Dudley Carleon lifted his ghastly face from his hands, staggered out of his chair, and fell on his knees at the bailiff’s feet.
“Look at me,” he said in a thick choking voice; “look at me; I am so degraded and lost a wretch that I kneel to you, and ask you to pity me! No, not to pity me, to pity her — the helpless woman I have deceived. Save her, and I will surrender this place, and every farthing I have in the world. Save her, and I will go out of this house, penniless and shelterless, to beg my bread or to die of starvation. Save her, and there is nothing I am not prepared to endure.”
“Will you endure the gallows?” asked Ralph with a sneer. Dudley groaned aloud, but did not answer.
“No, I thought not,” said the bailiff. “Now, listen to me. Let me alone, and I’ll keep your secret to the day of my death. Interfere with me, or try to thwart my plans, or pry into my business, and I’ll let people know what you are, and how you poisoned your brother Martin.”
Jenny Carleon, crouching at the threshold of the door, had heard every word spoken by Ralph Parvis. But at this hideous climax her senses left her, and she fell down the steps leading from the corridor.
CHAPTER VIII. THE LAST CHANCE.
WHEN Jenny recovered her senses, she found herself lying in her own room, with a bandage round her forehead. It was broad daylight, and her husband was seated at the bedside.
She put her hand to her head, looked round helplessly, and asked, “What have I been doing?”
“We found you in the corridor leading to the servants’ rooms. What, in Heaven’s name, had taken you there, Jenny?”
The scene of the night before flashed upon her. She felt that her only chance of escape was to affect ignorance of what she had discovered.
“I thought I heard a child cry, and I went to ascertain; but I was so weak that I could scarcely reach the stairs. I suppose I fainted in trying to do so.”
Her husband looked at her with a searching glance, and then said, “Foolish girl, the child you heard was Martha’s. My old housekeeper has been married a year and a half, and she has come down here to see if her brother can get her a place. Try and go to sleep, Jenny; you did yourself harm by getting up last night.”
She listened to the sound of her husband’s receding footsteps as he left the room. She heard him go along the corridor, down the stairs, across the hall, and into the back premises. As the doors closed behind him, she crept from her bed, and began hurriedly to dress herself in the warmest garments she could find. She was dizzy from the cut on her forehead, and so weak that she was compelled to support herself by holding on to the furniture as she dressed.
“0 God, grant me strength to crawl from this horrible place,” she said, “or I shall never leave it till I am carried out in my coffin.”
She put on her bonnet, and muffled herself in a great woollen shawl, then crept along the corridor, and slowly descended the stairs. To her unspeakable relief she found the hall deserted. She stole out of the front door and closed it behind her. The cold winter air blew upon her face and revived her. She looked up at the long rows of windows and the dreary stone-frontage of the house, as some wretched criminal might look back at a prison from which he had just escaped.
She had tied a thick veil over her plain straw bonnet. “If any of the men are about they will take me for one of the servants,” she thought.
She hurried across the garden, through the gate, and on to the river-bank, without meeting anyone in her way. The tide was high, the river swollen by the rains, the meadows by the bank half-hidden by the standing water. She seemed to have a superhuman strength as she walked rapidly along the narrow pathway.
“Thank Heaven!” she said. “ If I can but reach the highroad I may get a lift in some market-cart going into Olney.”
But when she came to the first gate she stopped suddenly. On the other side of it two men were hard at work with spades and pickaxes. They had just finished cutting a drain straight across the bank — a channel through which the water off the meadows was pouring down into the river.
This open drain presented an impassable barrier between the Grey Farm and the outer world. To reach the high-road by any other way Jenny must traverse half-a-dozen fields, and walk a distance of two miles.
Her heart seemed to stop beating.
“I must stay here to be murdered,” she said; “for escape is impossible.”
But what if she were to appeal to one of the men? Wide as the drain was, they might lift her over it if they pleased. She crawled on until she came up to the spot where they were at work. One of them had his back towards her as she approached, but at the sound of her footsteps he turned round. That man was Ralph the bailiff.
The fact of his presence revealed to her the terrible truth. This barrier between herself and Olney was a part of the hideous plot, the end of which was her death.
