“That is a harsh and unjust way of speaking, Mrs. Porter,” said Lord Cheriton, drawing himself up suddenly with an air of wounded dignity. “You can tell me nothing about our trouble, I see; and I am not in the mood to talk of any older grief. Good night.”
He lifted his hat with grave respect and walked back to the park gate, vanishing slowly from those grey eyes which followed him in eager watchfulness.
“Is he really sorry?” she asked herself. “Can such a man as that be sorry for any one, even his own flesh and blood? He has prospered; all things have gone well with him. Can he be sorry? It is a check, perhaps; a check to his ambitious hopes. It baulks him in his longing to found a family. He looks pale and worn, as if he had suffered: and at his age, after a prosperous life, it must be hard to suffer.”
So mused the woman who had seen better days—embittered doubtless by her own decadence—embittered still more by her daughter’s fall.
It was nearly ten years since the daughter had eloped with a middle-aged Colonel in a cavalry regiment, a visitor at the Chase—a man of fortune and high family, with about as diabolical a reputation as a man could enjoy and yet hold Her Majesty’s commission.
Mercy Porter’s fall had been a surprise to everybody. She was a girl of shy and reserved manners, graver and sadder than youth should be. She had been kept very close by her mother, allowed to make no friendships among the girls in the village, to have no companions of her own age. She had early shown a considerable talent for music, and her piano had been her chief pleasure and occupation. Lady Cheriton had taken a good deal of notice of her when she grew up, and she might have done well, the gossips said, when they recalled the story of her disgrace; but she chose to fall in love with a married man of infamous character, a notorious profligate, and he had but to beckon with his finger for her to go off with him. The circumstances of her going off were discussed confidentially at feminine tea-drinkings, and it was wondered that Mrs. Porter could hold her head so high, and show herself at church three times on a Sunday, and entertain the curate and his wife to afternoon tea, considering what had happened.
The curate and his wife were new arrivals comparatively, and only knew that dismal common story from hearsay. They were both impressed by Mrs. Porter’s regular attendance at the church services, and by the excellence of that cup of tea with which she was always ready to entertain them whenever they cared to drop in at her cottage between four and five o’clock.
The inquest was opened early on the afternoon of Monday at the humble little inn near the forge, with its rustic sign, “Live and let live.” Juanita gave her evidence with a stony calmness which impressed those who heard her more than the stormiest outburst of grief would have done. Her mother and her husband’s mother had both implored her not to break down, to bear herself heroically through this terrible ordeal, and they were both in the room to support her by their presence. Both were surprised at the firmness of her manner, the clear tones of her voice as she made her statement, telling how she had heard the shot in her dream, and how she had gone down to the drawing-room to find Sir Godfrey lying face downward on the carpet, in front of the chair where he had been sitting, his hand still upon the open book, which had fallen as he fell.
“Did you think of going outside to see if any one was lurking about?”