King of the Castle Part 65

"You think I was praying for him, Miss Mary?"

The girl nodded her head quickly, and remained silent, for she could not trust herself to speak.

Sarah stood gazing before her in a strangely absent way, and went on muttering softly--

"Isaac, poor husband, you can rest now. If you can see all from where you are, look down upon me. You must feel content--you must be content, and forgive me for keeping you waiting so long."

"Woodham," said Mary gently, after standing watching the strange, weird face before her, and catching a word here and there, "you are ill; the shock of poor uncle's death has been too much for you. There, try and be calm."

"Miss Mary," said the woman hoa.r.s.ely, and her eyes glowed with her great excitement, "what do you mean? Have I been talking, like, in my sleep?"

"Yes," said Mary, smiling in her troubled face, and trying to soothe her.

"Yes! What did I say? Quick; tell me. I didn't say anything aloud?"

"Yes, you did. I heard parts of what you spoke."

"Tell me!" cried the woman, excitedly. "Quick! What did I say?"

"You talked about prayer and forgiveness, and spoke about your poor husband. There, there; try and be calm. This has been too much for you, and has brought up all your old sorrows. You want rest and a good long sleep."

"What else did I say?"

"Oh, I don't remember much more."

"You must," cried the woman angrily; "I will know."

"Very little else. I think you said that you hoped your husband was looking down upon you, or words to that effect. There, don't let us talk about it any more. Go and lie down, and when you are well rested come and help me again. We have so much to do. My poor cousin is completely prostrate."

"Yes," said the woman, looking at her searchingly. "Poor Miss Claude!

Broken-hearted. He wors.h.i.+pped her, in his way--in his way."

"Come," said Mary, gently, as she tried to lead her from the room, for the woman seemed to her as one distraught.

"Tell me again; try to recollect. What did I say?"

"Surely I have told you enough," said Mary. "There, you are ill."

"Yes, ill--sick at heart--sick with horror," whispered the woman, clinging to her with convulsive strength. "I came in and looked at his poor appealing face, and it was like seeing Isaac--my husband, again-- s.n.a.t.c.hed away so suddenly, just when he was so strong and full of what he meant to do; and it was as if master's eyes were staring at me and read my heart, and knew everything--everything, and it was too horrible to bear."

The woman burst into a pa.s.sionate fit of hysterical weeping, and sank upon her knees, covering her face with her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and bending lower and lower, till her arms were upon her knees.

Mary spoke to her, knelt beside her, and tried to whisper words of comfort, about resignation and patience, but without avail. Nothing she said appeared to be heard; and at last--weary, hopeless, and suffering, too, from the terrible trouble which had fallen upon the house--she knelt there in silence beside the moaning and sobbing woman, her hands clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon vacancy, as she thought of how happy they had all been by comparison a few hours before.

Mary Dillon was startled from her fit of sad musing by the opening of the drawing-room door.

"Claude!" she exclaimed, "I thought you were asleep."

Her cousin gave a look that was almost reproachful, and came slowly to where Sarah Woodham crouched.

As Claude laid her hand upon the sobbing woman's shoulder, it was as if the latter had received a shock. She looked up wildly, and hurriedly rose to her feet, pressed her hair back from her eyes, and made a tremendous effort to master the emotion to which she had given way.

Then, with a heavy sigh she grew calm, her distorted features resumed their old saddened dreamy expression, and she moved towards the door.

Claude tried to speak to her, and her lips moved, but no words came, for her face began to work, and she was turning away when the woman seized her hand, kissed it pa.s.sionately, and hurried from the room.

"We are not alone in our suffering, Mary," said Claude at last; and she drew her cousin to her breast and wept silently upon her shoulder, while Mary gave her the most loving form of consolation that woman can give to woman, the silent pressure that tells of heart beating for heart in sympathetic unison, as they stood together in the darkened room.

Volume Two, Chapter XVI.

MR WIMBLE RAKES FOR INFORMATION.

An enormous increase has taken place during the past five-and-twenty years in local journalism. England seems to have been almost Americanised in respect of news, for every centre worthy of the enterprise has been furnished with its newspaper, in which everything is told that is worthy of chronicling, and very often, from want of news, something unworthy of the paper upon which it appears. Notably that celebrated paragraph about So-and-So's horse and cart, which, left untended, moves on; the horse is startled by shouts, begins to trot, then gallops, and is finally stopped. "It was fortunate that the accident occurred before noon, for at that hour the children would have been leaving school, and," etc, etc--suggestion of the horror of what might have been.

But Danmouth was not a centre worthy of the enterprise, and, with the exception of a few copies of the county paper which came in weekly to partly satisfy the thirst for news, the inhabitants had no fount to depend upon save Michael Wimble, and to him they gravitated for information respecting the proceedings all around, from a failure, scandal, or accident on sh.o.r.e up to a s.h.i.+pwreck.

Consequently, Wimble's business on the morning of Gartram's death was so great that he began to think that he must hire a boy to lather, and the leather slipper nailed up against the wall to serve as a quaintly original till had to be emptied twice.

As a rule, the "salt" personages who hung about the cliff, staring into the sea, came to be shaved on Sat.u.r.days, but the news on the wing prompted every man to have a clean shave that morning, and many a stalwart fisher lady regretted that she had not a hirsute excuse for visiting the shop.

Wimble made the most of such information as he was able to glean, and as the morning advanced, he was able to keep on making additions, till the one little seed he received first thing came up, grew and blossomed into a news plant that would have been worth a good deal in town.

Towards evening, though, the excitement at Wimbles museum had fallen off, and gathered about the Harbour Inn, where the gossips of the place, clean shaven, and looking unusually like being in holiday trim, were able to quench their double thirst.

Michael Wimble sighed as he stood at his door looking towards that inn.

"Ah," he said to himself, "now, if I had a licence to sell beer by retail to be drunk on the premises,"--he was quoting from a board with whose lettering he was familiar--"they would have stopped; and my place being nearest to the Fort, the coroner would have held the inquest there."

"Hah!" he said aloud, after a pause, "how it would have read in the paper: 'An inquest was held at Wimble's Museum, Danmouth'--eh? I beg your pardon, Mr Brime, sir; I didn't hear you come up. Shave, sir?

Certainly, sir. Come in."

Wimble's heart beat high as he thought of the chance. His customers had pumped him dry, and gone away; and here, by a tremendous stroke of luck, was the commencement of a perfect spring of information to refill his well right to the brim.

Reuben Brime, who looked worried and haggard, entered the museum, took his place in the Windsor arm-chair, was duly covered with the print cloth, after removing collar and tie, and laid his head back in the rest.

"Why, you look f.a.gged out, Mr Brime, sir," said Wimble, quietly walking to the door, closing it, and slipping the bolt.

The gardener from the Fort was nervous and agitated. Death in the house--sudden death--had unhinged him. His master might have been poisoned, either by his own hand or by that of an enemy. That would be murder. He was bound, as it were, for the sacrifice; there were a dozen razors at hand; the barber's aspect was suspicious, and he had closed the door. What did it mean?

"I say," cried the gardener, sitting bolt upright, "what did you do that for?"

"Do what, Mr Brime? Fasten the door? I'll tell you. I've been that worked this day that I haven't had time for a decent meal, and I won't shave another chin. That's what I mean."

"Oh!" said Brime, calming down a little.

"I don't hold with working oneself to death, sir. Do you?"

"No; certainly not," said the gardener, with divers memories of idle pipes in the tool-house when "Master" had gone in the quarry.

"And so say I, sir," said Wimble. "n.o.body thinks a bit the better of you if you do."