PETER HARBOROUGH: SHOT.
Bella was not proud, neither was she exacting in any particular; but
there are times when even the least proud is tried by his family. Bella
was so tried on the day that she went with Polly and Bill to Bymouth.
Bymouth was the place selected by the three for the change which Polly
said they needed after all their trouble. They could not afford a
change, it is true; but as Polly also said: “It is no good waiting till
you can afford a thing; by that time you will probably not want it.”
Bella agreed with Polly; Bill’s cautious vote on the opposite side was
overruled, and to Bymouth they went. Bymouth, being four miles from a
railway-station, had the merit of being a cheap place; a railway-line
was indeed on its way there, but had not yet got very far. Visitors who
wished to go to Bymouth drove from Bybridge, or walked, sending their
luggage by the carrier’s cart. The cousins walked, and as the carrier
charged threepence for each package Polly said, “We must not take too
much.”
Bella agreed: it was easy to agree, for they had not much to take, and
they were only going for a week; but Polly’s notion of luggage and
Bella’s were not identical. This was the first of Bella’s trials; the
matter of provisions was another question which needed settlement.
Polly said they had better take all they could with them, for
Bymouth (she had never been there) was a very out-of-the-way place
where everything would be difficult to get: also (she added as an
afterthought) what they took with them they would have free, while
what they bought there they would have to pay for. Bella did not see
the necessity of provisioning themselves as if they were going to a
desert-island; however, she gave way to a certain extent, and Polly put
a cold fowl in her hat-box (Bella would not have it in hers), three
large lettuces rolled up in Bill’s bathing-dress, and a neat packet
of fat ham in slices securely wedged among the same obliging cousin’s
underwear.
“You can take the tea,” Polly said, handing Bella a large paper bag.
Bella took it in so pleasant a manner that Polly was induced to try her
with some plum turnovers which she was anxious not to leave behind,
because she said, “they would be so nice to eat in the train.”
“You can’t eat things in the train,” Bella exclaimed scandalised,
“least of all plum turnovers. Besides, do you think I am going to open
my luggage in the train to get them out? Why, it will be in the van!”
“So it will,” Polly agreed; “I forgot that. Still, they will be nice to
eat when we get there; we shall be hungry then, for we must dine very
early to leave in time.”
But Bella was obdurate; she would not take the turnovers, which she was
sure would not be wanted.
“Oh, well, please yourself,” Polly said good-humouredly, and packed
them in the crown of Bill’s hat. “She will have to wear her best one,”
she said; “this is much easier to pack.” And she crammed in hat and
turnovers together.
Bella, not seeing what she was doing, raised no objections, but on
the subject of apples she was firm. There were a certain number of
windfall apples Polly wanted to bring, because, she said, fruit was
always dear at the seaside; but she could not get them in among her
things or Bill’s, and Bella absolutely declined to have them. Polly
was annoyed, but at last gave it up, leaving the apples scattered over
the dressing-table, while she turned her attention to strapping up
waterproofs. Bill had begun to do this, putting in with them an extra
petticoat; Polly added the subscription of a dressing-jacket, but she
was called down-stairs just then and Bella took the straps from Bill
and persuaded her to give up the idea of taking the additions. “You
don’t want them,” she said, “and we can’t go about looking as if we
were bringing home the family washing in a mackintosh.”
“Why does Bella want to look so respectable?” Bill asked Polly, when
they were alone later on.
“Because,” Polly answered severely, “she is a lady.”
Bill, not at all impressed, smiled her derision, and enquired: “Why
was she so cross when she found out too late that my best boots were
packed?”
“Because Jack Dawson will be at the station. Just as if”--Polly was
contemptuous--“he would look at your boots! It is market-day, so he
is going to Wrugglesby; he is going to drive Bella--you and I and the
luggage will go in the chaise with Sam.”
