Wyllard's Weird/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
PEOPLE WILL TALK.
The year was a month older since Joseph Distin went back to town, baffled and angry with himself, yet glad for his friend's sake that his discoveries had gone no further. The heather was purpling on the hills, where the dwarf furze flashed here and there into patches of gold. The tourist season had set in; but the tourist for the most part avoided the little town of Bodmin, nestling snugly inland among the hills, and turned his face to the sea, and the wild rocks which defend that romantic western coast, to the Lizard and the Land's End, to rugged Tintagel and sandy Bude.
Life at Penmorval had drifted by as calmly as an infant's sleep, in those four weeks of soft summer weather. There had been no visitors staying in the house, for both Julian Wyllard and his wife loved a studious repose, and there were long intervals in which they lived almost alone. Penmorval would be full by and by, in October, when the pheasant-shooting began; and in the mean time it was pleasant to Dora Wyllard to be able to ride and drive with her husband—to be the companion of his walks, to read the books he read, and to waste long evenings in inexhaustible talk. They always had so much to say to each other. The sympathy between them was so complete.
Hilda Heathcote was at Penmorval nearly every day. She ranked almost as one of the family. She came to Mrs. Wyllard for counsel and instruction upon all manner of subjects—sometimes for a gardening lesson, sometimes for a lesson in crewel-work, in French, German, Italian. Dora was in advance of her young friend in all these subjects; but the pupil was so bright and quick that it was a pleasure to teach her. Between them Mrs. Wyllard and Miss Heathcote achieved marvels in the way of art-needlework—piano-backs which were as beautiful as pictures, portières worthy to rank with the highest examples of Gobelin tapestry, counterpanes that ought to have been exhibited at South Kensington. The calm leisure of country life lent itself to such slow and elaborate labours.
Mrs. Wyllard had a big box of foreign books once a month from Rolandi's library, and she meted out to Hilda such volumes as were fit for a young English lady's perusal; and then they met to talk over the books, sometimes alone, sometimes with Bothwell as a third. Bothwell was very scornful of all the sentimental books, laughed at the super-refined heroines of French novels, the dreamy heroes of German romance; but he read all the books that Hilda read, and he seemed to enjoy talking about them at that protracted function of afternoon tea from which he rarely absented himself.
The weather was peerless during this month of August, and Mrs. Wyllard's afternoon tea-table was set out in an arbour of clipped yew, at the end of the Italian garden, a point from which there was a fine view of the moors, and the great brown hills beyond.
Bothwell's sullen gloom had passed away soon after Mr. Distin's departure. He seemed to Hilda to have become once again the old Bothwell—gay, and cheery, and kind, and frank. But he did not commit himself by any of those delicate little attentions to Hilda which had made him such an agreeable person half a year ago. That particular phase of his character was a thing of the past.
A month had gone since the close of the inquest at the Vital Spark, but Bodmin people had not forgotten the strange death of the nameless girl, and had not left off talking about it. They talked about Bothwell, too, and of his refusal to give a plain answer to a plain question; and towards the end of that month Bothwell Grahame woke up all at once to the consciousness that he was under a cloud. He discovered that he was being cut by his old acquaintances, so far as they dared cut a man of his standing and temperament. They were not uncivil; they gave him good-day if they met him in the street; they would even deign to discuss the state of the weather, the results of the harvest. But Bothwell felt nevertheless that he was living under a cloud; there was a tacit avoidance of him, a desire to get off with as slight a greeting as civility would permit. Hands were no longer held out to him in friendship; salutations were no longer loud and cheery. No one asked him to stop and play billiards at the chief inn, as people had been wont to do, waylaying him when he wanted to get home. Now he could pursue his walk without let or hindrance. He had even seen one of his most familiar friends stroll dreamily round a corner to avoid meeting him.
During the whole of those four weeks he had not received a single invitation to play lawn-tennis, he for whose presence tennis-parties used to compete. There were two or three engagements outstanding at the time of the inquest. He had kept these, and had played his best, struggling against a coldness in the atmosphere. It had seemed to him that everybody was out of sorts. There was an all-pervading dulness. Nobody could find anything pleasant to talk about. He had been very slow to perceive that cloud which hung over him: but by the end of the month the fact had become too palpable, and Bothwell Grahame understood that he had been sent to Coventry.
"What does it all mean?" he asked himself, aghast with indignant wonder. "What can they have to say against me? Can any one have found out—?"
Bothwell's cheek paled as he thought of that one transaction of his life which he would least like to see recorded against him. But he told himself, after a few minutes' reflection, that nobody in Bodmin could possibly know anything about that particular episode in a young man's history.