“I want to go into Olney,” she said resolutely; “put a board over that drain, that I may cross it.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” answered Ralph indifferently, “that it can’t be done. First and foremost, there isn’t a board to be had; and as to going into Olney, I’m afraid you’re acting against the doctor’s orders in coming out at all, ma’am — and I’m sure Muster Carleon would break his heart to see you run the risk of catching cold. Here he comes, though, so he can settle the question himself.”
Her husband rode up to them as the man spoke.
“Jenny!” he said. “You out of doors this bitter morning! Are you mad? For Heaven’s sake come back to the house!”
“Dudley Carleon,” Jenny said, looking her husband foil in the face, “I want to escape from this place. I want to go into Olney.”
“My dear girl, you are not in a fit state to be out at all. Why, you can scarcely stand! — Lift your mistress up to me, Ralph,” he said.
The bailiff lifted Jenny in his arms, and her husband seated her before him upon his horse.
“Why, Jenny, you tremble like a leaf; you will catch your death!”
She looked round at him with grave sorrowful eyes.
“O, Dudley, Dudley, when I came to this place, I came to meet my death. I was warned, but I would not listen.” Ralph the bailiff looked significantly at his master.
“This work must be finished to-night,” he said, taking up his spade. “If you want to go into Olney to-morrow, ma’am,” he added, “you can go and welcome. We shall have laid down the pipes and filled in this dyke before ten o’clock to-night.”
Dudley rode slowly back to the house and carried his wife into the hall. He was about to take her upstairs, but she stopped him.
“Let me lie on the sofa in the parlour,” she said. “I hate those dreary upstairs rooms.”
He took her into the parlour, drew the sofa close to the fire, covered her with a thick railway-rug, and left her. She lay, hour after hour, repeating to herself again and again, “What am I to do?”
Should she appeal to the servants for protection from Ralph Purvis and his accomplice — her guilty husband? They would not believe her. Very likely Ralph had taught them to think her mad — had prepared them to set down every word she could say to the raving of a disordered mind. They would no doubt refuse to credit her accusations, as she had refused to credit those of Agnes Marlow. In that case they might betray her, and she would be only hastening her doom.
All communication between Olney and the farm had been purposely cut off. The doctor could not pay his accustomed visit. She was utterly friendless and alone. She knew that she had been taking slow poison for weeks — that her murderer was lying in wait to give her the final dose, and, that failing, that he would not scruple to have recourse to more violent means. He might force the deadly draught down her throat. How could she resist? A strong hand over her mouth, and her cries would be stifled until they grew still in death. They would bury her, as they had buried Martin Carleon, without a shadow of suspicion arising in the mind of the doctor, and no one outside that lonely house would ever know the truth. To-day
the hours were but too swift. This day flew by with terrible rapidity. It grew dark; the hour approached at which the men were accustomed to go to bed. This was the hour she dreaded above all others, for she felt she would then be left alone with Dudley Carleon and his bailiff.
She watched the clock intently, listening as she did so for the first clang of the bell which rang at the servants’ bedtime. It rang every night with unvarying punctuality as the clock struck nine. It was five-and-twenty minutes past eight. There were five-and-thirty minutes left, and during those five-and-thirty minutes she must think of some means of escape. Five-and-thirty minutes! She counted the seconds by the tumultuous beating of her heart. The hand of the clock had just reached the half-hour, when, to her horror, the bell rang violently. She started up from her sofa. She heard a hurried trampling of feet in the hall, and the men rushing out at the front door. Ralph Purvis was shouting to them to be quick — to look alive — look alive! or they would be too late.
What could it mean? She ran to one of the windows, drew up the blind, and looked out. A hayrick in a field at some distance had taken fire. It was one of several standing near together, and the men were hurrying to extinguish it, so as to save the others.
Her brain reeled, as the thought flashed upon her that this unlooked-for accident had taken Ralph from the house. She was free — free to attempt once more to escape. But how?
The hall-door had been left open by the men hurrying out. A sudden inspiration made the hot blood rush from her heart into her face. The river! There was the river — the river, which crept close behind the house, and down which the barges were often passing to Olney. Too desperate to remember her weakness, she stole round to the back premises, across the farmyard, and on to the bank. It was pitch dark. She looked about her wildly. “A dozen barges might pass me,” she thought, “and I should not see one of them.”
