Produced by Daniel Fromont
Mary Elizabeth Braddon (4 October 1835 - 4 February 1915), Milly Darrel
(serialised in Belgravia November 1870 - January 1871), here taken from
Milly Darrel and other stories Asher's Collection Emile Galette Paris
1873
ASHER'S COLLECTION
OF
ENGLISH AUTHORS.
BRITISH AND AMERICAN.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.
VOL. 72.
MILLY DARRELL AND OTHER STORIES
BY M. E. BRADDON.
IN ONE VOLUME.
PARIS
EMILE GALETTE, 12, RUE BONAPARTE.
1873.
_This Edition
is Copyright for Foreign Circulation only_.
ASHER'S COLLECTION
OF
ENGLISH AUTHORS
BRITISH AND AMERICAN.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.
VOL. 72.
MILLY DARRELL AND OTHER TALES
BY M.E. BRADDON.
IN ONE VOLUME.
ASHER'S EDITION
BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
ROBERT AINSLEIGH -- 3 VOL.
TO THE BITTER END -- 3 VOL.
MILLY DARRELL
AND OTHER TALES.
BY
M. E. BRADDON
AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "ROBERT AINSLEIGH," ETC.
_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.
BERLIN
A. ASHER & CO., PUBLISHERS,
1873.
TO
DR. AND MRS. BEAMAN,
THE AUTHOR'S OLD AND VALUED FRIENDS,
THIS BOOK
IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
CONTENTS.
MILLY DARRELL -- PAGE 1
OLD RUDDERFORD HALL -- PAGE 179
THE SPLENDID STRANGER -- PAGE 235
MILLY DARRELL
CHAPTER I.
I BEGIN LIFE.
I was just nineteen years of age when I began my career as articled
pupil with the Miss Bagshots of Albury Lodge, Fendale, Yorkshire. My
father was a country curate, with a delicate wife and four children, of
whom I was the eldest; and I had known from my childhood that the day
must come in which I should have to get my own living in almost the
only vocation open to a poor gentleman's daughter. I had been fairly
educated near home, and the first opportunity that arose for placing me
out in the world had been gladly seized upon by my poor father, who
consented to pay the modest premium required by the Miss Bagshots, in
order that I might be taught the duties of a governess, and essay my
powers of tuition upon the younger pupils at Albury Lodge.
How well I remember the evening of my arrival!--a bleak dreary evening
at the close of January, made still more dismal by a drizzling rain
that had never ceased falling since I left my father's snug little
house at Briarwood in Warwickshire. I had had to change trains three
times, and to wait during a blank and miserable hour and a quarter, or
so, at small obscure stations, staring hopelessly at the advertisements
on the walls--advertisements of somebody's life-sustaining cocoa, and
somebody else's health-restoring cod-liver oil, or trying to read the
big brown-backed Bible in the cheerless little waiting-room; and
trying, O so hard, not to think of home, and all the love and happiness
I had left behind me. The journey had been altogether tiresome and
fatiguing; but, for all that, the knowledge that I was near my
destination brought me no sense of pleasure. I think I should have
wished that dismal journey prolonged indefinitely, if I could thereby
have escaped the beginning of my new life.
A lumbering omnibus conveyed me from the station to Albury Lodge, after
depositing a grim-looking elderly lady at a house on the outskirts of
the town, and a dapper-looking little man, whom I took for a commercial
traveller, at an inn in the market-place. I watched the road with a
kind of idle curiosity as the vehicle lumbered along. The town had a
cheerful prosperous air even on this wet winter night, and I saw that
there were two fine old churches, and a large modern building which I
supposed to be the town-hall.
We left the town quite behind us before we came to Albury Lodge; a very
large house on the high-road, a square red-brick house of the early
Georgian era, shut in from the road by high walls. The great
wrought-iron gates in the front had been boarded up, and Albury Lodge
was now approached by a little wooden side-door into a stone-flagged
covered passage that led to a small door at the end of the house. The
omnibus-driver deposited me at this door, with all my worldly
possessions, which at this period of my life consisted of two rather
small boxes and a japanned dressing-case, a receptacle that contained
all my most sacred treasures.
I was admitted by a rather ill-tempered-looking housemaid, with a cap
of obtrusive respectability and a spotless white apron. I fancied that
she looked just a little superciliously at my boxes, which I daresay
would not have contained her own wardrobe.
