Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Not if she stays, and has her tea in his room every day. That girl is an underminer, Mr. Drayson. She has it in her face.”

  “She won’t undermine me, ma’am, if I know my value.”

  “We all know your value, but when you see your master’s mind failing — as nobody can doubt it is — you may expect the worst.”

  This conversation occurred when Mary Smith had been half a year at Warburton House, and when every picture in the gallery, and most of the books in the library, seemed a part of her life. It was winter, and the tête-à-tête afternoon tea, which was so deeply resented by the housekeeper, seemed all the more intimate when taken in the rosy glow of the wood fire, in the warm dusk that soothed Mr. Field’s nerves.

  Mary enjoyed that tranquil hour in the red twilight, when Mr. Field was in a talking humour; for his talk was always interesting — literary, philosophical, even sentimental, the quintessence of the books upon which he had been living for thirty years, the books that had been his companions and his consolers, the only barrier between him and despair.

  He was kind to her — irritable sometimes, with nerves on edge, often capricious and impatient; but always kind, kinder than her father had ever been, even when he was beginning to be fond of her; yes, always kind, and his kindness was very sweet to her. The sound of his voice, the light touch of his delicate hand when he welcomed or took leave of her — his praise when her reading pleased him, his careful instruction when she read French, and he would make her repeat a word half a dozen times till her accent satisfied him — all were sweet.

  She knew somehow that she had found the state of life that suited her, and she was almost happy. It was a monotonous, uneventful life, against which the spirit of youth in the average girl would have rebelled — but in Mary the spirit of youth was dead. She had been through deep waters.

  She had been through deep waters, and she had not forgotten. In the smooth and tranquil hours of the day she had no time for painful memories. Her duties, although so light, were absorbing, now that so many of her hours were spent in Mr. Field’s room. She thought of him and his hard fate — she thought of the strange inner life that he had revealed to her since he had given her his confidence so freely that talking to her had become almost like thinking aloud. In the day the present hour was enough, and she had no time to think of the past.

  But at night memory held her. At night the Past became the Present — and she was the slave of bitter memories. It was as if some cruel monster held her by the arm, and said: “Look back, look back at the path you trod, and see the mistakes you made. See how, when the straight road lay before you, dull and grey, perhaps, but with the morning sun waiting for you at the end — see how you let yourself be led astray by your first tempter — see how you tottered and fell when a nobler girl would have stood firm. See how poor a creature you were in days when you thought yourself strong. Look back, look back! Read the book of the Past, look at the pictures in the book. Look, and see what a wretched creature you were.”

  Memory was pain, but she could not forget. And it was in the dead of night, brain weary, and body weary after tossing herself from side to side upon her sleepless bed, that she lived over again the tragedy of her young life — lived it in every detail. She was at Port Jacob, in the place where she was born, the house and garden that meant home in the days when she could not conceive the possibility of any other place being home — when she felt herself a part of the house and the garden. She was born there and had been a child there, and had grown into a girl there, without change of scene, without new acquaintance, without friends new or old, and she had never revolted against the monotony of her life. The two rustic maid-servants pitied her for being always at Port Jacob, and talked of the splendours of Plymouth — the shops, the theatres, the music-hall. But she listened to them with a dreamy smile, and told them that she never wanted to leave home, unless she could go to Spain or Italy, and sec the things she had read about until they seemed as familiar as the golden hillside in May, or the cliffs in June, flushed with the bloom of the sea-pink.

  She was never impatient in those young years. She loved the sea and the hills and her garden, and the tasks of translation or grammar that her father set for her. He would give her half an hour of his morning to map out her studies for the day, and half an hour in the evening to find out what she had done, well or ill. And this was all the time he could spare for his only child’s education, and he did not pretend that this was not too much for him. Yet there was never a more eager pupil, or a mind that more rapidly absorbed knowledge. The books which he gave her to read, the chapters of history or travel that he told her to make a synopsis of, were sometimes of the toughest, yet she rarely offended him by her failures. He would praise her for work well done, though as coldly as he would have praised a paid secretary. But if he approved she was content. She had grown up without love, and she had left off hoping to be loved. The two maids were kind, the Vicar’s childless wife was interested in her, and often had her to tea when she was alone; but she was not invited to the Vicarage tea-parties, for her father was looked upon with distrust, as a misanthrope and an infidel, who never went to church or subscribed to local charities. That he lived soberly and paid his bills punctually was in his favour, but that he was engaged in literary work counted against him, since he was suspected of writing for Radical papers.

  Happy, careless days! She looked back and saw the colour of the sea that washes the dark red cliffs of North Cornwall, and hides broad stretches of golden sands and low rocks over which the clustering mussel-shells fling a mantle of royal purple — lovely sea, of changing emerald and azure, and of deep umber, where the seaweed shows through the clear water.

  Mary had plenty of friends among the fisher-folk and their dogs. She was sure of a kindly welcome in their cottages, even when she went empty-handed just to inquire about a sick child, or a fading grandfather, and she had their dogs to keep her company in her rambles over the hills, or along the shore — so it mattered to her very little that except the Vicar and his wife there were no gentlefolks at Port Jacob.

