By Birth a Lady

“And you think he’ll get well, then, sir?” said Mrs Pottles.

“Ye-e-e-s – yes, with care, Mrs Pottles – with care. But I’ll ride over to my surgery now, and obtain a little medicine. I shall be back in an hour.”

Mrs Pottles curtsied him out, and then returned to seat herself by her injured visitor, looking with motherly admiration on his broad white forehead and thick golden beard, as she again compared him with her Tom, who got into that bit of trouble with the squire. But before the doctor had been gone an hour, the patient began to display sundry restless movements, ending by opening his eyes widely and fixing them upon the landlady.

“Who are you? and where am I?” he exclaimed. “Let me see, though – I recollect now: my horse came down with me. I don’t think I’m much hurt, though.”

“O, but you are, sir, and very badly, too. Mr Tiddson says you are to be very quiet.”

“Who the deuce is Mr Tiddson?” said the patient, trying to rise, but sinking back with a groan.

“Lawk a deary me, sir! I thought everybody know’d Mr Tiddson: he’s our doctor, and they do say as he’s very clever; but he ain’t in rheumatiz, for he never did me a bit o’ good.”

“Poor dad!” muttered the young man thoughtfully, and then aloud: “Give me a pen and ink and a sheet of paper.”

“But sewerly, sir, you’re not going to try to – ”

“Get me the pen and ink, woman!” exclaimed the sufferer impatiently.

Mrs Pottles raised her hands, and then hurriedly placed a little dirty blotting-case before her guest, holding it and the rusty ink so that he was able to write a short note, which he signed, and then doubled hastily, for he was evidently in pain.

“Let some man take that to the King’s Arms at Lexville, and ask for Mr Bray. If he is not there, let them send for him; but the note is to be given to no one else.”

“Very good, sir,” said the woman; “but it’s a many miles there. How’s he to go?”

“Ride – ride!” exclaimed the sufferer impatiently, and then he sank back deeper in his pillow.

“I didn’t think, or I would have sent for some one else,” he muttered, after a pause; “but I daresay he will come.”

And then he lay thinking in a dreamy, semi-delirious fashion of the contents of that note – a note so short, and yet of itself containing matter that might bring to the writer a life of regret, and to another, loving, gentle, and true-hearted, the breaking of that true gentle heart, and the cold embrace of the bridegroom Death!

Volume One – Chapter Two.

“Bai Jove!”

Three months after the incidents recorded in the last chapter, Littleborough Station, on the Great Middleland and Conjunction Railway, woke into life; for it was nearly noon, and the mid-day up-train would soon run alongside of the platform, stay for the space of half a minute, and then proceed again on its hurrying, panting course towards the great metropolis; for though such a thing did sometimes happen, the taking up or setting down of passengers at Littleborough was not as a matter of course. Nobody ever wanted to come to Littleborough, which was three miles from the station, and very few people ever seemed to take tickets from Littleborough to proceed elsewhere: the consequence being that the station-master – a fair young man with budding whiskers, and a little cotton-woolly moustache – spent the greater part of his time in teaching a rough dog to stand upon his hind-legs, to walk, beg, smoke pipes, and perform various other highly interesting feats, while the one porter spent his in yawning and playing “push halfpenny,” right hand against left – a species of gambling that left him neither richer nor poorer at the day’s end. But his yawning was something frightful, being extensive enough to have startled a child into the belief that ogres really had an existence in the flesh, though the said porter was after all but a simple, lazy, ignorant boor, with as little of harm in his nature as there was of activity.

But, as before said, Littleborough Station now woke into life; for after crawling into the booking-office, and yawing frightfully at the clock, the porter went and turned a handle, altering the position of a signal, and then returned to find the station-master framed in the little doorway through which he issued tickets, and now pitching little bits of biscuit for the dog to catch.

“Here’s summun a-coming!” said the porter, excitedly running to the door and checking a yawn half-way.

“No! – is there?” cried the station-master, running out, catching up the dog and carrying it in, to shut himself up once more behind his official screen and railway-clerk dignity.

“Swell in a dog-cart, with groom a-drivin’,” said the porter aloud; and then, as the vehicle came nearer: “Portmanty and bag with him, and that there gum’s all dried up, and won’t stick on no labels. Blest if here ain’t somebody else, too, in the ’Borough fly, and two boxes on the top.”

The porter threw open the doors very widely, the station-master tried his ticket-stamper to see if it would work, and then peered excitedly out for the coming travellers.

