He forgot all our old quarrels, then?’’

  “Yes, he spoke of you most tenderly. You will find loving words in the poor boy’s letter, I know, Darrell, and I hope some mention of a legacy.”

  “I have neither need nor wish for that, Milly; but I am happy that Ringwood remembered me kindly upon his death-bed.”

  Darrell Markham broke the seal, and read the brief epistle. As he did so a joyous light broke suddenly out upon his handsome face.

  “Millicent, Millicent!” he said; “do you know the contents of this letter?”

  “Not one word, Darrell.”

  “It was noble and generous of my cousin Ringwood to write this to me. O, Milly, Milly! be has left me the most precious legacy that ever mortal man received from the will of another.”

  “I am so glad of that, Darrell. Glad, ay, more than glad, if he has left you every acre of the Compton estate. My little cottage is big enough for me; and I — should be so happy to see you master of the old Hall.”

  “But it is not the Compton estate, Milly darling. The legacy is something dearer and more valuable than all the lands and houses in merry England.”

  “Not the Compton estate?”

  “No: the legacy is — you.”

  He caught her in his arms, and clasped her once more to his heart. This time it was scarcely so brotherly an embrace with which he encircled the slender form, and this time, had the Captain of the Vulture been peeping in at the library door, he might have felt himself called upon to interfere.

  “Darrell, Darrell, what do you mean?” cried Millicent, as soon as she could extricate herself, with flushed cheeks and tangled curls, from her cousin’s arms.

  “What do I mean? Read poor Ringwood’s letter, Milly.”

  Mrs. George Duke opened her blue eyes in an innocent stare of wonder as she took the foolscap sheet from her cousin’s hand. In sober earnest she began very much to fear that Darrell Markham had become suddenly distracted.

  “Read, Milly, read!”

  Bespattered with unsightly blots, smudges, erasures, and feeble half-formed characters, this poor scrawl, written by the weak hand of the sick man, was no such easy matter to decipher; but to the eye of Millicent Duke every syllable seemed burnt upon the paper in letters of fire.

  It was thus that poor Ringwood had written; “COUSEN DARREL, “When you gett this, Capten Duk will hav bin away sevin years. I canot lieve you a legasy, but I lieve you my sister Mily, who after my deth will be a ritch woman, for your tru and lovyng wife. Forgett all past ill blud betwixt us, and cherish her for the sake of

  “RINGWOOD MARKHAM.”

  With her pale face dyed unnaturally red with crimson blushes, and her blue eyes bent upon the Turkey carpet in my lord’s library, Mrs. Duke stood, holding her brother’s letter in her trembling hands. Darrell Markham dropped on his knees at her feet. “You cannot refuse me now, my own dear love,” he said, with unutterable fondness; “for even if you could find the heart to be so cruel, I would not take the harsh word No from those beloved lips. You are mine, Mrs. Duke — mine to have and to hold. You are the legacy left me by my poor cousin.”

  “Am I free to wed, Darrell?” she faltered; “am I free?”

  “As free as you were, Millicent, before ever the shadow of George Duke darkened your father’s door.” While Darrell Markham was still upon his knees on my lord’s Turkey carpet, and while Millicent Duke was still looking down at him with a glance in which love, terror, and perplexity had equal share, the library door was burst open, and Mrs. Sarah Pecker dashed in upon the unconscious pair.

  “So, Mrs. George Duke and Mr. Darrell Markham,” she said, “this is mighty pretty treatment upon my first visit to London! Here have I been sitting in that blessed coach for the space of an hour by your town clocks, and neither of you have had so much civility as to ask me to come in and warm my fingers’ ends at your wretched fires.”

  Darrell Markham had risen from his knees on the advent of Mrs. Pecker; and it is to be recorded to her credit that the discreet Sally had evinced no surprise whatever at the abnormal attitude in which she had discovered Millicent’s cousin; and furthermore that, although expressing much indignation at the treatment she had received, Sarah appeared altogether in very high spirits and amazing good humour.

  “You’ve been rather a long time giving Master Darrell the letter, Miss Milly,” she said slyly.

  “That won’t surprise you, Sally, when you hear the contents of the letter,” answered Darrell; and then he planted Mrs. Pecker in a high-backed leather-covered chair by the fireplace, and told her the whole story of Ringwood’s epistle.

  It is doubtful if Millicent Duke would ever have freely given her consent to the step which appeared to her such a desperate one; but between Darrell Markham and Sarah Pecker she was utterly powerless; and when her cousin handed her back to the coach that had been so long in waiting, she had promised to become his wedded wife without an hour’s unnecessary delay.

