The Fire Within

David took up the cup and walked to the window. About a tablespoonful of cold tea remained. David tilted the cup, then became suddenly attentive. That small remainder of cold tea with the little skim of cream upon it had suddenly become of absorbing interest. David tilted the cup still more. The tea made a little pool on one side of it, and all across the bottom of the cup a thick white sediment drained slowly down into the pool. It was such a sediment as is left by very chalky water. But all the water of Market Harford is as soft as rain-water. It is not only chalk that makes a sediment like that. Arsenic makes one, too. David put down the cup quickly. He opened the door and went out into the passage. From the far end Elizabeth Chantrey came to meet him, and he gave her a hastily scribbled note for the chemist, and asked her for one or two things that were in the house. When he came back into Mr. Mottisfont’s room he went straight to the wash-stand, took up a small glass bottle labelled ipecacuanha wine and spent two or three minutes in washing it thoroughly. Then he poured into it very carefully the contents of the cup. He did all this in total silence, and in a very quiet and business-like manner.

Old Mr. Edward Mottisfont lay on his right side and watched him. His face was twisted with pain, and there was a dampness upon his brow, but his eyes followed every motion that David made and noted every look upon his face. They were intent—alive—observant. Whilst David stood by the wash-stand, with his back towards the bed, old Mr. Edward Mottisfont’s lips twisted themselves into an odd smile. A gleam of sardonic humour danced for a moment in the watching eyes. When David put down the bottle and came over to the bed, the gleam was gone, and there was only pain—great pain—in the old, restless face. There was a knock at the door, and Elizabeth Chantrey came in.

Three hours later David Blake came out of the room that faced old Mr. Mottisfont’s at the farther end of the corridor. It was a long, low room, fitted up as a laboratory—very well and fully fitted up—for the old man had for years found his greatest pleasure and relaxation in experimenting with chemicals. Some of his experiments he confided to David, but the majority he kept carefully to himself. They were of a somewhat curious nature. David Blake came out of the laboratory with a very stern look upon his face. As he went down the stair he met with Edward Mottisfont coming up. The sternness intensified. Edward looked an unspoken question, and then without a word turned and went down before David into the hall. Then he waited.

“Gone?” he said in a sort of whisper, and David bent his head.

He was remembering that it was only a week since he had told Edward in this very spot that his uncle might live for three years. Well, he was dead now. The old man was dead now—out of the way—some one had seen to that. Who? David could still hear Edward Mottisfont’s voice asking, “How long is he likely to live?” and his own answer, “Perhaps three years.”

“Come in here,” said Edward Mottisfont. He opened the dining-room door as he spoke, and David followed him into a dark, old-fashioned room, separated from the one behind it by folding-doors. One of the doors stood open about an inch, but there was only one lamp in the room, and neither of the two men paid any attention to such a trifling circumstance.

Edward sat down by the table, which was laid for dinner. Even above the white tablecloth his face was noticeably white. All his life this old man had been his bugbear. He had hated him, not with the hot hatred which springs from one great sudden wrong, but with the cold slow abhorrence bred of a thousand trifling oppressions. He had looked forward to his death. For years he had thought to himself, “Well, he can’t live for ever.” But now that the old man was dead, and the yoke lifted from his neck, he felt no relief—no sense of freedom. He felt oddly shocked.

David Blake did not sit down. He stood at the opposite side of the table and looked at Edward. From where he stood he could see first the white tablecloth, then Edward’s face, and on the wall behind Edward, a full-length portrait of old Edward Mottisfont at the age of thirty. It was the work of a young man whom Market Harford had looked upon as a very disreputable young man. He had since become so famous that they had affixed a tablet to the front of the house in which he had once lived. The portrait was one of the best he had ever painted, and the eyes, Edward Mottisfont’s black, malicious eyes, looked down from the wall at his nephew, and at David Blake. Neither of the men had spoken since they entered the room, but they were both so busy with their thoughts that neither noticed how silent the other was.

At last David spoke. He said in a hard level voice:

“Edward, I can’t sign the certificate. There will have to be an inquest.”

Edward Mottisfont looked up with a great start.

“An inquest?” he said, “an inquest?”

