by Fergus Hume
‘Such a situation!’ croaked another. ‘Bang opposite the Lady Chapel! An’ the view from that there vault! I don’t know as any corp ’ud require a finer.’
‘Mr Marlow’ll be lonely by himself,’ sighed a buxom woman; ‘there’s room for twenty coffins, an’ only one in the vault. ’T’ain’t natural-like.’
‘Well,’ chimed in the village schoolmaster, ‘’twill soon fill. There’s Miss Marlow.’
‘Dratted nonsense!’ cried Mrs Timber, making a dash into the company with a tankard of beer in each hand. ‘Miss Sophy’ll marry Mr Thorold, won’t she? An’ he, as the Squire of Heathton, ’as a family vault, ain’t he? She’ll sleep beside him as his wife, lawfully begotten.’
‘The Thorolds’ vault is crowded,’ objected the stonemason. ‘Why, there’s three-hundred-year dead folk there! A very old gentry lot, the Thorolds.’
‘Older than your Marlows!’ snapped Mrs Timber. ‘Who was he afore he came to take the Moat House five year ago? Came from nowhere—a tree without a root.’
The schoolmaster contradicted.
‘Nay, he came from Africa, I know—from Mashonaland, which is said to be the Ophir of King Solomon. And Mr Marlow was a millionaire!’
‘Much good his money’ll do him now,’ groaned the buxom woman, who was a Dissenter. ‘Ah! Dives in torment.’
‘You’ve no call to say that, Mrs Berry. Mr Marlow wasn’t a bad man.’
‘He was charitable, I don’t deny, an’ went to church regular,’ assented Mrs Berry; ‘but he died awful sudden. Seems like a judgment for something he’d done.’
‘He died quietly,’ said the schoolmaster. ‘Dr Warrender told me all about it—a kind of fit at ten o’clock last Thursday, and on Friday night he passed away as a sleeping child. He was not even sufficiently conscious to say good-bye to Miss Sophy.’
‘Ah, poor girl! she’s gone to the seaside with Miss Parsh to nurse her sorrow.’
‘It will soon pass—soon pass,’ observed the schoolmaster, waving his pipe. ‘The young don’t think much of death. Miss Sophy’s rich, too—rich as the Queen of Sheba, and she will marry Mr Thorold in a few months. Funeral knells will give way to wedding-bells, Mrs Berry.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Mrs Berry, feeling she was called upon for an appropriate sentiment; ‘you may say so, Mr Stack. Such is life!’
Cicero, munching his bread-and-cheese, felt that his imposing personality was being neglected, and seized upon what he deemed his opportunity.
‘If this company will permit,’ he said, ‘I propose now to give a recitation apropos of the present melancholy event. Need I say I refer to the lamented death of Mr Marlow?’
‘I’ll have no godless mumming here,’ said Mrs Timber firmly. ‘Besides, what do you know about Mr Marlow?’
Whereupon Cicero lied lustily to impress the bumpkins, basing his fiction upon such facts as his ears had enabled him to come by.
‘Marlow!’ he wailed, drawing forth his red bandana for effect. ‘Did I not know him as I know myself? Were we not boys together till he went to Africa?’
‘Perhaps you can tell us about Mr Marlow,’ said the schoolmaster eagerly. ‘None of us knows exactly who he was. He appeared here with his daughter some five years ago, and took the Moat House. He was rich, and people said he had made his riches in South Africa.’
‘He did! he did!’ said Cicero, deeply affected. ‘Millions he was worth—millions! I came hither to see him, and I arrive to find the fond friend of my youth dead. Oh, Jonathan, my brother Jonathan!’
‘His name was Richard,’ said Mrs Timber suspiciously.
‘I know it, I know it. I use the appellation Jonathan merely in illustration of the close friendship which was between us. I am David.’
‘H’m!’ snorted Mrs Timber, eyeing him closely, ‘and who was Mr Marlow?’
This leading question perplexed Mr Gramp not a little, for he knew nothing about the man.
‘What!’ he cried, with simulated horror. ‘Reveal the secrets of the dead? Never! never!’
‘Secrets?’ repeated the lean stonemason eagerly. ‘Ah! I always thought Mr Marlow had ’em. He looked over his shoulder too often for my liking. An’ there was a look on his face frequent which pointed, I may say, to a violent death.’
