CHAPTER IV
POOR Emily Garlett's funeral took place on a beautiful bright spring morning. The broad sunny street of Terriford was filled with motors and carriages, and quite a concourse of people had come out from Grendon, as well as from the surrounding villages, to testify their respect for popular Harry Garlett, both as famous cricketer and as a generous employer of labour.
Every one saw him, for he followed his wife's coffin on foot. So also did the various other people closely concerned with the departed lady.
Agatha Cheale was ashen pale, but looked very attractive in her close, nunlike bonnet and severely plain black dress. The few who knew him noticed that Miss Cheale's brother was not there; but Mrs. Warren could have told them that her lodger had left the farm two days ago, so recovered in health, so blithesome, so merry, that, though still unnaturally thin, he was scarcely the same man as the pale, coughing, queer, and clever gentleman who had come to her last February.
Dr. and Mrs. Maclean, accompanied by their niece, walked a little apart from Miss Prince and Miss Cheale. Lucy was not with the group of servants all clad in handsome black at their master's expense. She had left the Thatched House the afternoon after Mrs. Garlett's death, and to-day she had elected to stay at home to mind the farm. This had enabled Mrs. Warren to be present at the funeral, leaning on the arm of her brother, Enoch Bent, head clerk of Mr. Toogood the lawyer.
Little by little the mourners all passed through the lychgate into the ancient churchyard. The rector had a good voice, and tears rose to many eyes as he read the noble, solemn words of the burial service.
It was remembered afterward that Harry Garlett, though he looked sad, was absolutely composed. When the burial was over he lingered for a few minutes talking to the rector, doubtless in the hope that the crowd would disperse. Then he quietly walked down the short, broad village street, and so through into the beautiful garden of the house which somehow he had never quite regarded as his property, if only because it was there that he had first known his wife, and where, as people sometimes unkindly put it, he had “hung up his hat” when he married, instead of taking his bride to a new home.
It is fortunate indeed that men and women cannot read each other's thoughts, for, truth to tell, during the whole of his wife's funeral service, Harry Garlett's mind had been most uncomfortably full of another woman.
To this woman, none other than Agatha Cheale, he had written a formal note that morning saying he would like to see her after the funeral for a few minutes. And now he wondered whether she expected him to go to Miss Prince's house, where she had been staying the last few days, or whether he would find her waiting for him in the Thatched House in the room which, till his wife's death, had been known as “Miss Cheale's room.”
He went into the empty hall, took off his hat, but still wearing his great coat, hurried down the passage. Then, after a moment's pause, he knocked at the door.
A quiet voice said “Come in,” and as he entered the room he saw Agatha Cheale standing by the empty fireplace. All the little intimate possessions which cause a room to be associated with one personality had been cleared away. Already his late wife's companion looked, as well as felt, a stranger in this house where she had spent so secretly dramatic, while so openly calm, a year of her life.
And now she gazed with sunken, burning eyes at the man who stood before her. How well he looked, how young, how strong!—his life, which in the last few days she had come to realize would never be shared by her, open before him. Deep in her unhappy, tormented heart there had survived up to to-day a glimmer of hope. True, he had obviously avoided her during the last few days, but might not that be owing to his undoubted affection, or rather respect, for his late wife? Now that faint glimmer of hope died as she gazed into his set, almost stern, face.
There welled up in her heart a terrible tide of that acrid bitterness which is born of thwarted love and ambition. But being a brave as well as a proud woman, she only said: “I'm glad it was such a fine day—that makes such a difference to a funeral.” And he answered eagerly: “Yes, indeed!” grateful for her commonplace words.
With an obvious effort, he exclaimed: “I want to tell you how grateful I feel for all you did for my poor wife. Your being here has made all the difference this last year.”
She said nothing, and, speaking more quickly, he went on: “I have to thank you for myself, as well as for poor Emily. It was such an infinite comfort, each time I went away, to feel that I was leaving my wife with someone I could trust, as I knew I could trust you.”
He waited a moment, and as she still remained silent while looking at him with a terrible fixed look of—was it reproach?—he took an envelope out of his pocket.
“I have made up the enclosed cheque,” he said awkwardly, “to the end of the year. I am glad to say Emily left you a thousand pounds. So I do hope you'll manage to get a good rest before you start work again. From something Miss Prince said the other day, I gather you're taking a post connected with some kind of Russian business house.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “they were the people I was with before I came here, and they've often asked me to come back. It's interesting work, and I'm in general sympathy with their objects.”
“Bolshevik objects?” he suggested with a half smile, and without meaning what he said. But she, without a glimmer of an answering smile, replied: “Yes, Bolshevik objects.”
A look of bewilderment came over his open face.
“I had no idea that you and your brother shared that sort of views!” he exclaimed, “deep as I know is your attachment for him.”
“We agree as to politics,” she answered, as if the words were being forced out of her.
And then at last, almost as if reluctantly, she took the envelope from his hand.
“Thank you for this,” she said coldly, “and for telling me of Mrs. Garlett's unexpected thought for me. I do not want a holiday, but now I may be able to send my brother abroad this next winter, if he lives as long.”
“I was coming to that,” said Harry Garlett quickly. “I'm going away for a long holiday—certainly till Christmas, perhaps longer. But I'm keeping the household here together, and I've been wondering whether your brother would come and stay at the Thatched House as my guest, at any rate through the summer.”
She shook her head.
“I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Garlett, that his coming here is out of the question. I'm afraid, nay, I'm certain, that he was the man Lucy Warren let into the drawing room that night”
A look of anger and disgust flashed into his face. So she had succeeded in rousing him at last?
She sighed, a weary, listless sigh.
“As I think I told you long ago, my brother's one real interest in life is what he calls 'falling in love'—and always with some entirely unsuitable person.”
Harry Garlett softened; he remembered very well his surprise when she had first told him about the unprincipled sickly brother whom she yet loved so dearly, and of whom she was, in a sense, proud.
“I feel grieved,” he said feelingly, “that you have this real anxiety always with you; I wish I could help you with it.”
“No one can help me with it. I knew he was bound to get into a scrape with some woman here.”
“What an extraordinary way to go on!”
“Extraordinary to you, no doubt. But you are a Galahad, Mr. Garlett.”
Her words were like the lash of a whip: he grew red under his tan, and looking at her straight for the first time during this, to him, most trying conversation, “I'm a very ordinary chap,” he said deliberately.
Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Harry Garlett turned and looked unseeingly out of the window. He was longing for the uncomfortable interview to end, and it was with relief that he heard her say:
“I must be going back to the Thatched Cottage now. Good-bye, Mr. Garlett, and thank you for all your kindness.”
“Good-bye and good luck!”
He tried to wring her hand, but it felt like a lump of dead, cold flesh.
All at once the door opened behind them. “Agatha? Oh, here you are!”
It was Miss Prince.
“I beg your pardon,” she exclaimed, glancing sharply from the one to the other.
“We were just saying good-bye,” said Harry Garlett quickly. “And I'll bid you good-bye, too, Miss Prince, for I'm going away this afternoon, and I don't expect to be back this side of Christmas.”
“Good gracious, man! Are you going round the world?”
“I haven't made up my mind what I'm going to do.”
“And who will look after the factory?”
“Dodson and Miss Bower. Come, Miss Prince”—his look challenged her—“you've never credited me with doing much of the work there, eh?”