Mr. Tasker's Gods (12 page)

T
HE policeman of South Egdon was a man wisely servile to a magistrate, familiar with the clergy and large farmers, rather inclined to be surly with smallholders, and a bully to the labourers. He had ridden down to the local station upon his wife’s bicycle in order to take the first train to Maidenbridge, so that the coroner might have time to arrange for the inquest the next day.

That superior officer was a retired doctor who carried with him a bold look to the world and to dead bodies, and a modest fear of his two daughters. These young ladies regarded their father as a kind of black-beetle killer, and they always opened the windows when he came into the room. His pay from the town for his labours was Forty Pounds a year—and certain legal fees,—making up in all rather more than Fifty Pounds. This sum went annually to his two daughters as their allowance.

His daughters did not object to the source of the money, as long as they received it. Corpses cut down from bedposts, corpses fished up from backwaters, dead infants taken from sewers, shepherds from barns, girls from rivers, and old gentlemen from under trains, all generously helped to provide these young ladies with new hats. So, from their point of view, killing oneself or getting murdered became a deed of
Christian charity. And an extra decayed corpse or two in the year gave them a chance to buy a king’s box of milk-chocolate or a motor veil.

The policeman was shown into the coroner’s office and explained his case. It was a serious case. One witness whom he knew very well, the clergyman’s housekeeper, had told him that same morning that Miss Neville had poisoned her brother, to get his money. The policeman said he had searched the room and found no less than four little bottles of morphia tablets, one empty. He had taken them into the safe custody of his own pocket. He had seen the doctor, who had told him, in confidence of course, that he had not ordered morphia, but had recommended massage.

The coroner looked grave.

‘Be careful in the choice of your jury, officer. You must get educated men, men who can
understand
what I say. In a case like this the common labourer will not do—it may be murder. Will you kindly tell me—I hope I am not detaining you, officer——?’

‘Oh no, sir!’

‘—Will you kindly tell me, has this sister, this Miss Neville, a good character—is she known amongst the families in the neighbourhood?’

‘From India, sir,’ said the policeman, and having written his orders in a book, he departed.

The following morning, at ten o’clock, twelve men in their Sunday clothes were hanging about
in or near the vicarage drive. They were all ‘honourable men,’ and they were there to view the body. Although they had a laugh or two at its expense, they were, in their bellies if no higher up, rather ill at ease. In a road beside a homely hedge of red berries, a man may have his jest about a corpse, but going right up to one, as they by law were forced to do, was another matter.

The jests of these men, under the trees and by the drive gate, were taken from the
housekeeper’s
stories about her master. They were the kind of stories that the gentlemen of the jury liked, and they were passed to and fro by the tongues, and were pleasantly chewed by the foul mental teeth of the innkeeper, two dairymen, one coal merchant, a thatcher, a doctor’s son who knew about horses, two farm bailiffs, and four farmers. They could all write their own names except the thatcher, and he could set a drunken cross by the name of Sir Hugh Winterbottom at the elections.

The memories of these gentlemen threw out, each from its own cesspool, many a droll tale of the housekeeper’s. Their laughter was loud enough for Molly Neville to hear as she lay in her brother’s study looking upon the pages of a book. She knew quite well that they were laughing about her brother.

She rested there, gathering up what strength she could out of the deep places of her soul,
wherein there was no mud, to prevent her thoughts from sinking. Her eyes were strangely deep and luminous.

The merry jurors continued to walk amongst the trees in the garden, and to jest about the long grass and the nettles. Earlier in the day the doctor had been with the body. The sudden arrival of the coroner transformed all the merry jurors into servile rustics. Even the farmers and the merchant touched their caps as the grand official drove up in his motor.

The policeman opened the proceedings with a legal prayer to Pluto, the jury were sworn, and the largest farmer, the one who had killed the dog, was created foreman. The gentlemen trooped upstairs, and each one passed by the dead body. The face was uncovered. They looked and retired, much preferring the journey
downstairs
. With a sigh of relief, for the worst was over, each juror sat down by the long table.

The doctor from the town was the first witness. Sometimes he played golf with the coroner, and now he was in a great hurry to get away, being busy with influenza amongst his customers. The coroner understood the feelings of his fellow-tradesman and brought his questions to a point at once.

