CHAPTER XXI.

The inquest was to be held at the "Blue Bell" inn. And after the inquest, the dust of the Honourable Castalia Errington was to be laid beneath the turf of the humble village churchyard, amidst less noble dust, with the daisies growing impartially above all, and spreading their pink-edged petals over the just and the unjust alike.

It was now currently reported that the thefts at the post-office had been Castalia's doing. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Dockett had been "sure of it all along"—so they said, and so they really imagined now. The story of the mysterious notes paid to Ravell, the draper, was in every mouth. Roger Heath went about saying that Mr. Errington ought to make his loss good out of his own pocket, if he had any feelings of honour. But all the people who had not lost any money in the post-office were disgusted at Roger Heath's hardness and avarice, and asked indignantly if that was the moment to speak of such things? For the tragedy of Castalia's death had produced a strong effect in Whitford. Perhaps there was not one human being in the town who grieved that she was gone; but many were oppressed by the manner of her going. People had an uneasy feeling in remembering how much they had disliked her; almost as if their dislike made them guilty of her death in some vague, far-off, inexplicable way. They told themselves and each other that though "her manners had been repellent, poor thing," yet for their part they had always felt sorry for her, and had long perceived that her mind was astray, and that she was falling into a low melancholy state, that was likely to lead to some terrible catastrophe. By this time scarcely any one in Whitford entertained a doubt as to Castalia's having destroyed herself. And the social verdict, "Temporary insanity," was pronounced in assured anticipation that the legal verdict would be to that effect also.

There were two men who did not mystify themselves by conjuring up any factitious tenderness about Castalia's memory, and who gave way to no superstitious uneasiness of conscience as to their dislike of her when she was alive. One of these men was Jonathan Maxfield; the other was the dead woman's husband.

Maxfield had no retrospective softness on the subject. He, indeed, being accustomed to take certain passages of the Old Testament very seriously and literally, and having fed his mind almost exclusively upon those passages, was of opinion that Castalia's tragic fate had been brought about by a direct interposition of Providence as a judgment on her for her bad behaviour to himself and his daughter. And if this opinion on Maxfield's part should appear incredibly monstrous, let it be remembered that in his own mind "the godly" were typified by the Maxfield family, and "the ungodly" by the enemies of that family.

As to Algernon—harassed, anxious, and doubtful of the future as he might be, he was glad that his wife was dead, and he knew that he was glad. Her death made a way out—apparently the only possible way out—of a labyrinth of troubles, and relieved Algernon from the apprehension of an exposure which it made him sick to think of. He had not meant to kill her, he said to himself. He had certainly laid no deliberate plan to do so. Had he, in truth, been the cause of her death? In the state of mind she was in, would she not have thrown herself into the river, or otherwise put an end to herself, without that touch from him which he had given, he knew not how?

It all seemed unreal to him when he thought of it—the leaden water, the grey sky and meadows, and the slippery bank with its tufts of blackberry bushes. He went over and over again in his mind the words that had passed between himself and Castalia; her violence, and her wild jealousy and suspicions, and her allusion to her uncle's letter, and to what Gibbs had told her, and then her fierce threat that she would not spare him! She had become utterly unmanageable—mad, in fact. She had resolved to die. She had a suicidal mania. That scrap of writing would suffice to prove it. To be sure he had found it and put it in his pocket-book weeks ago, although he told the servant that he had picked it up off the floor that morning of his return from London. But that only indicated that the idea had long been rooted in her mind. And besides, the paper bore no date. There was nothing to show how long it had been written.

No, it was not he who had killed Castalia. She had gone down willingly to death. She had uttered no sound, no cry. He should have heard a cry all across the silent meadows. He had not looked back. He had fled away from the river at his topmost speed after he saw her slip, and stagger, and fall heavily into the black water under the shadow of the bank. Had she risen again to the surface? It was said that drowning persons always rose three times. But she had made no sound. Surely she would have cried out if she had longed for life. Ugh! It was horrible to imagine her white face and staring eyes rising above the strong dragging current and looking for help. That was all very ghastly, very hideous. He would not think of it. It was over. Castalia was dead. And although he would have given much that she should have died in any other way, yet he was glad that she was dead, and he knew that he was glad.

