Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (175 page)

Mat declined this hospitable invitation peremptorily, and set forth at once on his return to the station. All Mr. Tatt’s efforts to engage him for an “early day,” and an “appointed hour,” failed. He would only repeat, doggedly, that at some future time he might have a question or two to ask about a matter of law, and that his new acquaintance should then be the man to whom he would apply for information.

They wished each other “good morning” at the entrance of the lane, — Mr. Tatt lounging slowly up the High Street, with his terrier at his heels; and Mat walking rapidly in the contrary direction, on his way back to the railway station.

As he passed the churchyard, the funeral procession had just arrived at its destination, and the bearers were carrying the coffin from the hearse to the church door. He stopped a little by the road-side to see it go in. “She was no good to anybody about her, all her lifetime,” he thought bitterly, as the last heavy fold of the velvet pall was lost to view in the darkness of the church entrance. “But if she’d only lived a day or two longer, she might have been of some good to me. There’s more of what I wanted to know nailed down along with her in that coffin, than ever I’m likely to find out anywhere else. It’s a long hunt of mine, this is — a long hunt on a dull scent; and her death has made it duller.” With this farewell thought, he turned from the church.

As he pursued his way back to the railroad, he took Jane Holdsworth’s letter out of his pocket, and looked at the hair enclosed in it. It was the fourth or fifth time he had done this during the few hours that had passed since he had possessed himself of Mary’s Bracelet. From that period there had grown within him a vague conviction, that the possession of Carr’s hair might in some way lead to the discovery of Carr himself. He knew perfectly well that there was not the slightest present or practical use in examining this hair, and yet, there was something that seemed to strengthen him afresh in his purpose, to encourage him anew after his unexpected check at Dibbledean, merely in the act of looking at it. “If I can’t track him no other way,” he muttered, replacing the hair in his pocket, “I’ve got the notion into my head, somehow, that I shall track him by this.”

Mat found it no very easy business to reach Rubbleford. He had to go back a little way on the Dibbledean line, then to diverge by a branch line, and then to get upon another main line, and travel along it some distance before he reached his destination. It was dark by the time he reached Rubbleford. However, by inquiring of one or two people, he easily found the dairy and muffin-shop when he was once in the town; and saw, to his great delight, that it was not shut up for the night. He looked in at the window, under a plaster cast of a cow, and observed by the light of one tallow candle burning inside, a chubby, buxom girl sitting at the counter, and either drawing or writing something on a slate. Entering the shop, after a moment or two of hesitation, he asked if he could see Mrs. Peckover.

“Mother went away, sir, three days ago, to nurse uncle Bob at Bangbury,” answered the girl.

(Here was a second check — a second obstacle to defer the tracing of Arthur Carr! It seemed like a fatality!)

“When do you expect her back?” asked Mat.

“Not for a week or ten days, sir,” answered the girl. “Mother said she wouldn’t have gone, but for uncle Bob being her only brother, and not having wife or child to look after him at Bangbury.”

(Bangbury!
— Where had he heard that name before?)

“Father’s up at the rectory, sir,” continued the girl, observing that the stranger looked both disappointed and puzzled. “If it’s dairy business you come upon, I can attend to it; but it’s anything about accounts to settle, mother said they were to be sent on to her.”

“Maybe I shall have a letter to send your mother,” said Mat, after a moment’s consideration. “Can you write me down on a bit of paper where she is?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” And the girl very civilly and readily wrote in her best round hand, on a slip of bill-paper, this address: — ”Martha Peckover, at Rob: Randle, 2 Dawson’s Buildings, Bangbury.”

Mat absently took the slip of paper from her, and put it into his pocket; then thanked the girl, and went out. While he was inside the shop, he had been trying in vain to call to mind where he had heard the name of Bangbury before: the moment he was in the street, the lost remembrance came back to him. Surely, Bangbury was the place where Joanna Grice had told him that Mary was buried!

After walking a few paces, he came to a large linen-draper’s shop, with plenty of light in the window. Stopping here, he hastily drew from his pocket the manuscript containing the old woman’s “Justification” of her conduct; for he wished to be certain about the accuracy of his recollection, and he had an idea that the part of the Narrative which mentioned Mary’s death would help to decide him in his present doubt.

Yes! on turning to the last page, there it was written in so many words: “I sent, by a person I could depend on, money enough to bury her decently in Bangbury churchyard.”

“I’ll go there to-night,” said Mat to himself, thrusting the letter into his pocket, and taking the way back to the railway station immediately.

CHAPTER XIV. MARY’S GRAVE.

Matthew Grice was a resolute traveler; but no resolution is powerful enough to alter the laws of inexorable Time-Tables to suit the convenience of individual passengers. Although Mat left Rubbleford in less than an hour after he had arrived there, he only succeeded in getting half way to Bangbury, before he had to stop for the night, and wait at an intermediate station for the first morning train on what was termed the Trunk Line. By this main railroad he reached his destination early in the forenoon, and went at once to Dawson’s Buildings.

“Mrs. Peckover has just stepped out, sir — Mr. Randle being a little better this morning — for a mouthful of fresh air. She’ll be in again in half-an-hour,” said the maid-of-all-work who opened Mr. Randle’s door.

Mat began to suspect that something more than mere accident was concerned in keeping Mrs. Peckover and himself asunder. “I’ll come again in half-an-hour,” he said — then added, just as the servant was about to shut the door: — ”Which is my way to the church?”