One of David’s hands rested on the table. “I can’t sign the certificate,” he repeated.

Edward stared at him.

“Why not?” he said. “I don’t understand——”

“Don’t you?” said David Blake.

Edward rumpled up his hair in a distracted fashion.

“I don’t understand,” he repeated. “An inquest? Why, you’ve been attending him all these months, and you said he might die at any time. You said it only the other day. I don’t understand——”

“Nor do I,” said David curtly.

Edward stared again.

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Mottisfont might have lived for some time,” said David Blake, speaking slowly. “I was attending him for a chronic illness, which would have killed him sooner or later. But it didn’t kill him. It didn’t have a chance. He died of poisoning—arsenic poisoning.”

One of Edward’s hands was lying on the table. His whole arm twitched, and the hand fell over, palm upwards. The fingers opened and closed slowly. David found himself staring at that slowly moving hand.

“Impossible,” said Edward, and his breath caught in his throat as he said it.

“I’m afraid not.”

Edward leaned forward a little.

“But, David,” he said, “it’s not possible. Who—who do you think—who would do such a thing? Or—suicide—do you think he committed suicide?”

David drew himself suddenly away from the table. All at once the feeling had come to him that he could no longer touch what Edward touched.

“No, I don’t think it was suicide,” he said. “But of course it’s not my business to think at all. I shall give my evidence, and there, as far as I am concerned, the matter ends.”

Edward looked helplessly at David.

“Evidence?” he repeated.

“At the inquest,” said David Blake.

“I don’t understand,” said Edward again. He put his head in his hands, and seemed to be thinking.

“Are you sure?” he said at last. “I don’t see how—it was an attack—just like his other attacks—and then he died—you always said he might die in one of those attacks.”

There was a sort of trembling eagerness in Edward’s tone. A feeling of nausea swept over David. The scene had become intolerable.

“Mr. Mottisfont died because he drank a cup of tea which contained enough arsenic to kill a man in robust health,” he said sharply.

He looked once at Edward, saw him start, and added, “and I think that you brought him that tea.”

“Yes,” said Edward. “He asked me for it, how could there be arsenic in it?”

“There was,” said David Blake.

“Arsenic? But I brought him the tea——”

“Yes, you brought him the tea.”

Edward lifted his head. His eyes behind his glasses had a misty and bewildered look. His voice shook a little.

“But—if there’s an inquest—they might say—they might think——”

He pushed his chair back a little way, and half rose from it, resting his hands on the table, and peering across it.

“David, why do you look at me like that?”

David Blake turned away.

“It’s none of my business,” he said, “I’ve got to give my evidence, and for God’s sake, Edward, pull yourself together before the inquest, and get decent legal advice, for you’ll need it.”

Edward was shockingly pale.

“You mean—what do you mean? That people will think—it’s impossible.”

David went towards the door. His face was like a flint.

“I mean this,” he said. “Mr. Mottisfont died of arsenic poisoning. The arsenic was in a cup of tea which he drank. You brought him the tea. You are undoubtedly in a very serious position. There will have to be an inquest.”

Edward had risen completely. He made a step towards David.

“But if you were to sign the certificate—there wouldn’t need to be an inquest—David——”

“But I’m damned if I’ll sign the certificate,” said David Blake.

He went out and shut the door sharply behind him.

CHAPTER IV
A MAN’S HONOUR

“Elizabeth!”

There was a pause.

“Elizabeth—open your door!”

Elizabeth Chantrey came back from a long way off. Mary was calling her. Mary was knocking at her door. She got up rather wearily, turned the key, and with a little gasp, Mary was in the room, shutting the door, and standing with her back against it. The lamp burned low, but Elizabeth’s eyes were accustomed to the gloom. Mary Mottisfont’s bright, clear colour was one of her great attractions. It was all gone and her dark eyes looked darker and larger than they should have done.

“Why, Molly, I thought you had gone home. Edward told me he was sending you home an hour ago.”

“He told me to go,” said Mary in a sort of stumbling whisper. “He told me to go—but I wanted to wait and go with him. I knew he’d be upset—I knew he’d feel it—when it was all over. I wanted to be with him—oh, Liz——”

“Mary, what is it?”