'O, it's the governess-pupil, I suppose?' she said. 'You was expected
early this afternoon, miss. Miss Bagshot and Miss Susan are gone out to
tea; but I can show you where you are to sleep, if you'll please to
step this way. Do you think you could carry one of your trunks, if I
carry the other?'
I thought I could; so the housemaid and I lugged them all the way along
the stone passage and up an uncarpeted back staircase which led from
the lobby into which the door at the end of the passage opened. We went
very high up, to the top story in fact, where the housemaid led me into
a long bare room with ten little beds in it. I was well enough
accustomed to the dreariness of a school dormitory, but somehow this
room looked unusually dismal.
There was a jet of gas burning at one end of the room, near a door
opening into a lavatory which was little more than a cupboard, but in
which ten young ladies had to perform their daily ablutions. Here I
washed my face and hands in icy-cold water, and arranged my hair as
well as I could without the aid of a looking-glass, that being a luxury
not provided at Albury Lodge. The servant stood watching me as I made
this brief toilet, waiting to conduct me to the schoolroom. I followed
her, shivering as I went, to a great empty room on the first floor. The
holidays were not quite over, and none of the pupils had as yet
returned. There was an almost painful neatness and bareness in place of
the usual litter of books and papers, and I could not help thinking
that an apartment in a workhouse would have looked quite as cheerful.
Even the fire behind the high wire guard seemed to burn in a different
manner from all home fires: a fact which I attributed then to some
sympathetic property in the coal, but which I afterwards found to be
caused by a plentiful admixture of coke; a slow sulky smoke went up
from the dull mass of fuel, brightened ever so little now and then by a
sickly yellow flame. One jet of gas dimly lighted this long dreary
room, in which there was no human creature but myself and my guide.
'I'll bring you some supper presently, miss,' the housemaid said, and
departed before I could put in a timid plea for that feminine luxury, a
cup of tea.
I had not expected to find myself quite alone on this first night of my
arrival, and a feeling of hopeless wretchedness came over me as I sat
down at one end of a long green-baize-covered table, and rested my head
upon my folded arms. Of course it was very weak and foolish, a bad
beginning of my new life, but I was quite powerless to contend against
that sense of utter misery. I thought of all I had left at home. I
thought of what my life might have been if my father had been only a
little better off: and then I burst out crying as if my heart were
breaking.
Suddenly, in the midst of that foolish paroxysm, I felt a light hand
upon my shoulder, and looking up, saw a face bending over me, a face
full of sympathy and compassion.
O Milly Darrell, my darling, my love, how am I to describe you as you
appeared before my eyes that night? How poorly can any words of mine
paint you in your girlish beauty, as you looked down upon me in that
dimly-lighted schoolroom with divine compassion in your dark eloquent
eyes!
Just at that moment I was so miserable and so inclined to be sulky in
my wretchedness, that even the vision of that bright face gave me
little pleasure. I pushed away the gentle hand ungraciously, and rose
hastily from my seat.
'Pray don't cry any more,' said the young lady; 'I can't bear to hear
you cry like that.'
'I'm not going to cry any more,' I answered, drying my eyes in a hasty,
angry way. 'It was very foolish of me to cry at all; but this place did
look so cheerless and dreary, and I began to think of my father and
mother, and all I had left behind me at home.'
'Of course it was only natural you should think of them. Everything
does seem so bleak and dismal the first night; but you are very happy
to have so many at home. I have only papa.'
'Indeed!' I said, not feeling deeply interested in her affairs.
I looked at her as she stood leaning a little against the end of the
table, and playing idly with a bunch of charms and lockets hanging to
her gold chain. She was very handsome, a brunette, with a small
straight nose, hazel eyes, and dark-brown hair. Her mouth was the
prettiest and most expressive I ever saw in my life, and gave an
indescribable charm to her face. She was handsomely dressed in violet
silk, with rich white lace about the throat and sleeves.
'You will find things much pleasanter when the girls come back. Of
course school is always a little dreary compared with home; one is
prepared for that; but I have no doubt you will contrive to be happy,
and I hope we shall be very good friends. I think you must be the Miss
Crofton I have heard spoken of lately?'
'Yes, my name is Crofton--Mary Crofton.'
'And mine is Emily Darrell. Milly I am always called at home, and by
any one who likes me. I am a parlour-boarder, and have the run of the
house, as it were. I am rather old to be at school, you see; but I am
going home at the end of this year. I was brought up at home with a
governess until about six months ago; but then papa took it into his
head that I should be happier amongst girls of my own age, and sent me
off to school. He has been travelling since that time, and so I have
not been home for the Christmas holidays. I can't tell you what a
disappointment that was.'