He puzzled himself sorely about this change in the manner of his acquaintance; and on trying back he discovered that the change dated from the day of the adjourned inquest. He recalled too the curious manner in which everybody had avoided the subject of the inquest; how when any mention of the dead girl had been made in his presence the conversation had been changed instantly, as if the subject must needs be tabooed before him.
"Upon my soul," said Bothwell, "I begin to think they suspect me of having thrown that girl out of the carriage. Because I refused to answer that insolent ruffian's questions, these village wiseacres have made up their minds that I am a murderer."
He went back to Penmorval in a white heat of indignation. A week ago he had made up his mind to start for Peru. He had found out all about the steamer which was to carry him. He had obtained letters of introduction to the proprietor of a newspaper, and to some of the local aristocracy. He was ready to set forth upon his quest of fortune in the land of gold and jewels. But now he told himself that wild horses should not drag him away from Penmorval. He would stand his ground until he had humiliated those fools and rascals whom he had once called his friends. He would make them taste of the cup of their own folly.
He was much too hot-headed to keep the secret of his wrongs from that cousin who had been to him as a sister. He went straight to Dora, and told her of the foul suspicion that had arisen in men's minds against him.
She had read the report of the inquest, and although she had wondered at his refusal to answer Mr. Distin's questions, she had been able to understand that his pride might revolt against being so catechised, and that he might choose to persist in that refusal as a point of personal dignity.
"Any one who can suspect you for such a reason—any one who could suspect you for any reason—must be an idiot, Bothwell," she exclaimed. "There is no use in being angry with such people."
"But I am angry with them. I am rabid with anger."
"Why did you not answer that question, Bothwell?" asked his cousin thoughtfully.
"Because I did not choose."
"Yet it would have prevented all possibility of misapprehension if you had given a straight answer. And it would have been so easy," argued Dora.
"It would not have been easy. It was not possible to answer that question."
"Why not?"
"Because I could not answer it without injuring some one I—esteem," replied Bothwell, relapsing into that curious, sullen manner which Mr. Heathcote had observed on the day of the inquest.
"O Bothwell, you have secrets, then—a secret from me, your adopted sister!"
"Yes, I have my secrets."
"I am so sorry. I used to hope that I should have a share in the planning of your life; and now I begin to fear—"
"That my life is wrecked already. You are right, Dora. My life was wrecked three years before I left India, but I did not know then what shipwreck meant. I thought that there was land ahead, and that I should make it; but I know now I was drifting towards a fatal rock upon which honour, happiness, and prosperity must needs go to pieces."
"Don't talk in riddles, Bothwell. Tell me the plain truth, however bad it may be. You know you can trust me."
"I do, dear soul, as I trust Heaven itself. But there are some things a man must not tell. Yes, Dora, I have my secret, and it is a hard one to carry—the secret of a man who is bound in honour to one woman while he fondly loves another."
"Bothwell, I am so sorry for you," said his cousin softly.
She put her arms round his neck as if they had still been boy and girl. She put her lips to his fevered forehead. She comforted him with her love, being able to give him no other comfort.
Hilda Heathcote came up the avenue ten minutes later, escorting a matchless donkey, which was of so pale a gray as to be almost white. It was a donkey of surpassing size and dignity, and gave itself as many airs as if it had been a white elephant. It carried a pair of panniers, highly decorated in a Moorish fashion, and in the Moorish panniers sat Edward Heathcote's twin daughters.
The twins were as like as the famous Corsican Brothers in person, but they were utterly unlike in disposition, and the blue and pink sashes which they wore for distinction were quite unnecessary; since no one could have mistaken Minnie, the overbearing twin, for Jennie, the meek twin. People only had to to be in their company half an hour to know which was which for ever after. Whereas Jennie was quite a baby, and could hardly speak plain, Minnie was preternaturally old for her years, and expressed her opinion freely upon every subject. Minnie always came to the front, was always mistress of the situation, and where Jennie shed tears Minnie always stamped her foot. Needless to say that Minnie was everybody's favourite. Naughtiness at four years old, a termagant in miniature, is always interesting. Mr. Heathcote was the only person in Cornwall who could manage Minnie, and who properly appreciated Jennie's yielding nature. Jennie felt that her father loved her, and used to climb on to his knee and nestle in his waistcoat; while Minnie was charming society by those little airs and graces which were spoken of vaguely as "showing off."
