“Where is my maid? Can you tell me?” she inquired.
“In the hall, please, miss, at present, talking with Mr. Darkdale about the luggage, please, my lady,” she answered in good faith, not knowing which maid she inquired for.
“Well, as soon as she has seen after those things, I should like her to come here,” continued Miss Vernon.
“Do you wish to see Mr. Darkdale, miss?”
“No. Who is Mr. Darkdale?”
“We all thinks a deal of Mr. Darkdale down here,” said the woman, reservedly.
“And why do you think so much of him?” inquired the young lady.
“Well, he brings a deal of business to us, one way or other, going and coming, and he’s a very responsible man, he is. And Mr. Darkdale, please, miss, has a note from Lady Vernon for you.”
“A note from mamma? Why, I have come straight from Roydon.”
“He says, please, miss, that a letter came by the late post about an hour after you left, and your mamma sent him partly by rail, and partly on horseback, to overtake you here. If you please, miss, I’ll fetch the letter.”
“Thank you, very much,” said Maud, suddenly alarmed.
She stood up, and awaited the return of the landlady of the Pig and Tinder-box, almost without breathing.
In a minute she reappeared with a large envelope, which she placed in the young lady’s fingers. It contained a note from Maximilla Medwyn to Maud, which consisted of a few lines only, rather hastily written, and said:
You have heard of Warhampton’s illness. He is better; but I have not had a line from Lady Mardykes, and don’t know whether she would yet like to have us at Carsbrook. I think we had better wait for a day or two. I will write to you the moment I hear from her. I am sure you agree with me.
At the corner of this letter Lady Vernon had written a few words in two oblique lines, thus:
Go on, notwithstanding. Don’t think of turning back. I write to Maximilla by this evening’s post.
B. E. V.
So she was to go on, and find neither Lady Mardykes nor her cousin at Carsbrook.
Well, Max would get Lady Vernon’s letter at nine o’clock the next morning, and, we may be sure, would lose no time in joining Maud at Carsbrook, and before the day was over very likely Lady Mardykes herself would arrive. Max would make a point of coming forthwith, to relieve Maud from the oddity of her solitary state. She need not come down to breakfast, she determined; and on arriving she would go straight to her room. At all events, it was a mercy that her mamma, in the existing state of things, had not ordered her back to Roydon.
“Would you mind telling my maid to come here and take some tea?” said the young lady.
In a few minutes the shoes of the hostess were heard pattering along the tiles of the passage, and coming in with a curtsy, she said:
“She’s very thankful, miss, but, if you’ll allow, she’d rayther sit in the carriage till your ladyship comes out.”
“Very well. So she may,” said the young lady. “How far is Carsbrook — Lady Mardykes’s house — from this, do you happen to know?”
“We count it just twenty-two miles, miss. It might be half a mile less if the new bridge was open, but it ain’t.”
“Two-and-twenty. I thought it was only sixteen. Well, I’m not sorry, after all. The night is so very fine, and the moonlight so charming, it is quite a pleasure travelling tonight.”
The young lady was really thinking that it would be better not to arrive until the guests had gone to their rooms. She did not hurry herself, therefore, over her cup of tea, which she drank from the state china of the Pig and Tinder-box.
She looked from the narrow window, and saw the carriage with four horses and two postilions at the door, and saw, also, the energetic figure of the grave man in the black greatcoat, pacing slowly, this way and that, in the neighbourhood of the carriage-door, and now and then turning towards the hall of the inn, and looking at his watch in the light that shone through the door.
It was plain that the people outside were growing impatient, and Miss Vernon made up her mind to delay them no longer.
She took her leave of her new acquaintance, the hostess, in the hall. The man in the black coat opened the carriage-door, and Miss Vernon, handing in first a roll of music she was taking with her to Carsbrook, said, “Take this for a moment, and don’t let it be crushed,” was received by a dumpy gloved hand from the dark interior, and took her place beside her attendant, to whom, assuming her to be her old maid, Rebecca Jones, she did not immediately speak, but looked out of window listlessly on the landscape, as the carriage rolled away toward its destination from the inn-door.
