Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (174 page)

If he failed there in finding any clue to the object of his inquiry, he determined to repair next to Rubbleford, and to address himself boldly to Mrs. Peckover. He remembered that, when Zack had first mentioned her extraordinary behavior about the Hair Bracelet in Mr. Blyth’s hall, he had prefaced his words by saying, that she knew apparently as much of Madonna’s history as the painter did himself; and that she kept that knowledge just as close and secret. This woman, therefore, doubtless possessed information which she might be either entrapped or forced into communicating. There would be no difficulty about finding out where she lived; for, on the evening when he had mimicked her, young Thorpe had said that she kept a dairy and muffin-shop at Rubbleford. To that town, then, he proposed to journey, in the event of failing in his purpose at Dibbledean.

And if, by any evil chance, he should end in ascertaining no more from Mrs. Peckover than from Joanna Grice, what course should he take next? There would be nothing to be done then, but to return to London — to try the last great hazard — to discover himself to Mr. Blyth, come what might, with the Hair Bracelet to vouch for him in his hand.

These were his thoughts, as he sat alone in the lodging in Kirk Street. At night, they had ended in the fatal consolation of the brandy bottle — in the desperate and solitary excess, which had so cheated him of his self-control, that the lurking taint which his life among the savages had left in his disposition, and the deadly rancor which his recent discovery of his sister’s fate had stored up in his heart, escaped from concealment, and betrayed themselves in that half-drunken, half-sober occupation of scouring the rifle-barrel, which it had so greatly amazed Zack to witness, and which the lad had so suddenly and strangely suspended by his few chance words of sympathising reference to Mary’s death.

But, in the morning, Mat’s head was clear, and his dangerous instincts were held once more under cunning control. In the morning, therefore, he declined explaining himself to young Thorpe, and started quietly for the country by the first train.

On being set down at the Dibbledean Station, Mat lingered a little and looked about him, just as he had lingered and looked on the occasion of his first visit. He subsequently took the same road to the town which he had then taken; and, on gaining the church, stopped, as he had formerly stopped, at the churchyard-gate.

This time, however, he seemed to have no intention of passing the entrance — no intention, indeed, of doing anything, unless standing vacantly by the gate, and mechanically swinging it backwards and forwards with both his hands, can be considered in the light of an occupation. As for the churchyard, he hardly looked at it now. There were two or three people, at a little distance, walking about among the graves, who it might have been thought would have attracted his attention; but he never took the smallest notice of them. He was evidently meditating about something, for he soon began to talk to himself — being, like most men who have passed much of their time in solitude, unconsciously in the habit of thinking aloud.

“I wonder how many year ago it is, since she and me used to swing back’ards and for’ards on this,” he said, still pushing the gate slowly to and fro. “The hinges used to creak then. They go smooth enough now. Oiled, I suppose.” As he said this, he moved his hands from the bar on which they rested, and turned away to go on to the town; but stopped, and walking back to the gate, looked attentively at its hinges — ”Ah,” he said, “not oiled. New.”

“New,” he repeated, walking slowly towards the High Street — ”new since my time, like everything else here. I wish I’d never come back — I wish to God I’d never come back!”

On getting into the town, he stopped at the same place where he had halted on his first visit to Dibbledean, to look up again, as he had looked then, at the hosier’s shop which had once belonged to Joshua Grice. Here, those visible and tangible signs and tokens which he required to stimulate his sluggish memory, were not very easy to recognise. Though the general form of his father’s old house was still preserved, the re-painting and renovating of the whole front had somewhat altered it, in its individual parts, to his eyes. He looked up and down at the gables, and all along from window to window; and shook his head discontentedly.

“New again here,” he said. “I can’t make out for certain which winder it was Mary and me broke between us, when I come away from school, the year afore I went to sea. Whether it was Mary that broke the winder, and me that took the blame,” he continued, slowly pursuing his way — ”or whether it was her that took the blame, and me that broke the winder, I can’t rightly call to mind. And no great wonder neither, if I’ve forgot such a thing as that, when I can’t even fix it for certain, yet, whether she used to wear her Hair Bracelet or not, while I was at home.”

Communing with himself in this way, he reached the turning that led to Joanna Grice’s cottage.

His thoughts had thus far been straying away idly and uninterruptedly to the past. They were now recalled abruptly to present emergencies by certain unexpected appearances which met his eye, the moment he looked down the lane along which he was walking.

He remembered this place as having struck him by its silence and its loneliness, on the occasion of his first visit to Dibbledean. He now observed with some surprise that it was astir with human beings, and noisy with the clamor of gossiping tongues. All the inhabitants of the cottages on either side of the road were out in their front gardens. All the townspeople who ought to have been walking about the principal streets, seemed to be incomprehensibly congregated in this one narrow little lane. What were they assembled here to do? What subject was it that men and women — and even children as well — were all eagerly talking about?

Without waiting to hear, without questioning anybody, without appearing to notice that he was stared at (as indeed all strangers are in rural England), as if he were walking about among a breeched and petticoated people in the character of a savage with nothing but war paint on him, Mat steadily and rapidly pursued his way down the lane to Joanna Grice’s cottage. “Time enough,” thought he, “to find out what all this means, when I’ve got quietly into the house I’m bound for.” As he approached the cottage, he saw, standing at the gate, what looked, to his eyes, like two coaches — one, very strange in form: both very remarkable in colour. All about the coaches stood solemn-looking gentlemen; and all about the solemn-looking gentlemen, circled inquisitively and excitably, the whole vagabond boy-and-girl population of Dibbledean.

Amazed, and even bewildered (though he hardly knew why) by what he saw, Mat hastened on to the cottage. Just as he arrived at the garden paling, the door opened, and from the inside of the dwelling there protruded slowly into the open air a coffin carried on four men’s shoulders, and covered with a magnificent black velvet pall.

