A FIRST STEP
The funeral of Captain Rattenbury was conducted with that pomp
and circumstance so dear to the West Country heart. The entire
neighbourhood attended from both sides of the estuary of the Axe.
Indeed, the village of Beer was for the afternoon denuded of its
inhabitants; for, although only men were invited to the interment, yet
the women flocked to it as well, to express their sympathy with the
bereaved and their respect for the deceased, with copious gush of tears
and flutter of kerchiefs, and to hang about the door of the house of
mourning in hopes of being able to squeeze in and taste a little of
that spirituous consolation which flows freely at the funeral of an
adult, the absence of which from that of a child deprives it of its
zest and popularity.
Olver Dench thrust himself forward officiously, acting as though he had
been constituted master of the ceremonies and dispenser or steward of
the refreshments.
Mrs. Jose, always forward in kindly help as she was ever prompt in kind
intent, was there to assist Mrs. Marley. She had boiled the salt beef
at the farm, and baked the saffron cakes in the Bindon oven. She had
thoughtfully retained Winefred at her house, and had told her mother
that it was her purpose to keep her there till something was settled
relative to her future disposal.
When the ceremony in the churchyard was at an end, a sense of relief
manifested itself among the sable mourners in a hum of conversation
interspersed with sallies of cheerfulness and splutter of laughter. A
black stream now set in the direction of the cottage, where the bearers
might recruit after the muscular exertion of carrying the corpse, and
the mourners after the tension of their feelings.
The Undercliff habitation could not possibly contain all, and it
resembled a hive about which the bees were thick, some entering
eagerly, others emerging reluctantly, wiping their lips. Olver retained
hold of a flask of spirits, and poured out to every one, accompanying
each libation with a word on the irreparable loss the community
had sustained, and on the unapproachable merits of the deceased,
accompanied also by confident assurances that he was then smiling down
on the mourners from aloft. Then he threw out observations on the good
luck enjoyed by Jack at having come in for the fortune accumulated by
the thrift of his father, who had been the most unselfish man he knew,
toiling that Jack might enjoy, amassing that he might spend.
The ferryman did not fail to impress on all present that he had himself
been the most intimate friend of Captain Job, associated with him
throughout their lives, that they had lived as brothers, and that he
had been constituted orally by the departed the guardian of Jack, and,
added Dench, 'Please God I will do my duty by the lad, for ever and
ever. Amen.' Then, as his cheeks grew redder, and his face more glossy,
he moralised with greater unction. It behoved them all to take lesson,
and so to order their lives as to be able to die as happy as had the
captain. It would be well were their hearts in the right place, as was
his. That was the great secret. All were doomed to fade as the lilies
and to wither as the grass. Let them, therefore, lay up treasure for
their children to enjoy, and comrades to be left behind to lament them.
Then he diverged into more or less open allusion to Jane Marley. He
named no names, and he said nothing, but he felt all the deeper that
it was a sad thing for a man when ill and dying to be in the hands of
hirelings, who had no interest beyond grabbing what lay strewn about,
and whose solicitude was wholly for themselves and not with the patient.
But these insinuations were made only when not liable to be overheard
by Jane or Mrs. Jose. As his face glowed like a November setting sun,
and assumed a gloss like young holly leaves, he became noisy, talking
louder, excessive in his officiousness, demonstrative in his grief, and
effusive in his piety.
'I think,' said he very boisterously, 'that we'll lift up our voices
and sing John Wesley's favourite hymn, "For he's a jolly good fellow."'
Mrs. Jose hastily interfered.
'Well, ma'am, we'll take it slow time, like a hymn.'
As this did not meet with approval, 'Then some one start any hymn as is
suitable――I ain't very familiar with psalm-tunes.'
The influx of mourners was incessant, for no sooner had one set been
refreshed than another battled its way in at the door to be regaled as
well, and the first set, which had departed by the back door, made the
circuit of the house, and appeared again at the front, fresh for new
consolation.
The saffron cake and the cold beef were in request, but not to the same
extent as the spirits. As each ate and drank he heaved a sigh, and
said, 'Ah, well! Us shan't see the likes of he again,' or, 'He died
beautiful――'appy as a hangel,' or some similar commonplace. It was part
of the etiquette to heave a sigh and utter a moan, and make a pious
observation. At length the rapidly declining day put a term to the
entertainment, and caused a diminution in the concourse of applicants
for cake and liquor.