“I see,” Bill said, and began to make various odds and ends, refused
accommodation elsewhere, into a parcel. She had no idea of annoying
Bella, but she had two different pieces of brown paper, both too small,
and no genius for making parcels.
Polly glanced round to see if there was anything forgotten; her eye
fell on the apples. “It does seem a pity to leave them,” she sighed.
Then an idea occurred to her and her face brightened. “I know what I
will do,” she said.
She turned to an open drawer and stirred it over till she found a
small calico bag. She had many such,--Bill called them nosebags--which
she used to hold all manner of odds and ends collected from various
people. The one she brought out now contained scraps of ribbon, the
accumulation of many years. She emptied it, finding a home for most of
its contents in a smaller bag already used to hold some fifteen pieces
of pencil. Then she put the best of the apples into the empty bag and
forced it some way up the centre of Bella’s neat roll of waterproofs.
“It is a pity to unfasten them,” she said; “they are so nicely done up.
I am sure the bag won’t fall out, and it hardly shows at all.”
That may have been, but the first thing Bella saw when she came on the
platform at Wrugglesby was the bag, mouth-end foremost, sticking out of
the roll which Bill held under her arm.
“Are they here?” Jack asked as he came out of the booking-office with
her ticket. They were here, very much here; poor Bella almost wished
they were not.
“I don’t see them,” Jack went on, looking down the crowded platform:
the train stopped everywhere and was always full. “Oh yes,” he said at
last, “there’s Miss Hains, but I don’t see the luggage.”
Bella could hardly see anything else, she was so painfully conscious
of it--Polly’s round tin hat-box, packed to bursting, with the white
string of some garment shut in the hinge; the little hair-trunk with a
broken handle (the property of the late Mr. Hains), Bill’s paper parcel
resting on the top; Bill herself, with her old boots very much in
evidence, standing beside.
Polly caught sight of Bella and smiled pleasantly as they approached;
Jack took charge of the luggage and the train came in.
“Jump in, and I’ll hand the things to you,” he said. “Are you going to
have this in the carriage?” and he lifted the tin hat-box which would
neither go under a seat nor in a rack.
“Yes, yes, please!” Polly cried, and took it from him.
He picked up Bill’s parcel; the two ends drooped in a dangerous
manner, but he handed it to its owner without mishap, while Polly
tried to force the unwieldy hat-box under a seat. It would not go, and
after disturbing efforts Polly left it among the legs of the other
passengers, straightening herself just in time to see Bill drop her
parcel in Bella’s lap and take the roll which Jack handed to her, the
bag of apples falling out with a thud as he did so.
“Hullo!” said Jack; “what have I dropped?”
Bella grew scarlet, and prayed that the bag might have fallen down on
the line. No such thing,--it lay on the platform, one of the apples
shaken out by the fall beside it. Jack picked it up and gave it to
Bill. “Here you are, Miss Bill,” he said; “wait a moment, here’s
another one,--you nearly lost your refreshment that time.”
Fortunately the train started almost immediately and so prevented Bill
from explaining that the apples were Polly’s and not hers. Bella leaned
back in the carriage overcome with shame, while Bill serenely restored
the apple to the bag, and then tried in vain to get it back into its
original hiding-place. “It won’t go,” she said at last; “we shall
either have to undo the straps or carry it separately: which would you
rather, Bella?”
“I don’t care; it does not matter.” Bella felt that to be asked which
she preferred now was adding insult to injury.
“Let us undo the straps,” Polly said; “then we can put your parcel in
too; it does not look very strong.”
Bill unfastened the straps, and finding the parcel too broad to
go inside comfortably, she unfastened that too and rearranged its
miscellaneous contents. Then she packed it and the apples into a
waterproof; one of the apples rolled on to the floor and was pounced
upon by a small fellow-traveller.
“Mustn’t, mustn’t,” the mother said; “it belongs to the ladies; give it
to the ladies.”
