A Fatal Silence (Complete‪)‬

Market day at Haltham, and the primitive little town in an uproar. Huge oxen, with shaggy coats and wide-spreading horns, were being driven along the road, and floundering in their dismay against any luckless passenger that crossed their path. Meek sheep, with their lambs trotting by their side and all baa-ing in concert, followed after, whilst ducks and geese quacked and hissed, and the ploughboys and farming maidens shouted at each other with scarcely less discordant noise.

Miss Stafford was glad to be above it all.

She stood on the rustic pathway, which was raised several feet above the road, and was protected by stout green posts connected by iron chains, on which the country children loved to swing. Lottie and Carrie Gribble, who had been left in her charge, had run into the very midst of the excitement, and she looked as concerned as a hen whose foster ducklings have taken to the water as she drew her dainty cambric skirts closely around her, to prevent contact with the dirty crowd, and called to them to return to her side. Market day was the one great event of the week to the inhabitants of Haltham, but Miss Stafford came from the neighbouring village of Deepdale, seven miles off, and was not used to so much bustle. She looked annoyed as she was elbowed and pushed by farming men and market women eager to reach their stalls, or to inspect the tempting array of articles exhibited in the shop windows for their benefit. There was only one shop of each kind in Haltham, so that the spirit of competition did not run high. Mr Spring, the stationer, was standing at his door, rubbing his hands and smiling, as Miss Stafford called to the Gribble girls. He knew her well. She was the certificated schoolmistress of Deepdale, and all the slates and copy books and pens and ink for the use of the school were bought at his shop.

‘Ah, Miss Stafford,’ he exclaimed, ‘anything in my line to-day? I have just received the choicest selection of hymn books. Won’t you step in and look at them?’

‘In a moment, Mr Spring—indeed, I have a long list for you. But I must wait for Lottie and Carrie Gribble. They are very naughty. They have run right across the road. And you know how very particular Mrs Gribble is.’

Mr Spring lifted his hands and eyes as though to intimate that no one knew it better than himself, but at that moment quite a little crowd entered his shop, where he sold all sorts of fancy articles, and he was compelled to go and attend to them. Presently, Miss Stafford, having recaptured the children, two ugly little animals of eight and ten, followed in his wake, and took her stand by the counter till he could attend to her. She looked singularly interesting as she did so, and very different in appearance from those around her. Indeed, she was more than interesting, she was a very handsome young woman of about five-and-twenty, but she seemed to have taken great pains to conceal her beauty. She could not hide her soft, white skin, nor her long-fringed, dark-blue eyes, but her mass of reddish-brown hair was strained off her face in a most unbecoming manner, and tucked away at the back of her head, and she wore a coarse straw bonnet which almost concealed her features. Her slight figure was plainly draped in a lilac cambric gown, covered with a summer shawl; but there was an unmistakable air of refinement about her—to those who knew how to read the signs—that her dowdy attire had no power to take away, and which made it difficult to believe that she was only a village schoolmistress. Some people in Deepdale (but they were mostly women) thought that Mr Gribble and Mr Axworthy (who were the churchwardens of the place) had not acted with their usual discretion in engaging Miss Stafford to superintend the education of the rising generation. They considered she was too young, and—well, certainly not too pretty, for they saw nothing at all in her—but too flighty and ‘wool-gathering’ to hold so responsible a position, and they prophesied that no good would come of it. So far the flightiness had not been apparent, but Miss Stafford’s thoughts certainly seemed to be oftener away from her work than interested in it. She toiled through the monotonous routine day after day with unswerving fidelity, but she had a dreamy and abstracted air that looked as if her heart and head did not go hand in hand. Her beautiful eyes were very sad too, and there was an unaccountably pathetic droop at the corners of her mouth—unaccountable, that is, to the matrons who were set over her and watched her so closely. What, indeed, could anyone wish for more than Miss Stafford possessed? A most excellent and responsible position, mistress of Deepdale school, with three rooms all to herself under the same roof, gas and water free, and sixty pounds a year. Why, it was a little fortune in itself, and many excellentChristian women would be thankful for it. And when the married ladies of Deepdale said ‘Christian,’ they emphasised the word to such a degree that anyone would have thought that Miss Stafford was a heathen. However, she had obtained the appointment, and held it, and here she was at Mr Spring’s counter with a list of school necessaries in her hand.

‘And what may be your pleasure, miss?’ asked Mr Spring as she approached him.

‘Oh, I want so many things, Mr Spring, I think I had better wait till you have served your other customers. There is no hurry. I will look over some of these picture books till you are more at leisure.’

‘Teacher! teacher!’ cried Carrie Gribble, tugging at her sleeve, ‘get us some of them ciphering books with red and blue covers—will yer?’

‘Those ciphering books, my dear,’ corrected Miss Stafford in a low voice. ‘No; we don’t require any to-day. You must wait till another time.’

‘Teacher,’ exclaimed the other torment, in a nasal twang, ‘buy me a ball. I want that big ’un in the corner. Tell ’im to reach it down.’

‘Hush, Lottie, you must not be so rude. Your papa has given me no permission to buy you anything. Who is to pay for the ball?’

‘Why can’t you?’ replied the child rudely.

‘Because I do not choose to do so,’ said Miss Stafford firmly. ‘Sit down at once, and be good; or I shall inform your papa of your behaviour.’

