Christabel laid her hand upon the passionate lips; and, kneeling by her friend’s side, comforted her with gentle caresses.
“Do you suppose I am not sorry for him, Jessie?” she said reproachfully, after a long pause.
“Yes, no doubt you are, in your way; but it is such an icy way.”
“Would you have me go raving about the house — I, Leonard’s wife, Leo’s mother? I try to resign myself to God’s will: but I shall remember him till the end of my days, with unspeakable sorrow. He was like sunshine in my life; so that life without him seemed all one dull gray, till the baby came, and brought me back to the sunlight, and gave me new duties, new cares!”
“Yes! you can find comfort in a baby’s arms — that is a blessing. My comfort was to see my beloved in his bloody shroud — shot through the heart — shot through the heart! Well, the inquest will find out something to-morrow, I hope; but I want you to go with me to-morrow morning, as soon as it is light, to the Kieve.”
“What for?”
“To see the spot where he died.”
“What will be the good, Jessie? I know the place too well; it has been in my mind all this evening.”
“There will be some good, perhaps. At any rate, I want you to go with me; and if there ever was any reality in your love, if you are not merely a beautiful piece of mechanism, with a heart that beats by clockwork, you will go.”
“If you wish it I will go.”
“As soon as it is light — say at seven o’clock.”
“I will not go till after breakfast. I want the business of the house to go on just as calmly as if this calamity had never happened. I don’t want any one to be able to say, ‘Mrs. Tregonell is in despair at the loss of her old lover.’”
“In fact you want people to suppose that you never cared for him!”
“They cannot suppose that, when I was once so proud of my love. All I want is that no one should think I loved him too well after I was a wife and mother. I will give no occasion for scandal.”
“Didn’t I say that you were a handsome automaton?”
“I do not want any one to say hard things of me when I am dead — hard things that my son may hear.”
“When you are dead! You talk as if you thought you were to die soon. You are of the stuff that wears to threescore-and-ten, and even beyond the Psalmist’s limit. There is no friction for natures of your calibre. When Werther had shot himself, Charlotte went on cutting bread and butter, don’t you know? It was her nature to be proper, and good, and useful, and never to give offence — her nature to cut bread and butter,” concluded Jessie, laughing bitterly.
Christabel stayed with her for an hour, talking to her, consoling her, speaking hopefully of that unknown world, so fondly longed for, so piously believed in by the woman who had learnt her creed at Mrs. Tregonell’s knees. Many tears were shed by Christabel during that hour of mournful talk; but not one by Jessie Bridgeman. Hers was a dry-eyed grief.
“After breakfast then we will walk to the Kieve,” said Jessie, as Christabel left her. “Would it be too much to ask you to make it as early as you can?”
“I will go the moment I am free. Good-night, dear.”
CHAPTER III.
DUEL OR MURDER?
All the household appeared at breakfast next morning; even poor Dopsy, who felt that she could not nurse her grief in solitude any longer. “It’s behaving too much as if you were his widow,” Mopsy had told her, somewhat harshly; and then there was the task of packing, since they were to leave Mount Royal at eleven, in order to be at Launceston in time for the one o’clock train. This morning’s breakfast was less silent than the dinner of yesterday. Everybody felt as if Mr. Hamleigh had been dead at least a week.
Captain Vandeleur and Mr. Montagu discussed the sad event openly, as if the time for reticence were past; speculated and argued as to how the accident could have happened; talked learnedly about guns; wondered whether the country surgeon was equal to the difficulties of the case.
“I can’t understand,” said Mr. Montagu, “if he was found lying in the hollow by the waterfall, how his gun came to go off. If he had been going through a hedge, or among the brushwood on the slope of the hill, it would be easy enough to see how the thing might have happened; but as it is, I’m all in the dark.”
“You had better go and watch the inquest, and make yourself useful to the coroner,” sneered Leonard, who had been drinking his coffee in moody silence until now. “You seem to think yourself so uncommonly clever and far seeing.”
“Well, I flatter myself I know as much about sport as most men; and I’ve handled a gun before to-day, and know that the worst gun that was ever made won’t go off and shoot a fellow through the heart without provocation of some kind.”
“Who said he was shot through the heart?”
“Somebody did — one of your people, I think.”
Mrs. Tregonell sat at the other end of the table, half hidden by the large old-fashioned silver urn, and next her sat Jessie Bridgeman, a spare small figure in a close-fitting black gown, a pale drawn face with a look of burnt-out fires — pale as the crater when the volcanic forces have exhausted themselves. At a look from Christabel she rose, and they two left the room together. Five minutes later they had left the house, and were walking towards the cliff, by following which they could reach the Kieve without going down into Boscastle. It was a wild walk for a windy autumn day; but these two loved its wildness — had walked here in many a happy hour, with souls full of careless glee. Now they walked silently, swiftly, looking neither to the sea nor the land, though both were at their loveliest in the shifting lights and shadows of an exquisite October morning — sunshine enough to make one believe it was summer — breezes enough to blow about the fleecy clouds in the blue clear sky, to ripple the soft dun-coloured heather on the hillocky common, and to give life and variety to the sea.
