"I did not know which of the two girls it was who let the man out that
Wednesday night, for I did not clearly see; but, sir, the impression on
my mind at the moment was, that it was Jane Cross. Jane Cross, and not
Matilda. If so, why does she tell me this tale about her brother, and
say it was herself?"
"And if it was Jane Cross?"
Owen shook his head. "All sorts of notions occur to me, sir. Sometimes
I fancy that the man might have been Jane's sweetheart, that he might
have been there again on the Monday night, and done the mischief in
a quarrel; and that Matilda is holding her tongue because it is her
brother. Let the truth be what it will, Matilda's manner convinces me of
one thing: that there's something she is concealing, and that it is half
frightening her wits out of her.----You are going to leave Saltwater, I
hear, sir," added the young man in a different tone, "and I am glad to
have the opportunity of saying this, for I should not like you to carry
away any doubt of me. I'll bring the matter to light if I can."
Touching his hat, he walked onwards, leaving my thoughts all in a
whirligig.
Was Owen right in drawing these conclusions?--or was he purposely giving
a wrong colouring to facts, and seeking craftily to throw suspicion
off himself? It was a nice question, one I could make neither top nor
tail of. But, looking back to the fatal evening, weighing this point,
sifting that, I began to see that Matilda showed more anxiety, more
terror, than she need have shown _before_ she knew that any ill had
happened. Had she a prevision, as she stood at the door with the jug of
ale in her hand, that some evil might have chanced? Did she leave some
individual in the house with Jane Cross when she went to the Swan to get
the ale?--and was it her brother? Did she leave OWEN in the house, and
was she screening him?
* * * * *
"Why, Matilda! Is it you?"
It was fourteen months later, and autumn weather, and I had just arrived
in London at Miss Deveen's. My question to Matilda, who came into my
dressing-room with some warm water to wash off the travelling dust, was
not made in surprise at seeing _her_, for I supposed she was still in
service at Miss Deveen's, but at seeing the change in her. Instead of
the healthy and, so to say, handsome girl known at Saltwater, I saw a
worn, weary, anxious-looking shadow, with a feverish fire in her wild
dark eyes.
"Have you been ill, Matilda?"
"No, sir, not at all. I am quite well."
"You have grown very thin."
"It's the London air, sir. I think everybody must get thin who lives in
it."
Very civilly and respectfully, but yet with an unmistakable air of
reticence, spoke she. Somehow the girl was changed, and greatly changed.
Perhaps she had been grieving after Jane Cross? Perhaps the secret of
what had happened (if in truth Matilda knew it) lay upon her with too
heavy a weight?
"Do you find Matilda a good servant?" I asked of Miss Deveen, later,
she and I being alone together.
"A very good servant, Johnny. But she is going to leave me."
"Is she? Why?"
Miss Deveen only nodded, in answer to the first query, passing over the
last. I supposed she did not wish to say.
"I think her so much altered."
"In what way, Johnny?"
"In looks: looks and manner. She is just a shadow. One might say she had
passed through a six months' fever. And what a curious light there is in
her eyes!"
"She has always impressed me with the idea of having some great care
upon her. None can mistake that she is a sorrowful woman. I hear that
the other servants accuse her of having been 'crossed in love,'" added
Miss Deveen, with a smile.
"She is thinner even than Miss Cattledon."
"And that, I daresay you think, need not be, Johnny! Miss Cattledon, by
the way, is rather hard upon Matilda just now: calls her a 'demon.'"
"A demon! Why does she?"
"Well, I'll tell you. Though it is only a little domestic matter, one
that perhaps you will hardly care to hear. You must know (to begin with)
that Matilda has never made herself sociable with the other servants
here; in return they have become somewhat prejudiced against her, and
have been ready to play her tricks, tease her, and what not. But you
must understand, Johnny, that I knew nothing of the state of affairs
below; such matters rarely reach me. My cook, Hall, was especially at
war with Matilda: in fact, I believe there was no love lost between
the two. The girl's melancholy--for at times she does seem very
melancholy--was openly put down by the rest to the assumption that she
must have had some love affair in which the swain had played her false.