Mary put up a shaking hand.

“I’ll tell you—don’t stop me—there’s no time—I’ll tell you—oh, I’m telling you as fast as I can.”

She spoke in a series of gasps.

“I went into your little room behind the dining-room. I knew no one would come. I knew I should hear any one coming or going. I opened the door into the dining-room—just a little——”

“Mary, what is it?” said Elizabeth. She put her arm round her sister, but Mary pushed her away.

“Don’t—there’s no time. Let me go on. David came down. He came into the dining-room. He talked to Edward. He said, ‘I can’t sign the certificate,’ and Edward said, ‘Why not?’ and David said, ‘Because’—Liz—I can’t—oh, Liz, I can’t—I can’t.”

Mary caught suddenly at Elizabeth’s arm and began to sob. She had no tears—only hard sobs. Her pretty oval face was all white and drawn. There were dark marks like bruises under her hazel eyes. The little dark rings of hair about her forehead were damp.

“Dearest—darling—my Molly dear,” said Elizabeth. She held Mary to her, with strong supporting arms, but the shuddering sobs went on.

“Liz—it was poison. He says it was poison. He says there was poison in the tea—arsenic poison—and Edward took him the tea. Liz—Liz, why do such awful things happen? Why does God let them happen?”

Elizabeth was much taller than her sister—taller and stronger. She released herself from the clutching fingers, and let both her hands fall suddenly and heavily upon Mary’s shoulders.

“Molly, what are you talking about?” she cried.

Mary was startled into a momentary self-control.

“Mr. Mottisfont,” she said. “David said it was poison—poison, Liz.”

Her voice fell to a low horrified whisper at the word, and then rose on the old gasp of, “Edward took him the tea.” A numbness came upon Elizabeth. Feeling was paralysed. She was conscious neither of horror, anxiety, nor sorrow. Only her brain remained clear. All her consciousness seemed to have gone to it, and it worked with an inconceivable clearness and rapidity.

“Hush, Mary,” she said. “What are you saying? Edward——”

Mary pushed her away.

“Of course not,” she said. “Liz, if you dared—but you don’t—no one could really—Edward of all people. But there’s all the talk, the scandal—we can’t have it. It must be stopped. And we’re losing time, we’re losing time dreadfully. I must go to David, and stop him before he writes to any one, or sees any one. He must sign the certificate.”

Elizabeth stood quite still for a moment. Then she went to the wash-stand, poured out a glass of water, and came back to Mary.

“Drink this, Molly,” she said. “Yes, drink it all, and pull yourself together. Now listen to me. You can’t possibly go to David.”

“I must go, I must,” said Mary. Her tone hardened. “Will you come with me, Liz, or must I go alone?”

Elizabeth took the empty glass and set it down.

“Molly, my dear, you must listen. No—I’m thinking of what’s best for every one. You don’t want any talk. If you go to David’s house at this hour—well, you can see for yourself. No—listen, my dear. If I ring David up, and ask him to come here at once—at once—to see me, don’t you see how much better that will be?”

Mary’s colour came and went. She stood irresolute.

“Very well,” she said at last. “If he’ll come. If he won’t, then I’ll go to him, and I don’t care what you say, Elizabeth—and you must be quick—quick.”

They went downstairs in silence. Mr. Mottisfont’s study was in darkness, and Elizabeth brought in the lamp from the hall, holding it very steadily. Then she sat down at the great littered desk and rang up the exchange. She gave the number and they waited. After what seemed like a very long time, Elizabeth heard David’s voice.

“Hullo!”

“It is I—Elizabeth,” said Elizabeth Chantrey.

“What is it?”

“Can you come here at once? I want to see you at once. Yes, it is very important—important and urgent.”

Mary was in an agony of impatience. “What does he say? Will he come? Will he come at once?”

But Elizabeth answered David and not her sister.

“No, presently won’t do. It must be at once. It’s really urgent, David, or I wouldn’t ask it. Yes, thank you so much. In my room.”

She put down the receiver, rang off, and turned to Mary.

“He is coming. Had you not better send Edward a message, or he will be coming back here? Ring up, and say that you are staying with me for an hour, and that Markham will walk home with you.”