When the last had departed, Dench cast himself into the arm chair and
said, 'Darned if I ain't pretty nigh done up. Now it is my turn to
touch a drop.'
'There is none left,' said Mrs. Jose, who had quietly removed the
bottle, 'and what is more, you must clear out of this. Jane and I are
about to wash up, and then we must carry back to Bindon the dishes and
glasses that I lent for the occasion.'
'Well,' said Dench, 'it can't be said but that we did it handsome, and
I reckon they enjoyed themselves――prodigious. As to clearing out――I
don't see it, but I'll help to clear away.'
He set to work accordingly to make himself useful. He was, in fact,
impatient to be rid of the two women. He replaced the chairs against
the walls, brought in wood and made up the fire. He mounted the stairs
and drew up the blind in the bedroom above, and as he did so peered
into everything. The chamber had been well searched before; he searched
it again now.
He did not descend till the women were gone burdened with baskets that
contained glass and crockery. When he came down he saw Jack standing at
the window, looking forth into the dark night that had set in, with an
expression of sadness and in an attitude of dejection.
Olver said cheerily, 'We'll have out another bottle and smoke. Care
killed the cat. Make this your home. Draw a chair to the fire and close
the shutters, there is a good fellow. I'm a bit fagged――I've worked
hard to-day. But blow me if I would not go through it all again for
your dear old father. Ah! he was my most familiar friend. We knew each
other from boyhood, and he valued me for my poor gifts. Hanged if I
know what he saw in me――but there was something that made him cling to
me. He trusted me above any one in the world. I am one of your straight
men, you know. When he was bad with the stroke, and you had gone for
the doctor, he could not speak, but he made eyes for the slate, and
I understood him, and brought it to him, and he wrote on it, "I fear
Jack, that he's thoughtless, and may waste his inheritance. Be a father
to him, old friend. Tell him to intrust his money to you and beware of
a bank." There,' said the ferryman, taking down the slate, 'you see it
here. Drat it――only "I fear Ja――――," the rest was there, upon my soul,
I can swear to it; but there have been a deal of people in the house
to-day rubbing against it with their shoulders, and they have rubbed
the most of it out.'
'What you tell me seems too much to get on to the slate,' said Jack,
but without exhibiting a lively interest in the communication.
'Oh, not a bit. You see the commencement,' said Dench. 'What follows
has been brushed away. Then your father turned the slate and finished
on the other side. Ah! that is gone. I warrant you that Jane Marley has
done this. She is deep and she does not like us. A bad lot that. Do not
trust her. If she had been able to write, there is no saying what she
might have added and passed off as his last will. There has been no
will found, I believe.'
'None. I do not think my father made one.'
'No. He would have informed me if he had. He did nothing of importance
without advising with me. But you may take this as the expression
of his last wishes, and I can swear to every word. Jane Marley was
present, saw him write, and because she spited me has cleaned out the
scribble――all but the beginning. What has your father left?'
'I do not know――except debts.'
'Debts! but there is plenty of money for wiping them out.'
Jack shook his head.
'I say there must be.'
'Then where is it?'
'That is just what I supposed you knew. He did not tell me, though we
were so intimate.'
'I have no idea as to what he was worth, and where he placed what he
had.'
'My dear boy, he never spent one-tenth of what he made. He has been
a hoarding man ever since I knew him, close and frugal. On himself he
spent nothing.'
'But he never stinted me; and that is how the money went.'
'Fiddlesticks! He ordered you a cutter, that don't cost a trifle.'
'But it is not paid for.'
'He was not the man to order when he had not the money in hand
wherewith to pay.'
'There were fifteen pounds in a bag in his pocket,' said Jack; 'I know
of no more. That will meet the cost of the funeral, but not leave much
over.'
Dench went to the window seat, lifted it, and took out a flask of
spirits.
'I don't understand. There must be money.'
'To be frank with you,' said Jack, 'I have no faith in money made in
the way he has been speculating. It may come in freely, but it runs out
again as freely. It is drawing water in a leaky bucket. I have heard
Mrs. Marley say that her father died as poor as a rat, and he had been
in the business since he was a boy of fifteen. It has been the same
with my father.'
