The Queen's Scarlet Part 14

CHAPTER NINE.

DEAD--AND BURIED.

By the next morning the flood was subsiding rapidly, and at night the muddy meadows began to show that the river was sinking back into its bed.

All that evening boats were out, and people watched in expectation of that which they felt would soon be found.

Twenty-four hours more elapsed, and sheep, caught in hedgerows by the wool, were dragged through the mud and slime.

Lower down the river an ox or two were found, while news came of other carcases, miles away, stranded in bends where gravel and mud had half-buried them.

But there was a good deal of water still in the river, and a threatening of another rise.

At Mr Draycott's Mark Frayne still lay insensible, but he seemed to sleep calmly enough, and was beginning to take the food given to him, while the doctors both agreed that there was no fear of a relapse; the only trouble was--What would the young man's mental state be when he recovered from his long stupor?

Day after day glided by. Mr and Mrs Frayne reached the house, Mark's father evidently painfully ill of the complaint which had taken him from his bleak Devons.h.i.+re vicarage to the warmer climate and change of the South of France and the Riviera.

The news had been a very great shock, and the doctor looked at him anxiously as he went to his son's room, so weak that he had to be a.s.sisted by Jerry and the weeping mother.

They accepted Mr Draycott's hospitality and stayed, eager to be near their son, while longing to hear tidings of the discovery of their nephew--tidings that did not come.

Jerry stole away more than once to try and make out the exact place where he had seen Richard plunge in, and returned, shaking his head, for it was impossible.

Day by day he grew more morose, for fragments of the chatter reached him--petty talk, which blackened the young baronet's fame; while, worst stab of all, he read in the little local paper, where, in a long article concerning the trouble of "our respected townsman, Mr Draycott," it was said that the princ.i.p.al in the terrible tragedy had been guilty of that rash act to avoid the punishment likely to befall him consequent upon the a.s.sault he had committed and his connection with a monetary scandal.

"And if I go and punch the head of him as wrote that, they'll have me up before the magistrates," said Jerry; "and they call this a free land!"

Three weeks had pa.s.sed, and Mark Frayne was beginning to show signs of returning consciousness, when, towards evening, the police inspector came to the house to ask to see Mr Draycott.

"He's in, I s'pose, Mr Brigley?" said the official, looking very serious and important.

"Oh, yes; he's in," said Jerry, excitedly; "but--tell me--have you found him?"

"Just got a wire, Mr Brigley, from Chedleigh, fifty mile away, sir!"

Jerry caught at one of the hall chairs, and made it scroop on the stone floor.

The news was correct enough, and the next day an inquest was held upon the cruelly disfigured body which had been discovered, stripped by the action of the flood, and buried in sand and stones.

Jerry was there to give his evidence, along with that of others; and, looking haggard and suffering from mental anxiety, Mr Draycott was there to give his. The medical man who had been called told of his examination, and, as there seemed to be no doubt as to the ident.i.ty, a verdict was readily returned. Two days later there was a funeral at Richard Frayne's native place, and the unfortunate lad was laid to his rest--aged eighteen, people read upon his breastplate--just about the same time that Mark Frayne was lying upon his back, gazing at the open window, through which there came the pleasant odour of new-made hay, and wondering why he was there in bed, while a woman in white cap and ap.r.o.n was sitting reading.

"I say," he whispered at last; and the nurse started up, smiling.

"Yes?" she said, coming to his bedside.

"Who are you?"

"The nurse. Don't speak, please. You have been ill."

"Oh!" said Mark, "have I? Don't go away!"

"Only for a minute, to send word for somebody to come."

She stepped softly out into the corridor, just as the two pupils who had witnessed the encounter were coming upstairs.

"Would you mind telling Mrs Frayne that he is quite sensible now?"

"What! Mark Frayne?" cried Sinjohn. "Yes; all right."

The two young men turned and went together to deliver the news.

"Then he is really getting well," said Andrews, in a whisper. "Why, Sin, if he does, he'll be Sir Mark Frayne!"

"Not while his father lives," said the other. "But only think!--poor old d.i.c.k buried to-day! I wish we could have gone."

"Yes," said Andrews, bitterly. "Poor old d.i.c.k!"

"We shall never hear his flute agin!"

CHAPTER TEN.

INTO THE SWIFT WATERS.

"Oh! I wouldn't have done that!"

Of course you would not. No sane lad would ever be led away by his imagination to be guilty of any folly whatever. No one with a well-balanced brain would, for a moment, ever dream of being guilty of an act that would cause him repentance for years. In other words, we are all of us so thoroughly perfect that we go straight on through life, laughing at temptations, triumphing over our weakness, and so manly and confident in our own strength of mind that we continue our life's journey, never slipping, never stumbling, but bounding along to its highest point, where we pitch our caps in the air, flap our arms for want of wings, stretch out our throats, open our beaks, and cry "c.o.c.k-a-doodle-doo!" which, being translated from the gallinaceous tongue into plain English, means--"Look at me! Here I am! Did you ever see such a fine fellow in your life? I don't believe there was ever my equal born into the world!"

There was a comic philosopher born in the West, and his name was Artemus Ward; and every now and then, after a verbal flourish of this kind, he used to conclude by saying--

"This is wrote sarcastic."

So are these remarks concerning Richard Frayne's act, when, agonised by the horror of his position, and rankling mentally at being believed contemptible enough to have obtained the money, monkey-fas.h.i.+on, by using his cousin as catspaw, he had gradually become so out of balance that he was ready for any reckless act.

A few words from the proper quarter would have set him right; a kindly bit or two of sympathy from his fellow-students would have helped him; but everyone but the servant held rigidly aloof, and when the dark, blank night-time came, and the long hours of agony culminated in a feeling of utter, hopeless despair, he sat alone there in his room, ready to dash at anything which would, even if temporarily, relieve him from the terrible strain.

At last he forced himself into thinking as calmly as he could, setting himself to consider all that he had to face.

Mark was dying fast. The doctors had said it, and in a few hours he would stand in the eyes of the world as, if not his murderer, the cause of his death. Next there must be that terrible public examination and the verdict--manslaughter; it could be no other, he told himself. Then there would be a magisterial examination, ending in his being committed for trial. After this, a long, weary waiting--possibly on bail--and then the trial.

He arranged all of it in his own mind, perfectly satisfied that his view was too correct, and never once stopping to think that people would calmly investigate every circ.u.mstance of the trouble, and, while making every allowance, sift out the pearl truth from the sand and bitter ashes in which it was hidden. In his then frame of mind, he could only think the very worst of everything; for always before him was that terrible scene in which he was bound to take part. He felt that he could nerve himself to stand before coroner, magistrate, even judge, if matters went so far; but he could not face the sweet-faced, sorrowing mother and the weak invalid father, who must be now hastening back to their dying son as fast as trains could bear them.

Condemn, pity, ridicule, which you will; but the fact remains. A kind of panic had attacked Richard Frayne, and he prepared for the folly he was about to commit. There were the two courses open--a frank, manly meeting of the consequences, whatever they might be, or the act of a coward.

The hours pa.s.sed, and his mind was fully made up. And now everything he did was in a quiet, decisive fas.h.i.+on, with as much method in his madness as ever the great poet endowed his Danish hero.

He changed his clothes, putting on the quiet dark tweed suit Jerry missed, and went back into his room, to stand there in the gloom, looking round and vainly trying to make out the various objects there, every one being loved like some old friend.