CHAPTER V
Mr. Heddegan forgave the coldness of his bride's manner during and
after the wedding ceremony, full well aware that there had been
considerable reluctance on her part to acquiesce in this neighbourly
arrangement, and, as a philosopher of long standing, holding that
whatever Baptista's attitude now, the conditions would probably be
much the same six months hence as those which ruled among other
married couples.
An absolutely unexpected shock was given to Baptista's listless mind
about an hour after the wedding service. They had nearly finished
the mid-day dinner when the now husband said to her father, 'We think
of starting about two. And the breeze being so fair we shall bring
up inside Pen-zephyr new pier about six at least.'
'What--are we going to Pen-zephyr?' said Baptista. 'I don't know
anything of it.'
'Didn't you tell her?' asked her father of Heddegan.
It transpired that, owing to the delay in her arrival, this proposal
too, among other things, had in the hurry not been mentioned to her,
except some time ago as a general suggestion that they would go
somewhere. Heddegan had imagined that any trip would be pleasant,
and one to the mainland the pleasantest of all.
She looked so distressed at the announcement that her husband
willingly offered to give it up, though he had not had a holiday off
the island for a whole year. Then she pondered on the inconvenience
of staying at Giant's Town, where all the inhabitants were bonded, by
the circumstances of their situation, into a sort of family party,
which permitted and encouraged on such occasions as these oral
criticism that was apt to disturb the equanimity of newly married
girls, and would especially worry Baptista in her strange situation.
Hence, unexpectedly, she agreed not to disorganize her husband's
plans for the wedding jaunt, and it was settled that, as originally
intended, they should proceed in a neighbour's sailing boat to the
metropolis of the district.
In this way they arrived at Pen-zephyr without difficulty or mishap.
Bidding adieu to Jenkin and his man, who had sailed them over, they
strolled arm in arm off the pier, Baptista silent, cold, and
obedient. Heddegan had arranged to take her as far as Plymouth
before their return, but to go no further than where they had landed
that day. Their first business was to find an inn; and in this they
had unexpected difficulty, since for some reason or other--possibly
the fine weather--many of the nearest at hand were full of tourists
and commercial travellers. He led her on till he reached a tavern
which, though comparatively unpretending, stood in as attractive a
spot as any in the town; and this, somewhat to their surprise after
their previous experience, they found apparently empty. The
considerate old man, thinking that Baptista was educated to artistic
notions, though he himself was deficient in them, had decided that it
was most desirable to have, on such an occasion as the present, an
apartment with 'a good view' (the expression being one he had often
heard in use among tourists); and he therefore asked for a favourite
room on the first floor, from which a bow-window protruded, for the
express purpose of affording such an outlook.
The landlady, after some hesitation, said she was sorry that
particular apartment was engaged; the next one, however, or any other
in the house, was unoccupied.
'The gentleman who has the best one will give it up to-morrow, and
then you can change into it,' she added, as Mr. Heddegan hesitated
about taking the adjoining and less commanding one.
'We shall be gone to-morrow, and shan't want it,' he said.
Wishing not to lose customers, the landlady earnestly continued that
since he was bent on having the best room, perhaps the other
gentleman would not object to move at once into the one they
despised, since, though nothing could be seen from the window, the
room was equally large.
'Well, if he doesn't care for a view,' said Mr. Heddegan, with the
air of a highly artistic man who did.
'O no--I am sure he doesn't,' she said. 'I can promise that you
shall have the room you want. If you would not object to go for a
walk for half an hour, I could have it ready, and your things in it,
and a nice tea laid in the bow-window by the time you come back?'
This proposal was deemed satisfactory by the fussy old tradesman, and
they went out. Baptista nervously conducted him in an opposite
direction to her walk of the former day in other company, showing on
her wan face, had he observed it, how much she was beginning to
regret her sacrificial step for mending matters that morning.
She took advantage of a moment when her husband's back was turned to
inquire casually in a shop if anything had been heard of the
gentleman who was sucked down in the eddy while bathing.
The shopman said, 'Yes, his body has been washed ashore,' and had
just handed Baptista a newspaper on which she discerned the heading,
'A Schoolmaster drowned while bathing,' when her husband turned to
join her. She might have pursued the subject without raising
suspicion; but it was more than flesh and blood could do, and
completing a small purchase almost ran out of the shop.
'What is your terrible hurry, mee deer?' said Heddegan, hastening
after.
'I don't know--I don't want to stay in shops,' she gasped.
'And we won't,' he said. 'They are suffocating this weather. Let's
go back and have some tay!'
They found the much desired apartment awaiting their entry. It was a
sort of combination bed and sitting-room, and the table was prettily
spread with high tea in the bow-window, a bunch of flowers in the
midst, and a best-parlour chair on each side. Here they shared the
meal by the ruddy light of the vanishing sun. But though the view
had been engaged, regardless of expense, exclusively for Baptista's
pleasure, she did not direct any keen attention out of the window.