But the ladies, as represented by Polly, were benign and made a present
of the apple, afterwards entering into conversation with the mother on
the subject of the age and habits of the child. Bella took no part, and
Bill applied herself to the refastening of the straps. When that was
done she listened to what was being said, for the talk by this time had
worked round to Bymouth, which, it seemed, the mother knew well.
Now Bymouth had been Bill’s own choice; she did not know much about
it, nor did the others, except that the journey there was a cheap
one and that, after all, was an important piece of knowledge. The
thing, however, which attracted Bill was the fact that the recognised
heir to Wood Hall had been spoken of in her presence as Harborough of
Bybridge. She did not exactly expect to come across him while passing
through the small town on her way to Bymouth, but she had a vague idea
that she might see him, and she was anxious to know what he was like.
Yet another reason for her interest in the place was that her history
of the county had told her that it was the home of the Corby family,
they who had also owned the small manor of Corbycroft whence the old
Squire’s body had been carried to the Chapel at Wood Hall. Somewhere
between Bybridge and Sandover, a place somewhat higher up the coast
than Bymouth, had been their ancestral home. It had been pulled down
long ago, and the family had died out, probably in great poverty from
the story of the old squire’s body being in danger of arrest for debt.
But in their day the Corbys had been rich: all the ground on which the
now fashionable watering-place of Sandover stood had been theirs; and
though as agricultural land it had not been worth much, its annual
rental now was more than enough to reinstate the family fortunes twice
over.
Bill asked many questions of their talkative travelling-companion when
she found that, besides being born at Bymouth, she had lived since
her marriage at Sandover. However, she could tell little of what Bill
wanted to know; she could speak of the extravagant price of lodgings
at Sandover, the beauty of the pier, the number of the grocers’
shops,--her husband owned one, the very best in the town. There were
tombs, she said, lots of old tombs in St. Clement’s churchyard; people
often came to see them. “Old gentlemen come with spades and things,”
she went on, becoming somewhat mixed in her ideas, “and poke about and
read inscriptions and find no end--why, the cliffs are full of queer
things, fossils as big as your hand and little tiny shells. Sandover is
a very interesting place.”
“I dare say,” Polly said with vacant affability; “we must try to go
there one day.”
She had not the least intention of going, but Bill, who did not say so,
had, and she brought their loquacious informant back to St. Clement’s
and the tombs. After some time she learned that the interesting
churchyard was situated on the outskirts of Sandover, on the landward
side. The particular attraction of the tombs she could not learn, her
informant having only been there once: “When my Joey was nine months
old, and it was a hot day too, I carried him all the way; my sister,
she did offer to help me but--”
Here she addressed herself to Polly, who sympathised on the subject of
heat and the weight of nine months old babies until the tombs seemed
forgotten. But Bill, patient and persistent, was at last rewarded by
hearing that the charm of one lay in the fact that it commemorated a
man who shot himself nearly a hundred years ago.
“They say,” continued Joey’s mother, taking the core of the apple from
the disappointed Joey, to the great relief of a maiden lady in a light
gown, “they do say he didn’t ought to’ve been buried there at all,
for they were very particular in those days about burying suicides at
the cross-roads. However, some thought he hadn’t really shot himself,
but that his friend, who he’d been gambling with, murdered him or
something. They didn’t rightly know, so they put him in the churchyard
on the chance, as the nearest cross-roads had already been took up for
a farmer who cut his throat with a sickle.”
Bill, who had handled one, wondered how he did it, but contented
herself with asking the name of the other suicide.
“I can’t call to my mind,” was the answer she received, “but he was one
of the gentlefolks. I’ve heard my good man say he was squire, but of
course it was long before his time; there’s none of the name about now;
but my husband, he’s a great one for finding out things, he’s--”
And there followed a detailed account of his peculiarities and
accomplishments, at the conclusion of which Bill suggested that the
forgotten name might be Corby.
