TOWN TALK
As long as idle dogs will bark, and idle asses bray,
As long as hens will cackle over every egg they lay,
So long will folks be chattering,
And idle tongues be clattering,
For the less there is to talk about, the more there is to say.
The obituary notices of old Mr. Mottisfont which appeared in due course
in the two local papers were of a glowingly appreciative nature, and at
least as accurate as such notices usually are. David could not help
thinking how much the old gentleman would have relished the fine phrases
and the flowing periods. Sixty years of hard work were compressed into
two and a half columns of palpitating journalese. David preferred the
old man’s own version, which had fewer adjectives and a great deal more
backbone.
“My father left me nothing but debts—and William. The ironworks were in
a bad way, and we were on the edge of a bankruptcy. I was twenty-one,
and William was fifteen, and every one shook their heads. I can see ’em
now. Well, I gave some folk the rough side of my tongue, and some the
smooth. I had to have money, and no one would lend. I got a little
credit, but I couldn’t get the cash. Then I hunted up my father’s
cousin, Edward Moberly. Rolling he was, and as close as wax. Bored to
death too, for all his money. I talked to him, and he took to me. I
talked to him for three days, and he lent me what I wanted, on my note
of hand, and I paid it all back in five years, and the interest
up-to-date right along. It took some doing but I got it done. Then the
thing got a go on it, and we climbed right up. And folks stopped shaking
their heads. I began to make my mark. I began to be a ‘respected
fellow-citizen.’ Oh, Lord, David, if you’d known William you’d respect
me too! Talk about the debts—as a handicap, they weren’t worth
mentioning in the same breath with William. I could talk people into
believing I was solvent, but I couldn’t talk ’em into believing that
William had any business capacity. And I couldn’t pay off William, same
as I paid off the debts.”
David’s recollections plunged him suddenly into a gulf of black
depression. Such a plucky old man, and now he was dead—out of the
way—and he, David, had lent a hand to cover the matter over, and shield
the murderer. David took the black fit to bed with him at night, and
rose in the morning with the gloom upon him still. It became a shadow
which went with him in all his ways, and clung about his every thought.
And with the gloom there came upon him a horrible, haunting recurrence
of his old passion for Mary. The wound made by her rejection of him had
been slowly skinning over, but in the scene which they had shared, and
the stress of the emotions raised by it, this wound had broken out
afresh, and now it was no more a deep clean cut, but a festering thing
that bid fair to poison all the springs of life. At Mary’s bidding he
had violated a trust, and his own sense of honour. There were times when
he hated Mary. There were times when he craved for her. And always his
contempt for himself deepened, and with it the gloom—the black gloom.
“The doctor gets through a sight of whisky these days,” remarked Mrs.
Havergill, David’s housekeeper. “And a more abstemious gentleman, I’m
sure I never did live with. Weeks a bottle of whisky ’ud last, unless
he’d friends in. And now—gone like a flash, as you might say. Only, just
you mind there’s not a word of this goes out of the ’ouse, Sarah, my
girl. D’ ye hear?”
Sarah, a whey-faced girl whose arms and legs were set on at uncertain
angles, only nodded. She adored David with the unreasoning affection of
a dog, and had he taken to washing in whisky instead of merely drinking
it, she would have regarded his doing so as quite a right and proper
thing.
When the local papers had finished Mr. Mottisfont’s obituary notices and
had lavished all their remaining stock of adjectives upon the funeral
arrangements, they proceeded to interest themselves in the terms of his
will. For once, old Mr. Mottisfont had done very much what was expected
of him. Local charities benefited and old servants were remembered.
Elizabeth Chantrey was left twenty-five thousand pounds, and everything
else went to Edward. “To David Blake I leave my sincere respect, he
having declined to receive a legacy.”
David could almost see the old man grin as he wrote the words, could
almost hear him chuckle, “Very well, my highfalutin young man—into the
pillory with you.”
The situation held a touch of sardonic humour beyond old Mr.
Mottisfont’s contriving, and the iron of it rusted into David’s soul.
Market Harford discussed the terms of the will with great interest. They
began to speculate as to what Elizabeth Chantrey would do. When it
transpired that she was going to remain on in the old house and be
joined there by Edward and Mary, there was quite a little buzz of talk.
“I assure you he made it a condition—a _secret_ condition,” said old
Mrs. Codrington in her deep booming voice. “I have it from Mary herself.
He made it a condition.”
It was quite impossible to disbelieve a statement made with so much
authority. Mrs. Codrington’s voice always stood her in good stead. It
had a solidity which served to prop up any shaky fact. Miss Dobell, to
whom she was speaking, sniffed, and felt a little out of it. She had
been Agatha Mottisfont’s great friend, and as such she felt that she
herself should have been the fountainhead of information. As soon as
Mrs. Codrington had departed Miss Hester Dobell put on her outdoor
things and went to call upon Mary Mottisfont.
As it was a damp afternoon, she pinned up her skirts all round, and she
was still unpinning them upon Mary’s doorstep, when the door opened.
