Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Read online

  The Works of

  M. E. BRADDON

  (1835-1915)

  Contents

  The Novels

  THREE TIMES DEAD, OR THE SECRET OF THE HEATH

  CAPTAIN OF THE VULTURE

  LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET

  AURORA FLOYD

  JOHN MARCHMONT’S LEGACY

  THE DOCTOR’S WIFE

  HENRY DUNBAR

  BIRDS OF PREY

  CHARLOTTE’S INHERITANCE

  RUN TO EARTH

  FENTON’S QUEST

  THE LOVELS OF ARDEN

  THE CLOVEN FOOT

  VIXEN

  MOUNT ROYAL

  PHANTOM FORTUNE

  THE GOLDEN CALF

  MOHAWKS

  GERARD, OR THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL

  LONDON PRIDE

  HIS DARLING SIN

  MARY

  The Children’s Book

  THE CHRISTMAS HIRELINGS

  The Shorter Fiction

  RALPH THE BAILIFF AND OTHER TALES

  MILLY DARRELL

  FLOWER AND WEED, AND OTHER TALES

  The Short Stories

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

  LIST OF SHORT STORIES IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER

  The Play

  MARJORIE DAW

  The Memoir

  MY FIRST NOVEL: ‘THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT’

  © Delphi Classics 2013

  Version 1

  The Works of

  M. E. BRADDON

  By Delphi Classics, 2013

  The Novels

  Frith Street, Soho Square, London — Braddon’s birthplace

  Braddon’s brother, the Australian politician Sir Edward Nicholas Coventry Braddon, 18th Premier of Tasmania

  THREE TIMES DEAD, OR THE SECRET OF THE HEATH

  OR, THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT

  This novel was first published in 1860, while Mary Elizabeth Braddon was working as an actress in order to help support herself and her mother. It was published in 27 weekly instalments by the Yorkshire publisher C. R. Empson. The sensation thriller (the forerunner of the modern crime or mystery genre) had been popularised by Wilkie Collins with his publication of The Woman in White (1859) and Empson’s serial text added no less than three exclamation marks to the title, to emphasise the novel’s sensational plot. The Trail of the Serpent is the later (and now better known title) of the novel and the one under which it subsequently appeared in volume form. The story involves ‘Daredevil Dick’, who is wrongfully accused of murder, leaving the suspicious Mr. Peters to clear his name and discover the truth.

  In the late nineteenth-century, sensational or melodramatic ‘page-turners’ were re-marketed for a mass-audience; these so-called ‘yellowbacks’ had lurid yellow covers and were typically sold cheaply at railway bookstalls. Most of Braddon’s novels were reprinted in this format, as shown in the above example.

  CONTENTS

  BOOK THE FIRST. A RESPECTABLE YOUNG MAN.

  CHAPTER I. THE GOOD SCHOOLMASTER.

  CHAPTER II. GOOD FOR NOTHING.

  CHAPTER III. THE USHER WASHES HIS HANDS.

  CHAPTER IV. RICHARD MARWOOD LIGHTS HIS PIPE.

  CHAPTER V. THE HEALING WATERS.

  CHAPTER VI. TWO CORONER’S INQUESTS.

  CHAPTER VII. THE DUMB DETECTIVE A PHILANTHROPIST.

  CHAPTER VIII SEVEN LETTERS ON THE DIRTY ALPHABET.

  CHAPTER IX. “MAD, GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY.”

  BOOK THE SECOND. A CLEARANCE OF ALL SCORES.

  CHAPTER I. BLIND PETER.

  CHAPTER II. LIKE AND UNLIKE.

  CHAPTER III. A GOLDEN SECRET.

  CHAPTER IV. JIM LOOKS OVER THE BRINK OF THE TERRIBLE GULF.

  CHAPTER V. MIDNIGHT BY THE SLOPPERTON CLOCKS.

  CHAPTER VI. THE QUIET FIGURE ON THE HEATH.

  CHAPTER VII. THE USHER RESIGNS HIS SITUATION.

  BOOK THE THIRD. HOLY INSTITUTION.

  CHAPTER I. THE VALUE OF AN OPERA-GLASS.

  CHAPTER II. WORKING IN THE DARK.

  CHAPTER III. THE WRONG FOOTSTEP.

  CHAPTER IV. OCULAR DEMONSTRATION.

  CHAPTER V. THE KING OF SPADES.

  CHAPTER VI. A GLASS OF WINE.