They were continually worrying her on this score, and it no doubt
irritated Matilda; but she rarely retorted, preferring rather to leave
them and take refuge in her room."
"Why could they not let her alone?"
"People can't let one another alone, as I believe, Johnny. If they did,
the world would be pleasanter to live in than it is."
"And I suppose Matilda got tired at last, and gave warning?"
"No. Some two or three weeks ago it appears that, by some means or
other, Hall obtained access to a small trunk; one that Matilda keeps
her treasures in, and has cautiously kept locked. If I thought Hall
had opened this trunk with a key of her own, as Matilda accuses her of
doing, I would not keep the woman in my house another day. But she
declares to me most earnestly--for I had her before me here to question
her--that Matilda, called suddenly out of her chamber, left the trunk
open there, and the letter, of which I am about to tell you, lying, also
open, by its side. Hall says that she went into the room--it adjoins her
own--for something she wanted, and that all she did--and she admits this
much--was to pick up the letter, carry it downstairs, read it to the
other servants, and make fun over it."
"What letter was it?"
"Strictly speaking, it was only part of a letter: one begun but not
concluded. It was in Matilda's own hand, apparently written a long time
ago, for the ink was pale and faded, and it began 'Dearest Thomas Owen.
The----'"
"Thomas Owen!" I exclaimed, starting in my chair. "Why, that is the
milkman at Saltwater."
"I'm sure I don't know who he is, Johnny, and I don't suppose it
matters. Only a few lines followed, three or four, speaking of some
private conversation that she had held with him on coming out of church
the day before, and of some reproach that she had then made to him
respecting Jane Cross. The words broke suddenly off there, as if the
writer had been interrupted. But why Matilda did not complete the letter
and send it, and why she should have kept it by her all this time, must
be best known to herself."
"Jane Cross was her fellow-servant at Mr. Peahern's. She who was killed
by falling down the staircase."
"Yes, poor thing, I remembered the name. But, to go on. In the evening,
after the finding of this letter, I and Miss Cattledon were startled by
a disturbance in the kitchen. Cries and screams, and loud, passionate
words. Miss Cattledon ran down; I stayed at the top of the stairs. She
found Hall, Matilda, and one of the others there, Matilda in a perfect
storm of fury, attacking Hall like a maniac. She tore handfuls out of
her hair, she bit her thumb until her teeth met in it: Hall, though
by far the bigger person of the two, and I should have thought the
stronger, had no chance against her; she seemed to be as a very reed in
her hands, passion enduing Matilda with a strength perfectly unnatural.
George, who had been out on an errand, came in at the moment, and by his
help the women were parted. Cattledon maintains that Matilda, during the
scene, was nothing less than a demon; quite mad. When it was over, the
girl fell on the floor utterly exhausted, and lay like a dead thing,
every bit of strength, almost of life, gone out of her."
"I never could have believed it of Matilda."
"Nor I, Johnny. I grant that the girl had just cause to be angry. How
should we like to have our private places rifled, and their contents
exhibited to and mocked at by the world; contents which to us seem
sacred? But to have put herself into that wild rage was both unseemly
and unaccountable. Her state then, and her state immediately afterwards,
made me think--I speak it with all reverence, Johnny--of the poor people
in holy writ from whom the evil spirits were cast out."
"Ay. It seems to be just such a case, Miss Deveen."
"Hall's thumb was so much injured that a doctor had to come daily to it
for nine or ten days," continued Miss Deveen. "Of course, after this
climax, I could not retain Matilda in my service; neither would she
have remained in it. She indulged a feeling of the most bitter hatred
to the women servants, to Hall especially--she had not much liked them
before, as you may readily guess--and she said that nothing would induce
her to remain with them, even had I been willing to keep her. So she has
obtained a situation with some acquaintances of mine who live in this
neighbourhood, and goes to it next week. That is why Matilda leaves me,
Johnny."
