King of the Castle

Mary spoke to her, knelt beside her, and tried to whisper words of comfort, about resignation and patience, but without avail. Nothing she said appeared to be heard; and at last – weary, hopeless, and suffering, too, from the terrible trouble which had fallen upon the house – she knelt there in silence beside the moaning and sobbing woman, her hands clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon vacancy, as she thought of how happy they had all been by comparison a few hours before.

Mary Dillon was startled from her fit of sad musing by the opening of the drawing-room door.

“Claude!” she exclaimed, “I thought you were asleep.”

Her cousin gave a look that was almost reproachful, and came slowly to where Sarah Woodham crouched.

As Claude laid her hand upon the sobbing woman’s shoulder, it was as if the latter had received a shock. She looked up wildly, and hurriedly rose to her feet, pressed her hair back from her eyes, and made a tremendous effort to master the emotion to which she had given way. Then, with a heavy sigh she grew calm, her distorted features resumed their old saddened dreamy expression, and she moved towards the door.

Claude tried to speak to her, and her lips moved, but no words came, for her face began to work, and she was turning away when the woman seized her hand, kissed it passionately, and hurried from the room.

“We are not alone in our suffering, Mary,” said Claude at last; and she drew her cousin to her breast and wept silently upon her shoulder, while Mary gave her the most loving form of consolation that woman can give to woman, the silent pressure that tells of heart beating for heart in sympathetic unison, as they stood together in the darkened room.

Volume Two – Chapter Sixteen.

Mr Wimble Rakes for Information

An enormous increase has taken place during the past five-and-twenty years in local journalism. England seems to have been almost Americanised in respect of news, for every centre worthy of the enterprise has been furnished with its newspaper, in which everything is told that is worthy of chronicling, and very often, from want of news, something unworthy of the paper upon which it appears. Notably that celebrated paragraph about So-and-So’s horse and cart, which, left untended, moves on; the horse is startled by shouts, begins to trot, then gallops, and is finally stopped. “It was fortunate that the accident occurred before noon, for at that hour the children would have been leaving school, and,” etc, etc – suggestion of the horror of what might have been.

But Danmouth was not a centre worthy of the enterprise, and, with the exception of a few copies of the county paper which came in weekly to partly satisfy the thirst for news, the inhabitants had no fount to depend upon save Michael Wimble, and to him they gravitated for information respecting the proceedings all around, from a failure, scandal, or accident on shore up to a shipwreck.

Consequently, Wimble’s business on the morning of Gartram’s death was so great that he began to think that he must hire a boy to lather, and the leather slipper nailed up against the wall to serve as a quaintly original till had to be emptied twice.

As a rule, the “salt” personages who hung about the cliff, staring into the sea, came to be shaved on Saturdays, but the news on the wing prompted every man to have a clean shave that morning, and many a stalwart fisher lady regretted that she had not a hirsute excuse for visiting the shop.

Wimble made the most of such information as he was able to glean, and as the morning advanced, he was able to keep on making additions, till the one little seed he received first thing came up, grew and blossomed into a news plant that would have been worth a good deal in town.

Towards evening, though, the excitement at Wimbles museum had fallen off, and gathered about the Harbour Inn, where the gossips of the place, clean shaven, and looking unusually like being in holiday trim, were able to quench their double thirst.

Michael Wimble sighed as he stood at his door looking towards that inn.

“Ah,” he said to himself, “now, if I had a licence to sell beer by retail to be drunk on the premises,” – he was quoting from a board with whose lettering he was familiar – “they would have stopped; and my place being nearest to the Fort, the coroner would have held the inquest there.”

“Hah!” he said aloud, after a pause, “how it would have read in the paper: ‘An inquest was held at Wimble’s Museum, Danmouth’ – eh? I beg your pardon, Mr Brime, sir; I didn’t hear you come up. Shave, sir? Certainly, sir. Come in.”

Wimble’s heart beat high as he thought of the chance. His customers had pumped him dry, and gone away; and here, by a tremendous stroke of luck, was the commencement of a perfect spring of information to refill his well right to the brim.