  CHAPTER VII. THE LAST ACT OF LUCRETIA BORGIA.

  CHAPTER VIII. BAD DREAMS AND A WORSE WAKING.

  CHAPTER IX. A MARRIAGE IN HIGH LIFE.

  CHAPTER X. ANIMAL MAGNETISM.

  BOOK THE FOURTH. NAPOLEON THE GREAT.

  CHAPTER I. THE BOY FROM SLOPPERTON.

  CHAPTER II. MR. AUGUSTUS DARLEY AND MR. JOSEPH PETERS GO OUT FISHING.

  CHAPTER III. THE EMPEROR BIDS ADIEU TO ELBA.

  CHAPTER IV. JOY AND HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY.

  CHAPTER V. THE CHEROKEES TAKE AN OATH.

  CHAPTER VI. MR. PETERS RELATES HOW HE THOUGHT HE HAD A CLUE, AND HOW HE LOST IT.

  BOOK THE FIFTH. THE DUMB DETECTIVE.

  CHAPTER I. THE COUNT DE MAROLLES AT HOME.

  CHAPTER II. MR. PETERS SEES A GHOST.

  CHAPTER III. THE CHEROKEES MARK THEIR MAN.

  CHAPTER IV. THE CAPTAIN, THE CHEMIST, AND THE LASCAR.

  CHAPTER V. THE NEW MILKMAN IN PARK LANE.

  CHAPTER VI. SIGNOR MOSQUETTI RELATES AN ADVENTURE.

  CHAPTER VII. THE GOLDEN SECRET IS TOLD, AND THE GOLDEN BOWL IS BROKEN.

  CHAPTER VIII. ONE STEP FURTHER ON THE RIGHT TRACK.

  CHAPTER IX. CAPTAIN LANSDOWN OVERHEARS A CONVERSATION WHICH APPEARS TO INTEREST HIM.

  BOOK THE SIXTH. ON THE TRACK.

  CHAPTER I. FATHER AND SON.

  CHAPTER II. RAYMOND DE MAROLLES SHOWS HIMSELF BETTER THAN ALL BOW STREET.

  CHAPTER III. THE LEFT-HANDED SMASHER MAKES HIS MARK.

  CHAPTER IV. WHAT THEY FIND IN THE ROOM IN WHICH THE MURDER WAS COMMITTED.

  CHAPTER V. MR. PETERS DECIDES ON A STRANGE STEP, AND ARRESTS THE DEAD.

  CHAPTER VI. THE END OF THE DARK ROAD.

  CHAPTER THE LAST. FAREWELL TO ENGLAND.

  Opening of the serial

  An illustration from the original serial

  BOOK THE FIRST. A RESPECTABLE YOUNG MAN.

  CHAPTER I. THE GOOD SCHOOLMASTER.

  I DON’T suppose it rained harder in the good town of Slopperton-on-the-Sloshy than it rained anywhere else. But it did rain. There was scarcely an umbrella in Slopperton that could hold its own against the rain that came pouring down that November afternoon, between the hours of four and five. Every gutter in High Street, Slopperton; every gutter in Broad Street (which was of course the narrowest street); in New Street (which by the same rule was the oldest street); in East Street, West Street, Blue Dragon Street, and Windmill Street; every gutter in every one of these thoroughfares was a little Niagara, with a maelstrom at the corner, down which such small craft as bits of orange-peel, old boots and shoes, scraps of paper, and fragments of rag were absorbed — as better ships have been in the great northern whirlpool. That dingy stream, the Sloshy, was swollen into a kind of dirty Mississippi, and the graceful coal-barges which adorned its bosom were stripped of the clothes-lines and fluttering linen which usually were to be seen on their decks. A bad, determined, black-minded November day. A day on which the fog shaped itself into a demon, and lurked behind men’s shoulders, whispering into their ears, “Cut your throat! — you know you’ve got a razor, and can’t shave with it, because you’ve been drinking and your hand shakes; one little gash under the left ear, and the business is done. It’s the best thing you can do. It is, really.” A day on which the rain, the monotonous ceaseless persevering rain, has a voice as it comes down, and says, “Don’t you think you could go melancholy mad? Look at me; be good enough to watch me for a couple of hours or so, and think, while
you watch me, of the girl who jilted you ten years ago; and of what a much better man you would be to-day if she had only loved you truly. Oh, I think, if you’ll only be so good as watch me, you might really contrive to go mad.” Then again the wind. What does the wind say, as it comes cutting through the dark passage, and stabbing you, like a coward as it is, in the back, just between the shoulders — what does it say? Why, it whistles in your ear a reminder of the little bottle of laudanum you’ve got upstairs, which you had for your toothache last week, and never used. A foggy wet windy November day. A bad day — a dangerous day. Keep us from bad thoughts to-day, and keep us out of the Police Reports next week. Give us a glass of something hot and strong, and a bit of something nice for supper, and bear with us a little this day; for if the strings of yonder piano — an instrument fashioned on mechanical principles by mortal hands — if they are depressed and slackened by the influence of damp and fog, how do we know that there may not be some string in this more critical instrument, the human mind, not made on mechanical principles or by mortal hands, a little out of order on this bad November day?