‘You opened him, and what did you find?’

‘His lungs were, of course, very bad,’ gossiped the doctor, ‘but the morphia finished him—heart.’

The two gentlemen smiled at one another. The gentlemen of the jury smiled too.

‘Did you order morphia?’

‘Oh no!’

‘Do you know who gave it to him?’

‘Dear me, no!’

‘Do you consider that Mr. Neville was in his right mind at the time of his death?’

‘Quite right—yes, certainly, no mental trouble.’

‘I will not keep you any longer, doctor; you are busy, I know—the time of year—influenza——’

The coroner wrote out the medical man’s cheque, and the doctor’s motor hooted away from the village.

‘Call Miss Neville.’ The coroner’s voice was changed.

The kindly jurymen who expected a scene, or at least tears of repentance, were very grievously disappointed. Miss Neville appeared quietly in the room. To her the men around the table were shadows. She wondered what they all had to do with her brother.

‘When you bought the morphia for Mr. Neville, did you know he would try to kill
himself
?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he tell you?’

‘Yes, he told me.’

‘And he thought it right that a clergyman should take his own life in this cowardly way?’

‘Yes, he thought it right.’

‘Why did he do it?’

‘My brother did not wish me to see him suffer any more pain.’

‘And you gave him the poison?’ ‘Yes.’

‘Do you understand that I might have you tried for murder?’

Molly Neville was silent, she even smiled.

‘Before I allow you to go. Miss Neville, I wish to say in the presence of these gentlemen that your conduct appears to me to have been very wicked. You knew that your brother contemplated this dreadful act, and, instead of restraining him, you even went so far as to help him to do it. You helped to kill him, and now you are bold enough to smile. You preferred that your brother should become a corpse, rather than that you should suffer from seeing him ill. I have considered your case. I might commit you for trial. As it is, I have decided to very strongly censure your conduct. One more
question
I must ask you, a very important one—when you saw your brother last alive, when you bid him good-night for the last time, knowing quite well what he was going to do, was he in his right mind?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thank you. You may go. I think I will see Mrs. Lefevre.’

As Molly Neville went out she saw the shadows by the table move; one coughed, one brushed
its sleeve, one wrote or pretended to write notes upon three different sheets of paper.

The housekeeper came in. She had, like the old woman in the fable, only lived upon the smell of the bottle since Miss Neville had come there, and for that reason she would have been only too delighted to have seen Molly hanged. Mrs. Lefevre informed the coroner, somewhat
breathlessly
, that while she was dusting the sickroom:

‘I likes to keep it clean, you know, sir,’ she said. ‘And I heard the master and ’er talkin’—about killing ’eself. She says, “Be ’e going to do it or bain’t ’e? Take thik poison and leave your money to I.”’

‘Did you hear anything else?’

‘She took me keys, sir.’

‘And when you went up with his breakfast the next morning you found him dead?’

‘Yes, sir. I know death. I smell it. I smell it sooner than most folks.’

‘Have you anything else to say?’

‘In the night when the wind rumbled, I peeped me face out, and there was som’at black like a wicked soul flies out of master’s window among the great trees.’

‘Let the woman go. Gentlemen of the Jury, I have a sad duty to put upon you. I have given a good deal of thought to this case, and I must advise you to give a verdict of
felo
de
se.
The sacred life that God Almighty has given cannot be taken away in this wicked manner without
a punishment. The growing idea of modern freethinkers that to kill oneself in cold blood is a right and lawful act, must be stamped out. I censured Miss Neville. I might have done more. I did not do so. The death of her brother will be her punishment—on her soul. Without her help he would have been alive now. I fear, gentlemen, that we cannot, by any stretch of our feelings, call Mr. Neville mad. Your verdict will bring sorrow upon the people of this parish, it will bring sorrow upon the Church—but we must do our duty.—Your pastor
committed
this terrible crime, not insulting his own soul alone, but insulting the Church, insulting the law, and last but not least, insulting God Himself.’

An hour after the inquest, when the coroner entered his own dining-room for lunch, his daughters opened the windows very wide.

A
T the sign of ‘The Puss and Bottle,' the inn by the road to Maidenbridge, where the labourers of South Egdon used to meet in good fellowship, a discussion was going forward the evening after the inquest. The discussion was commenced by a thoughtful man, a tinker whose beer-can happened to be empty. It was necessary for his pleasure that it should be filled at the expense of some one else, as his pocket was as empty as his can.

