As Mary spoke the mist cleared from before Elizabeth 's eyes and the numbness that had been upon her changed slowly into feeling. She put both hands to her heart, and held them there. Her heart beat against her hands, and every beat hurt her. She felt again, and what she felt was the sharpest pain that she had ever known, and she had known much pain.
She had suffered when David left Market Harford. She had suffered when he ceased to write. She had suffered when he returned only to fall headlong in love with Mary. And what she had suffered then had been a personal pang, a thing to be struggled with, dominated, and overcome. Now she must look on whilst David suffered too. Must watch whilst his nerves tautened, his strength failed, his self-control gave way. And she could not shut her eyes or look away. She could not raise her thought above this level of pain. The black cloud overshadowed them and hid the light of heaven.
“Because I ask you, David-David, because I ask you.”
Mary's voice trembled and fell to a quivering whisper.
Suddenly David pushed her away. He turned and made a stumbling step towards the fireplace. His hands gripped the narrow mantelshelf. His eyes stared at the wall. And from the wall Mary's eyes looked back at him from the miniature of Mary's mother. There was a long minute's silence. Then David swung round. His face was flushed, his eyes looked black.
“If I do it can you hold your tongues?” he said in a rough, harsh voice.
Mary drew a deep soft breath of relief. She had won. Her hands dropped to her side, her whole figure relaxed, her face became soft and young again.
“O David, God bless you!” she cried.
David frowned. His brows made a dark line across his face. Every feature was heavy and forbidding.
“Can you hold your tongues?” he repeated. “Do you understand-do you fully understand that if a word of this is ever to get out it 's just sheer ruin to the lot of us? Do you grasp that?”
Elizabeth Chantrey got up. She crossed the room, and stood at David's side, nearly as tall as he.
“Don't do it, David,” she said, with a sudden passion in her voice.
Mary turned on her in a flash.
“Liz,” she cried; but David stood between.
“It 's none of your business, Elizabeth. You keep out of it.” The tone was kinder than the words.
Elizabeth was silent. She drew away, and did not speak again.
“I 'll do it on one condition,” said David Blake. “You 'd better go and tell Edward at once. I don't want to see him. I don't suppose he 's been talking to any one-it 's not exactly likely-but if he has the matter 's out of my hands. I 'll not touch it. If he has n't and you 'll all hold your tongues, I 'll do it.”
He turned to the door and Mary cried: “Won't you write it now? Won't you sign it before you go?”
David laughed grimly.
“Do you think I go about with my pockets full of death certificates?” he said. Then he was gone, and the door shut to behind him.
Elizabeth moved, and spoke.
“I will tell Markham that you are ready to go home,” she said.
CHAPTER V. 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 could n'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 were n't worth mentioning in the same breath with William. I could talk people into believing I was solvent, but I could n't talk 'em into believing that William had any business capacity. And I could n'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.