'But you have heard him boast that he intended to make a gentleman of
you.'
'Yes, precisely because, like a gambler, he reckoned on his next throw
being successful.'
'He has spent a lot of money on your education.'
'Yes, and he has ventured a lot of money in the trade――of late he has
not been able to realise. The look-out has been so sharp that he has
had no returns. You know how this last affair has ended.'
'Nothing has been confiscated.'
'No――but nothing has been sold.'
'I am not satisfied. On the whole he has been a lucky man, and, by the
foot of Pharaoh, a man like him is not ruined by a bad job. Let us look
round. If we find anything, you know what was his last desire, that you
should intrust it to me――make me your banker. You see this slate? He
was vastly against you keeping it yourself. He knew how thoughtless and
wasteful young men are.'
'We will talk of the disposal of the money when we have found it,'
said Jack. 'I will go round with you, and we will search, but I have
formed no very great expectations, so shall not be downcast if we find
nothing.'
Every candle was lighted, and Jack and Olver thoroughly explored the
house together. This was now the third time it had been searched; but
on this occasion the ferryman was not hurried. He had the whole night
before him.
They took down all the garments suspended in the wardrobe, Dench felt
every fold, examined the linings, beat them with a stick. They searched
above the receptacle, they looked under it. The only thing they did
not do was to draw it bodily out of its place, and this they did not
attempt because it was fastened into its place by crooks driven into
the wall, secured with screws that had become rusted into their place.
Jane Marley's bedroom was subjected to a search so thorough that the
two men omitted nothing.
It was during this investigation that Jane returned. She watched them
as they continued the exploration, and held the candle for them.
'We will let the fire out,' said Olver. 'I will go up the chimney and
examine that.'
But when this also proved fruitless, 'I wonder,' said the ferryman,
'whether he stuffed that violin of his with banknotes. A hundred-pound
note don't take up a terrible space.'
Again he encountered disappointment.
'We will rip open each pillow and mattress,' said Dench. 'I've heard
of large fortunes being secreted thus, and that is just where no
preventive men would look for kegs.'
He unpicked a seam, thrust in his hand, and groped through the feathers
of pillows and the wool of flock mattresses. Had there been a guinea
secreted in either he would have fingered it. But there was nothing of
that sort――dust only, and that not of gold.
Olver was puzzled, angry, disheartened.
'Can it be anywhere outside the house?' he asked. 'Jack, to-morrow with
the daylight we will give up hours to the search and leave not a stone
unturned, not a bush unexamined. I'm darned, but it is somewhere.'
With a hard, unmoved face, Jane Marley had watched and attended on the
two men.
She had been with Mrs. Jose to Bindon, helping to carry back the
articles lent from the farm for the funeral feast. As she had neared
the house Mrs. Jose had said to her, 'Jane, Winefred has got a valuable
watch, worth forty guineas, I should say, and she tells me a strange
tale about it――that she has met and talked with her father, who gave it
to her.'
'Yes, it was so.'
'But, Jane, what does he mean by it? Is he going to recognise her?'
'Not immediately. She must be educated. But she is to be brought up to
be a lady.'
'A lady! And he will supply the money needful?'
'The money I have. I am to have more as I require it. I shall give up
peddling.'
'I am glad. He has behaved very badly. I am glad that he sees the error
of his ways, and will make amends to you and to her. It is a step in
the right direction.'
'A step! Yes.' Jane considered. 'Yes, it is a step.'
'A first step, the rest will follow.'
'Yes, others will follow.'
'They must.'
Jane had said no more. Nor did Mrs. Jose till the door of Bindon was
reached. There the farmer's wife had said, 'I do not know the rights of
the story, and this is not the time for it to be told. But what about
the name? Is Winefred still to be Marley?'
'Winefred is to be no more called Marley, but is to bear her father's
name, Holwood.'
'And you?'
'Oh! I am nothing. I matter naught. I have been known as Marley. I am
going back, but Winefred is beginning. That makes the difference;'
and as Jane walked in the darkness back to the Undercliff she said to
herself, 'It is done. I cannot draw back now. I have taken the first
step. But Winefred shall be a lady.'