  There was no pain in the vision of those early days, and those were her good nights when she could fall asleep before the scene changed, sinking through slumberous seas of gently heaving water, into the felicity of placid sleep.

  There were bad nights when sleep would not come, when her brain was awake and active till the morning light brought the new day, and the past became the present. Miserable nights when she lived over again all that was cruel in her young life — when she had to live through disillusion and shame, and all the sorrow of her eighteenth and nineteenth years. The end of her innocent joy in simple things came so quickly that she could count the days that changed her from child to woman.

  “Open the door, Mary, and ask that poor wretch to come in,” said her father, who was standing with his back to the fire, looking at the window through which he had caught sight of a man crouching outside under the slope of the rustic veranda. The rain was streaming from the thatch and lashing the windows — a south-west wind, a day of pitiless rain, and a stormy sea. The house faced west, so the veranda was not much of a shelter; and Mary’s father had finished his day’s work, and was in a beneficent humour.

  “Let him come in, Mary. It’s inhuman to see him crouching out there.”

  He might have said: “Let in your evil genius; open the door to shame and sorrow.” For the opening of that door was the beginning of the dark chapters in the book of Mary’s life.

  She opened the door, and said in a low, shy voice:

  “My father wishes you to come in for shelter, till the storm is over.”

  The sound of distant thunder was in the air, and a flash lit up the man’s face, as he came from under the veranda to the threshold where Mary was standing.

  “You are very kind, and I shall be much obliged if you will give me shelter till the worst of it is over.”

  He pulled himself out of his long oilskin coat, left it hanging on a
nail which his quick eye had seen under the veranda, and came in at the door from which Mary had withdrawn, leaving him to shut it behind him, as he came in, bareheaded, with his streaming cloth cap in his hand.

  The room was hall and parlour — the largest room in the rambling old house. The ceiling was low, and the walls were lined with books. It was a sombre room, where the wood fire on the open hearth was the only bit of bright colour; and the master of the house was grey and grave, severe of aspect.

  That made no difference to the wayfarer, who came towards the hearth with a beaming smile; and, as his face came out of the shadows, Mary standing shyly behind her father’s high-backed armchair, knew that it was the handsomest face she had ever seen. It was not that the features were finely cut. It was the light in the eyes, the vivid life in the face that made it remarkable, just as the man himself was remarkable in some indefinable manner.

  He had a good deal to say about himself, and Mary’s father listened and even seemed interested, which surprised her, as his general attitude was that of an impenetrable reserve. He had snubbed the Vicar, and had presented a stony front to the advances of the Curate, who wanted to bring him into the fold, and brought all his Oxford culture to the task. But to this stranger he was courteous, motioned him to the chair on the other side of the hearth, and let him tell his story, where he came from, and how he came to be there.

  It was a far cry from the Argentine to North Cornwall, but that was where he had come from. It was the only place where he had a chance of making money, and he had done pretty well there. But he had worked too hard, and had been down with tropical fever, so as soon as he was about again he had put himself on board one of the Royal Mail steamers. The sea voyage had done wonders for him, and having landed at Plymouth, he had been so pleased to find himself on English soil, his mother’s country, that he had set out on a walk round Cornwall. His long legs were in want of exercise after the ship, and the ramble by the sea-shore and along the cliffs, with nights spent in queer little inns, had been delightful — till the rain came — such rain as he had not expected to encounter out of the Tropics.

  When the tea-tray was brought, the stranger rose to leave, but to Mary’s surprise he was asked to stay, and she found herself pouring out tea for the first visitor of a year or more. It would seem as if her father preferred this wayfarer out of an unknown world to the people whose names and place in life he knew.

  That was the beginning of Mary’s story; but the story, opening so quietly, began to glow with colour, and to travel along unknown lines with lightning speed, until she felt like Leonora, borne through the storm and darkness on the black horse, with her lover’s strong arm holding her. It was love at first sight, Jack Rayner told her when they met next day and strolled along the shore together, love swift as fate.

  There were no subtle phases, no delicate gradations, no tremulous uncertainties, no thrilling, unexpected revelations. The strong arm held her, the rush of the wind and the thundering hoofs of the black horse never ceased. From that first sunlit hour when she let herself walk beside him along the golden path under the cliff, and let him slip his arm through hers, and hold her to his side, she had passed out of everyday life into a dream-world. No one had ever given her love. In the arid atmosphere of her home the word had never been spoken, and here, all at once, this fierce love came to her, romantic, impassioned, offering her the promise of a life’s devotion. Even on that first day he made her tell him all her simple story, the solitary life, so friendless and grey. The man dominated her from the first. She tried to stand up against love that was all storm and stress. She had not been fed upon the novelists’ fairy-tales of lovers that can adore and be silent. He told her that he had never known what love meant till he saw her face in the firelight; and she remembered the thrill of wonder that ran through her brain as his face flashed out of the shadows. Yes, that was love at first sight. He was her master.

  He told her the story of his boyhood and youth, a wandering existence, full of adventure in places where a man went with his life in his hand — where death might be swift and sudden, but where fortune’s wheel was always turning. Bad luck to-day, good luck to-morrow.