He had not to wait long. The smart dog-cart was drawn up at the door; and as the horse stood champing its bit and throwing the white foam in all directions, a very languid, carefully-dressed gentleman descended, waved his hand towards his luggage and wrappers in answer to the porter’s obsequious salute, and then sauntering, cigar in hand, to the station-master’s pigeon-hole, he languidly drawled out:

“First cla-a-ass – London.”

“Twenty-eight-and-six, sir,” said the station-master, when the traveller slowly placed a sovereign and a half before him.

“Tha-a-anks. No! Give the change to the porter fellare.” And the new arrival strolled on to the platform, leaving the porter grinning furiously, and carrying the portmanteau and bag about without there being the slightest necessity for such proceedings.

Meanwhile the fly had drawn up, the driver dismounted, and opened the door for a closely veiled young lady in black to alight, when she proceeded to pay the man.

“Suthin’ for the driver, miss, please,” said the fellow gruffly.

“I understood from your master that the charge would be five shillings to the station,” said the new arrival, in a low tremulous voice.

“Yes, miss, but the driver’s allus hextry. Harf-crown most people gives the driver.”

There was no sound issued from beneath that veil, but the motion of the dress showed that something very much like a sigh must have been struggling for exit as a little soft white hand drew a florin from a scantily-furnished purse, and gave it to the man.

“Humph,” growled the fellow, “things gets wuss and wuss,” and climbing on to his box-seat, he gathered up reins and whip, and sat stolid and surly without moving.

“Will you be kind enough to lift down my trunks?” said the traveller gently.

“You must ast the porter for that ’ere,” said the man: “we’re drivers, we are, and ’tain’t our business. Here, Joe, come and get these here trunks off the roof,” and he accompanied his words with a meaning wink to the porter, which gentleman, in the full possession of an unlooked – for eighteenpence, felt so wealthy that he could afford to be supercilious.

“What class, miss?” he said, reaching his hand to a trunk.

“Third, if you please,” was the reply.

“Ah! there’ll be something extry to pay for luggidge: third-class passengers ain’t allowed two big boxes like these here. – Why didn’t you put ’em down, Dick?”

“Ain’t got half paid for what I did do,” said the driver gruffly. “People as can’t afford to pay for flies oughter ride in carts. Mind that ’ere lamp!”

Certainly a lamp had a very narrow escape, as trunk number one was brought to the ground with a crash, the second one being treated almost as mercilessly, but without a word from their owner, who quietly raising her veil and displaying a sweet sad face, now went to the pigeon-hole, regardless of the leering stare bestowed upon her by the exquisite, who had sauntered back into the booking-office.

“Third-class – London,” said the station-master aloud, repeating the fair young traveller’s words. “Nine-and-nine;” and he too bestowed a not very respectful stare.

The threepence change was handed to the porter, with a request that he would see the boxes into the van, which request, and the money, that incorruptible gentleman received with a short nod and an “all right,” pocketing the cash in defiance of all by-laws and ordinances of the company.

Turning to reach the platform, the young lady – for such her manners indicated her to be – became aware of the fixed insolent stare of the over-dressed gentleman at her side, when quietly and without ostentation the black fall was lowered, and she walked slowly to and fro for a few minutes, in expectation of the coming train – hardly noticing that she was met at every turn, and that the gentlemanly manoeuvres were being watched with great interest by station-master and porter.

“Nice day, deah!” was suddenly drawled out; and the traveller started to find that, in place of being met at every turn, her persecutor was now close by her side. Quickening her steps, she slightly bent her head and walked on; but in vain.

“Any one going to meet you?” was next drawled out; when turning shortly round, the young traveller looked the exquisite full in the face.

“I think you are making a mistake, sir,” she said coldly.

“Mistake? No, not I, my deah,” was the insolent reply. “Give me your ticket, and I’ll change it;” and the speaker coolly held out a tightly-gloved hand.

The black veil hid the flush that rose to the pale face, as, glancing rapidly down the line for the train that seemed as if it would never come, the traveller once more quickened her steps and walked to the other end of the platform; for there was no waiting-room at the little wooden station, one but newly erected by way of experiment.

“Now, don’t be awkward, my deah,” drawled the exquisite, once more overtaking her. “Here we are both going to town together, and I can take care of you. Pretty gyurls like you have no business to travel alone. Now, let me change your ticket;” and again he stretched forth his hand. “I’ll pay, you know.”