March 3rd, 1840. A long letter to-day from Robert, which surprised
and vexed and fluttered me so, that I have been sadly behind-hand
with my work ever since. He writes in worse spirits than last time,
and absolutely declares that he is poorer even than when he went to
America, and that he has made up his mind to come home to London. How
happy I should be at this news, if he only returned to me a prosperous
man! As it is, though I love him dearly, I cannot look forward to the
meeting him again, disappointed and broken down and poorer than ever,
without a feeling almost of dread for both of us. I was twenty-six
last birthday and he was thirty-three; and there seems less chance now
than ever of our being married. It is all I can do to keep myself by
my needle; and his prospects, since he failed in the small stationery
business three years ago, are worse, if possible, than mine. Not that
I mind so much for myself; women, in all ways of life, and especially
in my dressmaking way, learn, I think, to be more patient than men.
What I dread is Robert’s despondency, and the hard struggle he will
have in this cruel city to get his bread--let alone making money enough
to marry me. So little as poor people want to set up in housekeeping
and be happy together, it seems hard that they can’t get it when they
are honest and hearty, and willing to work. The clergyman said in his
sermon, last Sunday evening, that all things were ordered for the best,
and we are all put into the stations in life that are properest for us.
I suppose he was right, being a very clever gentleman who fills the
church to crowding; but I think I should have understood him better
if I had not been very hungry at the time, in consequence of my own
station in life being nothing but Plain Needlewoman.
March 4th. Mary Mallinson came down to my room to take a cup of tea
with me. I read her bits of Robert’s letter, to show her that if she
has her troubles, I have mine too; but I could not succeed in cheering
her. She says she is born to misfortune, and that, as long back as
she can remember, she has never had the least morsel of luck to be
thankful for. I told her to go and look in my glass, and to say if
she had nothing to be thankful for then; for Mary is a very pretty
girl, and would look still prettier if she could be more cheerful and
dress neater. However, my compliment did no good. She rattled her spoon
impatiently in her tea-cup, and said, “If I was only as good a hand at
needlework as you are, Anne, I would change faces with the ugliest girl
in London.” “Not you!” says I, laughing. She looked at me for a moment,
and shook her head, and was out of the room before I could get up and
stop her. She always runs off in that way when she is going to cry,
having a kind of pride about letting other people see her in tears.
March 5th.--A fright about Mary. I had not seen her all day, as she
does not work at the same place where I do; and in the evening she
never came down to have tea with me, or sent me word to go to her. So
just before I went to bed I ran up-stairs to say good-night. She did
not answer when I knocked; and when I stepped softly into the room I
saw her in bed, asleep, with her work not half done, lying about the
room in the untidiest way. There was nothing remarkable in that, and I
was just going away on tip-toe, when a tiny bottle and wine-glass on
the chair by her bedside caught my eye. I thought she was ill and had
been taking physic, and looked at the bottle. It was marked in large
letters, “Laudanum--Poison.” My heart gave a jump as if it was going to
fly out of me. I laid hold of her with both hands, and shook her with
all my might. She was sleeping heavily, and woke slowly, as it seemed
to me--but still she did wake. I tried to pull her out of bed, having
heard that people ought to be always walked up and down when they have
taken laudanum; but she resisted, and pushed me away violently.
“Anne!” says she in a fright. “For gracious sake, what’s come to you!
Are you out of your senses?”
“O, Mary! Mary!” says I, holding up the bottle before her, “If I hadn’t
come in when I did----” And I laid hold of her to shake her again.
She looked puzzled at me for a moment--then smiled (the first time I
had seen her do so for many a long day)--then put her arms round my
neck.
“Don’t be frightened about me, Anne,” she says, “I am not worth it, and
there is no need.”
“No need!” says I, out of breath. “No need, when the bottle has got
Poison marked on it!”
“Poison, dear, if you take it all,” says Mary looking at me very
tenderly; “and a night’s rest if you only take a little.”
