CHAPTER XV.
EVIL TIDINGS.
Ernest had packed his portmanteau, and ordered a hansom, meaning
to take temporary refuge at Number 28 Epsilon Terrace; and he went
down again for a few minutes to wait in the breakfast-room, where
he saw the 'Times' lying casually on the little table by the front
window. He took it up, half dreamily, by way of having something to
do, and was skimming the telegrams in an unconcerned manner, when
his attention was suddenly arrested by the name Le Breton, printed
in conspicuous type near the bottom of the third column. He looked
closer at the paragraph, and saw that it was headed 'Accident
to British Tourists in Switzerland.' A strange tremor seized him
immediately. Could anything have happened, then, to Herbert? He
read the telegram through at once, and found this bald and concise
summary before him of the fatal Pontresina accident:--
'As Mr. H. Oswald, F.R.S., of Oriel College, Oxford, and Mr.
Le Breton, Fellow and Bursar of St. Aldate's College, along with
three guides, were making the ascent of the Piz Margatsch, in the
Bernina Alps, this morning, one of the party happened to slip near
the great gulley known as the Gouffre. Mr. Oswald and two of the
guides were precipitated over the edge of the cliff and killed
immediately: the breaking of the rope at a critical moment alone
saved the lives of Mr. Le Breton and the remaining guide. The bodies
have been recovered this evening, and brought back to Pontresina.'
Ernest laid down the paper with a thrill of horror. Poor Edie! How
absolutely his own small difficulties with Lord Exmoor faded out
of has memory at once in the face of that terrible, irretrievable
calamity. Harry dead! The hope and mainstay of the family--the
one great pride and glory of all the Oswalds, on whom their whole
lives and affections centred, taken from them unexpectedly, without
a chance of respite, without a moment's warning! Worst of all, they
would probably learn it, as he did, for the first time by reading
it accidentally in the curt language of the daily papers. Pray
heaven the shock might not kill poor Edie!
There was only a minute in which to make up his mind, but in that
minute Ernest had fully decided what he ought to do, and how to
do it. He must go at once down to Calcombe Pomeroy, and try to
lighten this great affliction for poor little Edie. Nay, lighten
it he could not, but at least he could sympathise with her in it,
and that, though little, was still some faint shade better than
nothing at all. How fortunate that his difference with the Exmoors
allowed him to go that very evening without a moment's delay. When
the hansom arrived at the door, Ernest told the cabman to drive
at once to Paddington Station. Almost before he had had time to
realise the full meaning of the situation, he had taken a third-class
ticket for Calcombe Road, and was rushing out of London by the
Plymouth express, in one of the convenient and commodious little
wooden horse-boxes which the Great Western Railway Company provide
as a wholesome deterrent for economical people minded to save half
their fare by going third instead of first or second.
Didcot, Swindon, Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Newton Abbot, all followed
one after another, and by the time Ernest had reached Calcombe
Road Station he had begun to frame for himself a definite plan of
future action. He would stop at the Red Lion Inn that evening, send
a telegram from Exeter beforehand to Edie, to say he was coming
next day, and find out as much as possible about the way the family
had borne the shock before he ventured actually to see them.
The Calcombe omnibus, drawn by two lean and weary horses, toiled
its way slowly up the long steep incline for six miles to the
Cross Foxes, and then rattled down the opposite slope, steaming and
groaning, till it drew up at last with a sudden jerk and a general
collapse in front of the old Red Lion Inn in the middle of the
High Street. There Ernest put up for the present, having seen by
the shutters at the grocer's shop on his way down that the Oswalds
had already heard of Harry's accident. He had dinner by himself,
with a sick heart, in the gloomy, close little coffee-room of the
village inn, and after dinner he managed to draw in the landlord
in person for a glass of sherry and half an hour's conversation.
'Very sad thing, sir, this 'ere causality in Switzerland,' said
the red-faced landlord, coming round at once to the topic of the
day at Calcombe, after a few unimportant preliminary generalities.