“I wonder, Jones, you preferred sitting alone to coming in and drinking tea. It was better than they gave us at the what’s-its-name? — the Green Dragon.”
The person accosted cleared her voice with a little hesitation.
Trifling as was the sound, Miss Vernon detected a difference, and looked round with an odd sensation.
The figure in the corner was broader and shorter than Jones’s, and wore a big obsolete bonnet, such as that refined lady’s-maid would not be seen in.
“You are not Jones?” said the young lady, after a pause.
A low giggle was the only answer.
“Who are you?” demanded the young lady, very uncomfortably.
“La! Miss Maud, don’t you know me, miss?”
“I — I’m not sure. Will you say, please, who you are?”
“Dear me, miss, you know me as well as I know you.”
She sat forward as she spoke, giggling.
“Yes, I see who you are. But where is Jones, my maid? She is not sitting outside?”
“Not she, miss; she’s gone home to Roydon, please.”
“Who sent her away? — I want her. It is quite impossible she can have gone home!”
“Please, miss,” said the woman in a tone of much greater deference, for there was something dangerous in Maud’s look and manner, “I got a written order from Lady Vernon yesterday, Miss Maud, directing me to be in attendance here to go on with you as your maid in place of Miss Jones.”
The carriage in which they now were was something like the oldfashioned postchaise. Miss Vernon, without another word, let down the front window, and called to the postboys to stop.
They did accordingly pull up, and instantly the stern man in the black greatcoat was at the side window.
“Anything wrong?” he said, in an undertone, to Mercy Creswell.
“No, no,” she whispered, with a nod, “nothing.”
“Now, if you please, Creswell, you’ll show me that note of mamma’s. I must see it, or I shan’t go on.”
The man stood back a little, so that Maud could not see him at the open window; but with this precaution, he kept his ear as close to it as he could, and was plainly listening with the closest attention.
“Certainly, miss, you shall read it,” said Mercy, fumbling in haste in her pocket. Indeed, she seemed, as she would have said, in a bit of a fluster.
She did produce it, and Maud had no difficulty in reading the bold writing in the moonlight.
It was a short, very clear, very peremptory note, to the effect she had stated.
“How did my maid go without my being so much as told of it?” demanded Miss Vernon, fiercely.
Half a step sideways brought the man in the black coat to the window.
“Please, Miss Vernon,” said he, very quietly, but firmly, “I received instructions from Lady Vernon to send Miss Jones home to Roydon, precisely as she has gone, by the return horses, in her ladyship’s carriage, as far as the Green Dragon, on Dorminbury Common, and so on, in charge of her ladyship’s servants, and without any interview beforehand with you, all which I have accordingly done. If her ladyship did not acquaint you beforehand, or if any disappointment results to you in any way, I regret having had to disoblige you.”
For some seconds Maud made no answer. Those who knew her would have seen in her fine eye
s the evidence of her anger. I dare say she was on the point of ordering the drivers to turn the horses about, and of going back to Roydon.
But that impulse of her indignation did not last long. She looked at the man, whose intelligent, commanding, and somewhat stern face was new to her, and asked, with some hesitation:
“Are you a servant of Lady Vernon’s?”
“Only for this journey, miss.”
“But — but what are your duties?”
“I look after your luggage, miss, and pay the turnpikes, and settle for the horses, and take your orders, please, miss.”
Although this man was perfectly civil, there was something in his manner by no means so deferential and ceremonious as she was accustomed to. He looked in her face with no awe whatever, and at her dress, and leaned his hand on the carriage window. And when she leaned back a little, to recollect what next she should ask him, he touched Mercy Creswell’s arm with his finger, and whispered some words in the ear which she placed near the window.
“I’ve made up my mind. I shall go on. Tell them to go on,” said the young lady, indignant at these free-and-easy ways.