I watch her for a moment; doubtful whether I ought to believe what she
said, or to alarm the house. But there was no sleepiness in her eyes,
and nothing drowsy in her voice; and she sat up in bed quite easily
without anything to support her.
“You have given me a dreadful fright, Mary,” says I, sitting down by
her in the chair, and beginning, by this time, to feel rather faint
after being startled so.
She jumped out of bed to get me a drop of water; and kissed me, and
said how sorry she was, and how undeserving of so much interest being
taken in her. At the same time, she tried to possess herself of the
laudanum-bottle which I still kept cuddled up tight in my own hands.
“No,” says I. “You have got into a low-spirited despairing way. I won’t
trust you with it.”
“I am afraid I can’t do without it,” says Mary, in her usual quiet,
hopeless voice. “What with work that I can’t get through as I ought,
and troubles that I can’t help thinking of, sleep won’t come to me
unless I take a few drops out of that bottle. Don’t keep it away from
me, Anne; it’s the only thing in the world that makes me forget myself.”
“Forget yourself!” says I. “You have no right to talk in that way,
at your age. There’s something horrible in the notion of a girl of
eighteen sleeping with a bottle of laudanum by her bedside every night.
We all of us have our troubles. Haven’t I got mine?”
“You can do twice the work I can, twice as well as me,” says Mary. “You
are never scolded and rated at for awkwardness with your needle; and I
always am. You can pay for your room every week; and I am three weeks
in debt for mine.”
“A little more practice,” says I, “and a little more courage, and you
will soon do better. You have got all your life before you--”
“I wish I was at the end of it,” says she, breaking in. “I’m alone in
the world, and my life’s no good to me.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying so,” says I. “Haven’t
you got me for a friend. Didn’t I take a fancy to you when first you
left your stepmother, and came to lodge in this house? And haven’t I
been sisters with you ever since? Suppose you are alone in the world,
am I much better off? I’m an orphan, like you. I’ve almost as many
things in pawn as you; and, if your pockets are empty, mine have only
got nine-pence in them, to last me for all the rest of the week.”
“Your father and mother were honest people,” says Mary, obstinately.
“My mother ran away from home, and died in a hospital. My father was
always drunk, and always beating me. My stepmother is as good as dead,
for all she cares about me. My only brother is thousands of miles away
in foreign parts, and never writes to me, and never helps me with a
farthing. My sweetheart--”
She stopped, and the red flew into her face. I knew, if she went on
that way, she would only get to the saddest part of her sad story, and
give both herself and me unnecessary pain.
“My sweetheart is too poor to marry me, Mary,” I said. “So I’m not so
much to be envied, even there. But let’s give over disputing which is
worst off. Lie down in bed, and let me tuck you up. I’ll put a stitch
or two into that work of yours while you go to sleep.”
Instead of doing what I told her, she burst out crying (being very like
a child in some of her ways), and hugged me so tight round the neck,
that she quite hurt me. I let her go on, till she had worn herself out,
and was obliged to lie down. Even then, her last few words, before she
dropped off to sleep, were such as I was half-sorry, half-frightened,
to hear.
“I won’t plague you long, Anne,” she said. “I haven’t courage to go
out of the world as you seem to fear I shall. But I began my life
wretchedly, and wretchedly I am sentenced to end it.”
It was of no use lecturing her again, for she closed her eyes. I tucked
her up as neatly as I could, and put her petticoat over her; for the
bed-clothes were scanty, and her hands felt cold. She looked so pretty
and delicate as she fell asleep, that it quite made my heart ache
to see her, after such talk as we had held together. I just waited
long enough to be quite sure that she was in the land of dreams; then
emptied the horrible laudanum-bottle into the grate, took up her
half-done work, and, going out softly, left her for that night.
