Mrs. Ball was glad to get away from the subject of poor Mrs. Jackson. She said,
“Oh, yes, he was going up to London for the week-end- wasn’t he?”
The Vicarage stood next to the church. There was no need for Miss Blake to go out on the road and in by the lych gate. She took the short cut through the small side gate into the churchyard and followed it to the door beneath that lighted window. It was, as she had known it would be, ajar. Thirty years before, she had often slipped in to listen to Arnold Random’s playing and walked back with him when he had finished. Those thirty years had not softened her heart or sweetened her temper. They certainly had not left her with any indulgence for Arnold Random.
As she skirted the church she became aware that he had stopped playing. The sound of the organ had not, in fact, been noticeable since she left the Vicarage, yet she had certainly heard it whilst they were talking about Annie Jackson. Arnold could not have gone, or he would have locked the door behind him. He must be putting away the music. Well, so much the better -she certainly didn’t want to have to sit and listen to his playing now. Music was like a lot of other things, the interest went out of it. Her fingers could still control the keys, but her mind had lost the overtones.
She pushed open the door and went in. The door led directly into the church. The organ, with a curtain to screen the organist, lay to the left. The light which had made that faint glow came from behind the curtain. Miss Mildred switched off the torch which she had used to guide herself through the churchyard, took a single step forward, and was aware of voices. Arnold Random’s voice, high and cold, saying something about “nonsense.” And someone answering him with a country accent which seemed to be a little slurred with drink. She came forward a little, moving without any sound, and heard William Jackson say,
“And suppose it isn’t nonsense, Mr. Arnold? Suppose ’tis gospel truth as I’m telling you?”
Arnold Random said sharply,
“You’re drunk!”
From where she stood she could see a part of William Jackson’s arm from the shoulder to the elbow. The curtain had been drawn back, and he stood next to the gap with his rough coat-sleeve showing. Now he took a lurching step to the left, and she could see the back of his head with the reddish hair sticking up and catching the light. The head was being vigorously shaken.
“Not drunk. That’s where you’re wrong, sir. I didn’t ought to have had that last pint, but I’m not drunk. Not so steady on my legs as I might be, but I’m clear enough in my head. And yesterday was a twelvemonth Mr. James Random called me into the study-me and Billy Stokes-and told us we was wanted to witness his will. Yesterday was a twelvemonth.”
Arnold Random said,
“And what if it was?”
“That’s what I’ve come here to have a word about. Mr. Random he took a turn and was dead before the week was out. Supposed to be getting well he was, and the nurse going to leave and all, but he took a turn and he died. And Billy he went in the Navy, and got washed overboard. And never come home. So that leaves only me as could swear to Mr. Random signing of that will.”
“ Jackson, you are drunk! Naturally Mr. Random made a will, and it has been proved and all the business finished with. Now clear out and go home! I’m locking up.”
She could see William swaying a little from one foot to the other.
“Not so fast, sir,” he said. “If I can’t say what I want-to you, there’s others that’ll be glad enough to listen. There’s Mr. Edward for one.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s what I’m wanting to tell you. Mr. Edward-a year ago there wasn’t anyone but believed he was dead. Mr. Random, he believed it. Lawyer came out from Embank, and he altered his will. Maybe I wasn’t going past the study window when the signing was going on-maybe I haven’t got eyes in my head. Maybe I couldn’t look through the window and see what kind of a paper Mr. Random was putting his name to. A great big stiff white piece of foolscap with typing on it, and Mr. Random leaning over to sign his name, with the lawyer and his clerk, and the lady that was staying in the house- what was her name-Mrs. Peabody-awatching of him. Witnesses, I reckon they was, her and lawyer’s clerk. And she went away next day-back to Australia or something.”
“ Jackson, you are drunk.” The tone was steady but without life.
William laughed. The sound shocked Mildred Blake.
