CHAPTER XIII
The doctor who attended Nathan Baskerville in his last illness heard from Eliza Gollop what had been done, and he took a serious view of it. From the standpoint of his opinions Humphrey Baskerville had struck a blow at society and the established order.
The physician was sober-minded and earnest. He communicated with the coroner of the district, stated the case impartially and left the official to act as seemed proper to him. But the coroner was also a medical man, and he reduced the problem to its simplest possible dimensions.
Death had been hastened by an uncertain measure of time for one who was enduring extreme agony. He judged the case on its own merits, after a rare judicial faculty peculiar to himself. He made no effort to consider its general bearing and tendency; he did not enlarge his survey to the principles involved. His sympathy was entirely on the side of Humphrey Baskerville; he applauded the old man in his heart and declared no inquest necessary. None was therefore held.
Those interested in Nathan's end took opposite views, and as for Humphrey himself, he was hidden for a time from the people and did not appear again in public until his brother's funeral. He failed, therefore, to learn the public opinion.
Jack Head and those who thought as he did, upheld the action; but not a few shared the faith of Thomas Gollop, openly expressed at the bar of 'The White Thorn' while still the dead master lay above.
For two days Nathan kept a sort of humble state, and the folk from far and near enjoyed the spectacle of his corpse. Many tramped ten miles to see him.
The humblest people appeared; the most unexpected persons acknowledged debts of unrecorded kindness. He lay in his coffin with a face placid and small behind the bush of his silver beard. Women wept at the sight and took a morbid joy in touching his folded hands.
Then he was hidden for ever and carried with difficulty down the narrow and winding stair of the inn.
Thomas Gollop dug the grave and Joe Voysey helped him. No younger men assisted them. They felt a sort of sentiment in the matter.
"'Tis the last pit I shall open, Joe," said Mr. Gollop; "and for my part, if I had my way, I shouldn't make it very deep. In these cases the law, though slow, is sure, and it may come about that he'll have to be digged up again inside a month to prove murder against that dark, awful man to Hawk House."
"'Tis the point of view. I don't look at it quite the same. For my part, in my business, I see a lot of death—not men but plants. And when a bush or what not be going home, I don't stand in the way. 'No good tinkering,' I often says to Miss Masterman, for the silly woman seems to think a gardener can stand between a plant and death. 'The herb be going home,' I says, 'and us can't stay the appointed time.' 'But I don't want it to go home—it mustn't go home,' she'll answer me—like a silly child talking. However, when her back be turned, I do my duty. The bonfire's the place. Jack Head looked over the kitchen-garden wall a bit agone and seed me firing up; and he said, 'Ah, Joe, your bonfire's like charity: it covers a multitude of sins!' A biting tongue that man hath!"
Joe chuckled at the recollection, but Gollop was not amused.
"A plant and a man are very different," he answered. "Scripture tells us that the fire is the place for the withered branch, but where there's a soul working out its salvation in fear and trembling, who be we worms to stand up and say 'go'?"
"It might be the Lord put it in Mr. Baskerville's heart," argued Voysey.
"The Lord ban't in the habit of putting murder in people's hearts, I believe."
"You didn't ought to use the word. He might have you up if he come to hear it."
"I wish he would; I only wish he would," declared Thomas. "Fearless you'd find me, with Eliza's evidence behind me, I can promise you. But not him: he knows too well for that."
They stood and rested where Nathan's grave began to yawn beside that of his brother. White marble shone out above Vivian, and not only his farewell verse, but also a palestric trophy representing the old wrestler's championship belt, was carved there.
"'Twill make history in more ways than one—this death will," foretold Thomas.
"What do you think? Parson's going to help with the funeral!"
"Why not?"
"'Why not?' You ask that! Nat was a Dissenter and his dissenting minister be going to bury him; but Masterman says, seeing how highly thought upon he was by all parties, that it becomes all parties to be at his grave. And he's going to be there; and if the bishop comed to learn of it, there'd be a flare-up that might shake England in my opinion."
"If his reverence says he'll be there, there he'll be."
"I don't doubt that. My belief is that all's well knowed at headquarters, and they're giving the man rope enough to hang hisself with. This may be the last straw."
Comforted by the reflection, Thomas resumed his labours.
"He'll lie cheek by jowl with his brother," he said. "Go easy in that corner, Joe; us'll be getting to the shoulder of Vivian's bricks afore long."
The circumstance of Nathan's passing had been received with very real grief by most of his relations. Even distant kindred mourned and not a few of the race, who were strangers to the Baskervilles of Shaugh Prior, appeared at the funeral. Mrs. Baskerville of Cadworthy felt helpless and faced almost with a second widowhood, for all her financial affairs had rested in Nathan's willing hand since her husband died. Her daughters also mourned in very genuine fashion. Their uncle had been kind, helpful, and generous to them. Only Mr. Bassett did not greatly suffer, for now he knew that his wife must inherit her own and hoped, indeed, for some addition under the will of the departed innkeeper.