March 6th. Sent off a long letter to Robert, begging and entreating
him not to be so down-hearted, and not to leave America without
making another effort. I told him I could bear any trial except the
wretchedness of seeing him come back a helpless, broken-down man,
trying uselessly to begin life again, when too old for a change. It
was not till after I had posted my own letter, and read over parts of
Robert’s again, that the suspicion suddenly floated across me, for the
first time, that he might have sailed for England immediately after
writing to me. There were expressions in the letter which seemed to
indicate that he had some such headlong project in his mind. And
yet, surely if it were so, I ought to have noticed them at the first
reading. I can only hope I am wrong in my present interpretation of
much of what he has written to me--hope it earnestly for both our sakes.
This has been a doleful day for me. I have been uneasy about Robert,
and uneasy about Mary. My mind is haunted by those last words of hers:
“I began my life wretchedly, and wretchedly I am sentenced to end it.”
Her usual melancholy way of talking never produced the same impression
on me that I feel now. Perhaps the discovery of the laudanum-bottle is
the cause of this. I would give many a hard day’s work to know what to
do for Mary’s good. My heart warmed to her when we first met in the
same lodging-house, two years ago; and, although I am not one of the
over-affectionate sort myself, I feel as if I could go to the world’s
end to serve that girl. Yet, strange to say, if I was asked why I was
so fond of her, I don’t think I should know how to answer the question.
March 7th. I am almost ashamed to write it down, even in this journal,
which no eyes but mine ever look on; yet I must honestly confess to
myself, that here I am, at nearly one in the morning, sitting up in
a state of serious uneasiness, because Mary has not yet come home. I
walked with her, this morning, to the place where she works, and tried
to lead her into talking of the relations she has got who are still
alive. My motive in doing this was to see if she dropped anything
in the course of conversation which might suggest a way of helping
her interests with those who are bound to give her all reasonable
assistance. But the little I could get her to say to me led to nothing.
Instead of answering my questions about her stepmother and her brother,
she persisted at first, in the strangest way, in talking of her father,
who was dead and gone, and of one Noah Truscott, who had been the
worst of all the bad friends he had, and had taught him to drink and
game. When I did get her to speak of her brother, she only knew that
he had gone out to a place called Assam, where they grew tea. How he
was doing, or whether he was there still, she did not seem to know,
never having heard a word from him for years and years past. As for her
stepmother, Mary, not unnaturally, flew into a passion the moment I
spoke of her. She keeps an eating-house at Hammersmith, and could have
given Mary good employment in it; but she seems always to have hated
her, and to have made her life so wretched with abuse and ill-usage,
that she had no refuge left but to go away from home, and do her best
to make a living for herself. Her husband (Mary’s father) appears to
have behaved badly to her; and, after his death, she took the wicked
course of revenging herself on her step-daughter. I felt, after this,
that it was impossible Mary could go back, and that it was the hard
necessity of her position, as it is of mine, that she should struggle
on to make a decent livelihood without assistance from any of her
relations. I confessed as much as this to her; but I added that I would
try to get her employment with the persons for whom I work, who pay
higher wages, and show a little more indulgence to those under them,
than the people to whom she is now obliged to look for support. I spoke
much more confidently than I felt, about being able to do this; and
left her, as I thought, in better spirits than usual. She promised to
be back to-night to tea, at nine o’clock, and now it is nearly one in
the morning, and she is not home yet. If it was any other girl I should
not feel uneasy, for I should make up my mind that there was extra
work to be done in a hurry, and that they were keeping her late, and I
should go to bed. But Mary is so unfortunate in everything that happens
to her, and her own melancholy talk about herself keeps hanging on my
mind so, that I have fears on her account which would not distress me
about any one else. It seems inexcusably silly to think such a thing,
much more to write it down; but I have a kind of nervous dread upon me
that some accident--
What does that loud knocking at the street door mean? And those voices
and heavy footsteps outside? Some lodger who has lost his key, I
suppose, And yet, my heart----What a coward I have become all of a
sudden!
