The Rector was put out by these chance possibilities of criticism, and could not but feel that Miss Charity’s quick eyes must have seen him with his white tie untidy, loosely unfastened, under his beard. He had grown a beard, like so many clergymen, and it was not an improvement. Instead of looking clean, as he once did, he looked black and coarse, a mixture of sea-captain and divine. He kept putting up his hand stealthily all the time he remained, and inviting his wife with nervous glances, to let him know if all was right. Unfortunately he could not see it under the forest of black beard.
‘We heard,’ said his wife, coming to his relief, ‘that there was something about an opiate—an over-dose, something of that sort—that poor Mrs. James had taken it without measuring it, or—you know how everything is exaggerated. I was quite afraid, and so glad to see the death in the paper without any inquest or formalities of that kind, which must be so painful. Was there really nothing in the story of the opiate? It is so strange how things get about.’
‘I don’t think it at all strange, Maria. The servants call in a strange doctor, in their fright, who does not know anything about her case or temperament. He hears that she has to take some calming drops to relieve her pain, and of course he jumps in his ignorance to the idea of an overdose. It is the fashionable thing now-a-days. It is what they all say——’
‘And there was no truth in it?’
‘None whatever,’ said Miss Charity, who, safest of all advocates, implicitly believed what she was saying, not knowing that any doubt had ever existed on the subject. She sat facing them in her new mourning, so freshly, crisply black. Miss Charity knew of no mystery even, and her calm certainty had all the genuine force of truth.
The Rector and his wife looked at each other. ‘It shows that one should not believe the tenth part of what one hears,’ he said. ‘I was told confidently that poor Mrs. James Beresford held strange ideas about some things.’
‘That you may be quite sure of, Rector. I never knew any one yet worth their salt who did not hold odd ideas about something——’
‘Not about fundamentals, my dear lady. I am not straitlaced; but there are some matters—on some things, I am sure, none of us would like to give an uncertain sound. Life, for example—human life, is too sacred to be trifled with; but there is a set of speculatists, of false philosophers—I don’t know what to call them—sceptics, infidels they generally are, and at the same time radicals, republicans——’
‘Ah, politics? I dare say poor Annie was odd in politics. What did it matter? they were not political people. If James had been in Parliament, indeed, as I should like to have seen him—but unfortunately he was a man of fine tastes; that is fatal. A man of fine tastes, who is fond of travelling, and collecting, and rapt up in his wife, will never become a public man; and I should like to have seen James in Parliament. Strange ideas! oh, yes, queer to the last degree. If there is anything worse than republicanism (is there?) I should think poor Annie went in for that.’
‘That is bad enough, but it is not exactly what I meant,’ said the Rector; and then he rose up with an air of the deepest conventional respect. ‘My dear, here is your kind friend, Miss Cherry,’ he said.