"Oh, miss! what do you think? Poor Sir Harry Rokestone is dead."
"Sir Harry dead!" I exclaimed.
"Dead, indeed, miss," said Rebecca. "Thomas Byres is just come up from the vicar's, and he's had a letter from Mr. Blount this morning, and the vicar's bin down at the church with Dick Mattox, the sexton, giving him directions about the vault. Little thought I, when I saw him going away—a fine man he was, six feet two, Adam Bell says, in his boots—little thought I, when I saw him walk down the steps, so tall and hearty, he'd be coming back so soon in his coffin, poor gentleman. But, miss, they say dead folk's past feeling, and what does it all matter now? One man's breath is another man's death. And so the world goes on, and all forgot before long.
| 'To the grave with the dead, |
| And the quick to the bread.' |
"A rough gentleman he was, but kind—the tenants will be all sorry. They're all talking, the servants, downstairs. He was one that liked to see his tenants and his poor comfortable."
All this and a great deal more Rebecca discoursed. I could hardly believe her news. A letter, I thought, would have been sure to reach Dorracleugh, as soon as the vicar's house, at least.
Possibly this dismaying news would turn out to be mere rumour, I thought, and end in nothing worse than a sharp attack of gout in London. Surely we should have heard of his illness before it came to this catastrophe. Nevertheless I had to tear up my first note to the vicar—I was so flurried, and it was full of blunders—and I was obliged to write another. It was simply to entreat information in this horrible uncertainty, which had for the time superseded all my other troubles.
A mounted messenger was despatched forthwith to the vicar's house. But we soon found that the rumour was everywhere, for people were arriving from all quarters to inquire at the house. It was, it is true, so far as we could learn, mere report; but its being in so many places was worse than ominous.
The messenger had not been gone ten minutes, when Richard Marston arrived. From my room I saw the chaise come to the hall-door, and I ran down at once to the drawing-room. Richard had arrived half an hour before his time. He entered the room from the other door as I came in, and met me eagerly, looking tired and anxious, but very loving. Not a trace of the Richard whose smile had horrified me the day before.
Almost my first question to him was whether he had heard any such rumour. He was holding my hand in his as I asked the question—he laid his other on it, and looked sadly in my eyes as he answered, "It is only too true. I have lost the best friend that man ever had."