Mercy Creswell gave the man a clandestine look from the window, which he returned with a stern smile, and instantly calling to the postboys “All right,” he mounted the seat behind, and the journey proceeded.
CHAPTER LVIII.
LAMPS IN THE DARK.
The carriage drove on. Lady Vernon had certainly, Maud thought, treated her very oddly. It was not the first time, however, that she had snubbed or puzzled her daughter; and when Maud had a little got over her resentment, she resolved that she could not think of visiting her vexation upon the innocent Mercy Creswell.
She was leaving constraint and gloom behind her at Roydon. Nearer and nearer were the friendly voices, the music, and laughter of Carsbrook, and she could fancy the lights of that festive place already visible on the horizon.
“I dare say something has suddenly happened to make it unavoidable that mamma should have Jones back again with her at Roydon,” said the young lady. “I wonder what it can be. I hope it is nothing that could vex poor Jones; have you any idea, Mercy?”
“Me! La! no, miss!” said Mercy. “I do suppose Miss Jones will come after you hot-foot. Like enough your mamma has heard of some grand doings she didn’t know of before, and means to send some more jewels, or fans, or finery, or dresses, after you, and that is what I thinks.”
“Well, that is possible; it can’t be, after all, anything very wonderful, whatever it is. What is the name of that man who is acting as a sort of courier for this journey?”
“I don’t know, miss,” said Mercy Creswell, instantly.
“If he is a servant he certainly knows very little about his business,” said the young lady. “However, that need not trouble us much, as we are to part with him at the end of our journey. You know the country, I suppose, between this and Carsbrook?”
“Oh?” she said with a prolonged and dubious interrogation in the tone. “Do I know the country betwixt this and there? Well, yes, I do. Oh, to be sure I do — hevery inch! We’ll change next at Torvey’s Cross, unless Mr. Darkdale have made other arrangements.”
“Oh! Darkdale? Is that the name of the man?” asked Maud.
“Well, I won’t be too sure, but I think I heard some one call him Darkdale. It may ‘a bin down there at the Pig and Tinder-box; but I don’t suppose his name is of no great consequence,” answered Miss Mercy Creswell, endeavouring to brazen out a good deal of confusion.
“And what is Mr. Darkdale? Is he a servant; or what is he? He looks more like a poor schoolmaster,” said Miss Vernon.
“La, miss! What could I know about him?” exclaimed Mercy Creswell, oracularly. “Next to nothing, sure. Did they say I knewed anything about him? La! Nonsense!”
“I want to know what he is, or what he was,” said Miss Vernon, unable to account for her fat companion’s fencing with her questions.
Miss Creswell plainly did not know the extent of Maud’s information, and hesitated to say anything definite.
“The old woman down there at the Pig and Tinder-box — she doesn’t know next to nothing about him, or me. I don’t know what she was saying, I’m sure; not a pin’s-worth.”
There was a slight interrogative tone in this discrediting of the hostess, who, for aught she knew, had been talking in her gossiping fashion with Maud.
But Maud did not help her by saying anything.
“He was a postmaster, I’m told, somewhere in Cheshire, and kept a stationer’s shop. I’m sure I don’t know.”
“But what is he now?” asked Maud, whose suspicions began to be roused by Mercy Creswell’s unaccountable reluctance.
“What is he now? Well, I believe he is a sort of under-steward to a clergyman. That’s what I think.”
“You seem not to wish to tell me what you know about this man; and I can’t conceive why you should make a mystery of it. But if there is any difficulty I am sure I don’t care, provided he is a person of good character, which I suppose mamma took care to ascertain.”
“That I do know, miss. He is a most respectable man is Daniel Darkdale; he is a man that has been trusted by many, miss, and never found wanting. La! He has had untold wealth in his keeping, has Mr. Darkdale, many times, and there is them as would trust him with all they has, and knows him well too.”
“And you say our next change of horses will be at a place called Torvey’s Cross?” said Miss Vernon, interrupting, for her interest in Mr. Darkdale had worn itself out. “This is a very wide moor. Have we a long way still to go before we reach Torvey’s Cross?”