“I’m drunk-because I could look in through the study window and see Mr. Random asigning his will? And a twelvemonth ago yesterday I seen him sign another will-blue paper instead of white, and his own hand instead of all that typewriting stuff, and me and Billy Stokes for witnesses instead of lawyer’s clerk and Mrs. Peabody. A pint too much at the Lamb don’t make you as drunk as all that comes to, Mr. Arnold, and I’ll say the same when I’m stone-cold sober. And so be you don’t believe me, there’s others as will. There’s Mr. Edward for one. Suppose I was to go to him and tell him what I seen and what I heard? Billy he’d gone out by the window, and Mr. Random he was setting there with his head in his hand, staring down at that blue paper in front of him. I said, ‘Will I go now, sir?’ and he looks up at me and he says very solemn, ‘You and Mr. Edward was boys together. I saw him last night in a dream as plain as what I see you now, and he said, “I’m not dead, you know, and I’ll be coming back.” That’s why you’ve been asked to witness this new will. He mustn’t come home and find there’s nothing left for him. I’d like you to remember that, William,’ he says. ‘And I’d like you to tell him when he comes home.’ ”
He stopped. A time went by. Arnold Random spoke into the silence.
“And why didn’t you tell him?”
William Jackson shuffled with his feet.
“I thought I’d wait-I thought he’d be coming. I heard tell as he was coming. It wasn’t a thing I wanted to put on paper. I didn’t want to make trouble for myself, but seeing you’ve took and given me my notice-”
“You thought you’d trump up a story like this!”
Miss Blake saw William Jackson shake his head.
“There’s no trumping, Mr. Arnold, nor no making up. It’s gospel truth. Mr. Random made that will, and I’d take my Bible oath I saw him put his name to it, and Billy and me, we put ours, and he told me Mr. Edward had spoke to him in a dream and told him he wasn’t dead. Not that I’m wishful to make trouble, Mr. Arnold, and if you was to take back that notice and maybe give me a bit of a rise-”
Arnold Random had received a numbing shock. Under its impact all he could do was to repeat that William Jackson was drunk. It was the only weapon to his hand, the only measure of defence he had, and even as he used it he felt it weaken. If William was drunk today, he would be sober tomorrow. The drink had put words in his mouth, or it had loosened his tongue until he could bring himself to speak them aloud. But having said them, could he, or would he, unsay them again when the drink was out of him? He might. For a consideration he would. If he was given his job again and a rise, he would hold his tongue-for this time. Until he was short of cash-until the appetite for blackmail grew in him.
In the silence that was between them now the thought came clear-he was being blackmailed. Give way once, make one payment, and the chain is on your limbs for life. Whose life? The chain will not loosen till one of you is dead-and William was by more than thirty years the younger man. Rage flooded up in him, sweeping everything before it. He broke into a fury of words.
“You damned blackmailer!”
That was only the beginning. Mildred Blake put her hands to her ears, but the shouting voice came through. Such language! And in church! Several of the words were entirely new to her. How disgraceful! How unseemly! Quite sacrilegious!
She hurried out through the small side door and stood on the gravel path, hearing the angry voices rise and fall. She was shocked of course-really quite terribly shocked. But her mind was working. She had not the slightest doubt that William Jackson was speaking the truth. There had been a later will than the one under which Arn
old benefitted. In the last week of his life James Random had received what he believed to be an intimation that his nephew Edward was alive, and he had made another will. There could be no doubt at all of what the terms of that will must have been. If Arnold Random had destroyed it, he faced disgrace and imprisonment. If he heard of it now for the first time, he must submit to blackmail or lose his inheritance.
Mildred Blake was one of the few people who guessed what the possession of the Hall meant to him. Thirty years ago they had come near enough to read each others minds. There had been a brief, a very brief, space when all was clear between them. What Arnold Random saw had startled him into retreat. What Mildred Blake saw she had not forgotten. It was with her now.
The voices were louder in the church. There was a sound of footsteps. Her eyes were accustomed to the darkness now. Without waiting to put on her torch she turned and ran down the yew tunnel to the lych gate.