More knocking and louder voices. I must run to the door and see what it
is. O, Mary! Mary! I hope I am not going to have another fright about
you; but I feel sadly like it.
March 8th.
March 9th.
March 10th.
March 11th. O, me! all the troubles I have ever had in my life are as
nothing to the trouble I am in now. For three days I have not been able
to write a single line in this journal, which I have kept so regularly,
ever since I was a girl. For three days I have not once thought of
Robert--I, who am always thinking of him at other times. My poor, dear,
unhappy Mary, the worst I feared for you on that night when I sat up
alone was far below the dreadful calamity that has really happened. How
can I write about it, with my eyes full of tears and my hand all of a
tremble? I don’t even know why I am sitting down at my desk now, unless
it is habit that keeps me to my old everyday task, in spite of all the
grief and fear which seem to unfit me entirely for performing it.
The people of the house were asleep and lazy on that dreadful night,
and I was the first to open the door. Never, never, could I describe
in writing, or even say in plain talk, though it is so much easier,
what I felt when I saw two policemen come in, carrying between them
what seemed to me to be a dead girl, and that girl Mary! I caught hold
of her and gave a scream that must have alarmed the whole house; for,
frightened people came crowding down-stairs in their night-dresses.
There was a dreadful confusion and noise of loud talking, but I heard
nothing, and saw nothing, till I had got her into my room, and laid on
my bed. I stooped down, frantic-like, to kiss her, and saw an awful
mark of a blow on her left temple, and felt, at the same time, a feeble
flutter of her breath on my cheek. The discovery that she was not dead
seemed to give me back my senses again. I told one of the policemen
where the nearest doctor was to be found, and sat down by the bedside
while he was gone, and bathed her poor head with cold water. She never
opened her eyes, or moved, or spoke; but she breathed, and that was
enough for me, because it was enough for life.
The policeman left in the room was a big, thick-voiced, pompous man,
with a horrible unfeeling pleasure in hearing himself talk before an
assembly of frightened, silent people. He told us how he had found her,
as if he had been telling a story in a taproom, and began with saying,
“I don’t think the young woman was drunk.” Drunk! My Mary, who might
have been a born lady for all the spirits she ever touched--drunk! I
could have struck the man for uttering the word, with her lying, poor
suffering angel, so white and still and helpless before him. As it
was, I gave him a look; but he was too stupid to understand it, and
went droning on, saying the same thing over and over again in the same
words. And yet the story of how they found her was, like all the sad
stories I have ever heard told in real life, so very, very short. They
had just seen her lying along on the kerb-stone, a few streets off, and
had taken her to the station-house. There she had been searched, and
one of my cards, that I give to ladies who promise me employment, had
been found in her pocket, and so they had brought her to our house.
This was all the man really had to tell. There was nobody near her when
she was found, and no evidence to show how the blow on her temple had
been inflicted.
What a time it was before the doctor came, and how dreadful to hear him
say, after he had looked at her, that he was afraid all the medical men
in the world could be of no use here! He could not get her to swallow
anything; and the more he tried to bring her back to her senses, the
less chance there seemed of his succeeding. He examined the blow on her
temple, and said he thought she must have fallen down in a fit of some
sort, and struck her head against the pavement, and so have given her
brain what he was afraid was a fatal shake. I asked what was to be done
if she showed any return to sense in the night. He said, “Send for me
directly;” and stopped for a little while afterwards stroking her head
gently with his hand, and whispering to himself, “Poor girl, so young
and so pretty!” I had felt, some minutes before, as if I could have
struck the policeman; and I felt now as if I could have thrown my arms
round the doctor’s neck and kissed him. I did put out my hand, when he
took up his hat, and he shook it in the friendliest way. “Don’t hope,
my dear,” he said, and went out.
