Martin heard the news while standing outside the boxing booth, waiting for the sparring competition to commence. He went in, it is true, and saw some hard hitting, but the tent was nearly empty. When he and Jim Bates came out an hour later, Elmsdale was a place of mourning.
A series of exciting events, each crowding on its predecessor’s heels as though some diabolical agency had resolved to disturb the community, had roused the hamlet from its torpor.
Five slow-moving years had passed since the village had been stirred so deeply. Then it endured a fortnight’s epidemic of suicide. A traveling tinker began the uncanny cycle. On a fine summer’s day he was repairing his kettles on a corner of the green, when he was observed to leave his little handcart and to go into a neighboring wood. He did not return. Search next day discovered him swaying from a branch of a tall tree, looking like some forlorn scarecrow suspended there by a practical joker.
The following morning a soldier on furlough, one of the very men who helped to cut down the tinker’s body, went into a cow-house at the back of his mother’s cottage and suspended himself from a rafter. An odd feature of this man’s exit was that the rope had yielded so much that his feet rested on the ground. Before the hanging he had actually cut letters out of his red-cloth tunic and formed the word, “Farewell” in a semicircle on the stable floor. A girl soon afterwards selected the mill-dam for a consoling plunge; and, to crown all, the vicar, Mr. Herbert’s forerunner, having received a telegram announcing the failure of a company in which he had invested some money, opened his jugular vein with a sharp scissors. That these tragedies should happen within a fortnight in a community of less than three hundred people was enough to give a life-insurance actuary an attack of hysteria.
But each lacked the dramatic flavor attached to the ill-governed passion of Betsy Thwaites and her fickle swain. Kitty was known to all in Elmsdale, Betsy to few, but George Pickering was a popular man throughout the whole countryside. It was sensation enough that one of his many amours should result in an episode more typical of Paris than of an English Sleepy Hollow. But the sequel—the marriage of this wealthy gentleman-farmer to a mere dairymaid, followed by his death from a wound inflicted by the bride-to-be—this was undiluted melodrama drawn from the repertoire of the Petit Guignol.
That night the story spread over England. A reporter from the Messenger came to Elmsdale to glean the exact facts as to Mr. Pickering’s “accident.” Owing to the peculiar circumstances, he, perforce, showed much discretion in compiling the story telegraphed to the Press Association. Not even the use of that magic word “alleged” would enable him to charge Betsy Thwaites with attempted murder, after the police had apparently withdrawn the accusation. But he contrived to retail the legend by throwing utter discredit on it, and the rest was plain sailing. Moreover, he was a smart young man. He pondered deeply after dispatching the message. He was employed on the staff of a local weekly newspaper, so his traveling allowance was limited to a third-class return ticket and a shilling for “tea.” Yet he decided to remain in Elmsdale at his own expense. The departure of the German Government agent for another horse-fair left a vacant bedroom at the “Black Lion.” This he secured. He foresaw a golden harvest.
Luck favored him. Conversing with a village Solon in the bar, he caught a remark that “John Bolland’s lad” would be an important witness at the inquest. Of course, he made inquiries and was favored with a full and accurate account of the wanderings of the farmer and his wife in London thirteen years earlier, together with their adoption of the baby which had literally fallen from the skies. To the country journalist, Fleet Street is the Mecca of his earthly pilgrimage, and St. Martin’s Court, Ludgate Hill, was near enough to newspaperdom to be sacred ground. The very name of the boy smacked of “copy.”
John Bolland, lumbering out of the stockyard at tea-time, encountered Dr. MacGregor. The farmer had been thinking hard while striding through his diminished cornfields, and crumbling ears of wheat, oats, and barley in his strong hands to ascertain the exact date when they would be ripe. Already some of his neighbors were busy, but John was more anxious about the condition of the straw than the forwardness of the grain; moreover, men and women did not work so well during feast-time. Next week he would obtain full measure for his money.
“I reckon Martin’ll soon be fit?” he said.
The doctor nodded.