CHAPTER V.
GLOOMY DAYS.
Mrs. Dulcimercalled at the Water House after the morning service on Christmas Day. She found Beatrix alone, and very quiet, disinclined to talk of her grief, or, indeed, to talk about any subject whatever. Bella had gone to assist at the early dinner at the Park, or, in other words, to see that the juvenile Pipers did not gorge themselves with turkey and pudding.
‘You ought not to have let Bella leave you, my love,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘It is dreadful for you to be alone.’
‘Dear Mrs. Dulcimer, Bella cannot do me any good. She cannot bring my father back to life, or explain the mystery of his death. I insisted upon her going to the Park to-day. I am really better alone.’
‘My poor Beatrix, I cannot understand you.’
‘Am I so eccentric in liking to sit by my fireside quietly, and suffer in silence?’ asked Beatrix, with a wintry smile. ‘I should have thought any one would have preferred that to being the object of perpetual consolation.’
This was a strong-minded view of the case which Mrs. Dulcimer could by no means understand. It seemed to remove Beatrix further away from her. But then she had always been able to get on better with Bella than with Beatrix.
‘You are not without friends, Beatrix, and advisers in this hour of trouble,’ she said, encouragingly.
And then she told Beatrix about the two lawyers to whom the Vicar and his curate had written.
‘Strange, was it not, that Cyril and my husband should both think of the same thing?’
‘Very strange,’ said Beatrix, deeply thoughtful.
‘You see, my dear, the important question is, where did your father get the laudanum?’
‘Oh, I think I know that,’ answered Beatrix.
‘You know, and did not tell the coroner? How very foolish!’
‘I did not think of it yesterday. I could think of nothing. I felt as if I had lost myself in some hideous dream. But this morning, in my mother’s room—I am free to go into my mother’s room now—the idea occurred to me. It must have been there my poor father found the laudanum.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Mrs. Dulcimer, eagerly.
Beatrix described her former visit to her mother’s room, and how she had found a medicine chest there, and in the medicine chest a bottle half full of laudanum.
‘I looked at the bottle this morning,’ she said, ‘and it was empty.’
‘And your father was found lying dead in that room. Nothing can be clearer,’ exclaimed Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘The coroner ought to be communicated with immediately. How glad Clement will be! This will stop people’s mouths.’
‘What people?’ asked Beatrix.
‘Those horrid people who are always ready to think the worst of their neighbours. I shall go backto the Vicarage at once. Clement ought to know without a moment’s delay. How I wish you could eat your Christmas dinner with us, poor child! Kenrick has come back, looking so handsome, and so full of Culverhouse Castle. What a noble old place it must be! and what a pity he cannot afford to live in it!’
Beatrix did not hear a word about Culverhouse Castle.
‘Cyril will be with you too, I suppose?’ she said presently.
‘No; it’s extremely tiresome. Poor Cyril has one of his bad headaches, and says his only chance of getting through his evening duty is to keep quietly at home between the services. I feel quite annoyed. We have such a superb turkey. Rebecca chose it at Moyle’s farm six weeks ago. It was a great fierce creature, and flew at her like a tiger when she went into the poultry-yard. Well, good-bye, dear. Pray keep up your spirits. Clement will be so glad to know about the laudanum.’
Beatrix sat alone, till the twilight gatheredround her, thinking of Cyril. To-day, for the first time, she thought of her own position, which was assuredly a horrible one. But she contemplated it without a shadow of fear. Bella’s speech yesterday, Mrs. Dulcimer’s hints to-day, had shown her that—in their minds at least—it seemed possible that people might suspect her of being her father’s murderer. There were people who would think that she, to whom crime seemed as far off as the stars, had blossomed all at once into the most deliberate and vilest of criminals. Could this really be so? Were there people capable of believing such a thing? Why was not Cyril near her in this hour of doubt and trouble? Mrs Dulcimer came with her good-natured attempts at consolation; but he, her natural consoler, held himself aloof, now, when there was no one to bar the door against him. Was it delicacy that kept him away? Yes, possibly. He might consider it an outrage against that silent master of the house to cross his threshold unbidden.
‘By and by, after the funeral, he will come,’ she thought.
He had entered the house yesterday as one of the public. She had seen him in the hall, but he had either not seen her, or had not chosen to recognise her. These things were bitter to her, but she fancied there must be some wise meaning in his conduct which she could not fathom.
‘But he might at least have written to me,’ she thought, piteously.
Bella came home from the Park by and by, full of the history of her day, trying to change the current of Beatrix’s thoughts by talking briskly of all that had happened in the Piperménage. Mr. Piper had been wonderfully kind, and had insisted upon the brougham being brought out to take her back to the Water House.
‘I have no doubt the coachman hates me for bringing him out this damp evening,’ said Bella, ‘but Mr. Piper would not let me come any other way. “What’s the use of having ’osses eating their heads off, and a parcel of idle fellers standing about chewing straw?” he said. “It’ll do ’em good to ’ave a turn.”’