This good man, in order to attract attention to his emptiness, declared to the assembled company that Mr. Neville was to be buried at the cross-roads in the true old Christian fashion, with a stake cut out from the squire's wood rammed through his body and held and hammered there by the king's hangman.

‘What do they do that for?' asked a rather nervous ploughman.

‘To stop thik wicked parson from walking the village, sure, carter.'

Some one paid for the tinker's pint.

In the parlour of that same inn three other persons were consulting. Two were well known in the village, and the third, the estate agent, had been seen there before. His presence now prevented the gentlemen in the bar from using their favourite national word ‘bloody,' and caused them to say ‘damn' instead, a word
much more genteel and more fit for the polite ears of a land-agent.

This same agent had arrived there with
instructions
from the Church and from the squire. The sexton was there to give his advice, and the village undertaker, who was rather deaf, was there to take whatever might be said loud enough as his orders.

The sexton had been explaining to the agent the nature of a piece of waste ground close to the blessed field of bones. He advised that this last departure from the right way should be buried in this waste corner.

‘I knowed it would end like this, sir,' said the sexton. ‘I seed 'e peeping through thik little 'ole that the nippers 'ave knocked out of vestry window the same year the old cow fell into ditch. Parson said 'e liked God's air to get in—I could tell you some fine tales——'

‘Never mind about that now, sexton. Get your lantern and show us the ground you consider suitable.' The agent buttoned his coat.

Leaving the friendly glitter and clatter of the inn, the three proceeded to the churchyard, where they were joined by the policeman. Just outside the churchyard there was a narrow strip of ground used by the farm-hands as an allotment, wherein they grew potatoes. The hedge in one corner between the potatoes and the graves had been beaten down by the boys on Sundays. The
workers of the potato gardens had left a little corner angle of grass and nettles. Just at that point of the churchyard side there was nothing of any particular importance laid to rest. There were a few shaky wooden crosses marking the spot where infants were planted a few feet below the surface, those who died so young being carried to that corner in a bovril box and placed in a hole suitable for a dead cat. Over in the corner, on the potato side, there were nettles and long yellow grass.

After tumbling over and breaking down at least half a dozen of the little wooden crosses, the four men clambered over the already broken bank and stood together in the little disused plot three yards from the consecrated ground, that is to say, the ground upon which the magic feet of the Bishop—who bought his boots at Jeffrey's in the Strand—had trod. The gaze of the four men, though they pretended otherwise, was directed towards the vicarage just across the road, and their eyes were fixed, even the agent's as well, upon a glowing bright light that shone streaming through the black trees, making a burning pathway of light.

The men knew that the light came from the suicide's room, where it seemed that all the candles in the village must have been lit. The evening being misty and the window of the room open, without a blind, the light, like a silver sword, pierced the outer gloom, as though it tried to cut
a wonderful path in the heavy darkness that lay around the house.

The agent, thinking that the hour was becoming rather unsuitably late, hurriedly gave directions about setting up a wire railing, and marked the place where he wished the grave to be, in the Squire's, instead of in God's, acre. The funeral had been arranged for the next day. The newly appointed clergyman was going to be there, to appear, robed, and ready to be of use in keeping proper order, to watch the coffin put into the ground, and to keep his mouth legally closed all the time.

The next morning came, and amongst those who awaked that good morrow were the
undertaker
and his silent bearers. They passed along up the vicarage drive, that was now, by reason of the death of the master, almost trampled into a proper drive-way. The funeral was to be as early as possible by direction of the new
clergyman
. He feared that a scandalous Unitarian minister, a man of no private means, should, in the malice of his heart, take a turn that way from the town and make a scene by trying to shout out a service of his own invention, that God Himself might hear above the noise of His own winds, and in that way the law and the devil would be cheated of their rightful booty.

The Rev. Edward Lester, for it was he and no other, through the interest of Miss Rudge with the patron, who was the new clergyman,
waited at the gate, keeping an open eye down the road. He had risen early that morning, and had driven out from the town so that he might be able to see for himself that a proper way had been cut through the broken hedge into the potato garden where the new grave was.

