Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Well,” she asked, breathing quickly in her impatience to know the worst at once, “what has happened?”

  Then, far more gently than she would have supposed possible, he explained his errand.

  “I made sure I would be too late. This is the sort of thing some fool would bring to your notice at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps I was a fool to try to tell you before the others; but, you see, I wanted to be there when you heard about it first. I knew Rayner was persecuting you, and yet felt it might be a shock to you to hear that he was no more.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes. It seems they found the body in a first-class carriage on the District Railway at Ealing — the journey’s end — a little before noon to-day. He had entered the train at Blackfriars. There were not many passengers about then, and no one else in the compartment after Hammersmith. Between that station and the stopping-place Rayner must have swallowed a tablet of potassium cyanide, taken apparently from the diamond ring that was found on the seat close by. For there was an opening behind the stone which contained traces of the poison, and the local doctor had no doubt as to the cause of death.”

  “A terribly painful death,” said Mary, shuddering to think how near the dead man had once brought her to a similar fatal step.

  “More swift and merciful than many a so-called natural death,” said George. “It’s the stuff a doctor told me he would take himself — rather than face some of the operations that prolong our misery. No, depend upon it, in death as in life, he took the easiest way.”

  “How hard you are sometimes!”

  “I’ve had a good deal to make me hard,” he answered gravely, but without his usual bitterness. “ And I never was quite so soft as some people. By the by, no letter addressed to anyone else was found on the body. He may not have been much of a sportsman, but he died game — no infernal self-justification — no tell-tale squealing for the coroner to gloat over.”

  When he was gone, Mary remembered what his uncle had said about him—” not by any means a saint.” And yet — he had not pressed the point that she was now free, and she bore him a good heart for that.

  After all, Jack had been more to her once than any other man; and, woman-like, she blamed herself for having let him come to such a pitiful end. If only she had tried harder to understand the schemes he used to talk about in those dreary Chelsea days, she might have kept him straight — might have saved him from the self-deception that leads men of his sanguine temperament astray. No doubt he meant well, and, though he was too fond of taking short cuts to the things that tempted him, he had not loved money for its own sake.

  Remembering how he had to bolt then, she saw that he must have been in a worse hole now — so could not help feeling glad that he was beyond the reach of man’s justice. And Mary hoped that the agony he suffered at the end might be reckoned punishment enough by Him Whose justice she had once presumed to call in question.

  With one exception — a ghoulish weekly that always tore every rag of character from the defenceless dead — Rayner had by no means a bad press. At the inquest, which one of Bertram’s most eminent clients attended as unobtrusively as possible, the coroner — a physician of wide experience and by way of being a psychologist — struck a sympathetic note, which the papers echoed. He spoke learnedly of the malady of the century — over-strain — the breaking-point — and called Rayner one of those pathfinders who fail to reach the promised land.

  There was, moreover, a pleasing air of mystery about the man’s origin, for the Rayners of Castle Rayner maintained a discreet silence. And all his private papers had been destroyed — nothing left to implicate or compromise anybody—” so tactful, don’t you know”—” better form than one would have expected in a Rastac.”

  A reaction set in against the still-clamorous shareholders when the Official Receiver took charge of the Rayner Group. They were unfeelingly described as the “get-rich-quick fraternity,” while the distinguished directors were merely styled foolish figure-heads.

  The uncharitable attitude of the London Argus was all the more marked. It had a large type article with the malignant heading: “Exit Argentine Jack,” which was displayed on all its day bills. Here, among other things, Rayner was called “a megalomaniac who imposed on silly women and sillier men — dazzled by the stale old confidence trick in a new dress. The sale of gold bricks in the city enabled him to pay certain doubtful dowagers smart money for an introduction into smart houses.

  “The fellow’s colossal vanity was evidenced in his absurd pretensions to the hand of a great heiress, who would probably not have recognized him in the crowd that calls itself Society nowadays. Of course, he was a vulgar spellbinder, a common swindler, wherein he was not more guilty but only less fortunate than—” and then followed the names of some successful financiers who had recently departed this life in the odour of sanctity.