In my heart I could not help being sorry for her, and said so. She
looked so truly, terribly unhappy!
"I am very sorry for her," assented Miss Deveen. "And had I known the
others were making her life here uncomfortable, I should have taken
means to stop their pastime. Of the actual facts, with regard to the
letter, I cannot be at any certainty--I mean in my own mind. Hall is a
respectable servant, and I have never had cause to think her untruthful
during the three years she has lived with me: and she most positively
holds to it that the little trunk was standing open on the table and
the letter lying open beside it. Allowing that it was so, she had, of
course, no right to touch either trunk or letter, still less to take the
letter downstairs and exhibit it to the others, and I don't defend her
conduct: but yet it is different from having rifled the lock of the
trunk and taken the letter out."
"And Matilda accuses her of doing that?"
"Yes: and, on her side, holds to it just as positively. What Matilda
tells me is this: On that day it chanced that Miss Cattledon had paid
the women servants their quarter's wages. Matilda carried hers to her
chamber, took this said little trunk out of her large box, where she
keeps it, unlocked it and put the money into it. She disturbed nothing
in the trunk; she says she had wrapped the sovereigns in a bit of
paper, and she just slipped them inside, touching nothing else. She was
shutting down the lid when she heard herself called to by me on the
landing below. She waited to lock the box but not to put it up, leaving
it standing on the table. I quite well remembered calling to the girl,
having heard her run upstairs. I wanted her in my room."
Miss Deveen paused a minute, apparently thinking.
"Matilda has assured me again and again that she is quite sure she
locked the little trunk, that there can be no mistake on that point.
Moreover, she asserts that the letter in question was lying at the
bottom of the trunk beneath other things, and that she had not taken
it out or touched it for months and months."
"And when she went upstairs again--did she find the little trunk open
or shut?"
"She says she found it shut: shut and locked just as she had left it;
and she replaced it in her large box, unconscious that any one had been
to it."
"Was she long in your room, Miss Deveen?"
"Yes, Johnny, the best part of an hour. I wanted a little sewing done
in a hurry, and told her to sit down there and then and do it. It was
during this time that the cook, going upstairs herself, saw the trunk,
and took the opportunity to do what she did do."
"I think I should feel inclined to believe Matilda. Her tale sounds the
more probable."
"I don't know that, Johnny. I can hardly believe that a respectable
woman, as Hall undoubtedly is, would deliberately unlock a
fellow-servant's box with a false key. Whence did she get the key to
do it? Had she previously provided herself with one? The lock is of
the most simple description, for I have seen the trunk since, and Hall
might possess a key that would readily fit it: but if so, as the woman
herself says, how could she know it? In short, Johnny, it is one
woman's word against another's: and, until this happened, I had deemed
each of them to be equally credible."
To be sure there was reason in that. I sat thinking.
"Were it proved to have been as Matilda says, still I could not keep
her," resumed Miss Deveen. "Mine is a peaceable, well-ordered household,
and I should not like to know that one, subject to insane fits of
temper, was a member of it. Though Hall in that case would get her
discharge also."
"Do the people where Matilda is going know why she leaves?"
"Mrs. and Miss Soames. Yes. I told them all about it. But I told them
at the same time, what I had then learnt--that Matilda's temper had
doubtlessly been much tried here. It would not be tried in their house,
they believed, and took her readily. She is an excellent servant,
Johnny, let who will get her."
I could not resist the temptation of speaking to Matilda about this, an
opportunity offering that same day. She came into the room with some
letters just left by the postman.
"I thought my mistress was here, sir," she said, hesitating with the
tray in her hand.
"Miss Deveen will be here in a minute: you can leave the letters. So you
are going to take flight, Matilda! I have heard all about it. What a
silly thing you must be to put yourself into that wonderful tantrum!"
"She broke into my box, and turned over its contents, and stole my
letter to mock me," retorted Matilda, her fever-lighted eyes taking a
momentary fierceness. "Who, put in my place, would not have gone into
a tantrum, sir?"
"But she says she did not break into it."
