CHAPTER III--THE MYSTERIOUS GREATCOAT
Stockdale now began to notice more particularly a feature in the
life of his fair landlady, which he had casually observed but
scarcely ever thought of before. It was that she was markedly
irregular in her hours of rising. For a week or two she would be
tolerably punctual, reaching the ground-floor within a few minutes
of half-past seven. Then suddenly she would not be visible till
twelve at noon, perhaps for three or four days in succession; and
twice he had certain proof that she did not leave her room till
half-past three in the afternoon. The second time that this extreme
lateness came under his notice was on a day when he had particularly
wished to consult with her about his future movements; and he
concluded, as he always had done, that she had a cold, headache, or
other ailment, unless she had kept herself invisible to avoid
meeting and talking to him, which he could hardly believe. The
former supposition was disproved, however, by her innocently saying,
some days later, when they were speaking on a question of health,
that she had never had a moment's heaviness, headache, or illness of
any kind since the previous January twelvemonth.
'I am glad to hear it,' said he. 'I thought quite otherwise.'
'What, do I look sickly?' she asked, turning up her face to show the
impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for a
moment.
'Not at all; I merely thought so from your being sometimes obliged
to keep your room through the best part of the day.'
'O, as for that--it means nothing,' she murmured, with a look which
some might have called cold, and which was the worst look that he
liked to see upon her. 'It is pure sleepiness, Mr. Stockdale.'
'Never!'
'It is, I tell you. When I stay in my room till half-past three in
the afternoon, you may always be sure that I slept soundly till
three, or I shouldn't have stayed there.'
'It is dreadful,' said Stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects
of such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it
become a habit of everyday occurrence.
'But then,' she said, divining his good and prescient thoughts, 'it
only happens when I stay awake all night. I don't go to sleep till
five or six in the morning sometimes.'
'Ah, that's another matter,' said Stockdale. 'Sleeplessness to such
an alarming extent is real illness. Have you spoken to a doctor?'
'O no--there is no need for doing that--it is all natural to me.'
And she went away without further remark.
Stockdale might have waited a long time to know the real cause of
her sleeplessness, had it not happened that one dark night he was
sitting in his bedroom jotting down notes for a sermon, which
occupied him perfunctorily for a considerable time after the other
members of the household had retired. He did not get to bed till
one o'clock. Before he had fallen asleep he heard a knocking at the
front door, first rather timidly performed, and then louder. Nobody
answered it, and the person knocked again. As the house still
remained undisturbed, Stockdale got out of bed, went to his window,
which overlooked the door, and opening it, asked who was there.
A young woman's voice replied that Susan Wallis was there, and that
she had come to ask if Mrs. Newberry could give her some mustard to
make a plaster with, as her father was taken very ill on the chest.
The minister, having neither bell nor servant, was compelled to act
in person. 'I will call Mrs. Newberry,' he said. Partly dressing
himself; he went along the passage and tapped at Lizzy's door. She
did not answer, and, thinking of her erratic habits in the matter of
sleep, he thumped the door persistently, when he discovered, by its
moving ajar under his knocking, that it had only been gently pushed
to. As there was now a sufficient entry for the voice, he knocked
no longer, but said in firm tones, 'Mrs. Newberry, you are wanted.'
The room was quite silent; not a breathing, not a rustle, came from
any part of it. Stockdale now sent a positive shout through the
open space of the door: 'Mrs. Newberry!'--still no answer, or
movement of any kind within. Then he heard sounds from the opposite
room, that of Lizzy's mother, as if she had been aroused by his
uproar though Lizzy had not, and was dressing herself hastily.
Stockdale softly closed the younger woman's door and went on to the
other, which was opened by Mrs. Simpkins before he could reach it.
She was in her ordinary clothes, and had a light in her hand.
'What's the person calling about?' she said in alarm.
Stockdale told the girl's errand, adding seriously, 'I cannot wake
Mrs. Newberry.'
'It is no matter,' said her mother. 'I can let the girl have what
she wants as well as my daughter.' And she came out of the room and
went downstairs.
Stockdale retired towards his own apartment, saying, however, to
Mrs. Simpkins from the landing, as if on second thoughts, 'I suppose
there is nothing the matter with Mrs. Newberry, that I could not
wake her?'