  Of all Rayner’s ventures only the supper-club survived him. One of its latest members was Austin Sedgwick, who gave a constant succession of parties there. This was done to propitiate his frantic sisters for the — to them — inexplicable silence of Warburton House. Single-handed, he had undertaken the task of launching Tiny and Julia in the world they loved — a more formidable business than any launching ever planned at the Yard, but, like all good works, eventually crowned with success.

  In the meantime Mary had slipped away to Port Jacob where, if she could not escape from her own thoughts, she was, at any rate, safe from other intruders. The Tremayne Home, which now looked almost as picturesquely peaceful as Fred Walker’s Harbour of Refuge, was a fitting tribute to the memory of the father whose love Mary had tried so hard to win. It would have protected her against the lure of another love, only it was given to the dead. There were faults on both sides, but hers, she felt, had been the greater. Not for the first time, she thought of the mother she had never known. And Mary wondered if she would bring father and daughter together again in the shadow-land beyond — where we shall no longer see through a glass darkly, but face to face.

  July had come and soon the school holidays would be there, bringing noisy family parties to that quiet spot. Already Mary was thinking of going, she did not know where, when one day an unheralded visitor was announced. Who could it be? — the parlour-maid gave her no name — Austin, she knew, was busy in London on her behalf — poor fellow. Yet the watchful Zamiel did not bark, for it was an old friend of his who walked into the low-ceilinged private room at the “Ship.”

  “Come!” said George, in his startling abrupt way, when the usual greetings had been exchanged. “After those stuffy courts I want a breath of fresh air.”

  Mary could not help smiling, though in spite of his affected calm she saw that he was in real distress. And before long they had climbed the steep path to the moor, where the heather spread a carpet of pale purple bloom. Zamiel, who had rushed on ahead, began to make rings round them, much as the black poodle circled about Faust when he walked in the fields with his prosaic pupil on Easter day.

  It was the place where Mary herself first met the tempter, it seemed ages ago now — in a previous existence. Outwardly all was unchanged, but within nothing appeared the same. It felt as if a thick sea-fog had blown away and the sun was shining at last.

  “It’s a sin to stay indoors on a day like this,” exclaimed George, taking a deep breath.

  “I hadn’t been in long.”

  “And I dragged you out again, selfish brute that I am. I know I am selfish, Mary, beastly selfish. But it’s no good my pretending to be like Austin.”

  “It wouldn’t do, perhaps, if everyone were as unselfish as he is,” said Mary, in a thoughtful tone.

  “Look here!” George broke in quickly. “The man who tries to plead his own cause is an idiot — particularly when he knows that the merits arc against him. But won’t you take pity, dear? Help me out! Don’t let me despair again! You know how much I love you — and it is in your power, Mary, to make me a better man.” Her face grew softer than h
e had ever seen it look. For he had touched the right note this time. Every woman longs for such a mission, and loves a man for his weakness rather than his strength. As with the angels of God, there is joy among them over one sinner that repented, more than over ninety-and-nine just persons. “You forget that I failed once,” in a whisper.

  “The past is dead and done with. It is the present I would not have slip away from us,” answered George, his deep voice vibrating with long-suppressed emotion. “We have both been cheated of our youth, but our best years are still before us. Don’t let us lose them! For me, dear, you were always the one woman in the world — the most lovable as well as the loveliest.”

  “What about the lady the picture-papers called the beautiful Mrs. A.?” she asked with an accent of banter, anxious to stop him.

  “She is only a beautiful doll. But who on earth has been talking to you about her?”

  “Julia wrote to me the other day — she and her sister are not fond of you, I fancy — she told me that she was engaged to a nice boy, and, among much gossip, that Mrs. A. was the rage, and people said she was going strong with dear Cousin George.”