In Elizabeth’s little brown room the silence weighed and the time lagged. Mary walked up and down, moving perpetually—restlessly—uselessly. There was a small Dutch mirror above the writing-table. Its cut glass border caught the light, and reflected it in diamond points and rainbow flashes. It was the brightest thing in the room. Mary stood for a moment and looked at her own face. She began to arrange her hair with nervous, trembling fingers. She rubbed her cheeks, and straightened the lace at her throat. Then she fell to pacing up and down again.

“The room’s so hot,” she said suddenly. And she went quickly to the window and flung it open. The air came in, cold and mournfully damp. Mary drew half a dozen long breaths. Then she shivered, her teeth chattered. She shut the window with a jerk, and as she did so David Blake came into the room. It was Elizabeth he saw, and it was to Elizabeth that he spoke.

“Is anything the matter? Anything fresh?” Elizabeth moved aside, and all at once he saw Mary Mottisfont.

“Mary wants to speak to you,” said Elizabeth. She made a step towards the door, but Mary called her sharply. “No, Liz—stay!”

And Elizabeth drew back into the shadowed corner by the window, whilst Mary came forward into the light. For a moment there was silence. Mary’s hands were clasped before her, her chin was a little lifted, her eyes were desperately intent.

“David,” she said in a low fluttering voice, “oh, David—I was in here—I heard—I could not help hearing.”

“What did you hear?” asked David Blake. The words came from him with a sort of startled hardness.

“I heard everything you said to Edward—about Mr. Mottisfont. You said it was poison. I heard you say it.”

“Yes,” said David Blake.

“And Edward took him the tea,” said Mary quickly. “Don’t you see, David—don’t you see how dreadful it is for Edward? People who didn’t know him might say—they might think such dreadful things—and if there were an inquest—” the words came in a sort of strangled whisper. “There can’t be an inquest—there can’t. Oh, David, you’ll sign the certificate, won’t you?”

David’s face had been changing while she spoke. The first hard startled look went from it. It was succeeded by a flash of something like horror, and then by pain—pain and a great pity.

“No, Mary, dear, I can’t,” he said very gently. He looked at her, and further words died upon his lips. Mary came nearer. There was a big chair in front of the fireplace, and she rested one hand on the back of it. It seemed as if she needed something firm to touch, her world was shifting so. David had remained standing by the door, but Mary was not a yard away from him now.

“You see, David,” she said, still in that low tremulous voice, “you see, David, you haven’t thought—you can’t have thought—what it will mean if you don’t. Edward might be suspected of a most dreadful thing. I’m sure you haven’t thought of that. He might even”—Mary’s eyes widened—“he might even be arrested—and tried—and I couldn’t bear it.” The hand that rested on the chair began to tremble very much. “I couldn’t bear it,” said Mary piteously.

“Mary, my dear,” said David, “this is a business matter, and you mustn’t interfere—I can’t possibly sign the certificate. Poor old Mr. Mottisfont did not die a natural death, and the matter will have to be inquired into. No innocent person need have anything to be afraid of.”

“Oh!” said Mary. Her breath came hard. “You haven’t told any one—not yet? You haven’t written? Oh, am I too late? Have you told people already?”

“No,” said David, “not yet, but I must.”

The tears came with a rush to Mary’s eyes, and began to roll down her cheeks.

“No, no, David, no,” she said. Her left hand went out towards him gropingly. “Oh, no, David, you mustn’t. You haven’t thought—indeed you haven’t. Innocent people can’t always prove that they are innocent. They can’t. There’s a book—a dreadful book. I’ve just been reading it. There was a man who was quite, quite innocent—as innocent as Edward—and he couldn’t prove it. And they were going to hang him—David!”