‘Ah! say not that my friend Dick Marlow came to an untimely end.’
This outcry came from Cicero; it was answered by Mrs Timber.
‘He died of a fit,’ she said tartly, ‘and that quietly enough, considering as Dr Warrender can testify. But now we’ve talked enough, an’ I’m going to lock up; so get out, all of you!’
In a few minutes the taproom was cleared and the lights out. Cicero, greatly depressed, lingered in the porch, wondering how to circumvent the dragon.
‘Well,’ snapped that amiable beast, ‘what are you waitin’ for?’
‘You couldn’t give me a bed for the night?’
‘Course I could, for a shillin’.’
‘I haven’t a shilling, I regret to say.’
‘Then you’d best get one, or go without your bed,’ replied the lady, and banged the door in his face.
Under this last indignity even Cicero’s philosophy gave way, and he launched an ecclesiastic curse at the inhospitable inn.
Fortunately the weather was warm and tranquil. Not a breath of wind stirred the trees. The darkling earth was silent—silent as the watching stars. Even the sordid soul of the vagabond was stirred by the solemn majesty of the sky. He removed his battered hat and looked up.
‘The heavens are telling the glory of God,’ he said; but, not recollecting the rest of the text, he resumed his search for a resting-place.
It was now only between nine and ten o’clock, yet, as he wandered down the silent street, he could see no glimmer of a light in any window. His feet took him, half unconsciously as it were, by the path leading towards the tapering spire. He went on through a belt of pines which surrounded the church, and came suddenly upon the graveyard, populous with the forgotten dead—at least, he judged they were forgotten by the state of the tombstones.
On the hither side he came upon a circular chapel, with lance-shaped windows and marvellous decoration wrought in greystone on the outer walls. Some distance off rose a low wall, encircling the graveyard, and beyond the belt of pines through which he had just passed stretched the league-long herbage of the moor. He guessed this must be the Lady Chapel.
Between the building and the low wall he noticed a large tomb of white marble, surmounted by a winged angel with a trumpet. ‘Dick Marlow’s tomb,’ he surmised. Then he proceeded to walk round it as that of his own familiar friend, for he had already half persuaded himself into some such belief.
But he realized very soon that he had not come hither for sightseeing, for his limbs ached, and his feet burned, and his eyes were heavy with sleep. He rolled along towards a secluded corner, where the round of the Lady Chapel curved into the main wall of the church. There he found a grassy nook, warm and dry. He removed his gloves with great care, placed them in his silk hat, and then took off his boots and loosened his clothes. Finally he settled himself down amid the grass, put a hand up either coat-sleeve for warmth, and was soon wrapped in a sound slumber.
He slept on undisturbed until one o’clock, when—as say out-of-door observers—the earth turns in her slumber. This vagrant, feeling as it were the stir of Nature, turned too. A lowing of cows came from the moor beyond the pines. A breath of cool air swept through the branches, and the sombre boughs swayed like the plumes of a hearse. Across the face of the sky ran a shiver. He heard distinctly what he had not noticed before, the gush of running water. He roused himself and sat up alert, and strained his hearing. What was it he heard now? He listened and strained again. Voices surely! Men’s voices!
There could be no mistake. Voices he heard, though he could not catch the words they said. A tremor shook his whole body. Then, curiosity getting the better of his fear, he wriggled forward flat on his stomach until he was in such a po
sition that he could peer round the corner of the Lady Chapel. Here he saw a sight which scared him.
Against the white wall of the mausoleum bulked two figures, one tall, the other short. The shorter carried a lantern. They stood on the threshold of the iron door, and the tall man was listening. They were nearer now, so that he could hear their talk very plainly.
‘All is quiet,’ said the taller man. ‘No one will suspect. We’ll get him away easily.’
Then Cicero heard the key grate in the lock, saw the door open and the men disappear into the tomb. He was sick with terror, and was minded to make a clean bolt of it; but with the greatest effort he controlled his fears and remained. There might be money in this adventure.
In ten minutes the men came out carrying a dark form between them, as Cicero guessed, the dead body of Richard Marlow. They set down their burden, made fast the door, and took up again the sinister load. He saw them carry it towards the low stone wall. Over this they lifted it, climbed over themselves, and disappeared into the pine-woods.
Cicero waited until he could no longer hear the rustle of their progress; then he crept cautiously forward and tried the door of the tomb. It was fast locked.