CHAPTER X
It was seven o’clock next morning when Jimmy Heard ran up to the front door of the Vicarage and beat upon it with all his might. He was twelve years old and a widow’s son, so he helped by doing a paper round, and that meant bicycling into Embank for the papers which came in on the seven-twenty. His father had been cow-man on one of Lord Burlingham’s farms, and the family had been allowed to stay on in a rather tumbledown cottage up the track on the far side of the stream. He beat on the Vicarage door, and when Mrs. Ball opened it in a dressing-gown he was choking and sobbing.
“Oh, Mrs. Ball, ma’am, he’s dead! He’s drownded! He’s there in the water, and I can’t move him! Oh, ma’am!”
She put a kind arm about the shaking shoulders. He was too thin-of course growing boys- There was somebody drowned. She said quickly,
“Who is it?”
He was shaking all over.
“It’s-William Jackson! Oh, ma’am, he’s drownded-down there in the splash! Oh, ma’am!”
Mrs. Ball called the Vicar, and the Vicar called the sexton. They went down to the splash together, and found William Jackson lying face downwards in no more than a couple of feet of water. It was plain enough what had happened. The big flat stepping-stone in the middle was practically awash after the heavy rain of the night before, and as the sexton put it bluntly, “If William was coming home sober, it would be a bit of a wonder. Slipped on that there stone, he did, and come down, and too fuddled to get up again, though you would ha’ thought the cold water would ha’ brought him round. Must ha’ been pretty far gone to drown in that there little pool. Well, I reckon you’d better ring up the police, sir, and I’ll see no one comes along and meddles with him.”
Jimmy was late for his papers. Mrs. Ball gave him hot cocoa and a couple of left-over scones, after which he was sufficiently fortified to go off on his bicycle, stopping to tell everyone he met that he had just found William Jackson drowned in the splash. If there had been more people abroad, he would have been later. But he told Mrs. Alexander who was watching for him out of her window to ask him to leave a message with her sister-in-law who lived next door to his paper shop, and Mrs. Deacon who was cleaning her front-door step, and Joe Caddie going off to his job on Mr. Pomfret’s farm.
Mrs. Deacon and Mrs. Alexander wanted to know a lot more than he could tell them, but Joe, whose temper was bad in the mornings, only grunted and said some people had all the luck. Mrs. Deacon hurried up and got to the Miss Blakes’ a good quarter of an hour before her time, which was eight o’clock. Rare put about, Miss Ora would be to think how she was in her back bedroom and out of the way of seeing Jimmy herself. She wouldn’t lose a minute once she was told the news-trust Miss Ora for that. Not that there would be anything to see when she got to her sofa in the front room-Vicarage gate, and the church beyond, and the road going down to the splash. But you couldn’t see the water, not if it was ever so. She almost ran down the village street and up into Miss Ora’s bedroom with her news.
“Oh, miss-that there William Jackson-the one that married Annie Parker, pore thing!”
Miss Ora sat up straight in her bed, her hair in curling-pins and a shawl about her shoulders.
“I always said he was a bad lot. What has he done?”
“Oh, miss, he’s drowned!”
“What!”
“Jimmy Heard found him and come over so funny he don’t know how he got up to the Vicarage! And Vicar calls Mr. Williams, and they goes down and finds him just like Jimmy says, and Vicar comes back and rings up the police!”
Miss Ora was taking the pins out of her hair.
“Then they will be sending out the ambulance from Embank. I must get up at once! My comb and handglass, Mrs. Deacon! I don’t see how anyone could drown in the splash. Unless he was drunk, which I suppose he was.”
“Pore Annie!” said Mrs. Deacon.
Miss Mildred Blake said, “Nonsense!”
They had neither of them noticed the opening of the door. It startled them now to see her standing there, very grim and sallow in the old black coat which she wore in place of a dressing-gown. She went on harshly,
“There’s no poor Annie about it, Mrs. Deacon. He’s been a bad husband, and it was a bad day for her when she married him.”
It was the general verdict.
Miss Ora got to her sofa in time to see the ambulance go by and presently come back again. She pulled a second shawl about her and had all the windows in the bay set wide so that she might miss nothing that was said by the passers-by. She sent Clarice Dean on three separate errands to Mrs. Alexander’s shop in order that she might be kept abreast of local opinion.