A certain amount of talk, of house-to-house conversation, was caused by the strange fact that in the process of digging the grave very early that morning by the light of his lantern, the sexton, who was known as ‘Old Lantern' to the youth of the village, had turned up human bones. What could this mean? Was it, after all, a mistake that this corner was outside the
churchyard
? Or had, at some time or another, the whole potato patch been blessed by some former holy boots made by Jeffrey's in the Strand, perhaps even a more expensive pair than the present Lordship could afford?

‘Old Lantern' had declared it as his opinion to one or two persons—and his opinion was
considered
of value—that the bones he had cast out had once belonged to the flesh of a young man or a young maid. ‘They were,' he said, ‘snaky bones,' and though he had sent his spade ‘crash!' through the skull, ‘it was,' so he expressed it, ‘a pretty one.'

Mr. Lester, being informed of this find, said very wisely that no doubt the same spot had been used before, probably for another wicked suicide. His opinion was confirmed by
old Mr. Parks, who remembered, when he was a little boy, in the same year that the old barn was burnt, seeing the very same gap through the hedge, and even helping other youthful sparks to break it down again after the then clergyman's gardener had fenced it up. Old Parks affirmed that the bones undoubtedly had belonged once to a live maid: ‘he minded his mother talking of it at Sunday dinner and saying, “What a wicked maid she were for drowning herself in Farmer White's horse-pond because she were expecting.”'

The Rev. Edward Lester received the coffin at the church gates, and preceded it up the path in silence. A lady in black and one man with bowed head followed as mourners, and passed in silence amongst the graves. Two short halts had to be made. One of the bearers had put his pipe while still burning into his trousers' pocket, and had to stop to take it out again. A little farther, near the new gap, another of the bearers caught his foot in a bramble and nearly brought poor Neville's remains to the ground before the right time.

Without any prayer being uttered, the body of Henry Neville was lowered into the ground to rest beside the crushed skull of the girl. The two mourners returned to the vicarage. Quietly and serenely Molly arranged her cushions upon her favourite easy-chair and lay back, her eyes looking wonderingly, not towards ‘heaven,' but towards eternity. She had loved the silence
of the funeral. It was to her more full of meaning than many prayers. To her the silence had been in itself a prayer, the deepest, the holiest, the most illuminating. A light, shining and clear, filled her heart. He was no more in pain; the end had come, the eternal silence was reached.

Waking out of what was nearly a trance, she saw that Henry Turnbull was still sitting there, sadly looking out at the tall trees. If Henry had not walked with her she would have been quite alone. The housekeeper had crawled under the dining-room table, declaring that she had seen two little black dogs run under the dresser.

Unlike Molly, Henry had felt the silence as an insult to the dead. He had read in it the hatred of ‘the people' that stone to death the best lives amongst them. And he prayed that they too might be trampled in the earth where no bishop's holy boot had trod. He felt the hatred of the people upon the poor corpse, a hatred vindictive, savage, and cruel. Gently, and in quite an ordinary way, he said good-bye to Molly, and the sweet winter wind crept and sighed round him as he walked home.

The grave was slowly covered in, ‘Old Lantern' pleasantly smiling as he slid the earth upon the coffin. Around the grave, the nettles and thistles, after having been beaten down by winter rains, were now quite trampled into the ground by human feet. There had been no flowers to
waste and fade and die at this funeral. Neville had grown only nettles in his garden. The sexton cleaned his spade, using a broken bone; then, gently placing it upon his shoulder, he made his way down the road to his home, stopping here and there to enjoy a conversation with one or two doorway women. The potato patch was left to one inquisitive robin that had discovered a worm thrown up out of the ground.

Besides the uninvited robin, an unnoticed human face had been watching the burying; peering through the hedge next the road. When all the sombre actors were gone, this face and the dirty and ragged body that belonged to it broke a way for itself and shuffled up to the brown mound, that heaped witness that told the winds how it had been taken out and a man put in. The stumbling figure of the newcomer carried a heavy stick, and he also held a bunch of late winter roses tied with stolen twine to a root, shaped naturally like a cross, pulled from the vicarage hedge. The drover, more foul than ever, planted his cross firmly into the loose mould, and again shaking, this time with terror, climbed through the hedge. His protector had gone thud: who was there now to save him from ‘she'?