Mary’s voice broke off with a sort of jerk. Her face became suddenly ghastly. There was an extremity of terror in every sharpened feature. Elizabeth stood quite straight and still by the window. She was all in shadow, her brown dress lost against the soft brown gloom of the half-drawn velvet curtain. She felt like a shadow herself as she looked and listened. The numbness was upon her still. She was conscious as it were of a black cloud that overshadowed them all—herself, Mary, Edward. But not David. David stood just beyond, and Mary was trying to hold him and to draw him into the blackness. Something in Elizabeth’s deadened consciousness kept saying over and over again: “Not David, not David.” Elizabeth saw the black cloud with a strange internal vision. With her bodily eyes she watched David’s face. She saw it harden when Mary looked at him, and quiver with pain when she looked away. She saw his hand go out and touch Mary’s hand, and she heard him say:

“Mary, I can’t. Don’t ask me.”

Mary put her other hand suddenly on David’s wrist. A bright colour flamed into her cheeks.

“David, you used to be fond of me—once—not long ago. You said you would do anything for me. Anything in the world. You said you loved me. And you said that nowadays a man did not get the opportunity of showing a woman what he would do for her. You wanted to do something for me then, and I had nothing to ask you. Aren’t you fond of me any more, David? Won’t you do anything for me now?—now that I ask you?”

David pulled his hand roughly from her grasp. He pushed past her, and crossed the room.

“Mary, you don’t know what you are asking me,” he said in a tone of sharp exasperation. “You don’t know what you are talking about. You don’t seem to realise that you are asking me to become an accessory after the fact in a case of murder.”

Mary shuddered. The word was like a blow. She spoke in a hurried whispering way.

“But Edward—it’s for Edward. What will happen to Edward? And to me? Don’t you care? We’ve only been married six months. It’s such a little time. Don’t you care at all? I never knew such dreadful things could happen—not to one’s self. You read things in papers, and you never think—you never, never think that a thing like that could happen to yourself. I suppose those people don’t all die, but I should die. Oh, David, aren’t you going to help us?”

She spoke the last words as a child might have spoken them. Her eyes were fixed appealingly upon David’s face. Mary Mottisfont had very beautiful eyes. They were hazel in colour, and in shape and expression they resembled those of another Mary, who was also Queen of Hearts.

Elizabeth Chantrey became suddenly aware that she was shaking all over, and that the room was full of a thick white mist. She groped in the mist and found a chair. She made a step forward, and sat down. Then the mist grew thinner by degrees, and through it she saw that Mary had come quite close to David again. She was looking up at him. Her hands were against his breast, and she was saying:

“David—David—David, you said the world was not enough to give me once.”

David’s face was rigid.

“You wouldn’t take what I had to give,” he said very low. He had forgotten Elizabeth Chantrey. He saw nothing but Mary’s eyes.

“You didn’t want my love, Mary, and now you want my honour. And you say it is only a little thing.”

Mary lifted her head and met his eyes.

“Give it me,” she said. “If it is a great thing, well, I shall value it all the more. Oh, David, because I ask it. Because I shall love you all my life, and bless you all my life. And if I’m asking you a great thing—oh, David, you said that nothing would be too great to give me. Oh, David, won’t you give me this now? Won’t you give me this one thing, because I ask it?”

As Mary spoke the mist cleared from before Elizabeth’s eyes and the numbness that had been upon her changed slowly into feeling. She put both hands to her heart, and held them there. Her heart beat against her hands, and every beat hurt her. She felt again, and what she felt was the sharpest pain that she had ever known, and she had known much pain.

She had suffered when David left Market Harford. She had suffered when he ceased to write. She had suffered when he returned only to fall headlong in love with Mary. And what she had suffered then had been a personal pang, a thing to be struggled with, dominated, and overcome. Now she must look on whilst David suffered too. Must watch whilst his nerves tautened, his strength failed, his self-control gave way. And she could not shut her eyes or look away. She could not raise her thought above this level of pain. The black cloud overshadowed them and hid the light of heaven.

“Because I ask you, David—David, because I ask you.”

Mary’s voice trembled and fell to a quivering whisper.

Suddenly David pushed her away. He turned and made a stumbling step towards the fireplace. His hands gripped the narrow mantelshelf. His eyes stared at the wall. And from the wall Mary’s eyes looked back at him from the miniature of Mary’s mother. There was a long minute’s silence. Then David swung round. His face was flushed, his eyes looked black.

“If I do it can you hold your tongues?” he said in a rough, harsh voice.