Mercy put her head out of the window, and the moonlight fell upon her flat, flabby face.
“Ay, there’ll be near four miles still to go. When we come to the Seven Sallies — I can see them now — there will be still three miles betwixt us and it.”
“How do you come to know this road so very well?” inquired Maud.
“Well, I do; and why shouldn’t I, miss, as you say, seeing I was so long a time in Lady Mardykes’s service, and many a time I drove the road to Carsbrook before now. Will you ‘av a sangwige, miss?”
She had disentangled by this time, from a little basket in her lap, a roll of rather greasy newspaper, in which the proffered delicacies were wrapped up.
Maud declined politely, and Miss Mercy, with a word of apology for the liberty, stuffed them, one after another, into her own mouth.
Maud was a good deal disgusted at the vulgarity and greediness of her new waiting-maid, as well as upset, like every other lady in similar circumstances, by the loss of her old one. She was sustained, however, in this serious bereavement by agreeable and exciting anticipations of all that awaited her at Carsbrook.
“When were you last at Carsbrook?” asked the young lady, so soon as Miss Creswell had finished her sandwiches, and popped the paper out of the window, brushed away the crumbs from her lap, and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief, briskly.
“This morning, miss,” she answered, with that odd preliminary hesitation that made Miss Vernon uncomfortable.
“Are you there as a servant, or how is it? I should like to know exactly whether you are my servant, or whose servant.”
“Lady Vernon’s at present, miss, to attend upon you, please,” said Mercy Creswell, clearing her voice.
“Were you ever a lady’s-maid?”
“Oh, la! yes, miss; I was, I may say, Lady Mardykes’s maid all the time she was down, three years ago, at Mardykes Hall, near Golden Friars; you have heard of it, miss; it is such a beautiful place.”
Maud could hardly believe that Lady Mardykes could have had such a person for her maid, as she looked at her square body and clumsy hands, in the dim light, and bethought her that she had never heard that Mercy Creswell had shown the smallest aptitude for such a post. Certainly if she was a tolerable lady’s-maid she looked the part very badly. It was unspeakably provoking.
By this time they had passed the Seven
Sallies, and changed horses again at Torvey’s Cross; and now, a mile or two on, the road, which had hitherto traversed a particularly open and rather bare country, plunged suddenly into a close wood of lofty fir-trees.
The postboys very soon slackened the pace at which they had been driving. It became indeed so dark, that they could hardly proceed at all without danger.
It is a region of wood which might rival the pine forests of Norway. No ray of moonlight streaked the road. It is just wide enough for two carriages to pass, and the trunks of the great trees rear themselves at each side in a perspective, dim enough in daylight, and showing like a long and irregular colonnade, but now so little discernible, that the man in the back seat called to the drivers to pull up.
His voice was easily heard, for this road is carpeted with the perpetually falling showers of withered vegetation that serves for leaves upon the sprays and branches that overhang it, and hoofs and wheels pass on with dull and muffled sounds.
Now that they had come to a standstill, Maud lowered the window, and asked a question of Mr. Darkdale — a name not inappropriate to such a scene — who had got down, and stood, hardly discernible, outside, opening something he had just taken from his breastpocket.
“Can we get on?” inquired she, a good deal alarmed.
“Yes, miss,” he answered.
“But we can’t see.”
“We’ll see well enough, miss, when I light the lamps.”
“I say, Daniel, there’s lamps a-following of us,” exclaimed Miss Creswell, who, hearing some odd sounds, had thrust her head and shoulders out of the window at her own side.
“There are lamps here,” he answered.
“No, but listen, and look behind you,” said Mercy Creswell, with suppressed impatience.
The man turned and listened; Maud, whose curiosity and some slight sense of alarm were excited, partly by the profound darkness, and partly by the silence, looked from the window at her side, and saw two carriage-lamps gliding toward them, and faintly lighting the backs of four horses jogging on, with postilions duly mounted, just visible, and still pretty distant.
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 599