As for Rupert Baskerville, he endured very real grief; but Ned was too concerned with the bearing of this event on his own affairs to feel it deeply. He would now be free to administer his capital as he pleased. Only his mother stood between. One black cloud, however, thrust itself upon his immediate future. His wedding was postponed. Cora insisted upon it, and her mother supported her. Their motives were widely different, but they arrived at the same conclusion.
Priscilla hid her grief from all eyes but her son's; while he, less skilled, surprised the folk by his evident sorrow. They failed to understand it, and acute people laughed, judged it to be simulation, and despised the man for his display. Cora and Phyllis neither pretended nor felt grief. The elder had talked her sister round, and they arrived at a perfectly rational conclusion. It was averse from their father. It led them to regard him as a selfish and a cruel man. They considered also that he had deceived himself, and wickedly wronged the unborn that he might perform a far-fetched obligation to the dead.
Cora put the case very clearly.
"Mother won't see it, and 'tis vain to try to make her; and Heathman won't see it, because he's a fool, and only just misses being weak in his head. But I see it clear enough, and the ugly truth of the man is that for five thousand pounds he was content to let his children come into the world bastards. That's what he did, and I'm not going to pretend I care for him or shall ever respect his memory."
"It'll never come out, however," said Phyllis.
"I'm sure I hope it won't—not out of my mouth, anyway. But still it is so, and all the money he may have left behind him won't make me feel different."
"We shall be rich, I hope, anyway," speculated Phyllis.
"I suppose we shall; and that's the only bright thing about it."
"'Twill be funny not walking first behind the coffin, and not sitting in the mourners' pew after for the Sunday sermon; and we knowing all the time that's where we ought to be," said the younger; but Cora exploded the theory.
"Not at all. We've no right there—not the right of the most distant cousin twenty times removed. Mother was his mistress, and she daren't use the word 'husband' even to us, though I've seen her mouth itching to do it. 'Tis always 'your dear father.' She can't put on a widow's streamers, though it's in her heart to. She'll have to balance her black pretty cautious, I can tell you, if she don't want the people to be staring."
"Surely it must all come out if he leaves his money to us."
"He'll do it clever," said Cora bitterly. "With all his faults he was clever enough. He didn't hide this—so clever as a lapwing hides her nest—for near thirty years, to let it come out the minute he was dead."
"If I was engaged to be married, like what you are, I shouldn't be so nervous," said Phyllis.
"As to that, 'twas as well for me that it fell out now and not later. It may mean a bigger establishment after all; and even a bigger wedding, if I put it off till spring."
"My word, what'll Ned say?"
But Ned's view did not enter as a serious factor into Cora's.
"He's all right," she answered. "If I'm content, so's he."
Storm heralded the funeral day, and dawn blinked red-eyed from much weeping. It was hoped that further torrents might hold off until after the ceremony, and happily they did so, though intermittent rain fell and the wind stormed roughly out of a sad-coloured south.
"'Blessed be the carpse that the rain rains on,'" said Joe Voysey in muffled accents to Jack Head.
They were walking under the coffin, and bore it, with the assistance of six other men, to the grave.
"Ban't so blessed for them that's alive, however," answered Jack. "The mourners will be lashed out of their skins by the look of it. Death's never so busy as at a funeral."
A purple pall spread over the coffin, and while humble men carried the weight of Nathan Baskerville's dust, others of greater repute stood at the corners of the coverlet. They included Mr. Luscombe of Trowlesworthy, Timothy Waite of Coldstone Farm, Heathman Lintern as representing Undershaugh, one Mr. Popham from Cornwood, Nathan's lawyer, and others.
Humphrey Baskerville walked beside the coffin as chief mourner, and Hester Baskerville, on her son Ned's arm, followed him with the rest of the family, save Nathan's namesake, who was at sea. Other relations came after them, with Nicholas Bassett, Polly's husband, and Milly, the wife of Rupert. Cora and her mother and her sister were next in the long procession, and half a dozen private carriages stood together beneath the churchyard wall to support a convention and indicate the respect that their owners entertained towards the dead.
Flowers covered the pall and stood piled beside the grave. Crosses, wreaths, and various trophies were here, together with many little humble bunches from cottage gardens, and not a few mere gleanings from the hedgerow of scarlet and crimson berries, or the last autumnal splendour of beech and briar. The air was heavy with emotion, and many wept. A congregational minister conducted the service, and the vicar helped him. After the body had sunk to earth and the rite was nearly accomplished, the chief mourners took their last look upon the lid, according to custom. Leaves whirled in the air, and the branches overhead made a mighty sigh and swough in the brief silence. Underfoot was trampled mire and reeking grass. A pushing child slipped in the clay at the grave-mouth, and nearly fell in. She was dragged back by Thomas Gollop and despatched weeping to the rear.