'Young Mr. Oswald, as has been killed, he lived here, sir;
leastways his parents do. He was a very promising young gentleman
up at Oxford, they do tell me--not much of a judge of horses, I
should say, but still, I understand, quite the gentleman for all
that. Very sad thing, the causality, sir, for all his family. 'Pears
he was climbing up some of these 'ere Alps they have over there in
them parts, covered with snow from head to foot in the manner of
speaking, and there was another gentleman from Oxford with him, a
Mr. Le Breton----'
'My brother,' Ernest put in, interrupting him; for he thought it
best to let the landlord know at once who he was talking to.
'Oh, your brother, sir!' said the red-faced landlord, with a gleam
of recognition, growing redder and hotter than ever; 'well, now you
mention it, sir, I find I remember your face somehow. No offence,
sir, but you're the young gentleman as come down in the spring to
see young Mr. Oswald, aren't you?'
Ernest nodded assent.
'Ah, well, sir,' the landlord went on more freely--for of course
all Calcombe had heard long since that Ernest was engaged to Edie
Oswald--'you're one of the family like, in that case, if I may make
bold to say so. Well, sir, this is a shocking trouble for poor old
Mr. Oswald, and no mistake. The old gentleman was sort of centred
on his son, you see, as the saying is: never thought of nobody else
hardly, he didn't. Old Mr. Oswald, sir, was always a wonderful hand
at figgers hisself, and powerful fond of measurements and such kinds
of things. I've heard tell, indeed, as how he knew more mathematics,
and trigononomy, and that, than the rector and the schoolmaster both
put together. There's not one in fifty as knows as much mathematics
as he do, I'll warrant. Well, you see, he brought up this son of
his, little Harry as was--I can remember him now, running to and
from the school, and figgerin' away on the slates, doin' the sums in
algemer for the other boys when they went a-mitchin'--he brought
him up like a gentleman, as you know very well, sir, and sent him to
Oxford College: "to develop his mathematical talents, Mr. Legge,"
his father says to me here in this very parlour. What's the
consequence? He develops that boy's talent sure enough, sir, till
he comes to be a Fellow of Oxford College, they tell me, and even
admitted into the Royal Society up in London. But this is how he
did it, sir: and as you're a friend of the family like, and want
to know all about it, no doubt, I don't mind tellin' you on the
strict confidential, in the manner of speakin'.' Here the landlord
drew his chair closer, and sipped the last drop in his glass of sherry
with a mysterious air of very private and important disclosures.
Ernest listened to his roundabout story with painful attention.
'Well, sir,' the landlord went on after a short and pensive pause,
'old Mr. Oswald's business ain't never been a prosperous one--though
he was such a clover hand at figgers, he never made it remunerative;
a bare livin' for the family, I don't mind sayin'; and he always
spent more'n he ought to 'a done on Mr. Harry, and on the young
lady too, sir, savin' your presence. So when Mr. Harry was goin' to
Oxford to college, he come to me, and he says to me, "Mr. Legge,"
says he, "it's a very expensive thing sending my boy to the University,"
says he, "and I'm going to borrow money to send him with." "Don't
you go a-doin' that, Mr. Oswald," says I; "your business don't
justify you in doin' it, sir," says I. For you see, I knowed all
the ins and outs of that there business, and I knowed he hadn't
never made more'n enough just to keep things goin' decent like, as
you may say, without any money saved or put by against a emergence.
"Yes, I will, Mr. Legge," says he; "I can trust confidentially in
my son's abilities," says he; "and I feel confidential he'll be
in a position to repay me before long." So he borrowed the money on
an insurance of Mr. Harry's life. Mr. Harry he always acted very
honourable, sir; he was a perfect gentleman in every way, as YOU
know, sir; and he began repayin' his father the loan as fast as
he was able, and I daresay doin' a great deal for the family, and
especially for the young lady, sir, out of his own pocket besides.