‘How is poor Mrs. Piper?’ Beatrix asked, languidly.
‘Not any better. She had to dine in her own room. It was dreadful to see all those children stuffing turkey and pudding and mince pies, and making themselves spectacles of gluttony at dessert, without a thought of their poor mother, whose last Christmas Day was passing by—for I really don’t think Mrs. Piper can live to see another Christmas.’
‘Then you dined alone with Mr. Piper and the children?’ inquired Beatrix, in the same listless tone.
‘Not quite alone. Miss Coyle was there.’
Miss Coyle was a maiden lady of intense gentility, who possessed a small annuity—bestowed on her by the head of the house of Coyle, which was supposed to be a family of distinction—and who inhabited one of the prettiest cottages in Little Yafford—a rustic bower with a porch of green trellis-work, curtained with clematis and woodbine. The cottage was so small that a single friend dropping in to tea filled it to overflowing, insomuch that the small servant could hardly turn the corner of the parlour door with the tea-tray. This smallness Miss Coyle found economical. She visited a great dealin Little Yafford, and was not called upon to exercise any hospitality in return.
‘With my poor little place it would be ridiculous to talk about giving parties,’ she used to say, ‘but if my friends will drop in upon me any afternoon they will always find a good cup of tea.’
Thus Miss Coyle contrived to cry quits with the best people in Little Yafford at the cost of a cup of tea. Even Mrs. Dulcimer—who prided herself upon the superiority of her tea—confessed that Miss Coyle excelled as a tea maker, and would condescend to drop in at the cottage once in a way on a hot summer afternoon, when the roads were ankle-deep in dust, and seemed longer than usual. Miss Coyle had not only tea to offer for the refreshment of the body, but she generally had some scrap of news for the entertainment of her visitor’s mind. She was a wonderful woman in this way, and seemed always to be the first to know everything that occurred in Little Yafford, as if she had been the centre of an invisible telegraphic system.
‘Oh, Miss Coyle was there, was she?’ said Beatrix.
‘Yes, she has been at the Park a good deal since the beginning of Mrs. Piper’s illness. She goes to sit with poor Mrs. Piper almost every afternoon, and they talk of the wickedness of servants. Miss Coyle’s father kept seven servants—four indoor and three outdoor. I have heard her describe them all, again and again. They seem to have been models; but Miss Coyle said they belonged to a race that has disappeared off the face of the earth—like the Drift people, or the poor Swiss creatures who lived in the lakes. You may imagine how lively it is to hear Miss Coyle and Mrs. Piper bewailing the iniquities of the present race.’
‘Did Miss Coyle speak about my father—or me?’ asked Beatrix, with an anxious look.
She remembered meeting Miss Coyle at the Vicarage two or three times, and she had a vague notion that if this lady had assisted at a memorable scene, when the sinless among the crowd were bidden to cast the first stone, she would assuredly have been ready with her pebble.
Bella looked embarrassed at the question.
‘They did talk a little,’ she faltered. ‘Mr. Piperand Miss Coyle. Yon know how vulgar and coarse he is—and I’m afraid she is not so good-natured as she pretends to be. But you must not be unhappy about anything such people can say.’
‘Do you think I am going to make myself unhappy about it? Do you suppose I care what such people say or think of me?’ exclaimed Beatrix, irritably.
‘You must not imagine that they said anything very bad, dear,’ said Bella, soothingly.
‘I shall not imagine anything about them—their remarks are perfectly indifferent to me.’
‘Of course, dear. What need you care what anybody says—or thinks—with your fortune? You can look down upon the world.’
‘With my fortune!’ echoed Beatrix, scornfully. ‘I do not know whether I have sixpence belonging to me in this world, and I do not very much care. Indeed, I think I would just as soon be without fortune. I should find out what the world was like then.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Bella, ‘you would see it “the seamy side without.” It is a very rough world on the wrong side, I assure you.’
Beatrix did not answer. She was wondering how it would be if her father had left his estates away from her. If she were to find herself standing in the bleak hard world, penniless as the beggarmaid chosen by King Cophetua! Would Cyril, her king, in her mind the one pre-eminent man upon earth, would he, the true and noble lover, heedless of fortune, descend from his high estate to win her? She could not doubt that it would be so. Wealth or poverty could make no difference in him.
The weary week dragged slowly to its dull dark end. There was a stately funeral, solitary as the life of the dead man had been, for the mourners were but two—Mr. Scratchell, the agent, and Mr. Namby, the village doctor. But the escutcheoned hearse and nodding plumes, the huge Flemish horses with their manes combed reverse ways, the empty black carriages, the hired mourners, cloaked and scarved, and struggling heroically to impart a strangeness of expression to features which were familiar to the populace in every-day life—one of these venal followers being only too well known as a drunken carpenter, and another as a cobbler skilled in his art,but notorious for a too free use of the fire-irons in the correction of his wife and children—these trappings and suits of woe were not wanting. All that the most expensive undertaker in Great Yafford could devise to do honour to the dead was done; and Little Yafford, draining the dregs of its Christmas cup of dissipation, felt that Squire Harefield’s funeral made an appropriate finish to the festivities of the season. The weather had changed; the bare barren fields were lightly powdered with snow, the black ridge of moorland was sharply cut against a bright blue sky.