Bangbury church was close at hand, and the directions he received for finding it were easy to follow. But when he entered the churchyard, and looked about him anxiously to see where he should begin searching for his sister’s grave, his head grew confused, and his heart began to fail him. Bangbury was a large town, and rows and rows of tombstones seemed to fill the churchyard bewilderingly in every visible direction.

At a little distance a man was at work opening a grave, and to him Mat applied for help; describing his sister as a stranger who had been buried somewhere in the churchyard better than twenty years ago. The man was both stupid and surly, and would give no advice, except that it was useless to look near where he was digging, for they were all respectable townspeople buried about there.

Mat walked round to the other side of the church. Here the graves were thicker than ever; for here the poor were buried. He went on slowly through them, with his eyes fixed on the ground, towards some trees which marked the limits of the churchyard; looking out for a place to begin his search in, where the graves might be comparatively few, and where his head might not get confused at the outset. Such a place he found at last, in a damp corner under the trees. About this spot the thin grass languished; the mud distilled into tiny water-pools; and the brambles, briars, and dead leaves lay thickly and foully between a few ragged turf-mounds. Could they have laid her here? Could this be the last refuge to which Mary ran after she fled from home?

A few of the mounds had stained moldering tomb-stones at their heads. He looked at these first; and finding only strange names on them, turned next to the mounds marked out by cross-boards of wood. At one of the graves the cross-board had been torn, or had rotted away, from its upright supports, and lay on the ground weather-stained and split, but still faintly showing that it had once had a few letters cut in it. He examined this board to begin with, and was trying to make out what the letters were, when the sound of some one approaching disturbed him. He looked up, and saw a woman walking slowly towards the place where he was standing.

It was Mrs. Peckover herself! She had taken a prescription for her sick brother to the chemist’s — had bought him one or two little things he wanted in the High Street — and had now, before resuming her place at his bedside, stolen a few minutes to go and look at the grave of Madonna’s mother. It was many, many years since Mrs. Peckover had last paid a visit to Bangbury churchyard.

She stopped and hesitated when she first caught sight of Mat; but, after a moment or two, not being a woman easily baulked in anything when she had once undertaken to do it, continued to advance, and never paused for the second time until she had come close to the grave by which Mat stood, and was looking him steadily in the face, exactly across it.

He was the first to speak. “Do you know whose grave this is?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” answered Mrs. Peckover, glancing indignantly at the broken board and the mud and brambles all about it. “Yes, sir, I
do
know; and, what’s more, I know that it’s a disgrace to the parish. Money has been paid twice over to keep it decent; and look what a state it’s left in!”

“I asked you whose grave it was,” repeated Mat, impatiently.

“A poor, unfortunate, forsaken creature’s, who’s gone to Heaven if ever an afflicted, repenting woman went there yet!” answered Mrs. Peckover, warmly.

“Forsaken? Afflicted? A woman, too?” Mat repeated to himself, thoughtfully.

“Yes, forsaken and afflicted,” cried Mrs. Peckover, overhearing him. “Don’t you say no ill of her, whoever you are. She shan’t be spoken unkindly of in my hearing, poor soul!”

Mat looked up suddenly and eagerly. “What’s your name?” he inquired.

“My name’s Peckover, and I’m not ashamed of it,” was the prompt reply. “And, now, if I may make so bold, what’s yours?”

Mat took from his pocket the Hair Bracelet, and, fixing his eyes intently on her face, held it up, across the grave, for her to look at. “Do you know this?” he said.

Mrs. Peckover stooped forward, and closely inspected the Bracelet for a minute or two. “Lord save us!” she exclaimed, recognising it, and confronting him with cheeks that had suddenly become colourless, and eyes that stared in terror and astonishment. “Lord save us! how did you come by that? And who for mercy’s sake are you?”

“My name’s Matthew Grice,” he answered quickly and sternly. “This Bracelet belonged to my sister, Mary Grice. She run away from home, and died, and was buried in Bangbury churchyard. If you know her grave, tell me in plain words — is it here?”

Breathless as she was with astonishment, Mrs. Peckover managed to stammer a faint answer in the affirmative, and to add that the initials, “M. G.,” would be found somewhere on the broken board lying at their feet. She then tried to ask a question or two in her turn; but the words died away in faint exclamations of surprise. “To think of me and you meeting together!” was all she could say; — ”her own brother, too! Oh! to think of that! — only to think of that!”

Mat looked down at the mud, the brambles, and the rotting grass that lay over what had once been a living and loving human creature. The dangerous brightness glittered in his eyes, the cold change spread fast over his cheeks, and the scars of the arrow-wounds began to burn redly and more redly, as he whispered to himself — ”I’ll be even yet, Mary, with the man who laid you here!”

“Does Mr. Blyth know who you are, sir?” asked Mrs. Peckover, hesitating and trembling as she put this question. “Did he give you the Bracelet?”

She stopped. Mat was not listening to her. His eyes were fastened on the grave: he was still talking to himself in quick whispering tones.

“Her Bracelet was hid from me in another man’s chest,” he said — ”I’ve found her Bracelet. Her child was hid from me in another man’s house — I’ve found her child. Her grave was hid from me in a strange churchyard — I’ve found her grave. The man who laid her in it is hid from me still — I shall find
him!”

“Please do listen to me, sir, for one moment,” pleaded Mrs. Peckover, more nervously than before.
“Does
Mr. Blyth know about you? And little Mary — oh, sir, whatever you do, pray, pray don’t take her away from where she is now! You can’t mean to do that, sir, though you are her own mother’s brother? You can’t, surely?”