She could hear the voices of the men trying to extinguish the hayrick in the field in front of the house. She waited about ten minutes — ten interminable minutes — and at the end of that time she saw a feeble light creeping along the river. As it approached her, she perceived that it came from a lantern tied to the mast of a coal-barge.
She called to the men on board this barge. Her voice was feeble from the effects of her long illness, but her repeated cries at last attracted their attention. “What’s the matter there?” asked the man who was steering the barge.
At that moment the flames of the burning hayrick, which had before been hidden by the house, shot above the roof, and cast a lurid glare upon the river bank.
“Why, the house must be on fire?” the man said to his comrade. “Get ashore, Bill, and see what’s amiss.”
One of the men jumped into a boat at the stern of the barge, and pushed it to the bank on which Jenny was standing.
“What’s the matter?” he asked; “is the house a-fire?”
“No, no, take me to Olney,” she cried imploringly. “I’ll give you ten pounds if you’ll take me to Olney.”
The man thought she was one of the servants belonging to the house.
“Why, what is it, lass?” he said; “has your master been ill-using you?”
“Yes,” she answered eagerly, “take me to Olney, for pity’s sake!”
“All right, my lass; give us your hand, then.”
The man lifted her into the boat, and from the boat into the barge; his companion wrapped her in a great-coat, and seated her against the chimney of the little cabin.
“It’s warm there, my lass,”, he said; “we shall be nigh upon an hour getting into Olney.”
She never took her eyes from the red light in the sky, which revealed the sharp outline of the roof-tops and chimneys of the Grey Farm, till a curve of the river hid the gaunt building from her view. Then she lifted her voice to heaven, and thanked God for her deliverance from peril and death.
One of the men from the barge carried her to the Rectory, and placed her in Mr. Marlow’s arms.
The worthy Rector was bewildered and amazed by her appearance; but she only told him that her husband had treated her unkindly, and that she had come to throw herself upon her old guardian for shelter and protection.
The terrors of the awful night and day through which she had passed had been too much for a constitution undermined as hers had been. She had an attack of brain-fever, in which she lay for weeks upon a sick bed; in her delirium perpetually reacting the scenes through which she had passed. Agnes Marlow came from Scarborough on hearing of her friend’s illness, and nursed her with a sister’s devotion.
As soon as Jenny was strong enough to be moved, they carried her to Burlington for change of air.
They had never asked her any questions about her husband’s conduct to her, and she had made no inquiries as to what had taken place during her illness. She felt a strange serenity of mind in the society of these dear and devoted friends, and she had scarcely sufficient courage to allude to the past. She had noticed, however, that on the first occasion of her rising from her bed, Agnes, and the servant who helped to nurse her, had dressed her in mourning, and that they still continued to bring her this black dress every day. It was simply made, but trimmed with a deep border of crape. On the third day after her arrival at Burlington, as she sat alone with Agnes, she said very quietly, “Agnes, why am I in mourning? Who is dead?”
“Can you bear to hear, Jenny? Are you strong enough to hear something that may perhaps shock you?”
“Yes, tell me the worst. Who is dead?”
“Dudley Carleon.”
Jenny’s cheeks grew white, but she did not utter one exclamation of either surprise or sorrow. “May a merciful God forgive him his sins!” she said solemnly.
It was not until she had quite recovered that she was told the entire truth — Dudley Carleon had drowned himself in the river behind his house on the night of Jenny’s escape; and Ralph Purvis the bailiff had proved a will of Dudley’s which left the Grey Farm estate to himself and his sister conjointly.
As soon as Ralph and Martha were placed in possession of the estate, they sold the Grey Farm and all appertaining to it, and the brother and sister, with Dudley’s infant son, sailed for Australia.
To none but these two people and Jenny Trevor was the real cause of Dudley’s suicide ever known. It was supposed by most people to have been caused by financial difficulties, and that the burning of several valuable hayricks had gone some way to drive the young farmer to this terrible deed. It was some time afterwards discovered that the ricks had been fired by a young man who had been dismissed from the farm a few days before, under circumstances of peculiar cruelty, by Ralph Purvis.