It was a long walk; but the length of the way seemed of little account to these two. Christabel had only the sense of a dreary monotony of grief. Time and space had lost their meaning. This dull aching sorrow was to last for ever — till the grave — broken only by brief intervals of gladness and forgetfulness with her boy.
To-day she could hardly keep this one source of consolation in her mind. All her thoughts were centred upon him who lay yonder dead.
“Jessie,” she said, suddenly laying her hand on her companion’s wrist, as they crossed the common above the slate-quarry, seaward of Trevalga village, with its little old church and low square tower. “Jessie, I am not going to see him.”
“What weak stuff you are made of,” muttered Jessie, contemptuously, turning to look into the white frightened face. “No, you are not going to look upon the dead. You would be afraid, and it might cause scandal. No, you are only going to see the place where he died; and then perhaps you, or I, will see a little further into the darkness that hides his fate. You heard how those men were puzzling their dull brains about it at breakfast. Even they can see that there is a mystery.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only as much as I say. I know nothing — yet.”
“But you suspect —— ?”
“Yes. My mind is full of suspicion; but it is all guess-work — no shred of evidence to go upon.”
They came out of a meadow into the high road presently — the pleasant rustic road which so many happy holiday-making people tread in the sweet summer time — the way to that wild spot where England’s first hero was born; the Englishman’s Troy, cradle of that fair tradition out of which grew the Englishman’s Iliad.
Beside the gate through which they came lay that mighty slab of spar which has been christened King Arthur’s Quoit, but which the Rector of Trevalga declared to be the covering stone of a Cromlech. Christabel remembered how facetious they had all been about Arthur and his game of quoits, five years ago, in the bright autumn weather, when the leaves were blown about so lightly in the warm west wind. And now the leaves fell with a mournful heaviness, and
every falling leaf seemed an emblem of death.
They went to the door of the farmhouse to get the key of the gate which leads to the Kieve. Christabel stood in the little quadrangular garden, looking up at the house, while Jessie rang and asked for what she wanted.
“Did no one except Mr. Hamleigh go to the Kieve yesterday until the men went to look for him?” she asked of the young woman who brought her the key.
“No one else, Miss. No one but him had the key. They found it in the pocket of his shooting jacket when he was brought here.”
Involuntarily, Jessie put the key to her lips. His hand was almost the last that had touched it.
Just as they were leaving the garden, where the last of the yellow dahlias were fading, Christabel took Jessie by the arm, and stopped her.
“In which room is he lying?” she asked. “Can we see the window from here?”
“Yes, it is that one.”
Jessie pointed to a low, latticed window in the old gray house — a casement round which myrtle and honeysuckle clung lovingly. The lattice stood open. The soft sweet air was blowing into the room, just faintly stirring the white dimity curtain. And he was lying there in that last ineffable repose.
They went up the steep lane, between tall tangled hedges, where the ragged robin still showed his pinky blossoms, and many a pale yellow hawksweed enlivened the faded foliage, while the ferns upon the banks, wet from yesterday’s rain, still grew rankly green.
On the crest of the hill the breeze grew keener, and the dead leaves were being ripped from the hedgerows, and whirled down into the hollow, where the autumn wind seemed to follow Christabel and Jessie as they descended, with a long plaintive minor cry, like the lament at an Irish funeral. All was dark and desolate in the green valley, as Jessie unlocked the gate, and they went slowly down the steep slippery path, among moss-grown rock and drooping fern — down and down, by sharply winding ways, so narrow that they could only go one by one, till they came within the sound of the rushing water, and then down into the narrow cleft, where the waterfall tumbles into a broad shallow bed, and dribbles away among green slimy rocks.
Here there is a tiny bridge — a mere plank — that spans the water, with a hand-rail on one side. They crossed this, and stood on the broad flat stone on the other side. This is the very heart of St. Nectan’s mystery. Here, high in air, the water pierces the rock, and falls, a slender silvery column, into the rocky bed below.
“Look!” said Jessie Bridgeman, pointing down at the stone.
There were marks of blood upon it — the traces of stains which had been roughly wiped away by the men who found the body.
“This is where he stood,” said Jessie, looking round, and then she ran suddenly across to the narrow path on the other side. “And some one else stood here — here — just at the end of the bridge. There are marks of other feet here.”
“Those of the men who came to look for him,” said Christabel.
“Yes; that makes it difficult to tell. There are the traces of many feet. Yet I know,” she muttered, with clenched teeth, “that some one stood here — just here — and shot him. They were standing face to face. See!” — she stepped the bridge with light swift feet—”so! at ten paces. Don’t you see?”
Christabel looked at her with a white scared face, remembering her husband’s strange manner the night before last, and those parting words at Mr. Hamleigh’s bedroom door. “You understand my plan?” “Perfectly.” “It saves all trouble, don’t you see.” Those few words had impressed themselves upon her memory — insignificant as they were — because of something in the tone in which they were spoken — something in the manner of the two men.