"As surely as that is heaven's sun above us, she _did it_, Mr. Johnny.
She has been full of spite towards me for a long time, and she thought
she would pay me out. I did but unlock the box, and slip the little
paper of money in, and I locked it again instantly and brought the key
away with me: I can never say anything truer than that, sir: to make a
mistake about it is not possible."
No pen could convey the solemn earnestness with which she spoke. Somehow
it impressed me. I hoped Hall would get served out.
"Yes, the wrong has triumphed for once. As far as I can see, sir, it
often does triumph. Miss Deveen thinks great things of Hall, but she is
deceived in her; and I daresay she will find her out sometime. It was
Hall who ought to have been turned away instead of me. Not that I would
stay here longer if I could."
"But you like Miss Deveen?"
"Very much indeed, sir; she is a good lady and a kind mistress. She
spoke very well indeed of me to the new family where I am going, and
I daresay I shall do well enough there.--Have you been to Saltwater
lately, sir?" she added, abruptly.
"Never since. Do you get news from the place?"
She shook her head. "I have never heard a word from any soul in it. I
have written to nobody, and nobody has written to me."
"And nothing more has come out about poor Jane Cross. It is still a
mystery."
"And likely to be one," she replied, in a low tone.
"Perhaps so. Do you know what Owen the milkman thought?"
She had spoken the last sentence or two with her eyes bent, fiddling
with the silver waiter. Now they were raised quickly.
"Owen thought that you could clear up the mystery if you liked, Matilda.
At least, that you possessed some clue to it. He told me so."
"Owen as good as said the same to me before I left," she replied, after
a pause. "He is wrong, sir: but he must think it if he will. Is he--is
he at Saltwater still?"
"For all I know to the contrary. This letter, that the servants here
got at, was one you were beginning to write to Owen. Did----"
"I would rather not talk of that letter, Mr. Johnny: my private affairs
concern myself only," she interrupted--and went out of the room like a
shot.
* * * * *
Had anyone told me that during this short visit of mine in London I
should come across the solution of the mystery of that tragedy enacted
at No. 7, I might have been slow to credit it. Nevertheless, it was to
be so.
Have you ever noticed, in going through life, that events seem to carry
a sequence in themselves almost as though they bore in their own hands
the guiding thread that connects them from beginning to end? For a time
this thread will seem to be lost; to lie dormant, as though it had
snapped, and the course of affairs it was holding to have disappeared
for good. But lo! up peeps a little end when least expected, and we
catch hold of it, and soon it grows into a handful; and what we had
thought lost is again full of activity and gradually works itself out.
Not a single syllable, good or bad, had we heard of that calamity at
Saltwater during the fourteen months which had passed since. The thread
of it lay dormant. At Miss Deveen's it began to steal up again: Matilda,
and her passion, and the letter she had commenced to Thomas Owen were to
the fore: and before that visit of mine came to an end, the thread had,
strange to say, unwound itself.
I was a favourite of Miss Deveen's: you may have gathered that from past
papers. One day, when she was going shopping, she asked me to accompany
her and not Miss Cattledon: which made that rejected lady's face all the
more like vinegar. So we set off in the carriage.
"Are we going to Regent Street, Miss Deveen?"
"Not to-day, Johnny. I like to encourage my neighbouring tradespeople,
and shall buy my new silk here. We have excellent shops not far off."
After a few intricate turnings and windings, the carriage stopped before
a large linendraper's, which stood amidst a colony of shops nearly a
mile from Miss Deveen's. George came round to open the door.
"Now what will you do, Johnny?" said Miss Deveen. "I daresay I shall be
half an hour in here, looking at silks and calico; and I won't inflict
that penalty on you. Shall the carriage take you for a short drive the
while, or will you wait in it?--or walk about?"
"I will wait in the street here," I said, "and come in to you when I am
tired. I like looking at shops." And I do like it.
The next shop to the linendraper's was a carver and gilder's: he had
some good pictures displayed in his window; at any rate, they looked
good to me: and there I took up my station to begin with.