  “They may say what they jolly well like — dear Cousin Julia won’t get a wedding present out of me, though — it is you only that I love, Mary. From the first you drew me towards you, in spite of yourself.”

  “Perhaps I wished to all the while.”

  “Did you really?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt if one ever does — till afterwards.”

  Once more he clasped her to him, and this time there was no resistance. He trembled all over, as he held her in his arms — trembled with joy at having won her and with fear lest it should not be true, but only another of the tantalizing dreams that had mocked him of late.

  Thus their lips met — in a state of trance which sets the spirit free. In a second or two they had descended to earth again, but it was minutes before they could speak of earthly things, and not then without a painful sense of being commonplace. Still, somehow or other, it was settled that George should leave his suit-case at the Railway Inn, and that they should be asked in church by the good Mr. Holditch next Sunday morning as ever was — both of this parish. The wedding was to be very quiet — so quiet, indeed, that most people would only hear of it afterwards — no fuss or frills of any kind, by special request of the bridegroom.

  Mary was to be married in a travelling dress, and George was to wear a tweed suit in which he could drive the car. They were to motor down by easy stages to Dunoon, where she was to introduce him to her friends in the Yard — the braw, dour-faced lads with oil-stained hands, the bonnie, smiling lassies and lusty bairns with sun-kissed hair.

  First, however, Mary had to come back to London, in order to execute the marriage settlement, which was like a big parchment book that no man save a Chancery barrister might read, being without a single comma, but having several schedules, full of figures, that formed a bulky appendix. When counsel’s opinion had been taken on all points arising out of the disposal of as much of their joint wealth as it was deemed advisable to tie up for the benefit of future generations — a seemingly needless precaution — and the solicitors on both sides had conferred for the last time, Mary, who looked dead-beat, fervently hoped never to need independent advice again. But there was something that weighed on her more than the responsibilities of great possessions, heavy though they were.

  “I had such a dear letter from Sir John,” Mary told George, as they were leaving the office where the deed had finally been signed, sealed and delivered.

  “The judge is a brick,” he replied; “and so is dear old Austin. We were always great pals. I’m afraid he’ll feel a bit lonely now, poor chap.”

  “He’ll never be lonely while the world is full of unhappy people,” said Mary, with a sad smile. “And they will never be without a friend while he lives — I’ve good reason to know that.”

  Then in almost a solemn tone she added: “Will you take me somewhere this afternoon, George? It’s not far.”

  “Aren’t you too tired?” he asked, noticing the want of timbre in her voice. “No? Well, come along, dear.”

  She told her chauffeur to drive to the place where he had put her down before in the Fulham Road. And George wondered a little where they were going, but did not ask, as Mary seemed sunk in thought. The car pulled up before it had reached the railway bridge. Getting out, they took a street on the right hand that leads to one of the gates of Brompton Cemetery. They entered and walked, still in silence, along a broad road towards a narrow path off it. At the corner they stood aside to make way for a woman, respectably dressed in black, with a couple of children in their Sunday clothes. Somehow her face struck Mary as familiar, though there was no answering look of recognition in it. She was Norah Lee, of course, the unruly but not ill-natured girl at the Refuge.

  “Don’t you know me again, Norah?” asked Mary.

  “Can’t say I do!” said the woman with a troubled I expression and an uneasy side-glance at George.

  “Surely you remember Mrs. Gurdon’s?”

  “I seem to have heard the name somewhere. But it’s years ago and I’ve had a lot to think of since. We’ve brought these” — indicating a modest bunch of flowers—” for my husband’s mother who was as good as a mother to me. Hope you’re well, miss?” And she hurried pas’ them, dragging her round-eyed children with her.

  Norah is right, reflected Mary. It seemed ungrateful but there are things it was perhaps wiser to forget.