  “I will make all arrangements for the ceremony, dearest,” Darrell said, as he lingered at the coach door, loth to bid his cousin good-bye. “That done, I must ride into Buckinghamshire with my lord’s letters, and wish him farewell for a time. I will breakfast with you to-morrow morning at your inn, and escort you and Sally to see some of the lions of this big city. Good bye, darling; God bless you!”

  The blue-nosed coachman smacked his whip, and the coach drove away, leaving Darrell Markham standing on the doorsteps looking after his cousin.

  “O, Sally, Sally, what have I done?” cried Millicent as soon as the coach had left St. James’s Square.

  “What have you done, Miss Milly!” exclaimed Mrs. Pecker; “why, only what was right and proper, and according to your poor brother’s wishes. You wouldn’t have gone against them, miss, would you, knowing what a wickedness it is to thwart those that are dead and gone?” ejaculated Sarah, with pious horror.

  For the rest of that day Millicent Duke was as one in a dream. She seemed to lose all power of volition, and to submit quietly to be carried hither and thither at the behest of stout Sarah Pecker. As for the worthy mistress of the Black Bear, this suddenly devised wedding between the two young people, whom she had known as little children, was so deep a delight to her, that she could scarcely contain herself and her importance within the limits of a hired coach.

  “Shall I bid the man stop at a silk mercer’s, Miss Milly?” she asked, as the vehicle drove citywards.

  “What for, Sally?”

  “For you to choose a wedding-dress, miss. You’ll never be married in mourning?”

  “Why not, Sally? Do you think I mourn less for my brother because I am going to marry Darrell Markham? It would be paying ill respect to his memory to cast off my black clothes before he has been three months in his grave.”

  “But only for your wedding-day, Miss Millicent I Think what a bad omen it would be to wear black on your wedding-day.”

  Mrs. Duke smiled gravely. “If it please Heaven to bless my marriage, Sally,” she said, “I do not think the colour of my dress would come between me and Providence.”

  Sarah Pecker shook her head ominously. “There’s such things as tempting Providence, and flying in the face of good fortune, Miss Milly,” she said; and without waiting for leave from Millicent, she ordered the coachman to stop at a mercer’s on Ludgate hill, a very shabby dingy little shop compared to the splendid emporiums of to-day, but grander than anything Mrs. Pecker had ever seen at Carlisle.

  Mrs. Duke did not oppose her protectress; but when the shopman brought his rolls of glis
tening silks and brocade, and cast them in voluminous folds upon the narrow counter, Millicent took care to choose a pale lavender-coloured fabric, arabesqued with flowers worked in black floss silk.

  “You seem determined to bring bad luck upon your wedding, Mrs. Duke,” Sarah said sharply, as Millicent made this sombre choice. “Who ever heard of black roses and lilies?”

  But Millicent was determined; and they drove back to the big gloomy hostelry in the heart of the City, where Mrs. Pecker seated herself at once to her task of making the wedding dress.

  The fortnight that must needs elapse before the marriage could take place seemed only one long bewildering dream to Millicent Duke. She gave herself up into the hands of Sarah and Darrell, and let them do as they pleased with her. It was Darrell’s delight to make that first visit to London a pleasant holiday for his beloved cousin. He removed the two women from the busy City hostelry to a quiet lodging near Covent Garden; and here he spent much of his time with them, taking them to see all the grandest sights in London — to Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s, to the Tower, and to Kensington Gardens, where the; bad the honour of beholding their Majesties King George and Queen Charlotte, to say nothing of a whole bevy of Court beauties, whose costumes Mrs. Pecker contemplated with unbounded curiosity and admiration, but whom she condemned en masse as “London madams.” Darrell conducted his cousin and her faithful companion to Ranclagh, and to the two great theatres, where Mrs. Duke was delighted with Arta verxes, and was moved to pity for hapless Mistress Shore. It would have been altogether a most delightful period for Millicent if she had not been tormented by vague doubts and shadowy fears, which she tried in vain to banish from her mind, but which grew and multiplied as the day appointed for her marriage drew nigh.

  CHAPTER XV. MILLICENT’S WEDDING.

  VERY little breakfast was eaten upon the wedding morning by any one of the trio assembled in the cheerful little sitting-room in Soho. The weather had been cold and rainy during the past fortnight; but to-day there was neither rain nor sleet falling from the leaden sky. There was that blackness in the air and in the heavens which predicts the coming of a tremendous fall of snow. The mud of the day before had frozen in the gutters, and the pavements were hard and dry in the bitter frosty morning — so bitter a morning that Mrs. Pecker’s numbed fingers could scarcely adjust the brocade wedding-dress, and all the feminine furbelows which it had been her delight to prepare. A cheerless, black, and hopeless frost — black alike upon the broad moors around Compton and in the dark London streets, where the breath of half-frozen foot-passengers and shivering horses made a perpetual mist. A dismal wedding morning this, for the second nuptials of Squire Markham’s daughter.