Part 3, Chapter XX.
The Golden Wedding.
“Tina died.”
Mr Gilfil’s Love Story.
Arthur went away from the Rectory whistling gaily, and succeeded in catching Hugh before he started for Oxley. Hugh was a good but not a very keen sportsman, and the rabbits were rather a sore subject; and he replied to Arthur’s representations that, as they had been left entirely for the delectation of himself and George, it was his own fault if they were too numerous. Arthur answered that he knew Hugh had asked two friends next week, and had supposed he would want something for them to shoot.
“The Molyneuxes, do you mean? They’re not sportsmen. Never take out a gun.”
“So you said yesterday, and if you have no objection George and I will polish a few off to-day. And if you will just come out early and meet us in the plantations down by the canal, you’ll see if I’m not right.” Hugh never liked to appear indifferent about sporting matters, so he agreed to the proposal, though not very willingly, and they appointed a place and time of meeting in the afternoon. Meanwhile, Arthur, who enjoyed most things that fell to his lot, and George, who lived for the pursuit of rats and rabbits, spent a pleasant and successful morning, and when Hugh joined them could display a sufficient number of rabbits to presuppose either considerable skill on their parts or the existence of plenty of food for powder. Hugh, at Arthur’s suggestion, despatched George with three couple of rabbits to the tenant-farmer on whose land they had been shooting, and sent the keeper for some more cartridges, as their supply seemed likely to run short. Hugh and Arthur, thus left together, went on through the copses, now in the full weight and depth of their summer foliage, before the first tints of autumn varied them. It was, perhaps, the time when the woods were least attractive, since they were powerless and almost silent. Hugh was unsuccessful, and not particularly pleased thereat.
“You have got your hand out in Italy,” said Arthur, “and you have never given yourself a day’s shooting since you came home.”
“I am unlucky,” said Hugh, “but you know I am never a very good shot.”
“I wanted Jem to come; but he began to discuss the whole question of cruelty, etc, from beginning to end. So I made myself scarce.”
“It does seem a barbarous way for civilised gentlemen to spend their time,” said Hugh, but the appearance of a rabbit cut his remark short as he fired and missed it, with an exclamation of annoyance rather strong for a civilised gentleman with a contempt for sport.
“So that rabbit thinks,” said Arthur, laughing.
“Ah, there’s Mysie talking to the Woods,” he added, as they came across a stile into the copse by the canal and saw, through an opening, the lock and Mysie and Alice standing by it.
“Hugh, I wish you would make them put a rail on to those gates.”
“It’s not my affair,” said Hugh, “and they’re safe enough. You had better go and help her across.”
As Hugh spoke, rather irritated by Arthur’s fancifulness, as he considered it, another little brown rabbit started out of the ferns.
“I’ll have that one!” he said.
“Don’t fire,” said Arthur. “Look, you’ll startle Mysie.”
“Nonsense, it’s too far off,” answered Hugh sharply, and fired.
They saw the white figure start and reel, then vanish from their eyes. With a loud shout of horror Arthur flung aside his gun, and leapt down through the bushes on to the path, pursued, almost outstripped, by Hugh, who sprang right into the water, as Alice’s screams brought her father and the doctor both at once to the spot.
Arthur stopped short on the brink, as nothing but the blank water met his eyes.
“She fell in here!” he cried, clutching Alice’s arm.
“Oh yes, sir; yes—off the gates! Oh, where is she?”
“She must have caught her dress in the gate!” cried Wood.
“Or struck her head?” said Mr Dickenson.
“Let off the water—is there no boat-hook—nothing?”
What gave to Arthur the power of acting and judging he knew neither then nor afterwards. He turned round and said, low and clear:
“No, that will take too long. Open the gates, and she will be washed down the stream. Come out, Hugh, that is useless.”
“Yes, sir, for the Lord’s sake come out, or you’ll be drowned too,” cried the lock-keeper, as he turned to the great handles of the gates.
“Run, Alice, open the other!”
Quick as thought, Alice crossed the upper gates, and seized the handle. Arthur held out his hand, and, holding by a post, helped Hugh up the steep side, then ran down the bank, and stood some yards below the lock, waiting. Slowly the great doors groaned back and, with a swirl and a rush, out poured the muddy water, for the lock was full. Hugh would have thrown himself in again, but Wood held him back. Arthur strained his eyes as the water rushed through, saw something dim and white above him; sprang after it; dived, disappeared, then rose to the surface—empty-handed. The impetus of the water had carried her further than he had calculated on. Both Hugh and the lock-keeper had come to his help before the white dress rose again: but it was his hand that caught it—he caught her once more in his arms, gained his feet in the shallow water, and carried her to the bank.