Mary drew a deep soft breath of relief. She had won. Her hands dropped to her side, her whole figure relaxed, her face became soft and young again.

“O David, God bless you!” she cried.

David frowned. His brows made a dark line across his face. Every feature was heavy and forbidding.

“Can you hold your tongues?” he repeated. “Do you understand—do you fully understand that if a word of this is ever to get out it’s just sheer ruin to the lot of us? Do you grasp that?”

Elizabeth Chantrey got up. She crossed the room, and stood at David’s side, nearly as tall as he.

“Don’t do it, David,” she said, with a sudden passion in her voice.

Mary turned on her in a flash.

“Liz,” she cried; but David stood between.

“It’s none of your business, Elizabeth. You keep out of it.” The tone was kinder than the words.

Elizabeth was silent. She drew away, and did not speak again.

“I’ll do it on one condition,” said David Blake. “You’d better go and tell Edward at once. I don’t want to see him. I don’t suppose he’s been talking to any one—it’s not exactly likely—but if he has the matter’s out of my hands. I’ll not touch it. If he hasn’t, and you’ll all hold your tongues, I’ll do it.”

He turned to the door and Mary cried: “Won’t you write it now? Won’t you sign it before you go?”

David laughed grimly.

“Do you think I go about with my pockets full of death certificates?” he said. Then he was gone, and the door shut to behind him.

Elizabeth moved, and spoke.

“I will tell Markham that you are ready to go home,” she said.

CHAPTER V
TOWN TALK

The obituary notices of old Mr. Mottisfont which appeared in due course in the two local papers were of a glowingly appreciative nature, and at least as accurate as such notices usually are. David could not help thinking how much the old gentleman would have relished the fine phrases and the flowing periods. Sixty years of hard work were compressed into two and a half columns of palpitating journalese. David preferred the old man’s own version, which had fewer adjectives and a great deal more backbone.

“My father left me nothing but debts—and William. The ironworks were in a bad way, and we were on the edge of a bankruptcy. I was twenty-one, and William was fifteen, and every one shook their heads. I can see ’em now. Well, I gave some folk the rough side of my tongue, and some the smooth. I had to have money, and no one would lend. I got a little credit, but I couldn’t get the cash. Then I hunted up my father’s cousin, Edward Moberly. Rolling he was, and as close as wax. Bored to death too, for all his money. I talked to him, and he took to me. I talked to him for three days, and he lent me what I wanted, on my note of hand, and I paid it all back in five years, and the interest up-to-date right along. It took some doing but I got it done. Then the thing got a go on it, and we climbed right up. And folks stopped shaking their heads. I began to make my mark. I began to be a ‘respected fellow-citizen.’ Oh, Lord, David, if you’d known William you’d respect me too! Talk about the debts—as a handicap, they weren’t worth mentioning in the same breath with William. I could talk people into believing I was solvent, but I couldn’t talk ’em into believing that William had any business capacity. And I couldn’t pay off William, same as I paid off the debts.”

David’s recollections plunged him suddenly into a gulf of black depression. Such a plucky old man, and now he was dead—out of the way—and he, David, had lent a hand to cover the matter over, and shield the murderer. David took the black fit to bed with him at night, and rose in the morning with the gloom upon him still. It became a shadow which went with him in all his ways, and clung about his every thought. And with the gloom there came upon him a horrible, haunting recurrence of his old passion for Mary. The wound made by her rejection of him had been slowly skinning over, but in the scene which they had shared, and the stress of the emotions raised by it, this wound had broken out afresh, and now it was no more a deep clean cut, but a festering thing that bid fair to poison all the springs of life. At Mary’s bidding he had violated a trust, and his own sense of honour. There were times when he hated Mary. There were times when he craved for her. And always his contempt for himself deepened, and with it the gloom—the black gloom.

“The doctor gets through a sight of whisky these days,” remarked Mrs. Havergill, David’s housekeeper. “And a more abstemious gentleman, I’m sure I never did live with. Weeks a bottle of whisky ’ud last, unless he’d friends in. And now—gone like a flash, as you might say. Only, just you mind there’s not a word of this goes out of the ’ouse, Sarah, my girl. D’ ye hear?”