  Soon they came to a spot where they had to thread their way between the close-set graves. At length Mary stopped before a small marble tomb, surrounded by an oblong bower of roses. Though it was beautifully kept, the crimson ramblers were beginning to fade and had go somewhat smoky. It reminded George of a child’s red curtained cot — the little one laid to rest by loving hands “Read what is written there,” said Mary, in a voice broken by tears. And, bending over, he read the young mother’s cry of anguish.

  “My darling,” he said ever so tenderly, holding her hand fast in his, “you were scarcely more than a child yourself when you lost him.”

  “You know now why there are no orange-blossoms for me” — sobbing out the words.

  “But we will have joy-bells in our hearts. Come look up, be brave, for my” — then, quickly correcting himself—” for the sake of others.”

  Mary felt an exquisite thrill of pleasure. Already the change in George had begun. Life had for her a new purpose. The days of fear and doubt were over. Without being told he understood.

  As the blood throbbed wildly through her temples, she seemed to hear again the music of the mass in some great Italian church and fresh young voices uplifted in a hymn of triumph — and there came back to her, as a special message of hope, the words: Sursum corda!

  THE END

  The Children’s Book

  St. James’s Theatre, London — the first theatre attended by Braddon. Throughout her early life she performed at several theatres in the city, before achieving instant fame and wealth with her novel ‘Lady Audley’s Secret’.

  THE CHRISTMAS HIRELINGS

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE.

  PROLOGUE.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  PREFACE.

  I HAD long wished to write a story about children, which should be interesting to childish readers, and yet not without interest for grown-up people: but that desire might never have been realized without the unexpected impulse of a suggestion, dropped casually in the freedom of conversation at a table where the clever hostess is ever an incentive to bright thoughts. The talk was of Christmas; and almost everybody agreed that the season, considered from the old-fashioned festal standpoint, was pure irony. Was it not a time of extra burdens, of manifold claims upon everybody’s purse and care, of great expectations from
all sorts of people, of worry and weariness? Except for the children! There we were unanimous.

  Christmas was the children’s festival — for us a rush and a scramble, and a perpetual paying away of money; for them a glimpse of Fairyland.

  “If we had no children of our own,” said my left-hand neighbour, “we ought to hire some for Christmas.”

  I thought it was a pretty fancy; and on that foundation built the little story of the Christmas Hirelings, which is now reproduced in book form from last year’s Christmas Number of the Lady’s Pictorial, and which I hope even after that wide circulation all over the English-speaking world may find a new public at home — the public of mothers and aunts and kind uncles, in quest of stories that please children. This story was a labour of love, a holiday task, written beside the fire in the long autumn evenings when the south-west wind was howling in the Forest trees outside.

  The living models for the three children were close at hand, dear and familiar to the writer; and Moppet’s long words and quaint little mannerisms are but the pale reproduction of words and looks and gestures in the tiny girl who was then my next-door neighbour, and who is now far away in the shadow of the Himalayas.

  The character of Mr. Danby, whom some of my critics have been kind enough to praise, was suggested by the following passage in the first series of the “Greville Memoirs,” copied in my commonplace-book long ago, when everybody was reading those delightful reminiscences: —

  “Old Creevy — an attorney or barrister — married a widow, who died a few years ago. She had something, he nothing. His wife died, upon which event he was thrown upon the world with about two hundred a year, or less, no home, few connections, a great many acquaintance, a good constitution, and extraordinary spirits. He possesses nothing but his clothes, no property of any sort; he leads a vagrant life, visiting a number of people who are delighted to have him, and sometimes roving about to various places as fancy happens to direct, and staying till he has spent what money he has in his pocket. He has no servant, no home, no creditors; he buys everything as he wants it at the place he is at; he has no ties upon him, and has his time entirely at his own disposal and that of his friends. He is certainly a living proof that a man may be perfectly happy and exceedingly poor, or rather without riches, for he suffers none of the privations of poverty, and enjoys many of the advantages of wealth. I think he is the only man I know in society who possesses nothing.”