Humphrey Baskerville came almost the last to look into the grave, and as others had fallen away from it when he did so, he assumed a momentary prominence. His small, bent, and sombre shape appeared alone at the edge of the cleft-in earth, with flowers piled about his knees. Then suddenly, ominously, cutting its way through the full diapason of the storm-sounds on trees and tower, there crept a different utterance. The wind shouted deep and loud; but this noise was thin and harsh—a hissing, a sharp, shrill sibilation that gained volume presently and spread epidemic into the crowded ranks of the collected men. They were mostly the young who permitted themselves this attack, but not a few of their elders joined with them. The sounds deepened; a groan or two threaded the hisses. Then Baskerville, from his abstraction, awakened to the terrific fact that here, beside his brother's grave, in the eyes of all men, a demonstration had broken out against him. Hands were pointed, even fists were shaken.
He could not immediately understand; he looked helplessly into certain angry faces, and then shrank back from the grave to where his relations stood.
"What's the meaning of this?" he asked Ned; but the young man turned and pretended not to hear him. Then the truth came hurtling like a missile. Voices shouted at him the words 'murderer' and 'brother-killer.'
The fire that lights a mob into one blaze was afoot, and leaping from heart to head. Many for a jest bellowed these insults at him, and thought it good for once to bate so unpopular a creature. A few in honest and righteous rage cried out their wrath. Of such were those who stoned the martyrs to serve their jealous gods. More stones than one now actually did fly, and Humphrey was struck upon the arm. A counter display of feeling ran like a wave against the enemies of the man, and induced a shock in the crowd. Masterman and others laboured to still the gathering storm; women's voices clacked against the gruffer noise of the men. Voysey, with admirable presence of mind, drew some boards over the dead in his grave, that no quick spirit might suddenly fall upon him.
The disturbance ended as swiftly as it had begun, for Humphrey Baskerville made a bolt, dashed through the crowd, descended the churchyard steps, and reached the street. A dozen hastened to follow, but Jack Head, Lintern, Waite, Mr. Masterman, and Ben North, the policeman, resisted the rioters, and kept them within the churchyard walls as far as possible. Jack hit so hard that soon he was involved in a battle against odds on his own account.
Meantime, with a clod or two whizzing past his head, Humphrey reached the street corner and hastened round it. Here was silence and peace. He stopped, and his brain grew dizzy. Such exertion he had not made for many years. He heard the noise of men and hastened on. A chaos of ideas choked his mind and dammed all play of coherent thought. He had heard a rumour that the thing he had done for his brother was regarded differently by different men, but he knew not that so many were incensed and enraged. The shock of the discovery disarmed him now and left him frantic. He looked forward, and believed that his last hope of reconciliation with humanity was dead. He envied the eternal peace of his brother as he struggled on against the hill homeward.
Into the black and water-logged heart of Shaugh Moor he climbed presently, and from exhaustion and faintness fell there. He stopped upon the ground for a few moments; then lifted himself to his hands and knees; then sat down upon a stone and stared down into the theatre of this tragedy.
Overhead a sky as wild as his soul made huge and threatening preparations for the delayed tempest. Through the tangled skirts of the darkness westerly there strove and spread great passages of dazzling silver all tattered and torn and shredded out of the black and weltering clouds. For a moment in the midst of this radiance there opened a farewell weather-gleam, where the azure firmament was seen only to vanish instantly. Then the gloom gathered, and huddled up in ridges of purple and of lead. Aloft, from the skirt of the main cumulus, where it swept under the zenith, there hung, light as a veil, yet darker than the sky behind them, long, writhing tentacles, that twisted down and curled in sinister suspension, that waved and twined, and felt hither and thither horribly, like some aerial hydra seeking prey.
For a time these curtains of the rain swayed clear of earth; but their progress swept them against it, and they burst their vials upon the bosom of the Moor. The storm shrieked, exploded, emptied itself with howling rage out of the sudden darkness. Then the fury of these tenebrous moments passed; the hurricane sped onward, and the dim wet ray that followed struck down upon a heath whitened with ice for miles. A bitterness of cold and an ice-blink of unfamiliar radiance were thrown upwards from the crust of the hail; but soon it melted, and the waste, now running with a million rivulets, grew dark again.
The spectacle must have been impressive to any peaceful mind, but Baskerville saw nothing hyperbolic in the rage of wind and water. The storm cited by Nature was not more tremendous than that tornado now sweeping through his own soul.
END OF SECOND BOOK