Her gaze as often fell on the floor and walls of the room as
elsewhere, and on the table as much as on either, beholding nothing
at all.
But there was a change. Opposite her seat was the door, upon which
her eyes presently became riveted like those of a little bird upon a
snake. For, on a peg at the back of the door, there hung a hat; such
a hat--surely, from its peculiar make, the actual hat--that had been
worn by Charles. Conviction grew to certainty when she saw a railway
ticket sticking up from the band. Charles had put the ticket there--
she had noticed the act.
Her teeth almost chattered; she murmured something incoherent. Her
husband jumped up and said, 'You are not well! What is it? What
shall I get 'ee?'
'Smelling salts!' she said, quickly and desperately; 'at that
chemist's shop you were in just now.'
He jumped up like the anxious old man that he was, caught up his own
hat from a back table, and without observing the other hastened out
and downstairs.
Left alone she gazed and gazed at the back of the door, then
spasmodically rang the bell. An honest-looking country maid-servant
appeared in response.
'A hat!' murmured Baptista, pointing with her finger. 'It does not
belong to us.'
'O yes, I'll take it away,' said the young woman with some hurry.
'It belongs to the other gentleman.'
She spoke with a certain awkwardness, and took the hat out of the
room. Baptista had recovered her outward composure. 'The other
gentleman?' she said. 'Where is the other gentleman?'
'He's in the next room, ma'am. He removed out of this to oblige
'ee.'
'How can you say so? I should hear him if he were there,' said
Baptista, sufficiently recovered to argue down an apparent untruth.
'He's there,' said the girl, hardily.
'Then it is strange that he makes no noise,' said Mrs. Heddegan,
convicting the girl of falsity by a look.
'He makes no noise; but it is not strange,' said the servant.
All at once a dread took possession of the bride's heart, like a cold
hand laid thereon; for it flashed upon her that there was a
possibility of reconciling the girl's statement with her own
knowledge of facts.
'Why does he make no noise?' she weakly said.
The waiting-maid was silent, and looked at her questioner. 'If I
tell you, ma'am, you won't tell missis?' she whispered.
Baptista promised.
'Because he's a-lying dead!' said the girl. 'He's the schoolmaster
that was drownded yesterday.'
'O!' said the bride, covering her eyes. 'Then he was in this room
till just now?'
'Yes,' said the maid, thinking the young lady's agitation natural
enough. 'And I told missis that I thought she oughtn't to have done
it, because I don't hold it right to keep visitors so much in the
dark where death's concerned; but she said the gentleman didn't die
of anything infectious; she was a poor, honest, innkeeper's wife, she
says, who had to get her living by making hay while the sun sheened.
And owing to the drownded gentleman being brought here, she said, it
kept so many people away that we were empty, though all the other
houses were full. So when your good man set his mind upon the room,
and she would have lost good paying folk if he'd not had it, it
wasn't to be supposed, she said, that she'd let anything stand in the
way. Ye won't say that I've told ye, please, m'm? All the linen has
been changed, and as the inquest won't be till to-morrow, after you
are gone, she thought you wouldn't know a word of it, being strangers
here.'
The returning footsteps of her husband broke off further narration.
Baptista waved her hand, for she could not speak. The waiting-maid
quickly withdrew, and Mr. Heddegan entered with the smelling salts
and other nostrums.
'Any better?' he questioned.
'I don't like the hotel,' she exclaimed, almost simultaneously. 'I
can't bear it--it doesn't suit me!'
'Is that all that's the matter?' he returned pettishly (this being
the first time of his showing such a mood). 'Upon my heart and life
such trifling is trying to any man's temper, Baptista! Sending me
about from here to yond, and then when I come back saying 'ee don't
like the place that I have sunk so much money and words to get for
'ee. 'Od dang it all, 'tis enough to--But I won't say any more at
present, mee deer, though it is just too much to expect to turn out
of the house now. We shan't get another quiet place at this time of
the evening--every other inn in the town is bustling with rackety
folk of one sort and t'other, while here 'tis as quiet as the grave--
the country, I would say. So bide still, d'ye hear, and to-morrow we
shall be out of the town altogether--as early as you like.'
The obstinacy of age had, in short, overmastered its complaisance,
and the young woman said no more. The simple course of telling him
that in the adjoining room lay a corpse which had lately occupied
their own might, it would have seemed, have been an effectual one
without further disclosure, but to allude to that subject, however it
was disguised, was more than Heddegan's young wife had strength for.
Horror broke her down. In the contingency one thing only presented
itself to her paralyzed regard--that here she was doomed to abide, in
a hideous contiguity to the dead husband and the living, and her
conjecture did, in fact, bear itself out. That night she lay between
the two men she had married--Heddegan on the one hand, and on the
other through the partition against which the bed stood, Charles
Stow.