I tried to look sympathetic, and, not knowing exactly what to say, I
asked whether Miss Darrell's father lived in that neighbourhood.
'O dear, no,' she answered; 'he lives nearly a hundred miles away, in a
very wild part of Yorkshire, not far from the sea. But Thornleigh--that
is the name for our house--is a dear old place, and I like our bleak
wild country better than the loveliest spot in the world. I was born
there, you see, and all my happy memories of my childhood and my mother
are associated with that dear old home.'
'Is it long since you lost your mother?'
'Ten years. I loved her so dearly. There are some subjects about which
one dare not speak. I cannot often trust myself to talk of her.'
I liked her better after this. At first her beauty and her handsome
dress had seemed a little overpowering to me; I had felt as if she were
a being of another order, a bright happy creature not subject to the
common woes of life. But now that she had spoken of her own sorrows, I
felt that we were upon a level; and I stole my hand timidly into hers,
and murmured some apology for my previous rudeness.
'You were not rude, dear. I know I must have seemed very intrusive when
I disturbed you; but I could not bear to hear you crying like that. And
now tell me where you sleep.'
I described the room as well as I could.
'I know where you mean,' she said; 'it's close to my room. I have the
privilege of a little room to myself, you know; and on half-holidays I
have a fire there, and write my letters, or paint; and you must come
and sit with me on these afternoons, and we can be as happy as possible
together working and talking. Do you paint?'
'A little--in a schoolgirlish fashion kind of way.'
'Quite as well as I do, I daresay,' Miss Darrell answered, laughing
gaily, 'only you are more modest about it. O, here comes your supper;
may I sit with you while you eat it?'
'I shall be very glad if you will.'
'I hope you have brought Miss Crofton a good supper, Sarah,' she went
on in the same gay girlish way.--'Sarah is a very good creature, you
must know, Miss Crofton, though she seems a little grim to strangers.
That's only a way of hers: she _can_ smile, I assure you, though you'd
hardly think so.'
Sarah's hard-looking mouth expanded into a kind of grin at this.
'There's no getting over you, Miss Darrell,' she said; 'you've got such
a way of your own. I've brought Miss Crofton some cold beef; but if
she'd like a bit of pickle, I wouldn't mind going to ask cook for it.
Cold meat does eat a little dry without pickle.'
This 'bit of pickle' was evidently a concession in my favour made to
please Emily Darrell. I thanked Sarah, and told her that I would not
trouble her with a journey to the cook. I was faint and worn-out with
my day's pilgrimage, and had eaten very little since morning; but the
most epicurean repast ever prepared by a French chef would have seemed
so much dust and ashes to me that night; so I sat down meekly to my
supper of bread and meat, and listened to Milly Darrell's chatter as I
ate it.
Of course she told me all about the school, Miss Bagshot, and Miss
Susan Bagshot. The elder of these two ladies was her favourite. Miss
Susan had, in the remote period of her youth, been the victim of some
unhappy love-affair, which had soured her disposition, and inclined her
to look on the joys and follies of girlhood with a jaundiced eye. It
was easy enough to please Miss Bagshot, who had a genial matronly way,
and took real delight in her pupils; but it was almost impossible to
satisfy Miss Susan.
'And I am sorry to say that you will be a good deal with her,' Miss
Darrell said, shaking her head gravely; 'for you are to take the second
English class under her--I heard them say so at dinner to-day--and I am
afraid she will fidget you almost out of your life; but you must try to
keep your temper, and take things as quietly as you can, and I daresay
in time you will be able to get on with her.'
'I'm sure I hope so,' I answered rather sadly; and then Miss Darrell
asked me how long I was to be at Albury Lodge.
'Three years,' I told her; 'and after that, Miss Bagshot is to place me
somewhere as a governess.'
'You are going to be a governess always?'
'I suppose so,' I answered. The word 'always' struck me with a little
sharp pain, almost like a wound. Yes, I supposed it would be always. I
was neither pretty nor attractive. What issue could there be for me out
of that dull hackneyed round of daily duties which makes up the sum of
a governess's life?
'I am obliged to do something for my living,' I said; 'my father is
very poor. I hope I may be able to help him a little by and by.'