There he laid her down with her head on Alice’s lap, and wrung the water from her soft, clinging dress. She had lost her hat; but her tightly-folded hair was still in its place, and one was left of the carnations that he had put in front of her dress in the morning.
Mr Dickenson knelt down and examined her carefully.
“It was not the length of time,” he said, after a few moments.
“Oh, sir, sir, she’s not dead, not drowned!” screamed Alice.
“She is not drowned. She struck her head and the back of her neck against the side. It was all over before she touched the bottom.”
He added a few technical words to explain his meaning, and Arthur understood and knew that it was true.
“Yes, she is dead,” he said, and the tone was as quiet, far quieter than the doctor’s own. He stood up, put Hugh aside, and took her in his arms again.
“Will you get into that boat, Alice?” he said, pointing to one moored at the side.
Awe-struck and sobbing, Alice obeyed.
“Sit down in the stern,” he said.
And then he laid Mysie down with her head once more on Alice’s lap, unmoored the boat, and, with quick, vigorous strokes, rowed down towards Redhurst; rowed past the meadows and the copses, as once before he had rowed his love in the same bright evening sunlight, under the same blue sky, and had talked of the future. Now the boat went on, the girl’s long fair hair dancing and waving, but her face all white and tear-stained; Arthur bare-headed, his eyes fixed far away and his lips set; and the white motionless figure, with Alice’s little handkerchief over the face, between them. Those who followed them on the bank said that it was the most awful sight their eyes had ever seen—all the more awful in that it was in a way picturesque and beautiful.
Arthur stopped at the landing. He fastened up the boat and once more lifted up his burden.
“Mr Arthur, you’ll want help,” cried Wood.
“No,” said Arthur, “she is very light. Go first, Mr Dickenson, and tell them.”
But, as he said “and tell them,” a sort of quiver came over his face, and he faltered for a moment.
“Keep close to him,” said the doctor, “I’ll go on. But where’s Mr Crichton?”
“He may have gone ahead, sir, to break the news first.”
This seemed very probable; but, in case it had not been so, Mr Dickenson hastened on across the meadow, up the shrubbery, and into the garden. No messenger of evil tidings could have forestalled him in his cruel task of breaking up that happy summer peace. Mr Crichton sat restfully on the terrace, watching for the arrival of Mr and Mrs Harcourt. James, on the step below her, was smoking, stroking his long, brown beard, and discoursing dreamily. Frederica, in her white muslin and red ribbons, was teasing Snap. Mysie’s doves, at a safe distance from Snap, were cooing on the grass; the great peacock strutting along in the background.
“Mr James Crichton!” said Mr Dickenson, stopping short of the terrace, with a glance that brought James to his side in a moment.
“What’s the matter?”
“Mr James, Miss Crofton has met with an accident. She has fallen into the water, and Mr Arthur is bringing her home. You had better get the ladies into the house.”
But, as he spoke, up from the sunny meadows came Arthur, with Mysie in his arms, closely followed by Alice Wood, now sobbing and clinging to her father’s coat. James gave one look, and saw that Mysie’s face was covered.
“Mamma! there’s an accident! Come in. Come in.” But Mrs Crichton had started up with a shriek and rushed down the path.
“What is it; what is it? The water? Has she come to herself?”
“You must let me take her in,” said Arthur, in a low, quiet voice, while James held back his mother; and Wood said, choking: “Lord have mercy on us, ma’am; she’ll never come to herself in this world!” Arthur took no notice; he went on, and they all followed indiscriminately, the servants rushing out with wild cries and questions. Arthur went up the steps, across the terrace, and through the open window, into the drawing-room, where, on the sofa, he laid his dead love down. Then he paused, hanging over her, and drew the handkerchief a little back, and put his hand softly on her wrist.
“Arthur! Arthur, my poor boy, come away,” said James, in his ear.
Arthur turned round and faced them.
“How did it happen? how did it happen?” gasped Mrs Crichton.
“The noise of the gun startled her, and she fell off the lock. She struck her head against the side, and she is dead—she is dead,” he repeated. And, in the moment’s blank pause that followed, Alice Wood’s voice rose in a wild shriek: “Dead! oh, Miss Mysie’s dead!”
“Take care of that poor little girl,” said Arthur; “she has—” but with the words his voice failed him; he staggered, and fell down in a dead faint, before James could catch him, for they had all fallen back with a sort of awe, before his collected voice and the wild stare in his eyes.
They lifted Arthur up and carried him into the house and upstairs to his own room, whither the doctor followed them. The maid-servants pressed into the drawing-room, with tears and cries of pity, till the old nurse came and put them all back. She knew what to do.
