Verner's Pride. Mrs. Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ silly as to be alarmed for the moment, why do you continue to show alarm still?"

      "Because my husband says he'll shake me," she whimpered, after a long pause. "He never has no patience with ghosts."

      "Serve you right," was the half-audible comment of Mr. Verner. "Is this all you know of the affair?" he continued, after a pause.

      "It's all, sir," she sobbed. "And enough too. There's only one thing as I shall be for ever thankful for."

      "What's that?" asked Mr. Verner.

      "That my poor Luke was away afore this happened. He was fond of hankering after Rachel, and folks might have been for laying it on his shoulders; though, goodness knows, he'd not have hurt a hair of her head."

      "At any rate, he is out of it," observed John Massingbird.

      "Ay," she replied, in a sort of self-soliloquy, as she turned to leave the room, for Mr. Verner told her she was dismissed, "it'll be a corn o' comfort amid my peck o' troubles. I have fretted myself incessant since Luke left, a-thinking as I could never know comfort again; but perhaps it's all for the best now, as he should ha' went."

      She curtsied, and the door was closed upon her. Her evidence left an unsatisfactory feeling behind it.

      An impression had gone forth that Mrs. Roy could throw some light upon the obscurity; and, as it turned out, she had thrown none. The greater part of those present gave credence to what she said. All believed the "ghost" to have been pure imagination; knowing the woman's proneness to the marvellous, and her timid temperament. But, upon one or two there remained a strong conviction that Mrs. Roy had not told the whole truth; that she could have said a great deal more about the night's work, had she chosen to do so.

      No other testimony was forthcoming. The cries and shouts of young Broom, when he saw the body in the water, had succeeded in arousing some men who slept at the distant brick-kilns; and the tidings soon spread, and crowds flocked up. These people were eager to pour into Mr. Verner's room now, and state all they knew, which was precisely the evidence not required; but of further testimony to the facts there was none.

      "More may come out prior to the inquest; there's no knowing," observed Mr. Bitterworth, as the gentlemen stood in a group, before separating. "It is a very dreadful thing, demanding the most searching investigation. It is not likely she would throw herself in."

      "A well-conducted girl like Rachel Frost throw herself wilfully into a pond to be drowned!" indignantly repeated Mr. Verner. "She would be one of the last to do it."

      "And equally one of the last to be thrown in," said Dr. West. "Young women are not thrown into ponds without some cause; and I should think few ever gave less cause for maltreatment of any kind than she. It appears most strange to me with whom she could have been quarrelling—if indeed it was Rachel that was quarrelling."

      "It is all strange together," cried Lionel Verner. "What took Rachel that way at all, by night time?"

      "What indeed!" echoed Mr. Bitterworth. "Unless—"

      "Unless what?" asked Mr. Verner; for Mr. Bitterworth had brought his words to a sudden standstill.

      "Well, I was going to say, unless she had an appointment there. But that does not appear probable for Rachel Frost."

      "It is barely possible, let alone probable," was the retort of Mr. Verner.

      "But still, in a case like this, every circumstance must be looked at, every trifle weighed," resumed Mr. Bitterworth. "Does Rachel's own conduct appear to you to have been perfectly open? She has been indulging, it would seem, in some secret grief latterly; has been 'strange,' as one or two have expressed it. Then, again, she stated to her brother that she was going to stay at Duffs for a gossip, whereas the woman says she had evidently no intention of gossiping, and barely gave herself time to order the articles spoken of. Other witnesses observed her leave Duff's, and walk with a hasty step direct to the field road, and turn down it. All this does not sound quite clear to me."

      "There was one thing that did not sound clear to me," broke in Lionel abruptly, "and that was Dinah Roy's evidence. The woman's half a fool; otherwise I should think she was purposely deceiving us."

      "A pity but she could see a real ghost!" cried John Massingbird, looking inclined to laugh, "It might cure her for fancy ones. She's right in one thing, however; poor Luke might have got this clapped on his shoulders had he been here."

      "Scarcely," dissented Dr. West. "Luke Roy is too inoffensive to harm any one, least of all a woman, and Rachel; and that the whole parish knows."

      "There's no need to discuss Luke's name in the business," said Mr. Verner; "he is far enough away. Whoever the man may have been, it was not Luke," he emphatically added. "Luke would have been the one to succour Rachel, not to hurt her."

      Not a soul present but felt that Mr. Verner spoke in strict accordance with the facts, known and presumptive. They must look in another quarter than Luke for Rachel's assailant.

      Mr. Verner glanced at Mr. Bitterworth and Dr. West, then at the three young men before him.

      "We are amongst friends," he observed, addressing the latter. "I would ask you, individually, whether it was one of you that the boy, Duff, spoke of as being in the lane?"

      They positively disclaimed it, each one for himself. Each one mentioned that he had been elsewhere at the time, and where he had been.

      "You see," said Mr. Verner, "the lane leads only to Verner's Pride."

      "But by leaping a fence anywhere, or a gate, or breaking through a hedge, it may lead all over the country," observed Frederick Massingbird. "You forget that, sir."

      "No, Frederick, I do not forget it. But unless a man had business at Verner's Pride, what should he go into the lane for? On emerging from the field on this side the Willow Pond, any one, not bound for Verner's Pride, would take the common path to the right hand, open to all; only in case of wanting to come here would he take the lane. You cannot suppose for a moment that I suspect any one of you has had a hand in this unhappy event; but it was right that I should be assured, from your own lips, that you were not the person spoken of by young Duff."

      "It may have been a stranger to the neighbourhood, sir. In that case he would not know that the lane led only to Verner's Pride."

      "True—so far. But what stranger would be likely to quarrel with Rachel?"

      "Egad, if you come to that, sir, a stranger's more likely to pick a quarrel with her than one of us," rejoined John Massingbird.

      "It was no stranger," said Mr. Verner, shaking his head. "We do not quarrel with strangers. Had any stranger accosted Rachel at night, in that lonely spot, with rude words, she would naturally have called out for help; which it is certain she did not do, or young Broom and Mrs. Roy must have heard her. Rely upon it, that man in the lane is the one we must look for."

      "But where to look?" debated Frederick Massingbird.

      "There it is! The inference would be that he was coming to Verner's Pride; being on its direct way and nearly close upon it. But, the only tall men (as the boy describes) at Verner's Pride, are you three and Bennet. Bennet was at home, therefore he is exempt; and you were scattered in different directions—Lionel at Mr. Bitterworth's, John at the Royal Oak—I wonder you like to make yourself familiar СКАЧАТЬ