“Miss Chantrey is with her sister? Oh, indeed! That is very nice, very
nice indeed. And Mrs. Mottisfont is seeing visitors, you say? Yes? Then
I will just walk in—just walk in.”
Miss Dobell came into the drawing-room with a little fluttered run. Her
faded blue eyes were moist, but not so moist as to prevent her
perceiving that Mary wore a black dress which did not become her, and
that Elizabeth had on an old grey coat and skirt, with dark furs, and a
close felt hat which almost hid her hair. She greeted Mary very
affectionately and Elizabeth a shade less affectionately.
“I hope you are well, Mary, my dear? Yes? That is good. These sad times
are very trying. And you, Elizabeth? I am pleased to find that you are
able to be out. I feared you were indisposed. Every one was saying,
‘Miss Chantrey must be indisposed, as she was not at the funeral.’ And I
feared it was the case.”
“No, thank you, I am quite well,” said Elizabeth.
Miss Dobell seated herself, smoothing down her skirt. It was of a very
bright blue, and she wore with it a little fawn-coloured jacket adorned
with a black and white braid, which was arranged upon it in loops and
spirals. She had on also a blue tie, fastened in a bow at her throat,
and an extremely oddly-shaped hat, from one side of which depended a
somewhat battered bunch of purple grapes. Beneath this rather
bacchanalian headgear her old, mild, straw-coloured face had all the
effect of an anachronism.
“I am so glad to find you both. I am so glad to have the opportunity of
explaining how it was that I did not attend the funeral. It was a great
disappointment. Everything so impressive, by all accounts. Yes. But I
could not have attended without proper mourning. No. Oh, no, it would
have been impossible. Even though I was aware that poor dear Mr.
Mottisfont entertained very singular ideas upon the subject of mourning,
I know how much they grieved poor dear Agatha. They were very singular.
I suppose, my dear Elizabeth, that it is in deference to poor Mr.
Mottisfont’s wishes that you do not wear black. I said to every one at
once—oh, at _once_—‘depend upon it poor Mr. Mottisfont must have
expressed a _wish_. Otherwise Miss Chantrey would certainly wear
mourning—oh, certainly. After living so long in the house, and being
like a daughter to him, it would be only proper, only right and proper.’
That is what I said, and I am sure I was right. It was his wish, was it
not?”
“He did not like to see people in black,” said Elizabeth.
“No,” said Miss Dobell in a flustered little voice. “Very strange, is it
not? But then so many of poor Mr. Mottisfont’s ideas were very strange.
I cannot help remembering how they used to grieve poor dear Agatha. And
his views—so sad—so very sad. But there, we must not speak of them now
that he is dead. No. Doubtless he knows better now. Oh, yes, we must
hope so. I do not know what made me speak of it. I should not have done
so. No, not now that he is dead! It was not right, or charitable. But I
really only intended to explain how it came about that I was not at the
funeral. It was a great deprivation—a very great deprivation, but I was
there in spirit—oh, yes, in spirit.”
The purple grapes nodded a little in sympathy with Miss Dobell’s nervous
agitation. She put up a little hand, clothed in a brown woollen glove,
and steadied them.
“I often think,” she said, “that I should do well to purchase one black
garment for such occasions as these. Now I should hardly have liked to
come here to-day, dressed in colours, had I not been aware of poor dear
Mr. Mottisfont’s views. It is awkward. Yes, oh, yes. But you see, my
dear Mary, in my youth, being one of a very large family, we were so
continually in mourning that I really hardly ever possessed any garment
of a coloured nature. When I was only six years old I can remember that
we were in mourning for my grandfather. In those days, my dears, little
girls, wore, well, they wore—little—hem—white trousers, quite long, you
know, reaching in fact to the ankle. Under a black frock it had quite a
garish appearance. And my dear mother, who was very particular about all
family observances, used to stitch black crape bands upon the
trouser-legs. It was quite a work. Oh, yes, I assure you. Then after my
grandfather, there was my great-uncle George, and on the other side of
the family my great-aunt Eliza. And then there were my uncles, and two
aunts, and quite a number of cousins. And, later on, my own dear
brothers and sisters. So that, as you may say, we were never out of
black at all, for our means were such that it was necessary to wear out
one garment before another could be purchased. And I became a little
weary of wearing black, my dears. So when my last dear sister died, I
went into colours. Not at once, oh, no!”—Miss Dobell became very much
shocked and agitated at the sound of her own words. “Oh, dear, no. Not,
of course, until after a full and proper period of mourning, but when
that was over I went into colours, and have never since possessed
anything black. You see, as I have no more relations, it is unnecessary
that I should be provided with mourning.”
Elizabeth Chantrey left her sister’s house in rather a saddened mood.
She wondered if she too would ever be left derelict. Unmarried women
were often very lonely. Life went past them down other channels. They
missed their link with the generations to come, and as the new life
sprang up it knew them not, and they had neither part nor lot in it.
When she reached home she sat for a long while very still, forcing her
consciousness into a realisation of Life as a thing unbroken, one,
eternal. The peace of it came upon her, and the sadness passed.