“That’s it!” the voluble lady exclaimed with delight. “Fancy you
remembering it and me not! I have got a head! Corby, that’s it--or is
it Harborough? There are both there, but I think it’s Corby; they were
the great people hereabouts; my man says they used to own all the land,
but they are dead and gone now, every one of them.”
“Who owns the land now?” asked Bill.
“A Mr. Briant, a rich man living in London; he comes to Bymouth for
shooting, but he don’t trouble Sandover much. He’s made a good thing
of it, a fine man of business he’s called, though I should call him
precious close myself.”
A list of Mr. Briant’s delinquencies followed, with an account of the
way in which he was bringing other seaside places into fashion, a form
of speculation to which he seemed addicted. Bill did not listen very
much, she was thinking of the long dead Corbys and Harboroughs. She
thought of them a good deal both then and later, determining to pay
their graves a visit at the first opportunity. But she did not put this
determination into practice at once, for she forgot all about it during
the first two days at Bymouth. The cousins arrived there on a Thursday
evening; Friday and Saturday were two golden, never-to-be-forgotten
days to Bill, in which she cannot be said to have thought of anyone
or anything. She did precisely what she pleased, and, according to
Polly, undid all the little good she had gained during the past months.
“She is five years younger, and ten times worse than she ever was,”
said that remorseless critic, and debated how best she could speak to
the offender about Gilchrist and her behaviour to him. Bill did not
trouble herself much about Gilchrist at this time; Polly told her that
she ought to write to him every day as Bella did to Jack, but this she
entirely declined to do, and only under great pressure could she be
induced to write every other day, considering even that a great waste
of time and stamps as she had nothing to say to him.
While Polly was still pondering on the subject of Gilchrist Harborough,
Bill’s thoughts returned to the other and older members of the family.
On Sunday she recalled her intention of visiting their graves, and went
to St. Clement’s, Sandover, for the afternoon service. She walked in
the heat of the day (thereby losing her dinner), reached the church
in time for the _Magnificat_, and heard the dreariest music and the
most unedifying sermon in the world. But it did not matter; she was
seventeen, sound in wind and limb, body and soul, and consequently
quite unconscious of herself mentally, morally and physically. The
womanhood, which had timidly tried to assert itself during the early
summer, had slipped away; the thoughts and cares, the hopes and fancies
which had begun to grow in the past months were lulled to sleep now by
the sea and the sunshine, playmates which had called her irresistibly
during these last days. She was a child still though she was not
conscious of it; afterwards, in looking back, she knew those three
perfect days were the last of her childhood.
When the service was over she went out into the churchyard to examine
the gravestones, which did not prove so numerous or so interesting as
she had expected. A fair proportion of the older ones were in memory
of the Corbys, who also, as she had seen during the service, had two
tablets within the church inscribed to them. One she could not read;
the other was to the honour and glory of a lady named Jane, wife of
one Richard Corby, and evidently the pattern and model of what a wife
should be; she possessed so many virtues that Bill felt, when she saw
how young she had died, that, though sad, it was but natural.
“She must have been the mother of the granddaughter who managed the old
Squire’s burial,” she thought as she craned her neck to see the date.
“I expect Jane would have objected to that business. I wonder what
became of the granddaughter; perhaps she is buried outside.”
But she was not; there were no more recent tombs to the family outside.
Jane’s husband had died and been buried abroad some years after his
wife, the event being announced briefly at the foot of the encomium of
that lady’s virtues. The old Squire, who must have died later still,
was not buried in this part of the country; the few graves in St.
Clement’s churchyard which bore the Corby name were all of older date,
the inscriptions of some half effaced, none in their briefness telling
a story, romantic or tragic, of that forgotten past. The stone slab in
memory of the suicide was hardly an exception to this rule, and the man
whose brief record it bore was not a Corby at all. _Peter Harborough,
died at Corby Dean in this parish. March 12th, 1799. Shot._ That was
all; of the history of his life and the tragedy of his death there had
been found nothing to say but the one word, _shot_. To Bill it seemed
almost terrible in its uncompromising briefness. As she stood looking
at the stone, a brown-winged butterfly rested for a moment on the
moss-grown lettering. “Who did it?” She asked herself. “Who and why?”