But he still owed his father a couple of hundred pound an' more
when this causality happened, while the business, I know, had been
a-goin' to rack and ruin for the last three year. To-day I seen the
agent of the insurance, and he says to me, "Legge," says he, most
private like, "this is a bad job about young Oswald, I'm afeard,
worse'n they know for." "Why, sir?" says I. "Well, Legge," says
he, "they'll never get a penny of that there insurance, and the
old gentleman'll have to pay up the defissit on his own account,"
says he. "How's that, Mr. Micklethwaite?" says I. "Because," says
he, "there's a clause in the policy agin exceptional risks, in
which is included naval and military services, furrin residences,
topical voyages, and mountain-climbin'," says he; "and you mark my
words," says he, "they'll never get a penny of it." In which case,
sir, it's my opinion that old Mr. Oswald'll be clean broke, for he
can't never make up the defissit out of his own business, can he
now?'
Ernest listened with sad forebodings to the red-faced landlord's
pitiful story, and feared in his heart that it was a bad look-out
for the poor Oswalds. He didn't sleep much that evening, and next
day he went round early to see Edie. The telegram he found would
be a useless precaution, for the gossip of Calcombe Pomeroy had
recognised him at once, and news had reached the Oswalds almost
as soon as he arrived that young Mr. Le Breton was stopping that
evening at the Red Lion.
Edie opened the door for him herself, pale of face and with eyes
reddened by tears, yet looking beautiful even so in her simple black
morning dress, her mourning of course hadn't yet come home--and
her deep white linen collar. 'It's very good of you to have come
so soon, Mr. Le Breton,' she said, taking his hand quietly--he
respected her sorrow too deeply to think of kissing her; 'he will
be back with us to-morrow. Your brother is bringing him back to us,
to lay him in our little churchyard, and we are all so very very
grateful to him for it.'
Ernest was more than half surprised to hear it. It was an unusual
act of kindly thoughtfulness on the part of Herbert.
Next day the body came home as Edie had said, and Ernest helped
to lay it reverently to rest in Calcombe churchyard. Poor old Mr.
Oswald, standing bowed and broken-hearted by the open grave side,
looked as though he could never outlive that solemn burial of all
his hopes and aspirations in a single narrow coffin. Yet it was
wonderful to Ernest to see how much comfort he took, even in this
terrible grief, from the leader which appeared in the 'Times' that
morning on the subject of the Pontresina accident. It contained
only a few of the stock newspaper platitudes of regret at the loss
of a distinguished and rising young light of science--the ordinary
glib commonplaces of obituary notices which a practised journalist
knows so well how to adapt almost mechanically to the passing event
of the moment; but they seemed to afford the shattered old country
grocer an amount of consolation and solemn relief that no mere
spoken condolences could ever possibly have carried with them. 'See
what a wonderful lot they thought of our boy up in London, Mr. Le
Breton,' he said, looking up from the paper tearfully, and wiping
his big gold spectacles, dim with moisture. 'See what the "Times"
says about him: "One of the ablest among our young academical
mathematicians, a man who, if his life had been spared to us, might
probably have attained the highest distinction in his own department
of pure science." That's our Harry, Mr. Le Breton; that's what
the "Times" says about our dear, dead Harry! I wish he could have
lived to read it himself, Edie--"a scholar of singularly profound
attainments, whose abilities had recently secured him a place upon
the historic roll of the Royal Society, and whom even the French
Academy of Sciences had held worthy out of all the competitors
of the civilised world, to be adjudged the highest mathematical
honours of the present season." My poor boy! my poor, dear, lost
boy! I wish you could have lived to hear it! We must keep the paper,
Edie: we must keep all the papers; they'll show us at least what
people who are real judges of these things thought about our dear,
loved, lost Harry.'