  But of course bad influences can only come to bad men; and of course he must be a very bad man whose spirits go up and down with every fluctuation of the weather-glass. Virtuous people no doubt are virtuous always; and by no chance, or change, or trial, or temptation, can they ever become other than virtuous. Therefore why should a wet day or a dark day depress, them? No; they look out of the windows at house less men and women and fatherless and motherless children wet through to the skin, and thank Heaven that they are not as other men: like good Christians, punctual rate-payers, and unflinching church-goers as they are.

  Thus it was with Mr. Jabez North, assistant and usher at the academy of Dr. Tappenden. He was not in anywise affected by fog, rain, or wind. There was a fire at one end of the schoolroom, and Allecompain Major had been fined sixpence, and condemned to a page of Latin grammar, for surreptitiously warming his worst chilblain at the bars thereof. But Jabez North did not want to go near the fire, though in his official capacity he might have done so; ay, even might have warmed his hands in moderation. He was not cold, or if he was cold, he didn’t mind being cold. He was sitting at his desk, mending pens and hearing six red-nosed boys conjugate the verb Amare, “to love” — while the aforesaid boys were giving practical illustrations of the active verb “to shiver,” — and the passive ditto, “to be puzzled.” He was not only a good young man, this Jabez North (and he must have been a very good young man, for his goodness was in almost every month in Slopperton — indeed, he was looked upon by many excellent old ladies as an incarnation of the adjective “pious”) — but he was rather a handsome young man also. He had delicate features, a pale fair complexion, and, as young women said, very beautiful blue eyes; only it was unfortunate that these eyes, being, according to report, such a very beautiful colour, had a shifting way with them, and never looked at you long enough for you to find out their exact hue, or their exact expression either. He had also what was called a very fine head of fair curly hair, and what some people considered a very fine head — though it was a pity it shelved off on either side in the locality where prejudiced people place the organ of conscientiousness. A professor of phrenology, lecturing at Slopperton, had declared Jabez North to be singularly wanting in that small virtue; and had even gone so far as to hint that he had never met with a parallel case of deficiency in the entire moral region, except in the skull of a very distinguished criminal, who invited a friend to dinner and murdered him on the kitchen stairs while the first course was being dished. But of course the Sloppertonians pronounced this professor to be an impostor, and his art a piece of charlatanism, as they were only too happy to pronounce any professor or any art that came in their way.

  Slopperton believed in Jabez North. Partly because Slopperton had in a manner created, clothed, and fed him, set him on his feet, patted him on his head, and reared him under the shadow of Sloppertonian wings, to be the good and worthy individual he was.

  The story was in this wise. Nineteen years before this bad November day, a little baby had been dragged, to all appearance drowned, out of the muddy waters of the Sloshy. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be, he turned out to be less drowned than dirty, and after being subjected to very sharp treatment — such as being held head downwards, and scrubbed raw with a jack-towel, by the Sloppertonian Humane Society, founded by a very excellent gentleman, somewhat renowned for maltreating his wife and turning his eldest son out of doors — this helpless infant set up a feeble squall, and evinced other signs of a return to life. He was found in a Slopperton river by a Slopperton bargeman, resuscitated by a Slopperton society, and taken by the Slopperton beadle to the Slopperton workhouse; he therefore belonged to Slopperton. Slopperton found him a species of barnacle rather difficult to shake off. The wisest thing, therefore, for Slopperton to do, was to put the best face on a bad matter, and, out of its abundance, rear this un-welcome little stranger. And truly virtue has its reward; for, from the workhouse brat to the Sunday-school teacher; from the Sunday-school teacher to the scrub at Dr. Tappenden’s academy; from scrub to usher of the fourth form; and from fourth-form usher to first assistant, pet toady, and factotum, were so many steps in the ladder of fortune which Jabez mounted, as in seven-leagued boots.

