Chapter 31

THE WILL

Agreeably to the prediction of Doctor Parsons, Mrs. Lezzard's journey was ended in less than three weeks of her conversation with Clement Hicks. Then came a night when she made an ugly end; and with morning a group of gossips stood about the drawn blinds, licked their lips over the details, and generally derived that satisfaction from death common to their class. Indeed, this ghoulish gusto is not restricted to humble folk alone. The instinct lies somewhere at the root of human nature, together with many another morbid vein and trait not readily to be analysed or understood. Only educated persons conceal it.

"She had deliriums just at the end," said Martha, her maid. "She called out in a voice as I never heard afore, an' mistook her husband for the Dowl."

"Poor sawl! Death's such a struggle at the finish for the full-blooded kind. Doctor tawld me that if she'd had the leastest bit o'liver left, he could 'a' saved her; but 'twas all soaked up by neat brandy, leaving nought but a vacuum or some such fatal thing."

"Her hadn't the use of her innards for a full fortnight! Think o' that! Aw. dallybuttons! It do make me cream all awver to hear tell of!"

So they piled horror upon horror; then came Clement Hicks, as one having authority, and bade them begone. The ill-omened fowls hopped off; relations began to collect; there was an atmosphere of suppressed electricity about the place, and certain women openly criticised the prominent attitude Hicks saw fit to assume. This, however, did not trouble him. He wrote to the lawyer at Newton, fixed a day for the funeral, and then turned his attention to Mr. Lezzard. The ancient resented Clement's interference not a little, but Hicks speedily convinced him that his animosity mattered nothing. The bee-keeper found this little taste of power not unpleasant. He knew that everything was his own property, and he enjoyed the hate and suspicion in the eyes of those about him. The hungry crowd haunted him, but he refused it any information. Mr. Lezzard picked a quarrel, but he speedily silenced the old man, and told him frankly that upon his good behaviour must depend his future position. Crushed and mystified, the widower whispered to those interested with himself in his wife's estate; and so, before the reading of the will, there slowly grew a very deep suspicion and hearty hatred of Clement Hicks. None had considered him in connection with Mrs. Lezzard's fortune, for he always kept aloof from her; but women cannot easily shut their lips over such tremendous matters of news, and so it came about that some whisper from Chris or dark utterance from old Mrs. Hicks got wind, and a rumour grew that the bee-keeper was the dead woman's heir.

Facts contributed colour to the suspicion, for it was known that Clement had of late given Chris one or two pretty presents, and a ring that cost gold. His savings were suspected to justify 110 such luxuries; yet that a speedy change in his manner of life might be expected was also manifest from the fact that he had been looking into the question of a new stone cottage, on the edge of the Moor, where the heather in high summer would ripple to the very doors of his beehives.

The distrust created by these facts was quickly set at rest, for Mrs. Lezzard sank under ground within four days of her dissolution; then, after the eating of funeral baked meats, those interested assembled in the parlour to hear the will. The crowd whispered and growled, and looked gloomily across at Hicks and the little figure of his mother who had come in rusty black to witness his triumph. Then a young lawyer from Newton adjusted his spectacles, rustled his papers, and poured himself out a glass of grocer's port before proceeding. But his task involved no strain upon him, and was indeed completed within five minutes. Black disappointment, dismay, and despair were the seeds sown by that unimpassioned voice; and at his conclusion a silence as blank as any that reigned in the ears of the dead fell upon those who listened--on those who had hoped so much and were confronted with so little.

"The will is remarkably concise. Mrs. Lezzard makes sundry bitter statements which I think none will blame me for not repeating, though all may see them here who desire so to do; she then constitutes Mr. Clement Hicks, her nephew, sole residuary legatee. There is no condition, no codicil; but I have regretfully to add that Mr. Hicks wins little but this barren expression of good-will from the testatrix; for the sufficient reason that she had nothing to leave. She laboured under various delusions, among others that her financial position was very different from what is the case. Upon her first husband's death, Mrs. Coomstock, as she was then, made an arrangement with my late senior partner, Mr. Joel Ford, and purchased an annuity. This absorbed nearly all her capital; the rest she lost in an undesirable speculation of her own choosing. I am amazed at the present extent of her obligations. This dwelling-house, for instance, is mortgaged to her medical man, Doctor Parsons, of Chagford. There is barely money to meet the debts. Some fifty or sixty pounds in my hands will be absorbed by the calls of the estate. Mrs. Lezzard's tastes--I sorrow to say it--were expensive in some directions. There is an item of ten pounds twelve shillings for--for brandy, if I may be pardoned for speaking plainly. The funeral also appears to have been conducted on a scale more lavish than circumstances warranted. However, there should be sufficient to defray the cost, and I am sure nobody will blame Mr. Hicks for showing this last respect to an amiable if eccentric woman. There is nothing to add except that I shall be delighted to answer any questions--any questions at all."