Ernest dared hardly glance towards poor Edie, with the tears trickling
slowly down her face; but he felt thankful that the broken-hearted
old father could derive so much incomprehensible consolation from
those cold and stereotyped conventional phrases. Truly a wonderful
power there is in mere printer's ink properly daubed on plain
absorbent white paper. And truly the human heart, full to bursting
and just ready to break will allow itself to be cheated and cajoled
in marvellous fashions by extraordinary cordials and inexplicable
little social palliatives. The concentrated hopes of that old man's
life were blasted and blighted for ever; and he found a temporary
relief from that stunning shock in the artificial and insincere
condolences of a stock leader-writer on a daily paper!
Walking back by himself in such sad meditations to the Red Lion,
and sitting there by the open window, Ernest overheard a tremulous
chattering voice mumbling out a few incoherent words at the Rector's
doorway opposite. 'Oh, yes,' chirped out the voice in a tone of
cheerful resignation, 'it's very sad indeed, very sad and shocking,
and I'm naturally very sorry for it, of course. I always knew
how it would be: I warned them of it; but they're a pig-headed,
heedless, unmannerly family, and they wouldn't be guided by me. I
said to him, "Now, Oswald, this is all very wrong and foolish of
you. You go and put your son to Oxford, when he ought to be stopping
at home, minding the shop and learning your business. You borrow
money foolishly to send him there with. He'll go to Oxford; he'll
fall in with a lot of wealthy young gentlemen--people above his
own natural station--he'll take up expensive, extravagant ways, and
in the end he'll completely ruin himself. He won't pay you back a
penny, you may depend upon it--these boys never do, when you make
fine gentlemen of them; they think only of their cigars and their
horses, and their dog-carts and so forth, and neglect their poor
old fathers and mothers, that brought them up and scraped and saved
to make fine gentlemen of them. You just take my advice, Oswald, and
don't send him to college." But Oswald was always a presumptuous,
high-headed, independent sort of man, and instead of listening to
me, what does he do but go and send this sharp boy of his up to
Oxford. Well, now the boy's gone to Switzerland with one of the
young Le Bretons--brother of the poor young man they've inveigled
into what they call an engagement with Miss Edith, or Miss Jemima,
or whatever the girl's name is--very well-connected people, the Le
Bretons, and personal friends of the Archdeacon's--and there he's
thrown himself over a precipice or something of the sort, no doubt
to avoid his money-matters and debts and difficulties. At any
rate, Micklethwaite tells me the poor old father'll have to pay
up a couple of hundred pound to the insurance company: and how on
earth he's ever to do it _I_ don't know, for to my certain knowledge
the rent of the shop is in arrears half-a-year already. But it's
no business of mine, thank goodness!--and I only hope that exposure
will serve to open that poor young Le Breton's eyes, and to warn him
against having anything further to say to Miss Jemima. A designing
young minx, if ever there was one! Poor young Le Breton's come down
here for the funeral, I hear, which I must say was very friendly
and proper and honourable of him; but now it's over, I hope he'll
go back again, and see Miss Jemima in her true colours.'
Ernest turned back into the stuffy little coffee-room with his face
on fire and his ears tingling with mingled shame and indignation.
'Whatever happens,' he thought to himself, 'I can't permit Edie
to be subjected any longer to such insolence as this! Poor, dear,
guileless, sorrowing little maiden! One would have thought her
childish innocence and her terrible loss would have softened the
heart even of such a cantankerous, virulent old harridan as that,
till a few weeks were over, at least. She spoke of the Archdeacon:
it must be old Miss Luttrell! Whoever it is, though, Edie shan't
much longer be left where she can possibly come in contact with
such a loathsome mass of incredible and unprovoked malice. That
Edie should lose her dearly-loved brother is terrible enough; but
that she should be exposed afterwards to be triumphed over in her
most sacred grief by that bad old woman's querulous "I told you
so" is simply intolerable!' And he paced up and down the room with
a boiling heart, unable to keep down his righteous anger.