* * * *
Far away in the Bush there is a rich sheep-farm, stretching over many miles of fair and luxuriant country. The master counts his cattle by hundreds, and bids fair to become a wealthy and a respected citizen of that distant world. Grim, sleek, dark, and silent, he stalks about amongst his farm-servants, always near them when they least expect to see him — always watching them when they fancy themselves most unobserved.
Dark and silent as himself, his sister, dressed in widow’s weeds, sits nursing her sickly child at the door of their roughly-built, but comfortable, dwelling. They are neither of them liked by their dependents; but they are feared, and are better served than a better master and mistress might be.
Jenny Trevor has kept Dudley Carleon’s secret, and has lived to marry happily, but not to forget either her terrible sufferings, or her merciful deliverance out of the murderous hands of Ralph the bailiff.
CAPTAIN THOMAS
I hold it as a rule, that nine men out of ten are unfortunate in their first attachments; and I hold it as another rule, that it’s a very good thing for them that they are. If fortune had smiled upon my first wooing, I should have united myself to a young lady of thirty-five, assistant at a pastrycook’s in the neighbourhood of the academy where I was educated, with whom I became enamoured at the age of nine and three-quarters. Naturally, the lady repu
lsed my advances on account of my tender years; though I had two Latin Grammars; a book of French Exercises; a penknife; Telemachus, with the verbs in Italics; and a new pair of boots; with which I offered to endow her upon my marriage. I wept when she refused me; whereupon, out of the tenderness of her heart, she gave me a stale Bath bun, which had the effect of choking rather than of consoling me. I believe she was a fat woman with red hair; but I saw her then with the glamour of first love about her, and I thought she was a happy combination of Mary Queen of Scots (I was familiar with that ill-used potentate through an itinerant exhibition of waxwork) and a young lady I had seen at Richardson’s, dancing the Highland Fling.
So I, being one of the nine men out of the ten above alluded to, was unlucky in my first attachment.
I can’t say that I was any more fortunate in my second, which flame was illumined by the bright eyes of a cousin three years older than myself, who boxed my ears on my declaring myself in the back-parlour on a wet Sunday. I knew to what cause to attribute this repulse: I was not yet out of jackets, and I glanced behind me in the direction where my coat-tails ought to have been, and felt that my enemy was there.
My third passion was equally luckless; my fourth no more successful; and I really think I had had the honour of having my hand in marriage refused seventeen times, counting from the pastrycook, when my happy stars (I said happy stars then, I know now that the hand of a malignant genius was in the business) threw me across the path of Rosa Matilda. I met her at a tea-party at Somers Town, whither my sisters had taken me in a cab — for which I had to pay — tight boots, and a white waistcoat. Now, I have always considered that the end and aim of that snare and delusion which is popularly called a friendly cup of tea is to sit in an uncomfortable position in an uncomfortable chair; drink hot weak tea, which afflicts you with temporary dropsy; eat spongy preparations of the genus Lunn or Muffin, admirally adapted to impair your digestive organs; and utter articulate inanities. I am not a brilliant man, I believe, at the very best of times. I never remember throwing an assembly into convulsions of laughter with my wit, or electrifying it with my eloquence. I may have done so often, but my modesty has prevented my being conscious of the fact. But O, let me be so luckless as to be invited to join “a few friends” to tea between seven and eight, and the veriest phantasm of a “phantasm captain” is a Chamier, Marryat, or Basil Hall, in powers of amusing conversation, compared to me. O, how I hate the simpering hostess in her best gown! But I know that she is fidgety about that eighteenpenn’orth of cream, that won’t go all round with the third cup, and that her heart sinketh at the sight of a three-cornered bit of muffin dropped, greasiest side downwards, on the new Brussels; yes, I know she is wretched, and I could almost pity her. But O, my hatred for the “few friends”! I hope that young man from the War-office has tight boots on too; there is a look about the corners of his mouth that can come from nothing but corns. Yes; I am neither physiognomist nor physiologist if that nervous twitch of the facial muscles doesn’t denote the presence of corns, and the patent leather is drawing them. He and I, in all that heartless throng, are friends and brothers.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 1051