  As to his name, Jabez North, it is not to be supposed that when some wretched drab (mad with what madness, or wretched to what intensity of wretchedness, who shall guess?) throws her hapless and sickly offspring into the river — it is not, I say, to be supposed that she puts his card-case in his pocket, with his name and address inscribed in neat copper-plate upon enamelled cards therein. No, the foundling of Slopperton was called by the board of the workhouse Jabez; first, because Jabez was a scriptural name; secondly, perhaps, because it was an ugly one, and agreed better with the cut of his clothes and the fashion of his appointments than Reginald, Conrad, or Augustus might have done. The gentlemen of the board further bestowed upon him the surname of North because he was found on the north bank of the Sloshy, and because North was an unobtrusive and commonplace cognomen, appropriate to a pauper; like whose impudence it would indeed be to write himself down Montmorency or Fitz-Hardinge.

  Now there are many natures (God-created though they be) of so black and vile a tendency as to be soured and embittered by workhouse treatment; by constant keeping down; by days and days which grow into years and years, in which to hear a kind word is to hear a strange language — a language so strange as to bring a choking sensation into the throat, and not unbidden tears into the eyes. Natures there are, so innately wicked, as not to be improved by tyranny; by the dominion, the mockery, and the insult of little boys, who are wise enough to despise poverty, but not charitable enough to respect misfortune. And fourth-form ushers in a second-rate academy have to endure this sort of thing now and then. Some natures too may be so weak and sentimental as to sicken at a life without one human tie; a boyhood without father or mother; a youth without sister or brother. Not such the excellent nature of Jabez North. Tyranny found him meek, it is true, but it left him much meeker. Insult found him mild, but it left him lamb-like. Scornful speeches glanced away from him; cruel words seemed drops of water on marble, so powerless were they to strike or wound. He would take an insult from a boy whom with his powerful right hand he could have strangled: he would smile at the insolence of a brat whom he could have thrown from the window with one uplifting of his strong arm almost as easily as he threw away a bad pen. But he was a good young man; a benevolent young man; giving in secret, and generally getting his reward openly. His left hand scarcely knew what his right hand did; but Slopperton always knew it before long. So every citizen of the borough praised and applauded this model young man, and many were the prophecies of the day when the pauper boy should be one of the greatest men in that greatest of all towns, the town of Slopperton.

  The bad November day merged into a bad November night. Dark night at five o’clock, when candles, f
ew and far between, flickering in Dr. Tappenden’s schoolroom, and long rows of half-pint mugs — splendid institutions for little boys to warm their hands at, being full of a boiling and semi-opaque liquid, par excellence milk-and-water — ornamented the schoolroom table. Darker night still, when the half-pint mugs have been collected by a red maid-servant, with nose, elbows, and knuckles picked out in purple; when all traces of the evening meal are removed; when the six red-nosed first-form boys have sat down to Virgil — for whom they entertain a deadly hatred, feeling convinced that he wrote with a special view to their being flogged from inability to construe him. Of course, if he hadn’t been a spiteful beast he would have written in English, and then he wouldn’t have had to be construed. Darker night still at eight o’clock, when the boys have gone to bed, and perhaps would have gone to sleep, if Allecompain Major had not a supper-party it his room, with Banbury cakes, pigs’ trotters, periwinkles, acid rock, and ginger-beer powders, laid out upon the bolster. Not so dark by the head assistant’s desk, at which Jabez sits, his face ineffably calm, examining a pile of exercises. Look at his face by that one candle; look at the eyes, which are steady now, for he does not dream that any one is watching him — steady and luminous with a subdued fire, which might blaze out some day into a deadly flame. Look at the face, the determined mouth, the thin lips, which form almost an arch — and say, is that the face of a man to be content with a life of dreary and obscure monotony? A somewhat intellectual face; but not the face of a man with an intellect seeking no better employment than the correcting of French and Latin exercises. If we could look into his heart, we might find the answers to these questions. He raises the lid of his desk; a deep desk that holds many things — paper, pens, letters; and what? — a thick coil of rope. A strange object in the assistant’s desk, this coil of rope! He looks at it as if to assure himself that it is safe; shuts his desk quickly, locks it, puts the key in his waistcoat-pocket; and when at half-past nine he goes up into his little bedroom at the top of the house, he will carry the desk under his arm.