Reuben Brime, who looked worried and haggard, entered the museum, took his place in the Windsor arm-chair, was duly covered with the print cloth, after removing collar and tie, and laid his head back in the rest.

“Why, you look fagged out, Mr Brime, sir,” said Wimble, quietly walking to the door, closing it, and slipping the bolt.

The gardener from the Fort was nervous and agitated. Death in the house – sudden death – had unhinged him. His master might have been poisoned, either by his own hand or by that of an enemy. That would be murder. He was bound, as it were, for the sacrifice; there were a dozen razors at hand; the barber’s aspect was suspicious, and he had closed the door. What did it mean?

“I say,” cried the gardener, sitting bolt upright, “what did you do that for?”

“Do what, Mr Brime? Fasten the door? I’ll tell you. I’ve been that worked this day that I haven’t had time for a decent meal, and I won’t shave another chin. That’s what I mean.”

“Oh!” said Brime, calming down a little.

“I don’t hold with working oneself to death, sir. Do you?”

“No; certainly not,” said the gardener, with divers memories of idle pipes in the tool-house when “Master” had gone in the quarry.

“And so say I, sir,” said Wimble. “Nobody thinks a bit the better of you if you do.”

“That’s true,” said the gardener, letting his head sink back with a sigh, as Wimble stood before him working up the lather in his pot to a splendid consistency.

“Anxious time for you people at the Fort, sir,” said Wimble, beginning to lather gently, and taking care to leave his customer’s lips quite free.

“Yes,” said the gardener shortly.

“Poor man! Ah, I wonder how many times I have shaved him, sir.”

The gardener stared straight before him in silence, frowning heavily.

“In the midst of life we are in death, Mr Brime, sir, parson says o’ Sundays,” continued Wimble, pausing to tuck the cloth a little more in round his customer’s neck.

No acquiescent reply.

“Just like things in your profession, Mr Brime, or, as I might say, in mine. Flowers and grass comes up, and the frost takes one, and the scythe the other; or beards comes up and the hair grows, and it’s the razor for one, and the shears for the other, eh?”

“Humph!”

“Yes, sir; you are quite right,” said Wimble, replacing the brush in the pot, and proceeding to rub the soap into his customer’s cheeks, throat and chin with a long, lissome finger.

Silence.

“Wonderful stiff, wiry beard yours, Mr Brime, sir. Pleasure to shave it, though. I hate your fluffy beards that lie down before the razor. Yours is a downright upright one, which meets the razor like crisp grass. What a difference in beards. Not in a hurry, sir, I hope?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll do it well, sir, so as to make it last. Ah, many’s the time I’ve shaved poor Mr Gartram, sir! Hard man to please over pimples, while a nick used to make him swear terrible, and there are times when you can’t help just a touch, sir.”

“No,” said Brime, thinking of slips with the scythe.

“Good customer gone,” said the barber, resuming the brush once more, but still keeping clear of the lips. “Always a shilling for going up and shaving him, Mr Brime. Yes, a capital customer gone.”

Here the shaving pot was set down, and a razor taken out of a loop to re-strop.

“Bad job for me, Mr Brime. Won’t affect you, I suppose, sir?” continued Wimble, finishing off the keen-edged razor on his palm with a loud pat, pat, pat.

“Not affect me?” said the gardener, sitting up sharply; for the barber had touched the right key at last, and the instrument began to sound. “But it will affect me. How do I know what’ll take place now, sir? Saved up my little bit o’ money, and made the cottage comfortable and fit for a wife.”

“Indeed, Mr Brime, and you’d been thinking of that sort o’ thing, sir?”

“P’raps I had and p’r’aps I hadn’t,” snarled the gardener, savagely. “Not the first man, I suppose, as thought of it.”

“No, sir, indeed. I’ve been thinking of it for years, and making my bits o’ preparation; but,” – he said with a sigh – “it hasn’t come off yet.”