‘Resurrection-men! body-snatchers!’ he moaned.
He felt shaken to his very soul by the ghastliness of the whole proceeding. Then suddenly the awkwardness of his own position, if by chance anyone should find him there, rushed in upon his mind, and, without so much as another glance, he made off as quickly as he could in the opposite direction.
CHAPTER II
THE HUT ON THE HEATH
‘WELL, I’m glad it’s all over,’ said the footman, waving a cigar stolen from the box of his master. ‘Funerals don’t suit me.’
‘Yet we must all ’ave one of our own some day,’ said the cook, who was plainly under the influence of gin; ‘an’ that pore Miss Sophy—me ’art bleeds for ’er!’
‘An’ she with ’er millions,’ growled a red-faced coachman. ‘Wot rot!’
‘Come now, John, you know Miss Sophy was fond of her father’—this from a sprightly housemaid, who was trimming a hat.
‘I dunno why,’ said John. ‘Master was as cold as ice, an’ as silent as ’arf a dozen graves.’
The scullery-maid shuddered, and spread out her grimy hands.
‘Oh, Mr John, don’t talk of graves, please! I’ve ’ad the nightmare over ’em.’
‘Don’t put on airs an’ make out as ’ow you’ve got nerves, Cammelliar,’ put in the cook tearfully. ‘It’s me as ’as ’em—I’ve a bundle of ’em—real shivers. Ah, well! we’re cut down like green bay-trees, to be sure. Pass that bottle, Mr Thomas.’
This discussion took place in the kitchen of the Moat House. The heiress and Miss Parsh, the housekeeper, had departed for the seaside immediately after the funeral, and in the absence of control, the domestics were making merry. To be sure, Mr Marlow’s old and trusted servant, Joe Brill, had been told off to keep them in order, but just at present his grief was greater than his sense of duty. He was busy now sorting papers in the library—hence the domestic chaos.
It was, in truth, a cheerful kitchen, more especially at the present moment, with the noonday sun streaming in through the open casements. A vast apartment with a vast fireplace of the baronial hall kind; brown oaken walls and raftered roof; snow-white dresser and huge deal table, and a floor of shining white tiles.
There was a moment’s silence after the last unanswerable observation of the cook. It was broken by a voice at the open door—a voice which boomed like the drone of a bumble-bee.
‘Peace be unto this house,’ said the voice richly, ‘and plenty be its portion.’
The women screeched, the men swore—since the funeral their nerves had not been quite in order—and all eyes turned towards the door. There, in the hot sunshine, stood an enormously fat old man, clothed in black, and perspiring profusely. It was, in fact, none other than Cicero Gramp, come in the guise of Autolycus to pick up news and unconsidered trifles. He smiled benignly, and raised his fat hand.
‘Peace, maid-servants and men-servants,’ said he, after the manner of Chadband. ‘There is no need for alarm. I am a stranger, and you must take me in.’
‘Who the devil are you?’ queried the coachman.
‘We want no tramps here,’ growled the footman.
‘I am no tramp,’ said Cicero mildly, stepping into the kitchen. ‘I am a professor of elocution and eloquence, and a friend of your late master’s. He went up in the world, I dropped down. Now I come to him for assistance, and I find him occupying the narrow house; yes, my friends, Dick Marlow is as low as the worms whose prey he soon will be. Pax vobiscum!’
‘Calls master “Dick”,’ said the footman.
‘Sez ’e’s an old friend,’ murmured the cook.
They looked at each other, and the thought in every mind was the same. The servants were one and all anxious to hear the genesis of their late master, who had dropped into the Moat House, as from the skies, some five years before. Mrs Crammer, the cook, rose to the occasion with a curtsy.
‘I’m sure, sir, I’m sorry the master ain’t here to see you,’ she said, polishing a chair with her apron. ‘But as you says—or as I take it you means—’e’s gone where we must all go. Take a seat, sir, and I’ll tell Joe, who’s in the library.’
‘Joe—my old friend Joe!’ said Cicero, sitting down like a mountain. ‘Ah! the faithful fellow!’
This random remark brought forth information, which was Cicero’s intention in making it.
‘Faithful!’ growled the coachman, ‘an’ why not? Joe Brill was paid higher nor any of us, he was; just as of living all his life with an iceberg deserved it!’
