Randolph went to Jane and helped her to her feet. He held his sister to him and patted her shoulder. ‘There, there, my dear, try to remain calm.’ Glancing at Bernard, he said, ‘You look all in, young man. When did you last eat? At midday, I’ll be bound. Emma, take him down to the kitchen and see he has something, some broth at least.’
Bernard was hesitant, looking at his patient, and Randolph added, ‘We’ll call you at once if there’s any change.’
‘Very well! But I’ll not be away long.’
Outside in the hall, he whispered to Emma, ‘You had better know the true situation. There are internal injuries, and he is also suffering from the effects of exposure. I’m afraid I don’t expect him to last through until morning.’
‘Yes, Mr Sutcliffe told me.’
He nodded, frowning slightly at Matthew’s name. ‘It was Sutcliffe and the two fellows he had with him who found your uncle, did he explain? Mr Hardaker organised everything with the greatest efficiency, as one would expect of him. I met the returning searchers on my way back from the shepherd’s cottage, where I discovered that Dr Eade had already seen the child safely through the crisis.’
‘Yes, thank heaven! At least poor Uncle Paget has the solace of knowing that he saved the little girl. But he still seems in deep distress.’
‘Believe me, Emma, he is not really conscious now. Mrs Eade is undergoing far greater distress than he.’
The kitchen was crowded with men, their wet clothes steaming as they stood around the roaring fire in the grate. Emma allowed herself to glance briefly at Matthew, and their eyes held in a fleeting moment of intimacy. Bernard was at once assailed with questions, but he could only shake his head sadly.
‘Alas, there is no hope for Dr Eade. I fear his constitution is insufficiently robust to bring him through such an ordeal.’
There was no more broth left but Mrs Hoad cut Bernard a plate of cold beef, while her husband drew him a glass of beer from the keg on the dresser. He ate quickly and had almost finished when they heard a commotion of shouting voices in the hall above, then running footsteps on the kitchen stairs. The door was flung open by Randolph.
‘Bernard, come quickly! I think Paget’s going.’
Bernard sprang to his feet and Emma followed as he ran up to the hall. Chloe was standing in the parlour doorway, beckoning anxiously.
‘Jane is with him,’ she whispered. ‘I thought I’d better leave them alone.’
Inside the room, Jane was crouched over her husband, crying with the most pitiful abandon. Emma gently drew her aside so that Bernard could make an examination.
In a moment Bernard shook his head, saying, ‘I’m afraid he has already gone. He must have passed away without ever regaining consciousness.’
‘No, that’s not true!’ Jane protested hysterically. ‘He did come round just at the last. He did! He said, “Forgive me, Jane, and I shall die happy.” And I told him I willingly forgave him for everything.’
Bernard looked astonished. He glanced at Randolph. ‘What happened exactly, Mr Hardaker, after I left the room?’
‘There was no sign of him coming round while I was with him,’ said Randolph, ‘Jane had worked herself up into such a state, poor lass, that I told Chloe to take her out of the room for a bit to get hold of herself. But within a few minutes I heard a rattling in Paget’s throat and he looked really bad. I could see it was near the end, so I called my sisters back quickly and came down to fetch you. Poor Paget! But I’m glad he rallied enough at the end to put things right with Jane.’
Chloe, wringing her hands and looking very pale, seemed at a complete loss, but Randolph was Jane’s comforter. As he led his younger sister from the room, he talked to her gently, speaking of Paget with kindness and sympathy.
It was Emma who put Jane to bed in one of the spare rooms, which had been hastily aired for her; and a few minutes later Bernard came in with a sleeping draught to settle her for the night.
* * *
In the master bedroom at High Banks Emma stood with her two aunts, Jane and Chloe, a little back from the window, watching as the solemn funeral cortege set out. The hearse was drawn by four black-plumed geldings, six mutes bearing crape-swathed wands in melancholy attendance. In the leading carriage were Randolph Hardaker and Bernard Mottram, the latter given an honoured place not only as Paget’s partner but also, Jane had insisted, almost his adopted son. Following behind were four more carriages, each bearing four mourners; in the third was Matthew, invited as the man who had found Paget on that tragic night. And lastly, in the trap a discreet distance to the rear, the two men-servants, Hoad, who had known Jane since her childhood, and the Eades’ groom, Sugden.