"How do you do, sir? Have you forgotten me?"
The words came from a young man who stood at the next door, close to me,
causing me to turn quickly to him from gazing at the pictures. No, I had
not forgotten him. I knew him instantly. It was Owen, the milkman.
After a few words had passed, I went inside. It was a large shop, well
fitted up with cans and things pertaining to a milkman's business. The
window-board was prettily set off with moss, ferns, a bowl containing
gold and silver fish, a miniature fountain, and a rush basket of fresh
eggs. Over the door was his own name, Thomas Owen.
"You are living here, Owen?"
"Yes, sir."
"But why have you left Saltwater?"
"Because, Mr. Johnny, the place looked askance at me. People, in their
own minds, set down that miserable affair at No. 7 to my credit. Once or
twice I was hooted at by the street boys, asking what I had done with
Jane Cross. My mother couldn't stand that, and I couldn't stand it, so
we just sold our business at Saltwater, and bought this one here. And
a good change it has been, in a pecuniary point of view: this is an
excellent connection, and grows larger every day."
"I'm sure I am glad to hear it."
"At first, mother couldn't bear London: she longed for the country air
and the green fields: but she is reconciled to it now. Perhaps she'll
have an opportunity soon of going back to see her own old Welsh
mountains, and of staying there if it pleases her."
"Then I should say you are going to be married, Owen."
He laughed and nodded. "You'll wish me good luck, won't you, sir? She's
the only daughter at the next door, the grocer's."
"That I will. Have you discovered anymore of that mysterious business,
Owen?"
"At Saltwater? No, sir: not anything at all that could touch the matter
itself. But I have heard a good bit that bears upon it."
"Do you still suspect that Matilda could tell if she chose?"
"I suspect more than that, sir."
The man's words were curiously significant. He had a bit of fern in his
hand, and his fresh, open, intelligent face was bent downwards, as if he
wanted to see what the leaf was made of.
"I am not sure, sir. It is but suspicion at the best: but it's an
uncommonly strong one."
"Won't you tell me what you mean? You may trust me."
"Yes, I am sure I may," he said, promptly. "And I think I will tell
you--though I have never breathed it to mortal yet. I think Matilda did
it herself."
Backing away from the counter in my surprise, I upset an empty milk-can.
"Matilda!" I exclaimed, picking up the can.
"Mr. Johnny, with all my heart I believe it to have been so. I have
believed it for some time now."
"But the girls were too friendly to harm one another. I remember you
said so yourself, Owen."
"And I thought so then, sir. No suspicion of Matilda had occurred to me,
but rather of the man I had seen there on the Wednesday. I think she
must have done it in a sudden passion; not of deliberate purpose."
"But now, what are your reasons?"
"I told you, sir, as I daresay you can recall to mind, that I should
do what lay in my power to unravel the mystery--for it was not at all
agreeable to have it laid at my door. I began, naturally, with tracing
out the doings of that night as connected with No. 7. Poor Jane Cross
had not been out of doors that night, and so far as I knew had spoken to
no one save to me from the window; therefore of her there seemed nothing
to be traced: but of Matilda there was. Inquiring here and there, I bit
by bit got a few odds and ends of facts together. I traced out the exact
time, almost to a minute, that I rang twice at the door-bell at No. 7,
and was not answered; and the time that Matilda entered the Swan to get
the supper beer. Pretty nearly half an hour had elapsed between the
first time and the second."
"Half an hour!"
"Not far short of it. Which proved that Matilda must have been indoors
when I rang, though she denied it before the coroner, and it was taken
for granted that I had rung during her absence to fetch the beer. And
you knew, sir, that her absence did not exceed ten minutes. Now why did
not Matilda answer my ring? Why did she not candidly say that she had
heard the ring, but did not choose to answer it? Well, sir, that gave
rise to the first faint doubt of her: and when I recalled and dwelt on
her singular manner, it appeared to me that the doubt might pass into
grave suspicion. Look at her superstitious horror of No. 7. She never
would go into the house afterwards!"