'And my father is so ridiculously rich. He is a great ironmaster, and
has wharves and warehouses, and goodness knows what, at North Shields.
How hard it seems!'
'What seems hard?' I asked absently.
'That money should be so unequally divided. Do you know, I don't think
I should much mind going out as a governess: it would be a way of
seeing life. One must meet with all sorts of adventures, going among
strangers like that.'
I looked at her as she smiled at me, with a smile that gave an
indescribable brightness to her face, and I fancied that for her indeed
there could be no form of life so dull that would not hold some
triumph, some success. She seemed a creature born to extract brightness
out of the commonest things, a creature to be only admired and
caressed, go where she might.
'You a governess!' I said, a little scornfully; 'you are not of the
clay that makes governesses.'
'Why not?'
'You are much too pretty and too fascinating.'
'O, Mary Crofton, Mary Crofton--may I call you Mary, please? we are
going to be such friends--if you begin by flattering me like that, how
am I ever to trust you and lean upon you? I want some one with a
stronger mind than my own, you know, dear, to lead me right; for I'm
the weakest, vainest creature in the world, I believe. Papa has spoiled
me so.'
'If you are always like what you are to-night, I don't think the
spoiling has done much mischief,' I said.
'O, I am always amiable enough, so long as I have my own way. And now
tell me all about your home.'
I gave her a faithful account of my brothers and my sister, and a brief
description of the dear old-fashioned cottage, with its white-plaster
walls crossed with great black beams, its many gables and quaint
latticed windows. I told her how happy and united we had always been at
home, and how this made my separation from those I loved so much the
harder to bear; to all of which Milly Darrell listened with most
unaffected sympathy.
Early the next day my new life began in real earnest. Miss Susan
Bagshot did not allow me to waste my time in idleness until the arrival
of my pupils. She gave me a pile of exercises to correct, and some
difficult needlework to finish; and I found I had indeed a sharp
taskmistress in this blighted lady.
'Girls of your age are so incorrigibly idle,' she said; 'but I must
give you to understand at once that you will have no time for dawdling
at Albury Lodge. The first bell rings a quarter before six, and at a
quarter past I shall expect to see you in the schoolroom. You will
superintend the younger pupils' pianoforte practice from that time till
eight o'clock, at which hour we breakfast. From nine till twelve you
will take the second division of the second class for English,
according to the routine arranged by me, which you had better copy from
a paper I will lend you for that purpose. After dinner you will take
the same class for two hours' reading until four; from four to five you
will superintend the needle-work class. Your evenings--with the
exception of the careful correction of all the day's exercises--will be
your own. I hope you have a sincere love of your vocation, Miss
Crofton.'
I said I hoped I should grow to like my work as I became accustomed to
it. I had never yet tried teaching, except with my young sister and
brothers. My heart sank as I remembered our free-and-easy studies in
the sunny parlour at home, or out in the garden under the pink and
white hawthorns sometimes on balmy mornings in the early summer.
Miss Susan shook her head doubtfully.
'Unless you have a love of your vocation you will never succeed, Miss
Crofton,' she said solemnly.
I freely confess that this love she spoke of never came to me. I tried
to do my duty, and I endured all the hardships of my life in, I hope, a
cheerful spirit. But the dry monotony of the studies had no element of
pleasantness, and I used to wonder how Miss Susan could derive
pleasure--as it was evident she did--from the exercise of her authority
over those hapless scholars who had the misfortune to belong to her
class. Day after day they heard the same lectures, listened
submissively to the same reproofs, and toiled on upon that bleak bare
high-road to learning, along which it was her delight to drive them.
Nothing like a flower brightened their weary way--it was all alike dust
and barrenness; but they ploughed on dutifully, cramming their youthful
minds with the hardest dates and facts to be found in the history of
mankind, the dreariest statistics, the driest details of geography, and
the most recondite rules of grammar, until the happy hour arrived in
which they took their final departure from Albury Lodge, to forget all
they had learnt there in the briefest possible time.
How my thoughts used to wander away sometimes as I sat at my desk,
distracted by the unmelodious sound of Miss Susan's voice lecturing
some victim in her own division at the next table, while one of the
girls in mine droned drearily at Lingard, or Pinnock's _Goldsmith_, as
the case might be! How the vision of my own bright home haunted me
during those long monotonous afternoons, while the March winds made the
poplars rock in the garden outside the schoolroom, or the April rain
beat against the great bare windows!