A few moments later, the lawyer mounted his dog-cart and rattled off to enjoy a pleasant drive homeward.

Then the company spoke its mind, and Mary Lezzard's clay might well have turned under that bitter hornet-buzz of vituperation. Some said little, but had not strength or self-command to hide tears; some cursed and swore. Mr. Lezzard wept unheeded; Mrs. Hicks likewise wept. Clement sat staring into the flushed faces and angry eyes, neither seeing the rage manifested before him, nor hearing the coarse volleys of reproach. Then in his turn he attracted attention; and hard words, wasted on the dead, hurtled like hail round his ears, with acid laughter, and bitter sneers at his own tremendous awakening. Stung to the quick, the lame wheelwright, Charles Coomstock, gloated on the spectacle of Clement's dark hour, and heaped abuse upon his round-eyed, miserable mother. The raw of his own wound found a sort of salve in this attack; and all the other poor, coarse creatures similarly found comfort in their disappointment from a sight of more terrific mortification than their own. Venomous utterances fell about Clement Hicks, but he neither heard nor heeded: his mind was far away with Chris, and the small shot of the Coomstocks and the thunder of the Chowns alike flew harmlessly past him. He saw his sweetheart's sorrow, and her grief, as yet unborn, was the only fact that much hurt him now. The gall in his own soul only began to sicken him when his eye rested on his mother. Then he rose and departed to his home, while the little, snuffling woman ran at his heels, like a dog.

Not until he had escaped the tempest of voices, and was hidden from the world, did the bee-keeper allow his own cruel disappointment to appear. Then, while his mother wept, he lifted up his voice and cursed God. As his relations had won comfort by swearing at him, so now he soothed his soul unconsciously in blasphemies. Then followed a silence, and his mother dared to blame him and remind him of an error.

"You wouldn't turn the bee-butts when she died, though I begged and prayed of 'e. Oh, if you'd awnly done what an auld woman, an' she your mother, had told 'e! Not so much as a piece of crape would 'e suffer me to tie 'pon 'em. An' I knawed all the while the hidden power o' bees."

Presently he left her, and went to tell Chris. She greeted him eagerly, then turned pale and even terrified as she saw the black news in his face.

"Just a gull and laughing-stock for the gods again, that's all, Chris. How easily they fool us from their thrones, don't they? And our pitiful hopes and ambitions and poor pathetic little plans for happiness shrivel and die, and strew their stinking corpses along the road that was going to be so gorgeous. The time to spill the cup is when the lip begins to tremble and water for it--not sooner--the gods know! And now all's changed--excepting only the memory of things done that had better been left undone."

"But--but we shall be married at once, Clem?"

He shook his head.

"How can you ask it? My poor little all--twenty pounds--is gone on twopenny-halfpenny presents during the past week or two. It seemed so little compared to the fortune that was coming. It's all over. The great day is further off by twenty pounds than it was before that poor drunken old fool lied to me. Yet she didn't lie either; she only forgot; you can't swim in brandy for nothing."

Fear, not disappointment, dominated the woman before him as she heard. Sheer terror made her grip his arm and scream to him hysterically. Then she wept wild, savage tears and called to God to kill her quickly. For a time she parried every question, but an outburst so strangely unlike Chris Blanchard had its roots deeper than the crushing temporary disaster which he had brought with him. Clement, suspecting, importuned for the truth, gathered it from her, then passed away into the dusk, faced with the greatest problem that existence had as yet set him. Crushed, and crushed unutterably, he returned home oppressed with a biting sense of his own damnable fate. He moved as one distracted, incoherent, savage, alone. The glorious palace he had raised for his happiness crumbled into vast ruins; hope was dead and putrid; and only the results of wild actions, achieved on false assumptions, faced him. Now, rising out of his brief midsummer madness, the man saw a ghost; and he greeted it with groan as bitter as ever wrung human heart.