“You mean,” she said slowly, with her hand clenching the rail of the bridge, seeking unconsciously for support; “you mean that Angus and my husband met here by appointment, and fought a duel?”
“That is my reading of the mystery.”
“Here in this lonely place — without witnesses — my husband murdered him!”
“They would not count it murder. Fate might have been the other way. Your husband might have been killed.”
“No!” cried Christabel, passionately; “Angus would not have killed him. That would have been too deep a dishonour!”
She stood silent for a few moments, white as death, looking round her with wide, despairing eyes.
“He has been murdered!” she said, in hoarse, faint tones. “That suspicion has been in my mind — dark — shapeless — horrible — from the first. He has been murdered! And I am to spend the rest of my life with his murderer!” Then, with a sudden hysterical cry, she turned angrily upon Jessie.
“How dare you tell lies about my husband?” she exclaimed. “Don’t you know that nobody came here yesterday except Angus; no one else had the key. The girl at the farm told us so.”
“The key!” echoed Jessie, contemptuously. “Do you think a gate, breast high, would keep out an athlete like your husband? Besides, there is another way of getting here, without going near the gate, where he might be seen, perhaps, by some farm labourer in the field. The men were ploughing there yesterday, and heard a shot. They told me that last night at the farm. Wait! wait!” cried Jessie, excitedly.
She rushed away, light as a lapwing, flying across the narrow bridge — bounding from stone to stone — vanishing amidst dark autumn foliage. Christabel heard her steps dying away in the distance. Then there was an interval, of some minutes, during which Christabel, hardly caring to wonder what had become of her companion, stood clinging to the hand-rail, and staring down at stones and shingle, feathery ferns, soddened logs, the water rippling and lapping round all things, crystal clear.
Then, startled by a voice above her head, she looked up, and saw Jessie’s light figure just as she dropped herself over the sharp arch of rock, and scrambled through the cleft, hanging on by her hands, finding a foothold in the most perilous places — in danger of instant death.
“My God!” murmured Christabel, with clasped hands, not daring to cry aloud lest she should increase Jessie’s peril. “She will be killed.”
With a nervous grip, and a muscular strength which no one could have supposed possible in so slender a frame, Jessie Bridgeman made good her descent, and stood on the shelf of slippery rock, below the waterfall, unhurt save for a good many scratches and cuts upon the hands that had clung so fiercely to root and bramble, crag and boulder.
“What I could do your husband could do,” she said. “He did it often when he was a boy — you must remember his boasting of it. He did it yesterday. Look at this.”
“This” was a ragged narrow shred of heather cloth, with a brick-dust red tinge in its dark warp, which Leonard had much affected this year—”Mr. Tregonell’s colour, is it not?” asked Jessie.
“Yes — it is like his coat.”
“Like? It is a part of his coat. I found it hanging on a bramble, at the top of the cleft. Try if you can find the coat when you get home, and see if it is not torn. But most likely he will have hidden the clothes he wore yesterday. Murderers generally do.”
“How dare you call him a murderer?” said Christabel, trembling, and cold to the heart. It seemed to her as if the mild autumnal air — here in this sheltered nook which was always warmer than the rest of the world — had suddenly become an icy blast that blew straight from far away arctic seas. “How dare you call my husband a murderer?”
“Oh, I forgot. It was a duel, I suppose: a fair fight, planned so skilfully that the result should seem like an accident, and the survivor should run no risk. Still, to my mind, it was murder all the same — for I know who provoked the quarrel — yes — and you know — you, who are his wife — and who, for respectability’s sake, will try to shield him — you know — for you must have seen hatred and murder in his face that night when he came into the drawing-room — and asked Mr. Hamleigh for a few words in private. It was then he planned this work,” pointing to the broad level stone against which the clear water was rippling with such a
pretty playful sound, while those two women stood looking at each other with pale intent faces, fixed eyes, and tremulous lips; “and Angus Hamleigh, who valued his brief remnant of earthly life so lightly, consented — reluctantly perhaps — but too proud to refuse. And he fired in the air — yes, I know he would not have injured your husband by so much as a hair of his head — I know him well enough to be sure of that. He came here like the victim to the altar. Leonard Tregonell must have known that. And I say that though he, with his Mexican freebooter’s morality, may have called it a fair fight, it was murder, deliberate, diabolical murder.”
“If this is true,” said Christabel in a low voice, “I will have no mercy upon him.”
“Oh, yes, you will. You will sacrifice feeling to propriety, you will put a good face upon things, for the sake of your son. You were born and swaddled in the purple of respectability. You will not stir a finger to avenge the dead.”
“I will have no mercy upon him,” repeated Christabel, with a strange look in her eyes.
CHAPTER IV.
“DUST TO DUST.”
The inquest at the Wharncliffe Arms was conducted in a thoroughly respectable, unsuspicious manner. No searching questions were asked, no inferences drawn. To the farmers and tradespeople who constituted that rustic jury, the case seemed too simple to need any severe interrogation. A gentleman staying in a country house goes out shooting, and is so unlucky as to shoot himself instead of the birds whereof he went in search. He is found with an empty bag, and a charge of swan-shot through his heart.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 719