‘Poor Dick was an iceberg!’ sighed Cicero pensively. ‘A cold, secretive man.’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Crammer, wiping her eye, ‘you may well say that. He ’ad secrets, I’m sure, and guilty ones, too!’
‘We all have our skeletons, ma’am. But would you mind giving me something to eat and to drink? for I have walked a long way. I am too poor,’ said Cicero, with a sweet smile, ‘to ride, as in the days of my infancy, but spero meliora.’
‘Talking about skeletons, sir,’ said the footman when Mr Gramp’s jaws were fully occupied, ‘what about the master’s?’
‘Ah!’ said Gramp profoundly. ‘What indeed!’
‘But whatever it is, it has to do with the West Indies,’ said the man.
‘Lor’!’ exclaimed the housemaid, ‘and how do you know that, Mr Thomas?’
‘From observation, Jane, my dear,’ Thomas smiled loftily. ‘A week or two afore master had the fit as took him, I brought in a letter with the West Indy stamp. He turned white as chalk when he saw it, and tore it open afore I could get out of the room. I ’ad to fetch a glass of whisky. He was struck all of a ’eap—gaspin’, faintin’, and cussin’ orful.’
‘Did he show it to Miss Sophy?’ asked Mrs Crammer.
‘Not as I knows of. He kept his business to hisself,’ replied Thomas.
Gramp was taking in all this with greedy ears.
‘Ha!’ he said, ‘when you took in the letter, might you have looked at the postmark, my friend?’
With an access of colour, the footman admitted that he had been curious enough to do so.
‘And the postmark was Kingston, Jamaica,’ said he.
‘It recalls my youth,’ said Cicero. ‘Ah! they were happy, happy days!’
‘What was Mr Marlow, sir?’
‘A planter of—of—rice,’ hazarded Gramp. He knew that there were planters in the West Indies, but he was not quite sure what it was they planted. ‘Rice—acres of it!’
‘Well, he didn’t make his money out of that, sir,’ growled the coachman.
‘No, he did not,’ admitted the professor of elocution. ‘He acquired his millions in Mashonaland—the Ophir of the Jews.’
This last piece of knowledge had been acquired from Slack, the schoolmaster.
‘He was precious
careful not to part with none of it,’ said the footman.
‘Except to Dr Warrender,’ said the cook. ‘The doctor was always screwing money out of him. Not that it was so much ’im as ’is wife. I can’t abear that doctor’s wife—a stuck-up peacock, I call her. She fairly ruined her husband in clothes. Miss Sophy didn’t like her, neither.’
‘Dick’s child!’ cried Gramp, who had by this time procured a cigar from the footman. ‘Ah! is little Sophy still alive?’
He lighted the cigar and puffed luxuriously.
‘Still alive!’ echoed Mrs Crammer, ‘and as pretty as a picture. Dark ’air, dark eyes—not a bit like ’er father.’
‘No,’ said Cicero, grasping the idea. ‘Dick was fair when we were boys. I heard rumours that little Sophy was engaged—let me see—to a Mr Thorold.’
‘Alan Thorold, Esquire,’ corrected the coachman gruffly; ‘one of the oldest families hereabouts, as lives at the Abbey farm. He’s gone with her to the seaside.’
‘To the seaside? Not to Brighton?’
‘Nothin’ of the sort—to Bournemouth, if you know where that is.’
‘I know some things, my friend,’ said Cicero mildly. ‘It was Bournemouth I meant—not unlike Brighton, I think, since both names begin with a B. I know that Miss Marlow—dear little Sophy!—is staying at the Imperial Hotel, Bournemouth.’
‘You’re just wrong!’ cried Thomas, falling into the trap; ‘she is at the Soudan Hotel. I’ve got the address to send on letters.’
‘Can I take them?’ asked Gramp, rising. ‘I am going to Bournemouth to see little Sophy and Mr Thorold. I shall tell them of your hospitality.’
Before the footman could reply to this generous offer, the page-boy of the establishment darted in much excited.
‘Oh, here’s a go!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dr Warrender’s run away, an’ the Quiet Gentleman’s followed!’
‘Wot d’ye mean, Billy?’
‘Wot I say. The doctor ain’t bin ’ome all night, nor all mornin’, an’ Mrs Warrender’s in hysterics over him. Their ’ousemaid I met shoppin’ tole me.’