Miller Lyddon sat that night alone until Mr. Blee returned to supper.

"Gert news! Gert news!" he shouted, while yet in the passage; "sweatin' for joy an' haste, I be!"

His eyes sparkled, his face shone, his words tripped each other up by the heels.

"Be gormed if ban't a 'mazin' world! She've left nought--dammy--less than nought, for the house be mortgaged sea-deep to Doctor, an' theer's other debts. Not a penny for nobody--nothin' but empty bottles--an' to think as I thought so poor o' God as to say theer weern't none! What a ramshackle plaace the world is!"

"No money at all? Mrs. Lezzard--it can't be!" declared Mr. Lyddon.

"But it is, by gum! A braave tantara 'mongst the fam'ly, I tell 'e. Not a stiver--all ate up in a 'nuity, an' her--artful limb!--just died on the last penny o' the quarter's payment. An' Lezzard left at the work'us door--poor auld zawk! An' him fourscore an' never been eggicated an' never larned nothin'!"

"To think it might have been your trouble, Blee!"

"That's it, that's it! That's what I be full of! Awnly for the watchin' Lard, I'd been fixed in the hole myself. Just picture it! Me a-cussin' o' Christ to blazes an' lettin' on theer wasn't no such Pusson; an' Him, wide awake, a-keepin' me out o' harm's way, even arter the banns was called! Theer's a God for 'e! Watchin' day an' night to see as I comed by no harm! That's what 't is to have laid by a tidy mort o' righteousness 'gainst a evil hour!"

"You 'm well out of it, sure enough."

"Ess, 't is so. I misjudged the Lard shocking, an' I'm man enough to up and say it, thank God. He was right an' I was wrong; an' lookin' back, I sees it. So I'll come back to the fold, like the piece of silver what was lost; an' theer'll be joy in heaven, as well theer may be. Burnish it all! I'll go along to church 'fore all men's eyes next Lard's Day ever is."

"A gude thought, tu. Religion's a sort of benefit society, if you look at it, an' the church be the bank wheer us pays in subscriptions Sundays."

"An' blamed gude interest us gets for the money," declared Mr. Blee. "Not but what I've drawed a bit heavy on my draft of late, along o' pretendin' to heathen ways an' thoughts what I never really held with; but 't is all wan now an' I lay I'll soon set the account right, wi' a balance in my favour, tu. Seein' how shameful I was used, ban't likely no gert things will be laid against me."

"And auld Lezzard will go to the Union?"

"A very fittin' plaace for un, come to think on 't. Awver-balanced for sheer greed of gawld he was. My! what a wild-goose chase! An the things he've said to me! Not that I'd allow myself--awuly from common humanity I must see un an' let un knaw I bear no more malice than a bird on a bough."

They drank, Billy deeper than usual. He was marvellously excited and cheerful. He greeted God like an old friend returned to him from a journey; and that night before retiring he stood stiffly beside his bed and covered his face in his hands and prayed a prayer familiar among his generation.

"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Bless the bed that I lie on, Four cornders to my bed, Four angels overspread Two tu foot an' two tu head, An' all to carry me when I'm dead. An' when I'm dead an' in my graave, An' all my bones be rotten. The greedy worms my flaish shall ate, An' I shall be forgotten; For Christ's sake. Amen."

Having sucked from repetition of this ancient twaddle exactly that sort of satisfaction the French or Roman peasant wins from a babble of a dead language over beads, Billy retired with many a grunt and sigh of satisfaction.

"It do hearten the spirit to come direct to the Throne," he reflected; "an' the wonder is how ever I could fare for near two year wi'out my prayers. Yet, though I got my monkey up an' let Jehovah slide, He knawed of my past gudeness, all set down in the Book o' Life. An' now I've owned up as I was wrong; which is all even the saints can do; 'cause Judgment Day, for the very best of us, will awnly be a matter o' owning up."