Part 39 (1/2)
”Happiness, you call it? 'T is awnly a painted tinsel o' the mind, and coming from it into reality is like waking arter tu much drink. So I've heard my husband say scores o' times--him bein' a man much given to overhopefulness in his younger days--same as Will is now.”
Clement departed, and presently found himself with the cooler breezes of the high lands upon his hot forehead. They put him in mind of Mrs.
Blanchard again, and their tendency, as hers had been, was to moderate his ardour; but that seemed impossible just now. Magnificent suns.h.i.+ne spread over the great wastes of the Moor; and through it, long before he reached Newtake, Clement saw his sweetheart returning. For a little time he seemed intoxicated and no longer his own master. The fires of the morning woke in him again at sight of her. They met and kissed, and he promised her some terrific news, but did not tell it then. He lived in the b.u.t.terfly fever of the moment, and presently imparted the fever to her. They left the road and got away into the lonely heather; then he told her that they would be man and wife within a fortnight.
They sat close together, far from every eye, in the shade of a thorn bush that rose beside a lonely stone.
”Within the very shadow of marriage, and you are frightened of me still!
Frightened to let me pick an apple over the orchard wall when I am going through the gate for my own the next moment! Listen! I hear our wedding bells!”
Only the little lizard and the hovering hawk with gold eyes saw them.
”Our wedding bells!” said Chris.
Towards set of sun Hicks saw his sweetheart to her mother's cottage. His ecstatic joys were sobered now, and his grat.i.tude a little lessened.
”To think what marvels o' happiness be in store for us, Clem, my awn!”
”Yes--not more than we deserve, either. G.o.d knows, if there 's any justice, it was your turn and mine to come by a little of the happiness that falls to the lot of men and women.”
”I doan't see how highest heaven's gwaine to be better than our married life, so long as you love me.”
”Heaven! Don't compare them. What's eternity if you're half a ghost, half a bird? That's the bribe thrown out,--to be a cold-blooded, perfect thing, and pa.s.sionless as a musical box. Give me hot blood that flows and throbs; give me love, and a woman's breast to lean on. One great day on earth, such as this has been, is better than a million ages of s.e.xless perfection in heaven. A vain reward it was that Christ offered.
It seemed highest perfection to Him, doubtless; but He judged the world by Himself. The Camel-driver was wiser. He promised actual, healthy flesh in paradise--flesh that should never know an ache or pain--eternal flesh, and the joys of it. We can understand that, but where's the joy of being a spirit? I cling to the flesh I have, for I know that Nature will very soon want back the dust she has lent me.”
CHAPTER XIII
THE WILL
Agreeably to the prediction of Doctor Parsons, Mrs. Lezzard's journey was ended in less than three weeks of her conversation with Clement Hicks. Then came a night when she made an ugly end; and with morning a group of gossips stood about the drawn blinds, licked their lips over the details, and generally derived that satisfaction from death common to their cla.s.s. Indeed, this ghoulish gusto is not restricted to humble folk alone. The instinct lies somewhere at the root of human nature, together with many another morbid vein and trait not readily to be a.n.a.lysed or understood. Only educated persons conceal it.
”She had deliriums just at the end,” said Martha, her maid. ”She called out in a voice as I never heard afore, an' mistook her husband for the Dowl.”
”Poor sawl! Death's such a struggle at the finish for the full-blooded kind. Doctor tawld me that if she'd had the leastest bit o'liver left, he could 'a' saved her; but 'twas all soaked up by neat brandy, leaving nought but a vacuum or some such fatal thing.”
”Her hadn't the use of her innards for a full fortnight! Think o' that!
Aw. dallyb.u.t.tons! It do make me cream all awver to hear tell of!”
So they piled horror upon horror; then came Clement Hicks, as one having authority, and bade them begone. The ill-omened fowls hopped off; relations began to collect; there was an atmosphere of suppressed electricity about the place, and certain women openly criticised the prominent att.i.tude Hicks saw fit to a.s.sume. This, however, did not trouble him. He wrote to the lawyer at Newton, fixed a day for the funeral, and then turned his attention to Mr. Lezzard. The ancient resented Clement's interference not a little, but Hicks speedily convinced him that his animosity mattered nothing. The bee-keeper found this little taste of power not unpleasant. He knew that everything was his own property, and he enjoyed the hate and suspicion in the eyes of those about him. The hungry crowd haunted him, but he refused it any information. Mr. Lezzard picked a quarrel, but he speedily silenced the old man, and told him frankly that upon his good behaviour must depend his future position. Crushed and mystified, the widower whispered to those interested with himself in his wife's estate; and so, before the reading of the will, there slowly grew a very deep suspicion and hearty hatred of Clement Hicks. None had considered him in connection with Mrs.
Lezzard's fortune, for he always kept aloof from her; but women cannot easily shut their lips over such tremendous matters of news, and so it came about that some whisper from Chris or dark utterance from old Mrs.
Hicks got wind, and a rumour grew that the bee-keeper was the dead woman's heir.
Facts contributed colour to the suspicion, for it was known that Clement had of late given Chris one or two pretty presents, and a ring that cost gold. His savings were suspected to justify 110 such luxuries; yet that a speedy change in his manner of life might be expected was also manifest from the fact that he had been looking into the question of a new stone cottage, on the edge of the Moor, where the heather in high summer would ripple to the very doors of his beehives.
The distrust created by these facts was quickly set at rest, for Mrs.
Lezzard sank under ground within four days of her dissolution; then, after the eating of funeral baked meats, those interested a.s.sembled in the parlour to hear the will. The crowd whispered and growled, and looked gloomily across at Hicks and the little figure of his mother who had come in rusty black to witness his triumph. Then a young lawyer from Newton adjusted his spectacles, rustled his papers, and poured himself out a gla.s.s of grocer's port before proceeding. But his task involved no strain upon him, and was indeed completed within five minutes. Black disappointment, dismay, and despair were the seeds sown by that unimpa.s.sioned voice; and at his conclusion a silence as blank as any that reigned in the ears of the dead fell upon those who listened--on those who had hoped so much and were confronted with so little.
”The will is remarkably concise. Mrs. Lezzard makes sundry bitter statements which I think none will blame me for not repeating, though all may see them here who desire so to do; she then const.i.tutes Mr.
Clement Hicks, her nephew, sole residuary legatee. There is no condition, no codicil; but I have regretfully to add that Mr. Hicks wins little but this barren expression of good-will from the testatrix; for the sufficient reason that she had nothing to leave. She laboured under various delusions, among others that her financial position was very different from what is the case. Upon her first husband's death, Mrs.