They returned to High Banks for the funeral meats and were gathered in Jane’s drawing room sipping a solemn glass of sherry, when Emma found Matthew by her side. It was her first opportunity for several days to speak to him. The look in his eyes was an unmistakable message of love, but his words were appropriate to the grave occasion as he enquired solicitously how her aunt had been faring since her husband’s death.
‘She’s been dreadfully upset,’ Emma told him. ‘Weeping all the time and getting worse rather than better. It doesn’t seem to have helped that Uncle Paget recovered to speak a few words to her, just before the end.’
‘He spoke to Mrs Eade?’
‘Yes, to ask her forgiveness.’
‘I wonder what he meant by that,’ said Matthew reflectively.
‘He was referring to their daughter. What else?’
Matthew glanced over his shoulder to assure himself they were not being overheard. Even so, he lowered his voice.
‘This mightn’t be the most appropriate moment, Emma, but I don’t know when we shall next have a chance to talk. The other evening I learned something about Dr Eade that set me thinking. You recall telling me that you believed it was grief over their daughter’s death which started off his drinking?’
‘So it was! Everyone knows that.’
Matthew shook his head. ‘No, the drinking started earlier than the daughter’s death. It was because he was intoxicated at the time she became ill that he misdiagnosed her condition and allowed her to die.’
‘No, that can’t be true!’ Emma protested.
‘I assure you it is! I had it first-hand from the Eades’ groom who has been with them for many years. He was one of my team in the search, and naturally we fell to talking about Dr Eade, but I’m sure he didn’t realise the significance of what he was telling me.’
‘Significance? What do you mean?’
Matthew dropped his voice still lower so that she had to listen carefully to hear him above the hubbub in the room.
‘When a man who has a reputation for being steady and reliable – almost abstemious, in fact – suddenly takes to heavy drinking, it can only be attributed to some deeply disturbing event in his life. In your Uncle Paget’s case, it was natural for people to assume that his dependence on alcohol began when he failed to save his daughter. But the facts are otherwise. By discreet questioning of Sugden I established the date fairly exactly – and it coincided with the time when your father was killed.’
Emma tried to hold back her avalanching thoughts and examine his words one by one, to reduce their horrifying impact.
‘But – but what connection could Uncle Paget have had with my father’s death?’ she whispered.
His dark eyes were serious and intent as he looked at her.
‘I have come to the conclusion that I was mistaken in suspecting William Hardaker. This new evidence points to Dr Eade, though as yet I know of no reason why he and your father should have quarrelled violently. But there must have been some reason, Emma, and I intend to discover what it was.’
* * *
Seated beside Jane in the padded window seat, Chloe paid scant attention to her sister’s tearful lamentations. She was observing Emma and Matthew engrossed in conversation. It was a disgrace, after the girl had been warned about him. Was Emma so stupefied by
his flattering attentions that she couldn’t perceive the kind of man Matthew Sutcliffe really was? Chloe had been hearing talk everywhere about the way he’d been calling on Blanche, alone and late in the evening! She glanced towards her sister-in-law, sitting over by the fireplace, and saw that although Blanche was ostensibly absorbed in talking to Bernard, she was watching the couple across the room with jealous eyes. Not that Chloe had any sympathy to waste on Blanche! And it was being whispered, too, that Matthew Sutcliffe had been seen in an establishment in Wyke, in the company of one of those – even in the privacy of her mind she baulked at the distasteful word – one of those low women of the town! Now he had the effrontery to try his captivating wiles on Emma.
Chloe’s gall rose at the thought of Hugh’s daughter – her niece – and Arnold Sutcliffe’s son coming together. It was as if, she brooded, fate had decreed her own humiliation was not enough; as if through the second generation, through Arnold Sutcliffe’s son by that odious woman he had married, she was being made to suffer all over again.
