Mrs. Crickett, twice a widow, and now the parish clerk’s wife, a
fine-framed, scandal-loving woman, with a peculiar corner to her eye by
which, without turning her head, she could see what people were doing
almost behind her, lived in a cottage standing nearer to the old
manor-house than any other in the village of Carriford, and she had on
that account been temporarily engaged by the steward, as a respectable
kind of charwoman and general servant, until a settled arrangement could
be made with some person as permanent domestic.
Every morning, therefore, Mrs. Crickett, immediately she had lighted
the fire in her own cottage, and prepared the breakfast for herself and
husband, paced her way to the Old House to do the same for Mr. Manston.
Then she went home to breakfast; and when the steward had eaten his, and
had gone out on his rounds, she returned again to clear away, make his
bed, and put the house in order for the day.
On the morning of Owen Graye’s departure, she went through the
operations of her first visit as usual--proceeded home to breakfast, and
went back again, to perform those of the second.
Entering Manston’s empty bedroom, with her hands on her hips, she
indifferently cast her eyes upon the bed, previously to dismantling it.
Whilst she looked, she thought in an inattentive manner, ‘What a
remarkably quiet sleeper Mr. Manston must be!’ The upper bed-clothes
were flung back, certainly, but the bed was scarcely disarranged.
‘Anybody would almost fancy,’ she thought, ‘that he had made it himself
after rising.’
But these evanescent thoughts vanished as they had come, and Mrs.
Crickett set to work; she dragged off the counterpane, blankets and
sheets, and stooped to lift the pillows. Thus stooping, something
arrested her attention; she looked closely--more closely--very closely.
‘Well, to be sure!’ was all she could say. The clerk’s wife stood as if
the air had suddenly set to amber, and held her fixed like a fly in it.
The object of her wonder was a trailing brown hair, very little less
than a yard long, which proved it clearly to be a hair from some woman’s
head. She drew it off the pillow, and took it to the window; there
holding it out she looked fixedly at it, and became utterly lost in
meditation: her gaze, which had at first actively settled on the hair,
involuntarily dropped past its object by degrees and was lost on the
floor, as the inner vision obscured the outer one.
She at length moistened her lips, returned her eyes to the hair, wound
it round her fingers, put it in some paper, and secreted the whole in
her pocket. Mrs. Crickett’s thoughts were with her work no more that
morning.
She searched the house from roof-tree to cellar, for some other trace of
feminine existence or appurtenance; but none was to be found.
She went out into the yard, coal-hole, stable, hay-loft, green-house,
fowl-house, and piggery, and still there was no sign. Coming in again,
she saw a bonnet, eagerly pounced upon it; and found it to be her own.
Hastily completing her arrangements in the other rooms, she entered the
village again, and called at once on the postmistress, Elizabeth Leat,
an intimate friend of hers, and a female who sported several unique
diseases and afflictions.
Mrs. Crickett unfolded the paper, took out the hair, and waved it on
high before the perplexed eyes of Elizabeth, which immediately mooned
and wandered after it like a cat’s.
‘What is it?’ said Mrs. Leat, contracting her eyelids, and stretching
out towards the invisible object a narrow bony hand that would have been
an unmitigated delight to the pencil of Carlo Crivelli.
‘You shall hear,’ said Mrs. Crickett, complacently gathering up the
treasure into her own fat hand; and the secret was then solemnly
imparted, together with the accident of its discovery.
A shaving-glass was taken down from a nail, laid on its back in the
middle of a table by the window, and the hair spread carefully out upon
it. The pair then bent over the table from opposite sides, their elbows
on the edge, their hands supporting their heads, their foreheads nearly
touching, and their eyes upon the hair.
‘He ha’ been mad a’ter my lady Cytherea,’ said Mrs. Crickett, ‘and ‘tis
my very belief the hair is--’
‘No ‘tidn’. Hers idn’ so dark as that,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Elizabeth, you know that as the faithful wife of a servant of the
Church, I should be glad to think as you do about the girl. Mind I
don’t wish to say anything against Miss Graye, but this I do say, that I
believe her to be a nameless thing, and she’s no right to stick a moral
clock in her face, and deceive the country in such a way. If she wasn’t
of a bad stock at the outset she was bad in the planten, and if she
wasn’t bad in the planten, she was bad in the growen, and if not in the
growen, she’s made bad by what she’s gone through since.’
‘But I have another reason for knowing it idn’ hers,’ said Mrs. Leat.
‘Ah! I know whose it is then--Miss Aldclyffe’s, upon my song!’
‘’Tis the colour of hers, but I don’t believe it to be hers either.’
‘Don’t you believe what they d’ say about her and him?’
‘I say nothen about that; but you don’t know what I know about his
letters.’
‘What about ‘em?’
‘He d’ post all his letters here except those for one person, and they
he d’ take to Budmouth. My son is in Budmouth Post Office, as you know,
and as he d’ sit at desk he can see over the blind of the window all
the people who d’ post letters. Mr. Manston d’ unvariably go there wi’
letters for that person; my boy d’ know ‘em by sight well enough now.’
‘Is it a she?’
‘’Tis a she.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘The little stunpoll of a fellow couldn’t call to mind more than that
‘tis Miss Somebody, of London. However, that’s the woman who ha’ been
here, depend upon’t--a wicked one--some poor street-wench escaped from
Sodom, I warrant ye.’
‘Only to find herself in Gomorrah, seemingly.’
‘That may be.’
‘No, no, Mrs. Leat, this is clear to me. ‘Tis no miss who came here to
see our steward last night--whenever she came or wherever she vanished.
Do you think he would ha’ let a miss get here how she could, go away how
she would, without breakfast or help of any kind?’
Elizabeth shook her head--Mrs. Crickett looked at her solemnly.
‘I say I know she had no help of any kind; I know it was so, for the
grate was quite cold when I touched it this morning with these fingers,
and he was still in bed. No, he wouldn’t take the trouble to write
letters to a girl and then treat her so off-hand as that. There’s a tie
between ‘em stronger than feelen. She’s his wife.’
‘He married! The Lord so ‘s, what shall we hear next? Do he look married
now? His are not the abashed eyes and lips of a married man.’
‘Perhaps she’s a tame one--but she’s his wife still.’
‘No, no: he’s not a married man.’
‘Yes, yes, he is. I’ve had three, and I ought to know.’
‘Well, well,’ said Mrs. Leat, giving way. ‘Whatever may be the truth
on’t I trust Providence will settle it all for the best, as He always
do.’
‘Ay, ay, Elizabeth,’ rejoined Mrs. Crickett with a satirical sigh, as
she turned on her foot to go home, ‘good people like you may say so, but
I have always found Providence a different sort of feller.’