The rest of the lodgers followed him, all silent and shocked, except
the inhuman wretch who owns the house, and lives in idleness on the
high rents he wrings from poor people like us. “She’s three weeks in my
debt,” says he, with a frown and an oath. “Where the devil is my money
to come from now?” Brute! brute!
I had a long cry alone with her that seemed to ease my heart a little.
She was not the least changed for the better when I had wiped away
the tears, and could see her clearly again. I took up her right hand,
which lay nearest to me. It was tight clenched. I tried to unclasp the
fingers, and succeeded after a little time. Something dark fell out of
the palm of her hand as I straightened it. I picked the thing up, and
smoothed it out, and saw that it was an end of a man’s cravat.
A very old, rotten, dingy strip of black silk, with thin lilac lines,
all blurred and deadened with dirt, running across and across the stuff
in a sort of trellis-work pattern. The small end of the cravat was
hemmed in the usual way, but the other end was all jagged, as if the
morsel then in my hands had been torn off violently from the rest of
the stuff. A chill ran all over me as I looked at it; for that poor,
stained, crumpled end of a cravat seemed to be saying to me, as though
it had been in plain words, “If she dies, she has come to her death by
foul means, and I am the witness of it.”
I had been frightened enough before, lest she should die suddenly
and quietly without my knowing it, while we were alone together; but
I got into a perfect agony now for fear this last worst affliction
should take me by surprise. I don’t suppose five minutes passed all
that woeful night through, without my getting up and putting my cheek
close to her mouth, to feel if the faint breaths still fluttered out
of it. They came and went just the same as at first, though the fright
I was in often made me fancy they were stilled for ever. Just as the
church clocks were striking four, I was startled by seeing the room
door open. It was only Dusty Sal (as they call her in the house) the
maid-of-all-work. She was wrapped up in the blanket off her bed; her
hair was all tumbled over her face; and her eyes were heavy with sleep,
as she came up to the bedside where I was sitting.
“I’ve two hours good before I begin to work,” says she, in her hoarse,
drowsy voice, “and I’ve come to sit up and take my turn at watching
her. You lay down and get some sleep on the rug. Here’s my blanket for
you--I don’t mind the cold--it will keep me awake.”
“You are very kind--very, very kind and thoughtful, Sally,” says I,
“but I am too wretched in my mind to want sleep, or rest, or to do
anything but wait where I am, and try and hope for the best.”
“Then I’ll wait, too,” says Sally. “I must do something; if there’s
nothing to do but waiting, I’ll wait.”
And she sat down opposite me at the foot of the bed, and drew the
blanket close round her with a shiver.
“After working so hard as you do, I’m sure you must want all the little
rest you can get,” says I.
“Excepting only you,” says Sally, putting her heavy arm very clumsily,
but very gently at the same time, round Mary’s feet, and looking hard
at the pale, still face on the pillow. “Excepting you, she’s the only
soul in this house as never swore at me, or give me a hard word that
I can remember. When you made puddings on Sundays, and give her half,
she always give me a bit. The rest of ’em calls me Dusty Sal. Excepting
only you, again, she always called me Sally, as if she knowed me in a
friendly way. I ain’t no good here, but I ain’t no harm neither; and I
shall take my turn at the sitting up--that’s what I shall do!”
She nestled her head down close at Mary’s feet as she spoke those
words, and said no more. I once or twice thought she had fallen asleep,
but whenever I looked at her, her heavy eyes were always wide open.
She never changed her position an inch till the church clocks struck
six; then she gave one little squeeze to Mary’s feet with her arm, and
shuffled out of the room without a word. A minute or two after, I heard
her down below, lighting the kitchen fire just as usual.
A little later, the doctor stepped over before his breakfast time, to
see if there had been any change in the night. He only shook his head
when he looked at her, as if there was no hope. Having nobody else to
consult that I could put trust in, I showed him the end of the cravat,
and told him of the dreadful suspicion that had arisen in my mind, when
I found it in her hand.
“You must keep it carefully, and produce it at the inquest,” he said.