But there was no answer; she did not know who, nor yet why some unknown
hand had left this single record of the tragedy.
She turned away at last, and unfolding the cheap little map of the
district she had borrowed to help her on the way to St. Clement’s,
she spread it on a flat tombstone and searched for Corby Dean. It
used to be the seat of the Corby family, she knew; now that the house
was pulled down the name seemed to have passed to a small farm and a
handful of cottages built, apparently, on the spot where the house once
stood.
“Corby Dean meant the house where Peter Harborough was shot,” Bill
said with her finger on the map. “He was with the Corbys then. What
happened? What were they doing?”
She clasped her hands round her knee and gave herself up to dreams.
All round her was the peace of earliest September, rich in its haze of
tender warmth, summer still except for the opalescence of its lights,
the coolness of its lengthening shadows. But Bill did not see it; she
was building in her mind a history of the past, reconstructing the
life which had been, groping in her memory, feeling that there, if she
could but find it, was a picture of this old tragedy; a tale, nay, more
than a tale, an actual experience if she could but recall it. A robin
chirped shrilly in the churchyard yew; she started at the sound and the
half-awakened memory was gone from her, the ghosts crept back to their
graves, the past was merged in shadows again. Here was nothing but the
stillness of Sunday afternoon, the peace of the earth’s sabbaths of
September. Such golden restful days had been before these men lived,
and still were though they were gone.
She rose, and folding her map, went out of the churchyard shutting the
gate behind her. Dead; that generation was dead, gone, forgotten, that
generation--and the next? That too was lost in mist--and the next? The
Corbys were ended, exhausted, but the Harboroughs? This brought her to
the present day and to Harborough of Bybridge. She remembered that as
yet she had heard nothing of him, and so remembering, she determined
if possible to find out what manner of man he was--a determination she
need hardly have troubled to make, for the next day, without effort on
her own part, she knew.
Monday did not seem a propitious day for discoveries; the weather was
unsettled in the morning and the afternoon was one of ceaseless rain.
Polly, seeing the state of affairs, prepared to spend three pleasant
hours over her wardrobe; she pulled the table to the window, brought
out her Sunday hat, took off the trimming, and proceeded to rearrange
it with the bows behind instead of before. Bella retired to the bedroom
(they only had one between the three) to write a letter, and Bill found
a delightful occupation down-stairs. Their rooms were over the village
shop which was also the post-office for a wide district. The rain
seemed to make very little difference to the business done there; in
fact it appeared to rather increase the number of customers, those who
were not obliged to come finding some excuse to spend ten minutes or so
in this cheerful little centre of gossip.
Mrs. Rose, the landlady and post-mistress, was short-handed just
at present, her assistant having gone home to nurse a sick mother.
The girl who helped with the housework came in to lend a hand, but
she was not clever, and the drawing-room lodgers had an elaborate
tea at five o’clock which seemed to require much preparation in the
afternoon. Thus it was without much trouble that Bill persuaded Mrs.
Rose to let her help in the shop that day. The permission once given
she set to work with great satisfaction, and soon found out something
of the whereabouts of the articles most in demand. The stock was a
very miscellaneous one, ranging from boots and twine through strange
specimens of crockery and many-coloured cottons to Gregory’s Powder
and treacle. Occasionally it took some little while to find the
thing required, but the customers were in no hurry; indeed, most of
them seemed more inclined to talk than to buy, Mrs. Rose seconding
them when she was not despatching a telegram or otherwise conducting
State-affairs through the medium of her post-office. Bill talked a good
deal and listened even more; her parcels, it is to be feared, were not
of the neatest, but her conversation was admirable and the customers
seemed satisfied.