'O no,' said the old lady hastily. 'Nothing at all.'
Still the minister was not satisfied. 'Will you go in and see?' he
said. 'I should be much more at ease.'
Mrs. Simpkins returned up the staircase, went to her daughter's
room, and came out again almost instantly. 'There is nothing at all
the matter with Lizzy,' she said; and descended again to attend to
the applicant, who, having seen the light, had remained quiet during
this interval.
Stockdale went into his room and lay down as before. He heard
Lizzy's mother open the front door, admit the girl, and then the
murmured discourse of both as they went to the store-cupboard for
the medicament required. The girl departed, the door was fastened,
Mrs. Simpkins came upstairs, and the house was again in silence.
Still the minister did not fall asleep. He could not get rid of a
singular suspicion, which was all the more harassing in being, if
true, the most unaccountable thing within his experience. That
Lizzy Newberry was in her bedroom when he made such a clamour at the
door he could not possibly convince himself; notwithstanding that he
had heard her come upstairs at the usual time, go into her chamber,
and shut herself up in the usual way. Yet all reason was so much
against her being elsewhere, that he was constrained to go back
again to the unlikely theory of a heavy sleep, though he had heard
neither breath nor movement during a shouting and knocking loud
enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers.
Before coming to any positive conclusion he fell asleep himself, and
did not awake till day. He saw nothing of Mrs. Newberry in the
morning, before he went out to meet the rising sun, as he liked to
do when the weather was fine; but as this was by no means unusual,
he took no notice of it. At breakfast-time he knew that she was not
far off by hearing her in the kitchen, and though he saw nothing of
her person, that back apartment being rigorously closed against his
eyes, she seemed to be talking, ordering, and bustling about among
the pots and skimmers in so ordinary a manner, that there was no
reason for his wasting more time in fruitless surmise.
The minister suffered from these distractions, and his extemporized
sermons were not improved thereby. Already he often said Romans for
Corinthians in the pulpit, and gave out hymns in strange cramped
metres, that hitherto had always been skipped, because the
congregation could not raise a tune to fit them. He fully resolved
that as soon as his few weeks of stay approached their end he would
cut the matter short, and commit himself by proposing a definite
engagement, repenting at leisure if necessary.
With this end in view, he suggested to her on the evening after her
mysterious sleep that they should take a walk together just before
dark, the latter part of the proposition being introduced that they
might return home unseen. She consented to go; and away they went
over a stile, to a shrouded footpath suited for the occasion. But,
in spite of attempts on both sides, they were unable to infuse much
spirit into the ramble. She looked rather paler than usual, and
sometimes turned her head away.
'Lizzy,' said Stockdale reproachfully, when they had walked in
silence a long distance.
'Yes,' said she.
'You yawned--much my company is to you!' He put it in that way, but
he was really wondering whether her yawn could possibly have more to
do with physical weariness from the night before than mental
weariness of that present moment. Lizzy apologized, and owned that
she was rather tired, which gave him an opening for a direct
question on the point; but his modesty would not allow him to put it
to her; and he uncomfortably resolved to wait.
The month of February passed with alternations of mud and frost,
rain and sleet, east winds and north-westerly gales. The hollow
places in the ploughed fields showed themselves as pools of water,
which had settled there from the higher levels, and had not yet
found time to soak away. The birds began to get lively, and a
single thrush came just before sunset each evening, and sang
hopefully on the large elm-tree which stood nearest to Mrs.
Newberry's house. Cold blasts and brittle earth had given place to
an oozing dampness more unpleasant in itself than frost; but it
suggested coming spring, and its unpleasantness was of a bearable
kind.
Stockdale had been going to bring about a practical understanding
with Lizzy at least half-a-dozen times; but, what with the mystery
of her apparent absence on the night of the neighbour's call, and
her curious way of lying in bed at unaccountable times, he felt a
check within him whenever he wanted to speak out. Thus they still
lived on as indefinitely affianced lovers, each of whom hardly
acknowledged the other's claim to the name of chosen one. Stockdale
persuaded himself that his hesitation was owing to the postponement
of the ordained minister's arrival, and the consequent delay in his
own departure, which did away with all necessity for haste in his
courtship; but perhaps it was only that his discretion was
reasserting itself, and telling him that he had better get clearer
ideas of Lizzy before arranging for the grand contract of his life
with her. She, on her part, always seemed ready to be urged further
on that question than he had hitherto attempted to go; but she was
none the less independent, and to a degree which would have kept
from flagging the passion of a far more mutable man.