He made no pretence to himself of a factitious tenderness about her. She had been thoroughly antagonistic and distasteful to him of late. She had been the bitter drop flavouring every action, every hope, every minute of his life. He had been the victim of a hard fate, and of the false promises (implied, if not expressed) of Lord Seely. Those paltry sums—those notes that he had taken—he had been driven into committing that action altogether by stress of circumstances. It was strange to himself to think of the light that action would appear in to other people. To his own mind, knowing how it had come to pass in an instant, by the tug of a sudden impulse, it seemed so clear that there was no real ground for blaming him in the matter! He had felt the difficulty of getting money with a severity which the rest of the world probably could not conceive. He was absolutely indifferent to the question of abstract right or wrong, justice or injustice, in the case. But the concrete hardship to himself of being poor he had keenly felt to be undeserved.

And now, if it were not for one thing, he should begin to breathe more freely. The one thing that weighed on him with a gloomy, though formless foreboding, was the inquest. He had been obliged to go to Duckwell Farm. He had been asked to look at Castalia's dead body. He had not dared to refuse to do so; but he had requested to be shown into the room where she lay, alone and without witnesses. The room was that sunny parlour where Rhoda Maxfield had sat on many a summer evening, and where the neighbours had discussed the news of his own marriage less than a year ago. But Algernon's imagination did not wander very far from the present. He walked to the window and looked out through the black trellis-work of leafless vine branches. Then he stared at the prints on the walls, and the gay china vases filled with winter nosegays of trembling grass and chrysanthemums. And then his eyes, which had wandered in every other direction, were compelled to turn towards the broad, old-fashioned sofa covered with fair white linen, under which the outlines of a human shape revealed themselves.

Was that stiff, white, silent thing Castalia? He could not realise it. He would scarcely have started if the door had opened and his wife had walked into the room in her ordinary dress, and with her ordinary gait. He had seen her last full of passionate excitement. That stiff, white, silent thing could not be she. He would not lift the coverlet, though, nor look on that which lay beneath. But he stood and gazed at it until the heap beneath the linen sheet seemed to stir and change its outlines. Then he turned away shuddering to the window, and looked at his watch to see whether he might venture to leave the room yet. Would the people think he had been there too short a time? He came out at length, looking pale and depressed enough to excite a good deal of sympathy in the breast of Mrs. Seth Maxfield. And with his usual quick susceptibility to the impression he produced on others, he was fully aware of this, and gratified by it, despite the chill vision of the still white heap under the coverlet which persistently haunted his memory. He saw looks of pity; he heard whispered exclamations of admiration, and they did more than gratify, they reassured him. It had entered into nobody's mind to conceive that he had been the cause of his wife's death. Into whose head, indeed, should it enter? or how? He remembered the last lightning-quick glance he had cast over the wide meadows, and how it had shown them to him empty and bare of any living thing for as far as his eye could reach. No; he was safe from suspicion. Of course he was safe from suspicion! And yet—he would have given a year of his life to have the inquest over, and the dead woman safely put away beneath the daisies in Duckwell churchyard.

Meanwhile the mortal frame that had so throbbed and suffered for his sake, lay there lonely and neglected. Strangers' hands had composed it decently; a stranger's roof sheltered it. It was to lie in a stranger's grave. Only one woman came and stood beside the couch in the sunny parlour, and looked on the dead shape with eyes full of compassionate tears; and, before going away, laid some sprays of fern and delicate hothouse blossoms on the quiet breast, and fastened there a curl of light hair. The hair had been cut jestingly from Algernon Errington's head when he was a school-boy, and then put away and forgotten for years. It now lay above his dead wife's heart. "She was so fond of him, poor soul!" said the compassionate woman. It was Minnie Bodkin.