‘And I have told you that I do not believe you. You were in all Mr Crampton’s confidences, and a precious bad use you made of your knowledge. My poor girl told me as much as that. She said several times how much she feared and suspected you. She said you were against her in everything, that you were always persuading her father to thwart her wishes and refuse her requests, and that she hated you for it.’
‘She—Jenny—said—she hated me, and to—you!’ exclaimed Henry Hindes. ‘It is impossible. You are deceiving me. We were the greatest friends.’
‘You may have thought so—she did not. And I will thank you to speak of my dead wife by her proper name, as Mrs Walcheren,’ cried Frederick, in a fury. ‘You should never have been allowed to call her by her Christian name, and I forbid you to do so now.’
Henry Hindes’s natural impulse would have been to retort by saying that Mr Walcheren had no rights whatever in the matter, and he should call his late friend by what name he chose, but his former assertion was still rankling in his memory.
‘Jenny said she hated me,’ he murmured to himself, ‘and to him! It was not on the impulse of the moment, then, as I hoped—as I have believed. She meant it—good heavens!—she meant it, and I—I loved her so.’
His face was white as ashes as he turned it towards Frederick Walcheren.
‘We will not quarrel, sir,’ he said, ‘and especially here. I came to the cemetery this afternoon at Mrs Crampton’s request to see if her orders had been carried out, with respect to the initialing and erection of this monument, with neither of which, as I told you, have I anything to do. But since you doubtless would wish to be left in privacy, I will withdraw.’
Saying which, he made a low bow and walked out of the cemetery. But he had left his sting behind him. Frederick Walcheren no longer felt in the disposition for prayer, or even tears.
‘What is it about that man that makes him so repulsive to me?’ he thought, as he found himself alone. ‘He speaks fair enough, but there is something behind it all that I cannot understand. Well, they have taken care between them that I shall not want to visit this spot too often. My poor darling! What must she think of their depriving her of the title which made her my wife. I was a weak fool for letting them take her from me so easily. But I little thought they would insult us both in this manner. Perhaps it is as well. She is my wife. No false inscription can unmake her that, God be thanked! And Father Tasker says I must wean my heart from all these earthly longings as soon as may be. One is squashed at any rate. I shall never want to look upon her grave again, with those vile texts written beneath her dear name. “Thou God knowest.” Yes, God does know that I am innocent of all blame in this matter, except of tempting her to leave her home. Well, well, it is not to be thought of. The sooner I turn my mind to other things the better.’
He stooped down and gathered two or three little blue flowers that were blossoming above Jenny’s remains, and, kissing them, put them carefully between the folds of his pocket-book. Then he knelt down and said a prayer above her, and, dashing his hand across his eyes, turned slowly away. Meanwhile, Henry Hindes was walking back to The Old Hall, with his heart on fire. He had been trying hard to persuade himself lately that Jenny had meant nothing by the hasty words she had used to him just before her death. Hannah had reiterated so often how fond the girl had been of them both, and it had pleased him to think that she was right, and that, when he met Jenny again, there would be no cloud between them, but only the old feeling of affection. He had begun to address her, in the solitude of his own chamber, as his darling and his love and his true wife, from whom he had been separated only by the conflicting circumstances of the world. But Walcheren’s statement had blown all his airy fancies away at a breath. She had really meant what she said. It had not been the meaningless outcome of a young girl’s petulance. It was ante-dated to the moment. Jenny had even told her bridegroom of a day of the feelings she entertained against her father’s friend. The truth made him feel fierce and wretched and revengeful all at once. For the moment he was not sorry that he had pushed her over the cliff and deprived her and her husband of their life’s happiness. But this feeling did not last, and it was succeeded by a paroxysm of unusual despair, in which both Earth and Heaven seemed to have arrayed themselves against him. He retired to his room on the plea of a headache, and there indulged in the custom which was fast becoming habitual to him—of inhaling opium until his senses were stupefied and all his fears laid to rest. He remained alone all the evening, and retired to bed without seeing his wife again. This was now so much his custom that Hannah was beginning to think nothing of it. She believed that her husband suffered from acute neuralgia which necessitated his taking a soporific, after which it was unwise to disturb him. So she walked over to The Cedars, where she was always very welcome now, and tried to cheer up the two lonely women, who would persist in sitting down with their grief in their laps, instead of doing their utmost to dispel it. Hannah almost talked them into a promise that evening that they would spend the winter abroad. They had never visited Paris, and she pressed them so hard to have a little pity on themselves that Mrs Crampton actually authorised her to make inquiries about the best means of getting there, and which hotel would be the most suitable for her sister and herself to stay at. She therefore returned home, well satisfied with her success, and feeling she had done a good night’s work. It was past her usual bed hour when she reached The Hall, so that, after a brief visit to the nursery, Hannah retired herself.