“Who is the other?” somebody asked.
“Mr. Bingham—the tall lawyer who came down from London the other day. Tell policeman—run to his wife. She’s at Mrs. Jones’s, and thinks he has lost his way in the fog coming home from Bell Rock.”
The policeman departed on his melancholy errand and the procession moved swiftly across the sandy beach and up the stone-paved way by which boats were dragged down the cliff to the sea. The village of Bryngelly lay to the right. It had grown away from the church, which stood dangerously near the edge of the cliff. On the further side of the church, and a little behind it, partly sheltered from the sea gales by a group of stunted firs, was the Vicarage, a low single-storied stone-roofed building, tenanted for twenty-five years past and more by Beatrice’s father, the Rev. Joseph Granger. The best approach to it from the Bryngelly side was by the churchyard, through which the men with the stretchers were now winding, followed by the crowd of sightseers.
“Might as well leave them here at once,” said one of the bearers to the other in Welsh. “I doubt they are both dead enough.”
The person addressed assented, and the thick-set man wrapped in a dark cloak, who was striding along by Beatrice’s stretcher, groaned again. Clearly, he understood the Welsh tongue. A few seconds more and they were passing through the stunted firs up to the Vicarage door. In the doorway stood a group of people. The light from a lamp in the hall struck upon them, throwing them into strong relief. Foremost, holding a lantern in his hand, was a man of about sixty, with snow-white hair which fell in confusion over his rugged forehead. He was of middle height and carried himself with something of a stoop. The eyes were small and shifting, and the mouth hard. He wore short whiskers which, together with the eyebrows, were still tinged with yellow. The face was ruddy and healthy looking, indeed, had it not been for the dirty white tie and shabby black coat, one would have taken him to be what he was in heart, a farmer of the harder sort, somewhat weather-beaten and anxious about the times—a man who would take advantage of every drop in the rate of wages. In fact he was Beatrice’s father, and a clergyman.
By his side, and leaning over him, was Elizabeth, her elder sister. There was five years between them. She was a poor copy of Beatrice, or, to be more accurate, Beatrice was a grand development of Elizabeth. They both had brown hair, but Elizabeth’s was straighter and faint-coloured, not rich and ruddying into gold. Elizabeth’s eyes were also grey, but it was a cold washed-out grey like that of a February sky. And so with feature after feature, and with the expression also. Beatrice’s was noble and open, if at times defiant. Looking at her you knew that she might be a mistaken woman, or a headstrong woman, or both, but she could never be a mean woman. Whichever of the ten commandments she might choose to break, it would not be that which forbids us to bear false witness against our neighbour. Anybody might read it in her eyes. But in her sister’s, he might discern her father’s shifty hardness watered by woman’s weaker will into something like cunning. For the rest Elizabeth had a very fair figure, but lacked her sister’s rounded loveliness, though the two were so curiously alike that at a distance you might well mistake the one for the other. One might almost fancy that nature had experimented upon Elizabeth before she made up her mind to produce Beatrice, just to get the lines and distances. The elder sister was to the other what the pale unfinished model of clay is to the polished statue in ivory and gold.
“Oh, my God! my God!” groaned the old man; “look, they have got them on the stretchers. They are both dead. Oh, Beatrice! Beatrice! and only this morning I spoke harshly to her.”
“Don’t be so foolish, father,” said Elizabeth sharply. “They may only be insensible.”
“Ah, ah,” he answered; “it does not matter to you, you don’t care about your sister. You are jealous of her. But I love her, though we do not understand each other. Here they come. Don’t stand staring there. Go and see that the blankets and things are hot. Stop, doctor, tell me, is she dead?”
“How can I tell till I have seen her?” the doctor answered, roughly shaking him off, and passing through the door.