The women at least would be in and out with their tongues going like so many mill-clappers, but it irked her to the very marrow of her bones that there was no one she could send into the Lamb when the men began to assemble there. They would be careful of course, because of the landlord. It was against the law to let a man get drunk on your premises, and drunk William Jackson must have been, or he wouldn’t have drowned himself in that little bit of water. Of course Mr. Parsons would swear William had had no more than a couple of pints, and there wasn’t a man who wouldn’t back him up. There was talk of the license not being renewed as it was, and they wouldn’t want to go to Embank for their beer. She said all this as many times as it came up in her mind-to Mrs. Deacon, to Clarice, to Mildred. None of them had much to say in return.
Mildred sat down to her writing-table and went through the housekeeping books. Terribly particular she was about them. And presently she had out her Post Office Savings book and went through that, and her bank book. Though Miss Ora was the elder, she had nothing to do with the accounts. Mildred was always saying how little they had to live on, and how terribly careful they must be. She certainly never spent anything on herself. Why, that old coat she wore instead of a dressing-gown had been got more than thirty years ago as mourning for poor Papa. And look at her now, in a darned flannel blouse and the dreadful coat and skirt which had come to them with their old cousin Lettice Halliday’s things. She had wanted to send it to a jumble sale, but Mildred had worn it ever since.
Miss Ora looked complacently from her sister’s dingy grey to her own pretty blue shawl. Figures made her head ache, and she was more than willing to leave the accounts to Mildred provided she could have her scented soap, her bath salts, her blue ribbons, her pretty shawls, and her library subscription. She read one sentimental novel after another with the pleasure which comes from a comfortable familiarity. She liked to know exactly what was going to happen. There must be no disagreeable surprises, no unforeseen developments. The lovely ward must marry her disagreeable guardian who is not really disagreeable at all but merely hiding a romantic passion under the cloak of austerity. The unjustly accused hero must be vindicated. Cinderella must have her Prince, and wedding bells-must ring with a deafening persistence. In fact,
Jack shall have Jill,
Nought shall go ill,
The man shall have his mare again,
And all shall go well.
The am
bulance came, and went. Knots of people gathered in the street to watch it go. William Jackson had had a glass too much and fallen into the stream and been drowned. The ambulance had taken him away, and Mrs. Ball had gone to tell his wife. There would have to be an inquest.
The morning passed.
CHAPTER XI
When lunch was over Mildred Blake put on her hat and went out. Miss Ora watched her go, and felt herself aggrieved. Why couldn’t Mildred come in and say where she was going? She watched her turn to the left, so she wasn’t going to the Vicarage, or to see Annie Jackson. Miss Ora’s blue eyes, which saw everything, watched her go by old Mrs. Palmer’s-ninety-three and bedridden, and Mrs. Wood’s-Johnny was the naughtiest child in Greenings and the subject of just suspicion if anyone missed their apples.
Mildred went past both cottages without so much as a turn of the head, right on and out of sight. Well, that could only mean one thing-she was going to see Emmeline Random. And without so much as changing out of that old coat and skirt! Miss Ora clicked with her tongue. Really Mildred was quite hopeless!
Mildred Blake did not turn in at the south lodge. She walked past Emmeline’s bright, untidy garden without giving it a glance and went on up the long drive to the Hall, where she rang the bell and asked for Arnold Random. She had a little black book in her hand with a pencil hanging from it by a piece of string. Everyone in Greenings knew that book. Miss Mildred was a rigorous collector. When it wasn’t the Sunday School outing it was the Children’s Christmas Treat, or the Mothers’ Outing, or an Institute Tea. Doris Deacon who opened the door wondered which of them it was this time. A bit early for Christmas, and the mothers had had their treat in August. She was hesitating in her own mind, when Miss Blake said abruptly, “Mr. Random is in the study? Then I will just go in,” and went past her without waiting for an answer.
The Watersplash Page 5