‘It’s an outing, anyhow,’ said the people of Little Yafford, and there was a good deal of extra liquor consumed at small wayside beerhouses after the funeral.
In the course of that afternoon the will was produced by Mr. Scratchell, who had drawn it, and who knew where to look for it. Nothing could be simpler or more decided. It had been executed nine years before, and, with the exception of legacies to old servants, and five hundred pounds to Mr. Scratchell, it left everything to Beatrix. Mr.Dulcimer was made joint executor with Mr. Scratchell, and Beatrix’s sole guardian in the event of her father dying while she was under age.
Two days later came the adjourned inquiry before the coroner. This time Beatrix Harefield’s interests were watched by the lawyer from London, a little dark man, with heavy eyebrows and a hard mouth, a defender who inspired Beatrix with a nameless horror, although she could but be grateful to Cyril Culverhouse for his forethought in procuring her such skilled service. Mrs. Dulcimer had harped upon the curate’s thoughtfulness in sending for one of the cleverest men in London to protect her dear Beatrix from the possibilities of evil.
‘It was very kind of him,’ Beatrix said somewhat constrainedly, ‘but I would much rather have dispensed with the London lawyer—or any lawyer.’
‘My dearest Beatrix, Mr. Dulcimer and Cyril must understand the exigencies of the case far better than you can, and both are agreed that the inquest cannot be too carefully watched on your behalf. If you only knew the dreadful things people say’——
Beatrix’s marble cheek could grow no paler thanit had been in all the sorrowful days since her father’s death, but a look of sharpest pain came into her face.
‘Mrs. Dulcimer, do people think that I murdered my father?’ she asked suddenly.
‘My love,’ cried the Vicar’s wife, startled by this plain question, ‘how can you suggest anything so horrible?’
‘You suggested it, when you spoke of people saying dreadful things about me.’
‘My dear Beatrix, I only meant to say that the world is very censorious. People are always ready to say cruel things—about the most innocent persons. It was so in David’s time even. See how often he alludes to the malice and injustice of his enemies.’
Beatrix said no more, but, when Mrs. Dulcimer had left her, she sat for a long time with her face hidden in her clasped hands, in blank tearless grief.
‘I see now why he shuns me,’ she said to herself. ‘He believes that I poisoned my father.’
Beatrix was one of the first witnesses examined at the adjourned inquest.
She made her statement about the medicine chest in her mother’s room, and the empty laudanum bottle, simply and briefly.
‘Why did you not mention this before?’ asked the coroner.
‘I forgot it.’
‘What! could you forget a fact of such importance? You found your father dead in that very room, and you forgot the existence of a medicine chest, which, according to your statement of to-day, contained the poison by which he died.’
‘The fact did not occur to me at the previous examination,’ Beatrix answered firmly.
Her manner and bearing were curiously different from what they had been on the previous occasion. She was deadly pale, but firm as a rock. That firmness of hers, the calm distinctness of her tones, the proud carriage of her beautiful head, impressed the coroner and jury strongly, but not favourably. They had been more ready to sympathize with her a week ago, when she had stood before them trembling, and bowed down by her distress.
The medicine chest was brought from the lateMrs. Harefield’s room. There was the bottle as Beatrix had described it—an empty bottle which had obviously contained laudanum.
‘Do you know if your mother was in the habit of taking laudanum?’ asked the coroner.
‘I know very little about her. All that I can remember of her is like a dream.’
Mr. Namby was re-examined upon this question of the laudanum.
He remembered that Mrs. Harefield had suffered from neuralgic pains in the head and face during the last year of her residence at the Water House. She had complained to him, and he had prescribed for her, not successfully. He was of opinion that the Water House was too much on a level with the river. He would not go so far as to say the house was damp, but he was sure it was not dry. It was not unlikely that Mrs. Harefield would resort to laudanum as a palliative. He had never given her laudanum.
Peacock, the butler, was examined. He remembered Mrs. Harefield complaining of pain in the head and face. It was called tic-dollerer. He fancied the name meant something like toothache, independent ofteeth. As he understood it you might have tic-dollerer anywheres. He remembered being in Great Yafford with the carriage one day when Mrs. Harefield told him to go into a chemist’s shop and ask for some laudanum. He got a small quantity in a bottle. Mrs. Harefield used often to drive into Great Yafford. Sometimes he went on the box with the coachman—sometimes not. He knew that she had a medicine chest in her room. He had heard Chugg, the young woman who waited on her, say that she took sleeping draughts.
The jury agreed upon their verdict, after some deliberation.
Mr. Harefield had died from the effects of laudanum, but by whom administered there was no evidence to show.