Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “I will, mother.”

  “She’ll be kind to you, I hope. I hear she is young, but you must not expect too much. And, oh dear, I wish someone was going with you. I think after all,” she added nervously, “I had better come with you.”

  “And spend all that money, mother!” Rachel was stout about it. “And have to come back alone! No, indeed, ma’am. You know the coach always makes you ill. And M. Bourlay is to meet me at Exeter and see me into the coach, and after that there is but the one change at Salisbury. Oh, I shall do very well, I assure you.”

  “And you’ll write at once? I shall not have a happy moment until I hear from you.”

  “Indeed I will. And perhaps Lady Ellingham will give me a frank so that it will cost you nothing.”

  “And you’ll tell us everything? If the child sleeps in your room, and what your hours are?”

  “And what Lady Ellingham wears,” Ruth put in eagerly. “And what company they have. And be sure to tell me if Lord Ellingham wears his star. Oh, what a letter we shall have, mother! And don’t forget to tell us when you wear your white muslin, and which sash with it. La, Rachel, I would like to see you primming it in your cap, as if you were an old maid! I’ll be bound you’ll look as mild as a mouse.”

  Rachel’s thoughts strayed for a moment to the white muslin, and, if the truth be told, drew some comfort from the contemplation of it and of the blue and the black sash that went with it. And the caps might be premature, but when tried on before her tiny glass upstairs they had seemed not unbecoming. Then the strange folk among whom she was going? They could not be all forbidding and rude like Lady Elisabeth. They could not be all old and inhuman. Lady Ellingham was young and might be kind.

  So she tried, and not in vain, to rally her spirits. But the last evening, and that half spent! Her lip trembled in spite of all her efforts. A few hours, so few that she could number them on her fingers, and she would have looked her last for a long, long year on the loving faces and the dear home-things that had cradled her from infancy; on Richard, the white-whiskered tabby, that she had teased and fondled so often; on the stool on which she had sat and crooned her doll to sleep, and the cottage dresser beneath which she had kept shop and sold currant-water for wine; on a hundred things endeared to her by recollections of work and play, and above all on the worn face of the mother whose love had warmed her and sheltered her all the days of her life — the life that had seemed at times dull and tedious, but now held out clinging arms to her, dressed itself in the colours of home, offered its lap of peace and security.

  Now she must leave all and enter a formal and unfriendly world, where she must stand alone, unfended and unwelcome, just a machine, priced and paid for — a young person, as Lady Elisabeth had styled her.

  But though Rachel quailed on the threshold of the hard road that tens of thousands, young and timid as she, have travelled, the lonely road that leaves on one side love and maidens’ dreams, she had a brave heart, and her spirit rose on the wings of youth. For after all this was adventure. For her no coming out, no first ball with its wakeful hours of anticipation and the delicious tremors that set the feet dancing; but instead this faring-forth with its charm of the untried and the unknown, its call on nerve and will, its vague promise. So she forced a smiling word, and chid Ruth for her extravagances, even while she noted with a pang her mother’s toil-hardened hands, her greying hair, her careworn face.

  Fortunately there were still things to do, even after the tea-cups were gone; and be sure that among the odds and ends to be packed Bath post was not forgotten, though, “La, mother,” Ruth remonstrated, “there’ll be paper there — hot-pressed and I don’t know what!”

  “Yes, mother, there will be sure to be writing-paper.”

  But Mrs. South was not to be moved. “I don’t know what there may be. But you’ll take some, Rachel. I shall be miserable if I don’t know that you have it and can write at any moment. There is no knowing in great houses what there is and what there is not. And don’t you wait, child, for franks or anything of that kind. And now,” she added, with an anxious look at the clock, “we must go to bed if you are to leave at six.”

  Fine words! But what mother could bear to cut short the last evening? What mother’s heart could rob itself of those last moments over the expiring fire when all had been done and the breakfast-cups stood ready on the table? Was there not always some new caution to be given, some word of advice to be repeated? Or some mute caress, some loving glance? At length, however, the moment came. The lamp was extinguished, the wood embers were raked together, they passed, candle in hand, into the little passage where Rachel’s cowhide trunk, lying small and lonely at the foot of the stairs, dealt their hearts a fresh blow.

