“I assure you he make 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 Mossitfont.
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 woolen 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 Cobell 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.
CHAPTER VI. THE LETTER
Oh, you shall walk in the mummers' train,
And dance for a beggar's boon,
And wear as mad a motley
As any under the moon,
And you shall pay the piper-
But I will call the tune.
OLD Mr. Mottisfont had been dead for about a fortnight when the letter arrived. David Blake found it upon his breakfast table when he came downstairs. It was a Friday morning, and there was an east wind blowing. David came into the dining-room wishing that there were no such thing as breakfast, and there, propped up in front of his plate, was the letter. He stared at it, and stared again. A series of sleepless or hag-ridden nights are not the best preparation for a letter written in a dead man's hand and sealed with a dead man's seal. If David's hand was steady when he picked up the letter it was because his will kept it steady, and for no other reason. As he held it in his hand, Mrs. Havergill came bustling in with toast and coffee. David passed her, went into his consulting room and shut the door.
“First he went red and then he went white,” she told Sarah, “and he pushed past me as if I were a stock, or a post, or something of that sort. I 'ope he 'asn't caught one of them nasty fevers, down in some slum. 'Tisn't natural for a man to turn colour that way. There was only one young man ever I knew as did it, William Jones his name was, and he was the sexton's son down at Dunnington. And he 'd do it. Red one minute and white the next, and then red again. And he went of in a galloping decline, and broke his poor mother's heart. And there 's their two graves side by side in Dunnington Churchyard. Mr. Jones, he dug the graves hisself, and never rightly held his head up after.”