Mrs Crichton sat down again in her chair on the terrace, Frederica crouching with her head in her aunt’s lap, while Wood, whose daughter had been carried off by the maids, repeated the sad story.
It was not very easy to understand its details, told with sobs and comments innumerable; but the fact was slowly borne in on them—Mysie was dead!
Presently James returned.
“He is coming to himself,” he said. “Dickenson is going to give him some strong opiate; then he hopes that he will sleep before he knows what has happened. No one must go to him or try to rouse him now.”
“I cannot understand, now, how it happened,” said Mrs Crichton. “Where is Hugh?”
Where was Hugh? His brother’s absence struck James for the first time as extraordinary.
“Mother,” he said, “you had better let me take you into the house, and I will ask Dickenson if he knows where Hugh has gone to. Get up, Freddie, my dear girl, take care of mother. Yes, that’s right,” as Frederica, with unexpected self-command, stood up, choked back her sobs, and took her aunt by the hand. Perhaps it had hardly come yet to the time for overwhelming grief, for Mrs Crichton rose and walked into the house, unable to realise the truth of what still seemed like a frightful dream.
“What became of my brother?” he said to Wood.
“Indeed, sir, I can’t remember. I saw nothing but Mr Arthur with the dear young lady in his arms; but Mr Crichton all the time was like one demented, and would have been drowned too if Mr Arthur had not dragged him out, and I held him back from jumping into the water before the gates were fairly open. O Lord! sir, there’s the Rector coming. This news will kill the poor old gentleman, surely.”
But the ill news had flown faster than they thought for, and the office of comforter had been familiar for too many years to Mr Harcourt for him to shrink from it now; and, instead of the merry dinner-party to which he and his wife had been summoned, he had left her to realise that she had bidden little Mysie farewell for ever only a few hours before.
“Her golden wedding—her golden wedding!” he said; but with what force of allusion James hardly knew. He took the Rector, however, to his mother; and when he came out again, with a vague idea of watching for Hugh, Wood had gone to look after his daughter; and Mr Dickenson came out, reporting that Arthur, under the influence of the opiate, had fallen asleep, without rousing to the consciousness of what had happened.
“So best,” said James, with a heavy sigh; “but, Mr Dickenson, what can have become of Hugh?”
“Your brother? I never thought of him till this moment!”
“Nor I, till my mother asked for him. There—no—that’s George. What can have become of him?”
As he spoke, George, white and terrified, came panting up the path and threw himself upon James.
“Jem! Where’s Mysie; where’s Mysie?” Involuntarily James glanced back at the drawing-room, where now the window was shut and the blind drawn down behind it.
“Have you heard anything, George?” he said; “there has been a sad accident on the lock.”
“I have seen Hugh,” said George.
“Hugh! Where?”
“In the copse by the lock. Oh, Jem, he was sitting on the ground, and he had Arthur’s gun in his hand—not his own—and there was a dead rabbit. He looked—I couldn’t ask him a word. He said: ‘Go home, George, there’s no more shooting; Mysie is drowned, and—and—’”
“Steady, my boy,” said the doctor, as George paused and gasped, “take your time. What did he say?”
“He said—he said, ‘I have killed her!’”
“Nothing,” interposed Mr Dickenson, as James almost dropped into a chair with a start of horror, “Nothing that anyone says on a night like this is of the slightest consequence whatever. We don’t know what we say. What followed, George?”
“I said, ‘Oh, come now, Hugh, you had better come home. Where’s Arthur?’ And he stood up and cried out ‘Arthur! Arthur! Never—never!’ and then he rushed off out on to the heath. So,” concluded George, “I thought he was mad or something, and I ran as hard as I could to fetch someone. I never thought it was true till I saw the lock gates open and little Bessie Wood, screaming and crying, with Mysie’s wet hat; and I ran on, and there was this pink bow she wore round her neck, wet, on the path in the meadow. Oh, Jem, she’s never drowned, really—not really,” as Jem burst into tears at sight of the gay pink ribbon.
“George,” said the doctor, “you must be a man, there’s need of it. Go and fetch Mr James some wine, and drink some yourself; then come back, we shall want you. Call Wood, too.”
“I think,” said George, as he went, “someone had better look for Hugh.”
“I think so too,” said Mr Dickenson. “If Mr Crichton has any morbid ideas in his head, the sooner they are dispelled the better.”
“He could not have done it,” said James, confusedly; “she was not shot.”
“Of course not, and if she was accidentally startled by the sound of the gun no blame could attach to anyone. Here,” as George returned with the wine, “take some; we have all work before us. Wood,” he added, “do you think poor Mr Spencer right in saying Miss Crofton was startled by the sound of a gun?”