  She was to be his fairy princess, and go with him to the land of gold — Brazil, Peru, the Argentine. They were all golden lands. Wherever they went fortune should go with them. He had been reckless, extravagant, idle, or had worked by fits and starts, and squandered his gains as fast as he made them, but he had always made money. With her for his wife he would be a new man; his whole being would be changed, his life would travel along a new road. He did not praise himself, but rather gloried in the idea that he had been a reprobate. Yet whatever he said of himself charmed her. He was her master. She was carried along by the force of that strong personality, by the animal magnetism in the man.

  He had found lodgings at a little inn under the hill, half a mile from Port Jacob, but he spent his days in rambling about. By sunlight or by moonshine, in fair or foul weather, he was always on the hills or by the sea, and wherever Mary went she met him.

  Too soon she found that those long rambles, with his arm holding her, were hours in paradise — that nothing else in her day was life, only waiting, only yearning to be with him, only endless thought of him, and a living over again of their last hour together: of the passionate speech, the first kiss, which was an event, resisted with outraged modesty, and accepted in a fainting surrender of weakness to strength, a slave to a sultan; and all the kisses that came after, and were claimed as a right. He called her his flower — his white rose of Cornwall — his sea-nymph, his fairy princess. He had a new name for her every time they met, and the folly of it charmed her. She was as completely subjugated as if she had been his wife for years, and obeyed him as the slave obeys, without free-will or power of resistance.

  There was to be no long courtship. He would see her father, and explain the necessity of an immediate marriage. His holiday was over. He was wanted in South America. His holiday had lasted too long, and the fate of desperate ventures depended on his return. Business in those countries was a gamble.

  She did not think her father would let her marry a stranger, a man of whom he knew nothing; but the voice that could charm her answered every objection. Why not? He was young, ambitious and successful. There was a fortune to be made where he was going. Why not? He told her that he was always lucky. What but luck could have brought him to her door, driven there by the rain and the wind. The elements were on his side. The same wind that had taken him to the Argentine had driven him to her door.

  “I am the kind of dare-devil that Fortune always favours,” he told her. “And I am going to have you for my wife: you and no other, my white flower of the west.”

  It was evening, an August sunset. The tide was far out, and they were standing on the edge of the waves that were lapping the sand. The very sound of the water, the red light of the sun, were with her as she lay sleepless, with unresting brain, and lived again through the passion of the dead past.

  He was holding her to his side, with that strong grasp that meant possession. She hardly knew how utterly she had surrendered, how hopelessly she had lost the power to think and act for herself. He would see her father to-morrow morning, before he began his literary work. She had told him all their hours and habits, and he knew that would be the convenient time. Half an hour’s interview would settle everything; but she must be out of the way. She was to go for a walk on the cliff — their favourite footpath, to the wild field of gorse and heather — and he would find her there when the interview was over. She had no objection to offer. All seemed so simple and so easy. Her father cared so little for her. Things had dropped from his lips, when he was in money difficulties, that told her she was a burden — an unnecessary expense. Why should he stand in the way of her marriage? How unreasonable, how unjust if he were to object! What had he ever given her of his heart? He had suffered her. A little while ago, perhaps, she was beginning to hope that he was growing fond of her. He had be
en kinder. But now that she knew what love meant, she looked back and thought that to have expected affection from such a father was like hoping for warmth from an iceberg. He had never cared for her.

  The morning was grey, but sultry, with a menace of thunder, and she seemed to have been walking a long time under the lowering sky, when her lover came up the footpath with long strides, swinging his stick, an embodiment of strength and courage, as he always seemed to her He did not answer her tremulous question, but caught her in his arms, and strained her to his breast, and covered the pale face with kisses.

  “You are mine, darling, all mine. The other half of my soul. Tell me, dear, are you my own?”

  She whispered yes, thinking her father had consented, and that all was well.

  No, he had refused. He had behaved abominably. He had been brutal, abusive, a foul-mouthed blackguard. She must never enter his house again. He was not fit to have a daughter. The lowest peasant girl in the country was too good to be subject to such a father. And then he told her that there was only one thing to be done, only one gateway into the Eden of happy love. She must trust her fate to him — go away with him at once — without entering her father’s house, across the hill to the railway station, and thence to Plymouth. They would be married before the Registrar next morning. She refused — she made every possible objection — but he had an answer for everything. She need carry nothing away with her — nothing. She could buy all she needed in half an hour at one of the big shops in Plymouth. His pockets were full of gold. She was to think of nothing, and trouble herself about nothing.

  “Consider the lilies,” he said, smiling at her. “My lily shall never know care.”

  She was swept along in a whirl of confusion and hurry. The strong arm had been slipped through hers, and she moved across the heather as if she had been walking on air. The sun came out of the sullen clouds, and the world was warm. The muttering thunder-peals rolled farther and farther away. Before she had time to think they were at the solitary little station, waiting for the Plymouth train. She stood by his side on the platform, silent and full of fear. Thought was impossible. When had she ever been able to think, while that arm held her; so strong, yet so gentle in its strength?