“I don’t know though, that it is likely to lead to anything. The bit
of stuff may have been lying on the pavement near her, and her hand
may have unconsciously clutched it when she fell. Was she subject to
fainting fits?”
“Not more so, sir, than other young girls who are hard-worked and
anxious, and weakly from poor living,” I answered.
“I can’t say that she may not have got that blow from a fall,” the
doctor went on, looking at her temple again. “I can’t say that it
presents any positive appearance of having been inflicted by another
person. It will be important, however, to ascertain what state of
health she was in last night. Have you any idea where she was yesterday
evening?”
I told him where she was employed at work, and said I imagined she must
have been kept there later than usual.
“I shall pass the place this morning,” said the doctor, “in going
my rounds among my patients, and I’ll just step in and make some
inquiries.”
I thanked him, and we parted. Just as he was closing the door, he
looked in again.
“Was she your sister?” he asked.
“No, sir, only my dear friend.”
He said nothing more; but I heard him sigh, as he shut the door softly.
Perhaps he once had a sister of his own, and lost her? Perhaps she was
like Mary in the face?
The doctor was hours gone away. I began to feel unspeakably forlorn
and helpless. So much so, as even to wish selfishly that Robert might
really have sailed from America, and might get to London in time to
assist and console me. No living creature came into the room but Sally.
The first time she brought me some tea; the second and third times she
only looked in to see if there was any change, and glanced her eye
towards the bed. I had never known her so silent before; it seemed
almost as if this dreadful accident had struck her dumb. I ought to
have spoken to her, perhaps, but there was something in her face that
daunted me; and, besides, the fever of anxiety I was in began to dry up
my lips as if they would never be able to shape any words again. I was
still tormented by that frightful apprehension of the past night, that
she would die without my knowing it--die without saying one word to
clear up the awful mystery of this blow, and set the suspicions at rest
for ever which I still felt whenever my eyes fell on the end of the old
cravat.
At last the doctor came back.
“I think you may safely clear your mind of any doubts to which that
bit of stuff may have given rise,” he said. “She was, as you supposed,
detained late by her employers, and she fainted in the work-room. They
most unwisely and unkindly let her go home alone, without giving her
any stimulant, as soon as she came to her senses again. Nothing is
more probable, under these circumstances, than that she should faint
a second time on her way here. A fall on the pavement, without any
friendly arm to break it, might have produced even a worse injury than
the injury we see. I believe that the only ill-usage to which the poor
girl was exposed was the neglect she met with in the work-room.”
“You speak very reasonably, I own, sir,” said I, not yet quite
convinced. “Still, perhaps she may----”
“My poor girl, I told you not to hope,” said the doctor, interrupting
me. He went to Mary, and lifted up her eyelids, and looked at her
eyes while he spoke, then added: “If you still doubt how she came by
that blow, do not encourage the idea that any words of hers will ever
enlighten you. She will never speak again.”
“Not dead! O, sir, don’t say she’s dead!”
“She is dead to pain and sorrow--dead to speech and recognition. There
is more animation in the life of the feeblest insect that flies, than
in the life that is left in her. When you look at her now, try to think
that she is in Heaven. That is the best comfort I can give you, after
telling the hard truth.”
I did not believe him. I could not believe him. So long as she breathed
at all, so long I was resolved to hope. Soon after the doctor was gone,
Sally came in again, and found me listening (if I may call it so) at
Mary’s lips. She went to where my little hand-glass hangs against the
wall, took it down, and gave it to me.
“See if the breath marks it,” she said.
Yes; her breath did mark it, but very faintly. Sally cleaned the
glass with her apron, and gave it back to me. As she did so, she half
stretched out her hand to Mary’s face, but drew it in again suddenly,
as if she was afraid of soiling Mary’s delicate skin with her hard,
horny fingers. Going out, she stopped at the foot of the bed, and
scraped away a little patch of mud that was on one of Mary’s shoes.