These customers were a representative lot. Some were visitors who
found the afternoon tedious and came to while away the time by buying
sweetmeats or papers or strange little penny dolls, according to their
age and tastes; some were neighbours from near by come for a pound of
marmalade and a gossip; others were from the next village, genuine
customers really anxious to transact business. The landlady from the
house next door came once, being in trouble because her lodgers would
have curry that night, and “she without a mite of curry-powder in the
house.” A man from the coastguard station came asking for a species of
tobacco that Bill took ten minutes to find, during which time he gave
limitless information about the prospects of the weather. One of the
customers was an anxious mother who wanted to buy castor-oil, but Bill,
discovering that there was none, induced her to have Gregory’s Powder
instead. “It will do just as well if he is five years old,” she said
putting up a small dose. “Now, my dear, what for you?” This was said to
a little girl with eyes just level with the top of the high counter.
“Treacle, half cup,” was the answer, and the cup, with the coppers
wrapped in paper reposing inside it, was handed up.
Bill turned to the green barrel-shaped tin canister with the label
_golden syrup_ and the spigot-tap she had been itching to turn all the
afternoon. As the purchaser of Gregory’s Powder left the shop, another
customer came in, a young fellow in splashed gaiters and streaming
mackintosh. Bill did not notice him much, being engaged in a struggle
with the tap grown stiff by reason of age and treacle. He held a paper
in his hand, perhaps a telegram, but he waited patiently enough while
an animated conversation went on between Mrs. Rose and an elderly lady
whom she had just served. The tap moved a little, and the treacle began
to run, slowly, it must be admitted, but still it ran, in the course of
time doubtless the cup would be half filled. Bill glanced at the last
comer; “a member of the surrounding aristocracy” she thought, noticing
an indefinable something about his clothes and bearing and clear-cut
profile. When he turned the accuracy of the profile was lost, but the
eyes, very grave young eyes, met hers and--
Her heart began to beat very fast, though she could not in the least
tell why. She ought to have lowered her eyes, but she did not; they
were fixed; she could not look away, and he did not look away either.
She could hear the beating of her heart plainly, almost as if some
giant hand were clutching it. She was afraid, she knew not of what,
afraid to look, afraid to look away, most terribly afraid of herself,
ashamed, yet foolishly, triumphantly glad. Her hands grew very cold and
moist, her breath came short, she lost consciousness of what was going
on around her; the little dim shop vanished, the pile of boots and pans
and seaside pails, the child who peered at her over the counter, the
women who talked by the desk. They two were alone, he and she, alone in
all the world.
“Cup’s runnin’ ower.”
Bill started like one waking from a deep sleep; the dark, greenish
fluid was slowly running over the sides of the cup. She forced the
tap back; her hands seemed so weak it was difficult to move it, and
they trembled till she could hardly hold the cup. She gave it to the
child,--one cannot put surplus treacle back into a tightly closed
canister--she gave it, full as it was, and the child took it, carefully
licking the edges to prevent any running to waste, and walked sedately
out of the shop. Bill sat down on a little high stool behind the
counter; her face was very pale and she was shaking all over. Mrs.
Rose, who had disposed of her last customer, saw her. “Why Missie,” she
said, “you’re tired out. I oughtn’t of kep’ you here all this blessed
afternoon.”
“I am not tired, thank you,” Bill protested mechanically.
But Mrs. Rose was unconvinced. “That I’m sure you are; I never saw
such a lot of folks as we had this afternoon, a gossipin’ lot too. As
for that Mrs. Randal, I thought she’d never go, taking up the room
like that! I’m sure that gentleman was going to send a telegram and he
never did; he walked out of the shop without sayin’ a word, a loss of
sixpence to the Government.”
“Who is he, do you know?” Bill’s voice sounded curiously stifled in her
own ears; she looked down as she spoke, but she could feel the colour
rising to her forehead.
“Who? Why, young Mr. Harborough of Bybridge.”