  But, at the head of the steep flight which Rachel’s childish feet had trodden a thousand times, the mother’s heart revolted. “Do you go to Rachel’s bed, my dear,” she said to Ruth. “She may sleep with me to-night. I have something to say to her.” And when Ruth would have demurred, Mrs. South’s face stayed the remonstrance.

  Alone with her child and with the door closed on them the mother’s composure gave way. “Oh, my lamb, my lamb!” she cried, and she folded the wanderer to her breast. “God keep you! You don’t know what is before you, and I don’t. But I know that it is a hard world, and you’ll need to be wise. You are going among strangers and you’ll have cold words, and cold looks, and some, maybe, that may not be cold, but may be worse. Oh, my own, promise me that you will be careful. That you will think of me waiting and watching and hungering for a word. You’ll think of me, Rachel, if trouble comes or — or temptation? For I have only you and Ruth, and Ruth I can fend for, while you, you must fend for yourself. You’ll think, my darling, won’t you?”

  But what more she said and what Rachel promised her, as the two women clung together under the humble sloping roof — are there not things so sacred, so hallowed by love that even a bird of the air may not carry them abroad?

  CHAPTER II

  FARING FORTH

  M. BOURLAY — some called him M. de Bourlay, but no one in Exeter knew whether he had a right to the particle, the status of the emigres being a standing puzzle to John Bull — danced up and down and waved his little cocked hat after the coach. “Bon voyage! Au revoir et a bientot!” he cried. And heedless of ridicule and of the grinning loafers before Foot’s hotel, he blew kisses after his pupil, until, to the lilting notes of “Oh dear, what can the matter be?” that mounted from the guard’s key-bugle into the crisp early air, the coach swung out of sight round a corner.

  It was not until this, the last strand that bound her to home, had parted, and she knew that for some hours she had only to sit with her feet in the straw and await her fate, that Rachel gave way and cried a little in her corner. She could do so unwatched, for she had but two companions, a stout tradesman and his stouter wife, and they were too busy blaming one another for the tardiness that had nearly cost them their seats, to pay heed to the little girl in the bonnet and tippet who sat so still in her place. By the time the team had struggled up Straightway Hill, youth, the changing scene, and the sunshine of a fine morning had made their claim, and Rachel had dried her tears.

  It was the first of September, and here and there she saw sportsmen with their dogs crossing the stubble or wading through turnips. At Honiton volunteers were drilling in the wide street, sharp orders rang out, men, with their pouches flapping against their legs ran to and fro, and there was a stir and a glitter; a reflection of the war that in this last year of the century was beating against the South Coast, and rousing stout hearts to meet the threat of invasion. A brace of officers climbed to the box-seat but travelled only as far as Chard, where orderlies met them with led horses, and there was much parade and saluting. Rachel viewed it all with young, curious eyes, and despite her sad thoughts was interested. She saw things that she had never seen before, and what with these stirring interludes and the common traffic of the highway with its unending stream of coaches and chaise
s, harvest wains and London wagons, and the hamlets that, strung along the road like a chain of beads, came so often and passed so quickly, the time went by. Before she was aware of it they were over Windwhistle Hill and descending with groaning brakes into Crewkerne. Here, before the Mermaid, they came to rest, the many-caped coachman flung down his whip, the travellers descended, the waiters cried, “Dinner, gentlemen, dinner!”

  Rachel, timid and strange, would fain have kept her seat. She had no appetite, and the value of money, that she was now to earn, pressed upon her. But she had to resist the clamour not only of the waiters but of her fellow-travellers. “God bless thee, my dear!” the fat man adjured her, “never miss a meal. There’s no lining keeps up the heart like beef and pudding! And the celery at this house is a treat!” So she had to move, but instead of entering the inn she walked a little way down the street and in a quiet corner ate the sandwiches, on which there fell a salt tear or two, as she thought of the loving hands that had packed them. But she reminded herself that she was now to play a stout part in the world, and when she returned to her seat and the coach filled up, she showed a composed face.