“All I know, sir, is that my daughter she screamed out, ‘The gun—the gun!’ and I ran out of the house, and Mr Arthur came tearing down from the copse without his gun. Mr Crichton he threw his away as he jumped into the water. I heard no gun in the house.”
“Neither did I,” said the doctor, “but, you see, we shall have to have their evidence to-morrow.”
“The inquest!” said James. “Ah, I never thought of that. What? Must poor Arthur?—”
“I am afraid he must; but, of course, if your brother is there to tell the story, he need say very little. But Mr Crichton must be there, you know, and we must get him home without delay.”
“I had better go and look for him,” said James, “though I hardly like to leave my mother.”
“I can stay here,” said Mr Dickenson; “and I can arrange for to-morrow better than you. Could any lady come to Mrs Crichton; and are there any relations to be sent for?”
“No,” said James, “Mysie has no near relations but my mother. But Miss Venning would come to us I am sure. George, you might go and fetch her.”
“Yes; but where’s Arthur?”
“He fainted; he is asleep. You can’t go to him now. Say nothing about Hugh. Of course, he would come back soon, but I shall go for him. Why, it is getting dusk; is it night or morning? What time can it be?”
“It is eight o’clock,” said Mr Dickenson; “or but a little after.”
James felt as if years had passed since he had seen Arthur come up the path with his sad burden, but the excitement of looking for Hugh came in almost as a relief. James was less alarmed by his absence than anyone less well acquainted with Hugh might have been. He knew the violence with which Hugh’s feelings were apt to overpower him in the first moments of a great shock, and also how completely he was soon able to govern and conceal them. James had little doubt of his speedy return; but it was less wretched to walk rapidly away with Wood, who wanted to return to his children—Alice having been left with the maids at Redhurst—than to sit at home and begin to realise what a blow had fallen on the home which had always seemed, in the few holiday weeks that he spent there, the realisation of sunshine and peace.
They came down towards the lock, which did not yet impress James with any sense of horror, so little realised was the scene connected with it.
“Why, if there ain’t the whole place turned out!” cried Wood, as they came in sight of it, and voices broke on the stillness. The banks of the canal were covered with people, gaping and staring, and surrounding the Wood children, who enjoyed the honour of having been first in the field.
“Well, here’s all Redhurst and half Oxley, and more coming along the path. Get into the house, Bessie, you little forward, unfeeling hussy, a-chattering about the poor dear young lady you saw drowned before your eyes!” cried Wood, not knowing why his real share in the sad tragedy made him so impatient of idle curiosity regarding it. Not but what there would be many genuine tears shed from many eyes for sweet Mysie Crofton; but excitement is a powerful rival at first to grief.
James stood aghast. How could he go and look for Hugh in all this confusion? How would Hugh face it?
Up stepped the inspector of police from Oxley.
“Mr James Crichton, I was fortunately on the spot first, and I have secured the gentlemen’s guns. One was found in the wood and one on the bank; also this rabbit.”
“Is Mr Spencer Crichton here?” said James.
“No, sir, I have not seen him.”
“Can’t you get all these people away?”
“Well, sir, accidents always collect a crowd.”
“My brother,” said James, “was here at the time. Perhaps, if you see him, you would tell him he is wanted at home.”
“Very well, sir,” said the inspector, with an absence of comment which was a great relief to James, who was now beset by a crowd of Redhurst folk, with questions and lamentations.
“It is all true,” James said. “We and all the place are in sad trouble. I think our friends had better go home and leave it to strangers to stare about this place.”
This produced a little effect, and Bessie, picking up the cue, hustled off the younger ones, telling them “to go in and not to be a-staring. Wasn’t Miss Mysie always telling them as little girls shouldn’t run after crowds like that of evenings?”
James ran up into the copse and out on the heath behind it; but he saw no signs of Hugh, and as the light failed he went home in despair, with the picture of his brother, as George had described him, more vividly impressed on his mind than any other of the sad events of the evening. Poor James! he did not know how to contend with the difficulties that he was left alone to bear. He was frightened to death at Hugh’s disappearance, and was almost ready to hope that Arthur might have awakened in his absence to bring his quicker powers of action to bear on the matter. For James felt that he had done just nothing.
It was some relief to find that no one could suggest any other course of action. Miss Venning had arrived and had persuaded his mother to go to bed; and James sat up, waiting and speculating on every possible and impossible cause and result of Hugh’s absence. The unalterable fact of Mysie’s death left no room for fear. Arthur was, for the moment, at rest; but what was Hugh doing?