Sarah, a whey-faced girl whose arms and legs were set on at uncertain angles, only nodded. She adored David with the unreasoning affection of a dog, and had he taken to washing in whisky instead of merely drinking it, she would have regarded his doing so as quite a right and proper thing.

When the local papers had finished Mr. Mottisfont’s obituary notices and had lavished all their remaining stock of adjectives upon the funeral arrangements, they proceeded to interest themselves in the terms of his will. For once, old Mr. Mottisfont had done very much what was expected of him. Local charities benefited and old servants were remembered. Elizabeth Chantrey was left twenty-five thousand pounds, and everything else went to Edward. “To David Blake I leave my sincere respect, he having declined to receive a legacy.”

David could almost see the old man grin as he wrote the words, could almost hear him chuckle, “Very well, my highfalutin young man—into the pillory with you.”

The situation held a touch of sardonic humour beyond old Mr. Mottisfont’s contriving, and the iron of it rusted into David’s soul. Market Harford discussed the terms of the will with great interest. They began to speculate as to what Elizabeth Chantrey would do. When it transpired that she was going to remain on in the old house and be joined there by Edward and Mary, there was quite a little buzz of talk.

“I assure you he made it a condition—a secret condition,” said old Mrs. Codrington in her deep booming voice. “I have it from Mary herself. He made it a condition.”

It was quite impossible to disbelieve a statement made with so much authority. Mrs. Codrington’s voice always stood her in good stead. It had a solidity which served to prop up any shaky fact. Miss Dobell, to whom she was speaking, sniffed, and felt a little out of it. She had been Agatha Mottisfont’s great friend, and as such she felt that she herself should have been the fountainhead of information. As soon as Mrs. Codrington had departed Miss Hester Dobell put on her outdoor things and went to call upon Mary Mottisfont.

As it was a damp afternoon, she pinned up her skirts all round, and she was still unpinning them upon Mary’s doorstep, when the door opened.

“Miss Chantrey is with her sister? Oh, indeed! That is very nice, very nice indeed. And Mrs. Mottisfont is seeing visitors, you say? Yes? Then I will just walk in—just walk in.”

Miss Dobell came into the drawing-room with a little fluttered run. Her faded blue eyes were moist, but not so moist as to prevent her perceiving that Mary wore a black dress which did not become her, and that Elizabeth had on an old grey coat and skirt, with dark furs, and a close felt hat which almost hid her hair. She greeted Mary very affectionately and Elizabeth a shade less affectionately.

“I hope you are well, Mary, my dear? Yes? That is good. These sad times are very trying. And you, Elizabeth? I am pleased to find that you are able to be out. I feared you were indisposed. Every one was saying, ‘Miss Chantrey must be indisposed, as she was not at the funeral.’ And I feared it was the case.”

“No, thank you, I am quite well,” said Elizabeth.

Miss Dobell seated herself, smoothing down her skirt. It was of a very bright blue, and she wore with it a little fawn-coloured jacket adorned with a black and white braid, which was arranged upon it in loops and spirals. She had on also a blue tie, fastened in a bow at her throat, and an extremely oddly-shaped hat, from one side of which depended a somewhat battered bunch of purple grapes. Beneath this rather bacchanalian headgear her old, mild, straw-coloured face had all the effect of an anachronism.

“I am so glad to find you both. I am so glad to have the opportunity of explaining how it was that I did not attend the funeral. It was a great disappointment. Everything so impressive, by all accounts. Yes. But I could not have attended without proper mourning. No. Oh, no, it would have been impossible. Even though I was aware that poor dear Mr. Mottisfont entertained very singular ideas upon the subject of mourning, I know how much they grieved poor dear Agatha. They were very singular. I suppose, my dear Elizabeth, that it is in deference to poor Mr. Mottisfont’s wishes that you do not wear black. I said to every one at once—oh, at once—‘depend upon it poor Mr. Mottisfont must have expressed a wish. Otherwise Miss Chantrey would certainly wear mourning—oh, certainly. After living so long in the house, and being like a daughter to him, it would be only proper, only right and proper.’ That is what I said, and I am sure I was right. It was his wish, was it not?”

“He did not like to see people in black,” said Elizabeth.