  A young man in the farthest corner thought it a face worth staring at, and Rachel might have found his attention embarrassing if she had not had more solid ground for annoyance. The tradesman had taken his fill not only of the beef and pudding, but of the Mermaid’s strong ale. He was drowsy, and every five minutes he fell over and crushed her out of sight in a manner as absurd as it was uncomfortable. Then the coach grew noisy as it grew crowded. Two of the new-comers fell to wrangling over this talk of invasion, the one maintaining that it was all a hum, a flam, a trick of they government chaps to clap on new taxes and take more lads from the plough-tail; while, “Ay, I smoke your sort,” the other retorted with disdain. “But I’m thinking you’ll sing to another tune when you’re burnt in your bed one of these dark nights.”

  “If my stacks be fired,” the farmer replied with ponderous certainty, “I’m bound ‘twon’t be Bony nor they Frenchies, mister! More like some o’ your peacock-dressed, tearing, swearing, yeomanry lads. Just kiss-the-maids they be! That’s what they be, drat ‘em!”

  The other turned up his eyes. “You’re a Methodist, my man! That’s what it is, I see!”

  The farmer swelled till his face was purple. “A Methodist!” he bawled. “I’d have you know, young man, I’m a churchwarden! Churchwarden of Weston-under-Panwood these seven years.”

  “Two pipes and a tabor!” his opponent muttered, shifting his ground unfairly.

  “And sung ‘God save the King’ every Sunday of my life since His Majesty’s late illness — which the Lord knows what it was, but ’twas a mystery. And damme, He will save him too, but ‘twon’t be by any o’ your Joseph-coated, henroost-robbing lads — a plague to honest men they be! But by Lord Nelson and Admiral Cornwallis as I pay my rent to! I’ll answer for it, as long as oak swims, they’ll never let no Frenchman come within sight o’ you, little man!”

  A third brawler burst in on this, and the dispute roused Rachel’s neighbour from his beery slumbers. He sat up, and, while the change freed the girl from bodily discomfort, it only left her mind at greater liberty to dwell on the trials before her. She had a nervous dread of the change which she must make at Salisbury. Suppose she could not get her trunk out in time! Or suppose, unaccustomed to the flurry of the coach office, she entered the wrong coach and travelled Heaven knew whither! Still, the change was a small matter after all, and doubtless she would compass it in one way or another; but beyond it loomed, ever more near, things that filled her heart with dread. The arrival at the great house, her entrance — she saw herself so small and lonely a figure! — her reception by a crowd of servants. Then the first meal in strange surroundings, the introduction to her ladyship, to her pupil — she did not know at the prospect of which of these things her heart beat most painfully. And they were all coming nearer; with every mile, with every hour, they rose more tremendous before her. When the coach changed horses at Shaftesbury she did not know whether she longed for the end, or felt suspense less intolerable. She only knew that she yearned with passion for the bedtime hour when these trials would be behind her and she might be alone with a little space in which to gather courage for the morrow. And still — for now they were away again — the coach swung inexorably onward, uphill and downhill, and the men swore and wrangled, and the tradesman’s wife snored in the opposite corner.

  A little waif going forth into a hard world! Her feet were cold, her throat was dry, she swallowed continually. Her eyes now anxiously reviewed the small parcels that she had with her, now scanned the passing scene lest the first houses of Salisbury should surprise her. Long before they sighted the graceful, soaring spire she fancied the city at hand; three times she collected her possessions and sat on thorns, wondering how she should make her way to the distant door from which so many burly knees divided her.

  But at last Salisbury came. They cantered along Fisherton Street and over the bridge, swept through the Market Place and, turning right-handed into Catherine Street, stopped, to the merry music of the bugle, before the White Hart. Rachel clutched her packets and got to her feet. But, alas, all were for alighting, and she was last. When she did emerge she found herself in a crowd, pushed this way and that and unregarded, and it was not until the coachman discovered her and flipped her half-crown into his pocket that she gained attention. With all his majesty, he was a good-natured man with an eye for females in distress, and he spoke to the guard, and presently her trunk was hunted out and handed down. A stable-helper in a moleskin cap shouldered it. “Where away, miss?” he cried. He was in a hurry — everyone seemed to be in a hurry.