“I always used to clean ’em for her,” said Sally, “to save her hands
from getting blacked. May I take ’em off now, and clean ’em again?”
I nodded my head, for my heart was too heavy to speak. Sally took the
shoes off with a slow, awkward tenderness, and went out.
An hour or more must have passed, when, putting the glass over her
lips again, I saw no mark on it. I held it closer and closer. I dulled
it accidentally with my own breath, and cleaned it. I held it over
her again. O, Mary, Mary, the doctor was right! I ought to have only
thought of you in Heaven!
Dead, without a word, without a sign,--without even a look to tell the
true story of the blow that killed her! I could not call to anybody, I
could not cry, I could not so much as put the glass down and give her
a kiss for the last time. I don’t know how long I had sat there with
my eyes burning, and my hands deadly cold, when Sally came in with the
shoes cleaned, and carried carefully in her apron for fear of a soil
touching them. At the sight of that----
I can write no more. My tears drop so fast on the paper that I can see
nothing.
March 12th. She died on the afternoon of the eighth. On the morning
of the ninth, I wrote, as in duty bound, to her stepmother, at
Hammersmith. There was no answer. I wrote again: my letter was returned
to me this morning, unopened. For all that woman cares, Mary might be
buried with a pauper’s funeral. But this shall never be, if I pawn
everything about me, down to the very gown that is on my back. The bare
thought of Mary being buried by the workhouse gave me the spirit to dry
my eyes, and go to the undertaker’s, and tell him how I was placed. I
said, if he would get me an estimate of all that would have to be paid,
from first to last, for the cheapest decent funeral that could be had,
I would undertake to raise the money. He gave me the estimate, written
in this way, like a common bill:
A walking funeral complete 1 13 8
Vestry 0 4 4
Rector 0 4 4
Clerk 0 1 0
Sexton 0 1 0
Beadle 0 1 0
Bell 0 1 0
Six feet of ground 0 2 0
---------
Total £2 8 4
If I had the heart to give any thought to it, I should be inclined to
wish that the Church could afford to do without so many small charges
for burying poor people, to whose friends even shillings are of
consequence. But it is useless to complain; the money must be raised
at once. The charitable doctor--a poor man himself, or he would not be
living in our neighbourhood--has subscribed ten shillings towards the
expenses; and the coroner, when the inquest was over, added five more.
Perhaps others may assist me. If not, I have fortunately clothes and
furniture of my own to pawn. And I must set about parting with them
without delay; for the funeral is to be to-morrow, the thirteenth. The
funeral--Mary’s funeral! It is well that the straits and difficulties I
am in, keep my mind on the stretch. If I had leisure to grieve, where
should I find the courage to face to-morrow?
Thank God, they did not want me at the inquest. The verdict given--with
the doctor, the policeman, and two persons from the place where she
worked, for witnesses--was Accidental Death. The end of the cravat was
produced, and the coroner said that it was certainly enough to suggest
suspicion; but the jury, in the absence of any positive evidence, held
to the doctor’s notion that she had fainted and fallen down, and so
got the blow on her temple. They reproved the people where Mary worked
for letting her go home alone, without so much as a drop of brandy to
support her, after she had fallen into a swoon from exhaustion before
their eyes. The coroner added, on his own account, that he thought the
reproof was thoroughly deserved. After that, the cravat-end was given
back to me, by my own desire; the police saying that they could make
no investigations with such a slight clue to guide them. They may think
so, and the coroner, and doctor, and jury may think so; but, in spite
of all that has passed, I am now more firmly persuaded than ever that
there is some dreadful mystery in connection with that blow on my poor
lost Mary’s temple which has yet to be revealed, and which may come to
be discovered through this very fragment of a cravat that I found in
her hand. I cannot give any good reason for why I think so; but I know
that if I had been one of the jury at the inquest, nothing should have
induced me to consent to such a verdict as Accidental Death.