“No,” said Miss Dobell in a flustered little voice. “Very strange, is it not? But then so many of poor Mr. Mottisfont’s ideas were very strange. I cannot help remembering how they used to grieve poor dear Agatha. And his views—so sad—so very sad. But there, we must not speak of them now that he is dead. No. Doubtless he knows better now. Oh, yes, we must hope so. I do not know what made me speak of it. I should not have done so. No, not now that he is dead! It was not right, or charitable. But I really only intended to explain how it came about that I was not at the funeral. It was a great deprivation—a very great deprivation, but I was there in spirit—oh, yes, in spirit.”

The purple grapes nodded a little in sympathy with Miss Dobell’s nervous agitation. She put up a little hand, clothed in a brown woollen glove, and steadied them.

“I often think,” she said, “that I should do well to purchase one black garment for such occasions as these. Now I should hardly have liked to come here to-day, dressed in colours, had I not been aware of poor dear Mr. Mottisfont’s views. It is awkward. Yes, oh, yes. But you see, my dear Mary, in my youth, being one of a very large family, we were so continually in mourning that I really hardly ever possessed any garment of a coloured nature. When I was only six years old I can remember that we were in mourning for my grandfather. In those days, my dears, little girls, wore, well, they wore—little—hem—white trousers, quite long, you know, reaching in fact to the ankle. Under a black frock it had quite a garish appearance. And my dear mother, who was very particular about all family observances, used to stitch black crape bands upon the trouser-legs. It was quite a work. Oh, yes, I assure you. Then after my grandfather, there was my great-uncle George, and on the other side of the family my great-aunt Eliza. And then there were my uncles, and two aunts, and quite a number of cousins. And, later on, my own dear brothers and sisters. So that, as you may say, we were never out of black at all, for our means were such that it was necessary to wear out one garment before another could be purchased. And I became a little weary of wearing black, my dears. So when my last dear sister died, I went into colours. Not at once, oh, no!”—Miss Dobell became very much shocked and agitated at the sound of her own words. “Oh, dear, no. Not, of course, until after a full and proper period of mourning, but when that was over I went into colours, and have never since possessed anything black. You see, as I have no more relations, it is unnecessary that I should be provided with mourning.”

Elizabeth Chantrey left her sister’s house in rather a saddened mood. She wondered if she too would ever be left derelict. Unmarried women were often very lonely. Life went past them down other channels. They missed their link with the generations to come, and as the new life sprang up it knew them not, and they had neither part nor lot in it. When she reached home she sat for a long while very still, forcing her consciousness into a realisation of Life as a thing unbroken, one, eternal. The peace of it came upon her, and the sadness passed.

CHAPTER VI
THE LETTER

Old Mr. Mottisfont had been dead for about a fortnight when the letter arrived. David Blake found it upon his breakfast table when he came downstairs. It was a Friday morning, and there was an east wind blowing. David came into the dining-room wishing that there were no such thing as breakfast, and there, propped up in front of his plate, was the letter. He stared at it, and stared again. A series of sleepless or hag-ridden nights are not the best preparation for a letter written in a dead man’s hand and sealed with a dead man’s seal. If David’s hand was steady when he picked up the letter it was because his will kept it steady, and for no other reason. As he held it in his hand, Mrs. Havergill came bustling in with toast and coffee. David passed her, went into his consulting room and shut the door.

“First he went red and then he went white,” she told Sarah, “and he pushed past me as if I were a stock, or a post, or something of that sort. I ’ope he ’asn’t caught one of them nasty fevers, down in some slum. ’Tisn’t natural for a man to turn colour that way. There was only one young man ever I knew as did it, William Jones his name was, and he was the sexton’s son down at Dunnington. And he’d do it. Red one minute and white the next, and then red again. And he went off in a galloping decline, and broke his poor mother’s heart. And there’s their two graves side by side in Dunnington Churchyard. Mr. Jones, he dug the graves hisself, and never rightly held his head up after.”

David Blake sat down at his table and spread out old Mr. Mottisfont’s letter upon the desk in front of him. It was a long letter, written in a clear, pointed handwriting, which was characteristic and unmistakable.