  “The Ringwood coach,” she said. “It starts from here?”

  The man grinned. “It do, miss — to-morrow morning!”

  Panic seized her. “Oh, but — but I was told that it met this coach,” she stammered. She had foreseen nothing as bad as this.

  “It did — yesterday. It don’t to-day. Summer coach, d’you see, miss. ‘Twere took off the road yesterday.”

  She stood bewildered. People were pressing about her, cutlers’ apprentices were showing and offering their wares, others were entering and leaving the yard; she had much ado not to be pushed into the not over-clean water-channel flowing on the farther side of the way — she was such a light little thing anyone could thrust her aside. “But what am I do to?” she pleaded. “I must be at Ringwood this evening.”

  “You can post, o’ course.”

  “Oh, dear, dear!” Posting was a terrible expense, she knew. “How far is it, please?”

  “I dunno, miss. You’d best ask in the yard.”

  She was ready to cry. She had received her bare fare from Salisbury to Ringwood, and she knew that to post would cost infinitely more. Faintly she asked how much it would be.

  But the man had another job in prospect. “You’d best ask in the yard,” he said, and dumped her trunk down inside the archway. “There! The master is there now. He’ll tell you.” He hurried away.

  Her heart in her mouth, Rachel walked into the yard. A burly man was giving orders to a knot of helpers, who were running out the new team. The coachman, a tankard in his hand, stood at the man’s elbow, a servant hung behind waiting for a word, in the passages on the left bells were ringing and chambermaids hurrying, from the red-curtained windows on the same side faces looked out. Rachel, in an agony between shyness and impatience, was pausing, uncertain what to do, when the burly man’s eye fell on her. He broke off and stepped towards her. “What for you, miss?” he asked.

  “I expected to meet the Ringwood coach here,” she explained. “Now I am told that it does not go.”

  “Quite right, miss.”

  “Then what am I to do?”

  “Well, you can either post or stay the night. There’s a coach at eleven in the morning.”

  “What will it cost to post?” she asked anxiously. “To Ringwood, miss?”

  “Ye
s, I am going to Queen’s Folly. It’s near Ringwood, I understand.”

  “Queen’s Folly!” The man’s manner changed a shade. “Well, it’s seventeen miles to Ringwood — the Folly’s seven miles farther. One-and-six out and ninepence in — call it two pounds, miss, to Ringwood.” Then, seeing her dismayed face, “If expense is any matter, it will he cheaper to stay the night,” he continued. “The coach fare is a crown. But if you’ll step into the coffee-room I’ll come to you by and by.” He pointed to the door on the left of the yard. “You, Joe, shove the young lady’s trunk in the passage.”

  There seemed to be nothing else to be done, and Rachel crept into the coffee-room. Some travellers were swallowing a hasty meal at the table, but no one heeded her, and she slid into the darkest corner, and sat, clutching her parcels and wondering what she ought to do. If she posted she would have to spend two pounds out of a purse slenderly filled, and would arrive almost penniless. On the other hand, she was to be met at Ringwood, and if she stayed the night here what would happen? The dull room with its smell of ale and pickles, the heavy sideboard, the smouldering fire supplied no answer. The travellers rose presently, and trooped noisily out, and she was alone, but no nearer a solution. Before the landlord came she must make up her mind.

  It seemed that he was in no haste to come. She heard the coach start, and, fearing all things now, feared that she was forgotten. She moved to a window and looked into the yard to learn if he was still there. He was there, and so close to the window that instinctively she retreated behind the red curtain. He was talking to a tall man in a cocked hat, who wore a shabby cloak over some sort of uniform: a plain, blackish-looking man with a long, thin nose and very keen eyes. She had but one glance at him, then he and the landlord passed out of sight, but an instant later, the door of the room being ajar, she heard their voices in the passage.