Chloe closed her eyes against the pain, but at once her mind was tortured with the vivid, stabbing images that had haunted it through all her adult years. High summer, a sleepy Sunday afternoon and herself as a girl of seventeen, running happily through the scented meadow pastures, her bonnet ribbons flying. Just a short time before, looking from the conservatory of the grand new house her papa had recently built, she had caught sight of her beloved sitting astride a wall at the bottom of the slope that ran down to the river. She had waved at him eagerly, and Arnold had waved back. It had been agony, waiting minute by minute until she could slip away from her mama unobserved. But at long last she was free, and her heart sang with joy as she skipped along. But Arnold was nowhere to be seen – he must be hiding from her! She climbed the stile and looked behind the drystone wall of the seven-acre field, but he wasn’t there. Nor was he concealed by the thick trunk of the oak tree near the drinking trough. Chloe glanced around breathlessly. There was only one place left, surely the tumbledown old cruck barn! She ran to it, calling to him expectantly, ‘Arnold, where are you? Come on, don’t be a tease, I know you’re there somewhere.’ At the gaping entrance where the old plank doors had fallen in, she had stopped and peered inside, waiting until her eyes could penetrate the gloom. He wasn’t there! Then, from up above, she heard a muffled exclamation. Of course, the hay loft!
Holding her breath, smothering an excited laugh, she had crept up the rickety ladder. As her eyes crested the loft floor, she met the startled gaze of another pair of eyes – and then another pair! Chloe stared in horror, petrified, unable to utter a sound. There in the tumbled hay lay Maggie Crowther, her skirt cast aside, her petticoats up above her waist. And Arnold lay on top of her, their bare limbs entwined. The pulsing seconds seemed like hours before the young man moved, rolling away and hastily covering his nakedness, while the girl pushed down her petticoats. The hush of the afternoon was split by a scream that Chloe only afterwards realised was her own voice. Careless of tearing her Sunday-best clothes, she scrambled feverishly down the ladder, fleeing from the barn and across the fields; running, running with all her might.
She had never spoken to either of them again – never, never, never! Not when they were married; not when, two years later, a son was born to them. Not even when Arnold Sutcliffe was made overlooker at the mill and she could not avoid seeing him on her visits there. Not so much as a single, solitary word. As if she would demean herself! Maggie Crowther, a smallholder’s daughter who had been her fellow pupil at the Misses Smallbent’s Academy; and Arnold Sutcliffe, whose father had been nothing more than a wool-sorter. She had offered them her friendship, and this was her reward. People like that were little better than servants. Chloe despised and hated them.
Like father, like son! She hated Matthew Sutcliffe and all he stood for. Hated his pretensions now that he was wealthier than the Hardakers themselves; hated his arrogance when as a young man he had claimed that credit for the Hardaker Condensing Engine should by rights go to his father, that Hugh Hardaker had stolen it. Chloe smiled to herself at the memory, a bitter smile that was like a knife piercing her heart. With what savage joy she had seized her opportunity, that day Hugh had shown her the patent application he’d drawn up, in the name of Arnold Sutcliffe!
‘Don’t you see!’ she’d cried excitedly, ‘now that he’s dead you can destroy this document and prepare another, this time with your name as the inventor.’
How bewildered Hugh had looked! That twin brother of hers could be very slow-witted at times.
‘But, Chloe, it was entirely Arnold’s idea, and he did all the development in his spare time. I merely offered to write up this specification for him in the proper form.’
‘What of it? He was just a mill hand, an employee of the Hardakers, and that’s all he ever would have been. And now that he’s dead, it would be too absurd to let that document be registered in his name.’
‘You always disliked Arnold,’ Hugh had said, looking at her curiously. ‘I never understood why.’
‘Disliked? How ridiculous! Why should I dislike the man? Arnold Sutcliffe was nothing to me, one way or the other.’
Having ruled Hugh as a child, she’d not expected such resistance from her twin. But she’d won him over in the end. And then, when that loud-mouthed Sutcliffe boy had started spreading the story that his father had been the true inventor of the condensing engine, Hugh had panicked and weakly wanted to give way to him. But she’d soon put a stop to that nonsense!
It was outrageously unfair that Arnold Sutcliffe’s son had returned from Australia a rich man, lording it in the Brackle Valley, accepted everywhere; and now he dared to cast desirous eyes upon Hugh’s daughter. Had it been up to her, as soon as Matthew Sutcliffe’s identity was discovered the Hardakers would have cut the wretch dead. But Randolph had seen fit to decree otherwise, and she could not bend Randolph to her will, as she had always bent Hugh.
Chloe opened her eyes and discovered they were moist with tears.