On the evening of the first of March he went casually into his
bedroom about dusk, and noticed lying on a chair a greatcoat, hat,
and breeches. Having no recollection of leaving any clothes of his
own in that spot, he went and examined them as well as he could in
the twilight, and found that they did not belong to him. He paused
for a moment to consider how they might have got there. He was the
only man living in the house; and yet these were not his garments,
unless he had made a mistake. No, they were not his. He called up
Martha Sarah.
'How did these things come in my room?' he said, flinging the
objectionable articles to the floor.
Martha said that Mrs. Newberry had given them to her to brush, and
that she had brought them up there thinking they must be Mr.
Stockdale's, as there was no other gentleman a-lodging there.
'Of course you did,' said Stockdale. 'Now take them down to your
mis'ess, and say they are some clothes I have found here and know
nothing about.'
As the door was left open he heard the conversation downstairs.
'How stupid!' said Mrs. Newberry, in a tone of confusion. 'Why,
Marther Sarer, I did not tell you to take 'em to Mr. Stockdale's
room?'
'I thought they must be his as they was so muddy,' said Martha
humbly.
'You should have left 'em on the clothes-horse,' said the young
mistress severely; and she came upstairs with the garments on her
arm, quickly passed Stockdale's room, and threw them forcibly into a
closet at the end of a passage. With this the incident ended, and
the house was silent again.
There would have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in
a widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or
mouldy from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with
recent mud bothered Stockdale a good deal. When a young pastor is
in the aspen stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the
merest trifles, a really substantial incongruity of this complexion
is a disturbing thing. However, nothing further occurred at that
time; but he became watchful, and given to conjecture, and was
unable to forget the circumstance.
One morning, on looking from his window, he saw Mrs. Newberry
herself brushing the tails of a long drab greatcoat, which, if he
mistook not, was the very same garment as the one that had adorned
the chair of his room. It was densely splashed up to the hollow of
the back with neighbouring Nether-Moynton mud, to judge by its
colour, the spots being distinctly visible to him in the sunlight.
The previous day or two having been wet, the inference was
irresistible that the wearer had quite recently been walking some
considerable distance about the lanes and fields. Stockdale opened
the window and looked out, and Mrs. Newberry turned her head. Her
face became slowly red; she never had looked prettier, or more
incomprehensible, he waved his hand affectionately, and said good-
morning; she answered with embarrassment, having ceased her
occupation on the instant that she saw him, and rolled up the coat
half-cleaned.
Stockdale shut the window. Some simple explanation of her
proceeding was doubtless within the bounds of possibility; but he
himself could not think of one; and he wished that she had placed
the matter beyond conjecture by voluntarily saying something about
it there and then.
But, though Lizzy had not offered an explanation at the moment, the
subject was brought forward by her at the next time of their
meeting. She was chatting to him concerning some other event, and
remarked that it happened about the time when she was dusting some
old clothes that had belonged to her poor husband.
'You keep them clean out of respect to his memory?' said Stockdale
tentatively.
'I air and dust them sometimes,' she said, with the most charming
innocence in the world.
'Do dead men come out of their graves and walk in mud?' murmured the
minister, in a cold sweat at the deception that she was practising.
'What did you say?' asked Lizzy.
'Nothing, nothing,' said he mournfully. 'Mere words--a phrase that
will do for my sermon next Sunday.' It was too plain that Lizzy was
unaware that he had seen actual pedestrian splashes upon the skirts
of the tell-tale overcoat, and that she imagined him to believe it
had come direct from some chest or drawer.
The aspect of the case was now considerably darker. Stockdale was
so much depressed by it that he did not challenge her explanation,
or threaten to go off as a missionary to benighted islanders, or
reproach her in any way whatever. He simply parted from her when
she had done talking, and lived on in perplexity, till by degrees
his natural manner became sad and constrained.