To-day Minnie was in a delightful humour, for she was being escorted in triumph to a long-promised festival. Since the very beginning of the summer the twins had been promised that they should go to drink tea with Mrs. Wyllard some day when they had been very good. Jennie had done everything to deserve the favour; but Minnie had offended in somewise every day. She had been cruel to the dogs—she had made an archipelago of blots in her copy-book, while her pothooks and hangers were a worse company of cripples than Falstaff's regiment. She had been rude to the kind Fräulein. She had been rebellious at dinner, had protested with loud wailings against the severity of seven-o'clock bed. Only towards the end of August had there come a brief interval of calm, and Hilda had been quick to take advantage of these halcyon days, knowing how soon they would be followed by storm.
The tea-table was laid in the yew-tree arbour, such a table as little children love, and which has an attractive air even to full-grown humanity. Such a delicious variety of cakes and jams and home-made bread, such nectarines and grapes. Minnie shouted and clapped her hands at sight of the feast, while Jennie blushed and hung her head, abashed at the dazzling apparition of Mrs. Wyllard in an Indian silk gown with a scarlet sash, and flashing diamond rings. Hilda had no such jewels on her sunburnt fingers.
"What a nice tea!" cried Minnie, when the blue and the pink twin had each been provided with a comfortable seat, each in a snug corner of the arbour, banked in by the tea-table. "Why do we never have such nice teas at home? Why don't we, Aunt Hilda?" she repeated, when her question had been ignored for a couple of seconds.
"Because such nice things would not be wholesome every day," replied Hilda.
"I don't believe that," said Minnie.
"O Minnie!" cried Jennie, with a shocked air. "You mustn't contradict people. You mustn't contradict Aunt Hilda, because she is old."
"If cakes weren't wholesome she wouldn't have them," said Minnie, ignoring the blue twin's interruption, and pointing her chubby finger at Mrs. Wyllard. "She can have what she likes, and she is grown up and knows everything. She wouldn't give us unwholesome things. I know why we don't have such nice teas at home."
"Why not, Minnie?" asked Dora, to encourage conversation.
"Because Fräulein is too stingy. I heard cook say so the other day. She is always grumbling about the cream and butter. You don't grumble about the cream and butter, do you?" she asked, in her point-blank way.
"I'm afraid I'm not so good a housekeeper as the Fräulein," answered Dora.
"Then I like bad housekeepers best. I shall be a bad housekeeper when I grow up, and there shall always be cakes for tea—ever so many cakes, as there are here. I'll have some of that, please," pointing to an amber-tinted pound-cake, "first."
By this Minnie signified that she meant to eat her way through the varieties of the tea-table.
"And what will Jennie take?" asked Dora, smiling at the blue twin.
"Jennie's a bilious child," said Minnie authoritatively; "she ought to have something plain."
Jennie, with her large blue eyes fixed pathetically on the pound-cake, waited for whatever might be given to her.
"Do you think just one slice of rich cake would make you ill, Jennie?" asked Dora.
"I am sure it would," said Minnie, ploughing her way through her own slice. "She's always sick, if she eats rich things. She was sick when we went to see grandma. Grandma isn't rich, you know, because her husband was a clergyman, and they're always poor. But she gives us beautiful teas when we go to see her, and lets us run about her garden and pick the fruit, and trample on the beds, and do just as we like; so we don't mind going to tea with grandma, though she's old and deaf. Jennie had cherries and pound-cake the last time we went to see grandma, and she was ill all night. You know you were, Jennie."
The blue twin admitted the fact, and meekly accepted a hunch of sanitarian sponge-cake.
"You must not talk so much, Minnie; you are a perfect nuisance," said Hilda; and then she looked round hesitatingly once or twice before she asked, "What has become of Mr. Grahame? He generally honours us with his company at afternoon tea."
"Bothwell has been a little worried this morning," faltered Dora. "He is not very well."
Her heart sank within her at the thought that this girl—this girl whom she had once thought of as Bothwell's future wife—would come in time to know the dark suspicion which hung over him like a poisonous cloud. She would be told by and by that people thought of him as a possible murderer, a wretch who had assailed a defenceless girl, set upon her as a tiger on his prey, hurled her to a dreadful death. She would learn that there were people in the neighbourhood capable of suspecting this very Bothwell Grahame, gentleman and soldier, of so dastardly a crime.
Dora had hardly been able to realise the awfulness of the situation yet. In her desire to comfort her cousin she had made light of the unspoken slander, the cruel taint which had been breathed upon his name. But now as she sat at her tea-table ministering to her two little guests, trying to appear interested in their prattle, her heart was aching as it had not ached since she had been forgiven by Edward Heathcote. From that hour until the strange girl's death her life had been cloudless. And now a cloud had drifted across her horizon, darkening the sunlight: a cloud that hung heavily over the head of one whom she dearly loved.