Across the room The Reverend Thomas Milner, who had officiated at Paget’s interment, was now giving Randolph the benefit of his views on Mr Charles Darwin’s deplorable theory that man was descended from the apes. He broke off his diatribe and peered over his spectacles at the two sisters who sat together on the window seat.
‘Ah, how they grieve!’ he tutted with compassion, ‘But it is only right and proper that they should, after such a tragic loss.’ He gave a deep sigh, and sipped appreciatively at his glass of fine amontillado sherry.
Chapter Fifteen
Chloe had stayed on at High Banks to keep her sister company but she returned home in time for dinner on the third day, and Emma left Cathy for an hour to join her uncle and aunt for the meal.
‘It really is too absurd,’ Chloe remarked acidly, ‘the way Jane is making such a display of her grief. She’s scarcely eating a morsel – well, I suppose starving won’t hurt her for a few days! But she trails around the house with puffy red eyes, ready to burst into a flood of tears at the smallest provocation. I even had to address the funeral cards for her, she said her hand shook so much she couldn’t hold a pen.’ Chloe gave a short, dry laugh. ‘To see Jane now, nobody would credit that she despised Paget all those years.’
Emma, grasping the opportunity to probe further into the matter which had festered in her mind ever since Matthew had spoken of it at the funeral, said thoughtfully, ‘It doesn’t appear to have helped her at all that Uncle Paget recovered consciousness for a few moments just before he died, long enough for Aunt Jane to tell him she forgave him.’ She spooned up the last of her partridge soup, but when neither Randolph nor Chloe made any comment, she continued, ‘It seems so dreadfully sad that their marriage should have been blighted because of a single mistake. A terrible mistake, I know, but all the same Aunt Jane cannot believe that Uncle Paget was wantonly careless in not saving poor Annabella’s life.’ Pausing deliberately for a moment, she added, ‘That was why he started
drinking, wasn’t it?’
‘Really, Emma, this is no fit subject for a young woman of your age to be discussing,’ Chloe protested, but Randolph waved her to silence. ‘It seems the obvious conclusion, lass. Why do you question it?’
Having manoeuvred the conversation so far, Emma was at a loss to know how to continue.
‘I – I don’t really know. It’s just that I can remember Uncle Paget being a heavy drinker ever since I was old enough to understand, and somehow I’ve always had the impression that it started after Annabella’s death. I merely wondered if that was true.’
Chloe, looking highly disapproving, shot a glance at her brother to see if he was going to censure Emma. But Randolph had risen to his feet, preparing to carve the joint of boiled gammon on the sideboard.
‘As it happens,’ she said, tight-lipped, ‘it is true! And now that your morbid curiosity has been satisfied, Emma, let us please change the subject. We don’t want the servants overhearing.’
‘I wouldn’t have mentioned it before the servants, Aunt Chloe.’
‘I should hope not, indeed!’
After dinner Randolph returned to the mill. Chloe and Cathy were both sleeping and the house was wrapped in its usual afternoon hush. Emma felt restless, disinclined even to read. She was very much on edge and longed to be doing something active and positive. The thought came to her suddenly that she had never looked through the remaining contents of her mother’s deed box. At once she went up to the attic and carried an armful of the tape-tied packages to her own room, spreading them on the bed. She selected the bundle of letters penned in her father’s hand – love letters to her mama. Emma held them a moment, then dropped them back on the quilted counterpane. Not just now! One day she would read them, when she was really happy.
Opening one of the other parcels she spread out the receipted bills it contained. There were several invoices on pale blue paper from a bookseller in Bloomsbury, made out to Hugh Hardaker Esquire. These were for books dealing with aspects of the textile industry, such as the development of the Jacquard loom and the new ring-frame spinning machines in America; the volumes had passed to Uncle Randolph after papa’s death, and were now kept in the glass-fronted cabinet over the secretaire in his study, though whether he had ever read them was another matter. Unlike papa, her uncle wasn’t a technically-minded man. Emma was about to gather the invoices up again when she noticed that one of them, dated only a few months before her father had died, was for a book entitled Patent Law and Practice. Patents! Papa must have bought it for reference when preparing the specification for the Hardaker Condensing Engine. Or, as Matthew insisted it should rightly be, the Sutcliffe Engine.
The Other Cathy Page 17