Mat stopped the moment he saw the coffin, and struck his hand violently on the paling by his side. “Dead!” he exclaimed under his breath.

“A friend of the late Miss Grice’s?” asked a gently inquisitive voice near him.

He did not hear. All his attention was fixed on the coffin, as it was borne slowly over the garden path. Behind it walked two gentlemen, mournfully arrayed in black cloaks and hat-bands. They carried white handkerchiefs in their hands, and used them to wipe — not their eyes — but their lips, on which the balmy dews of recent wine-drinking glistened gently.

“Dix, and Nawby — the medical attendant of the deceased, and the solicitor who is her sole executor,” said the voice near Mat, in tones which had ceased to be gently inquisitive, and had become complacently explanatory instead. “That’s Millbury the undertaker, and the other is Gutteridge of the White Hart Inn, his brother-in-law, who supplies the refreshments, which in my opinion makes a regular job of it,” continued the voice, as two red-faced gentlemen followed the doctor and the lawyer. “Something like a funeral, this! Not a halfpenny less than forty pound, I should say, when it’s all paid for. Beautiful, ain’t it?” concluded the voice, becoming gently inquisitive again.

Still Mat kept his eyes fixed on the funeral proceedings in front, and took not the smallest notice of the pertinacious speaker behind him.

The coffin was placed in the hearse. Dr. Dix and Mr. Nawby entered the mourning coach provided for them. The smug human vultures who prey commercially on the civilized dead, arranged themselves, with black wands, in solemn Undertakers’ order of procession on either side of the funeral vehicles. Those clumsy pomps of feathers and velvet, of strutting horses and marching mutes, which are still permitted among us to desecrate with grotesquely-shocking fiction the solemn fact of death, fluttered out in their blackest state grandeur and showed their most woeful state paces, as the procession started magnificently with its meager offering of one dead body more to the bare and awful grave.

When Mary Grice died, a fugitive and an outcast, the clown’s wife and the Irish girl who rode in the circus wept for her, stranger though she was, as they followed her coffin to the poor corner of the churchyard. When Joanna Grice died in the place of her birth, among the townspeople with whom her whole existence had been passed, every eye was tearless that looked on her funeral procession; the two strangers who made part of it, gossiped pleasantly as they rode after the hearse about the news of the morning; and the sole surviving member of her family, whom chance had brought to her door on her burial-day, stood aloof from the hired mourners, and moved not a step to follow her to the grave.

No: not a step. The hearse rolled on slowly towards the churchyard, and the sight-seers in the lane followed it; but Matthew Grice stood by the garden paling, at the place where he had halted from the first. What was her death to him? Nothing but the loss of his first chance of tracing Arthur Carr. Tearlessly and pitilessly she had left it to strangers to bury her brother’s daughter; and now, tearlessly and pitilessly, there stood her brother’s son, leaving it to strangers to bury
her.

“Don’t you mean to follow to the churchyard, and see the last of it?” inquired the same inquisitive voice, which had twice already endeavored to attract Mat’s attention.

He turned round this time to look at the speaker, and confronted a wizen, flaxen-haired, sharp-faced man, dressed in a jaunty shooting-jacket, carrying a riding-cane in his hand, and having a thorough-bred black-and-tan terrier in attendance at his heels.

“Excuse me asking the question,” said the wizen man; “but I noticed how dumbfoundered you were when you saw the coffin come out. ‘A friend of the deceased,’ I thought to myself directly — ”

“Well,” interrupted Mat, gruffly, “suppose I am; what then?”

“Will you oblige me by putting this in your pocket?” asked the wizen man, giving Mat a card. “My name’s Tatt, and I’ve recently started in practice here as a solicitor. I don’t want to ask any improper questions, but, being a friend of the deceased, you may perhaps have some claim on the estate; in which case, I should feel proud to take care of your interests. It isn’t strictly professional, I know, to be touting for the chance of a client in this way; but I’m obliged to do it in self-defense. Dix, Nawby, Millbury, and Gutteridge, all play into one another’s hands, and want to monopolize among ‘em the whole Doctoring, Lawyering, Undertaking, and Licensed Victualling business of Dibbledean. I’ve made up my mind to break down Nawby’s monopoly, and keep as much business out of his office as I can. That’s why I take time by the forelock, and give you my card.” Here Mr. Tatt left off explaining, and began to play with his terrier.

Mat looked up thoughtfully at Joanna Grice’s cottage. Might she not, in all probability, have left some important letters behind her? And, if he mentioned who he was, could not the wizen man by his side help him to get at them?

“A good deal of mystery about the late Miss Grice,” resumed Mr. Tatt, still playing with the terrier. “Nobody but Dix and Nawby can tell exactly when she died, or how she’s left her money. Queer family altogether. (Rats, Pincher! where are the rats?) There’s a son of old Grice’s, who has never, they say, been properly accounted for. (Hie, boy! there’s a cat! hie after her, Pincher!) If he was only to turn up now, I believe, between ourselves, it would put such a spoke in Nawby’s wheel — ”

“I may have a question or two to ask you one of these days,” interposed Mat, turning away from the garden paling at last. While his new acquaintance had been speaking, he had been making up his mind that he should best serve his purpose of tracing Arthur Carr, by endeavoring forthwith to get all the information that Mrs. Peckover might be able to afford him. In the event of this resource proving useless, there would be plenty of time to return to Dibbledean, discover himself to Mr. Tatt, and ascertain whether the law would not give to Joshua Grice’s son the right of examining Joanna Grice’s papers.

“Come to my office,” cried Mr. Tatt, enthusiastically. “I can give you a prime bit of Stilton, and as good a glass of bitter beer as ever you drank in your life.”