The two children obeyed, for there was something in the teacher’s manner which they dared not dispute; but they sat together sulkily, and watched with the keenest attention everything that took place. As Miss Stafford turned from them to examine a pile of illustrated children’s books, something touched her elbow. A farmer’s wife, in pressing forward to ask for a bottle of ink and a penholder, had squeezed the baby she carried—a bouncing boy of a twelvemonth old—against the teacher. The child chuckled and cooed. Miss Stafford turned to look at it, and a wonderful transformation seemed to take place in the expression of her features. The stern look, almost of disgust, certainly of impatience, with which she had spoken to the little Gribbles faded away, and a sad but heavenly smile beamed on her face instead. She stretched out her hand and laid it on the infant’s uncovered head. The boy chuckled again good-temperedly. Miss Stafford stooped and kissed him silently.

‘Lor!’ said Lottie to Carrie, under her breath, ‘just look at teacher kissing that baby! She never kissed one of us. I’ll tell ma of that as soon as we get home.’

At that moment a burly man, dressed in a suit of blue serge, beneath the open jacket of which might be seen a knitted woollen vest, rolled into the little shop, and being unable to approach the counter, bawled at the top of his voice,—

‘Here, mister. Hand us over a couple o’ sheets of paper and some anvelopes, will you? I only came into the town to-day, and can’t get at my togs. Why!’—he continued as he caught sight of Miss Stafford’s face, which had turned deadly white upon his entrance—‘God bless us and save us! It’s madame.’

‘No, no!’ cried Miss Stafford, shrinking backward as the stranger extended his hand, ‘you are mistaken. You must mean someone else.’

‘Mistaken!’ repeated the man, who was evidently a seaman, ‘mistaken, madame! Why, I’d know you in a thousand.’

The teacher threw a hurried glance towards the corner where the Gribble girls sat with open eyes and ears, and seemed suddenly to think better of her first intention.

‘Of course,’ she said, with a nervous laugh, ‘I know you now—perfectly—and—and—I should like to speak to you. Come this way; we can finish our shopping afterwards,’ and she slipped out of the door and stood upon the pathway.

‘Where have you come from?’ she asked with trembling lips as soon as they were alone.

‘Well, madame—’ he commenced.

‘Oh, pray don’t call me by that name,’ she rejoined. ‘I am known here only as Miss Stafford. I am a schoolmistress at Deepdale, and I want to forget everything else.’

‘I see,’ replied the sailor. ‘And you’re doing well, I hope, and pretty comfortable.’

‘Oh, yes, I have peace, and that is all I strive for. Brunt, you must not tell anyone you saw me here.’

‘Well, I don’t know as I’m likely to be put in the way of it. It was quite an accident my coming across you. I’m just home from China, and I thought I’d take a look at my old mother afore I started again. When I came to Haltham I found I couldn’t get a train on to Bonnysett (that’s our place) till six to-morrow morning, so I thought I’d have a walk round the market. And to think I should have come acrost you—and bless you!—not looking a day older for all that’s happened.’

‘Yes, yes; but I cannot stop. I came over with some friends, and they may call for me at any moment.’

‘And you’re a school teacher. Well, to think of it. It wasn’t much in our thoughts aboard the Lily of Christiansand, was it now?’

Miss Stafford shuddered visibly.

‘Oh, don’t speak of them—those terrible days! Thank God that they are over for ever. Good-bye, Brunt. I wish you all prosperity, but I must go.’

‘I should like to have had a word or two with you, though,’ said Seth Brunt, stroking his enormous beard. ‘Now that we’ve come acrost each other again, I’ve got one or two things to tell you that I think you ought to know.’

‘Not about him!’ she ejaculated, with scared eyes.

‘Yes, madame—I beg your pardon, I means Miss Stafford—about him. It won’t poison you to hear it, you know, and I was always his friend, and always shall be. Now, where can I see you this evening?’

Her face blanched, but she stood her ground.

‘Nowhere. It is impossible. I live miles away from here. You could not come. It is too far.’

‘Oh, no, it is not. I will walk over this evening.’ Then, noticing her perturbation, he added: ‘Of what are you afraid?’

‘Of nothing,’ she answered proudly. ‘Nothing can harm me now.’

‘You are right, madame. Do you live alone?’

‘Yes, quite alone. Even my little maid goes home at night to her mother. If you must speak to me, you will find me, after seven o’clock, in the schoolhouse at Deepdale. Only, say nothing of this to anybody, if you ever cared for me.’

‘You know that I did care—that I do care,’ replied Brunt roughly as she went back into the shop.

Her first fearful glance was directed towards the odious Gribble children, whispering and grinning to each other.

‘Now, Mr Spring,’ she said as she held out a paper to him with a trembling hand, ‘these are the articles I require. Will you have them packed at once to go home in Mr Gribble’s phaeton?’

‘Teacher,’ cried Lottie, catching at her skirt, ‘who’s the man with the long beard?’

‘No one whom you know, my dear,’ replied Miss Stafford quietly, although her face flushed with annoyance.

‘Oh, you are red!’ exclaimed the other little wretch. ‘I expect he’s been scolding you. Is he your cousin, teacher? Lottie and me never let Cousin Tom scold us. If he tries it on, we thump him till he runs away. Don’t we, Lottie? Oh, I say, here’s pa and the phaeton. Come on, teacher, we are going home,’ and away the two creatures ran, and climbed into the vehicle that had drawn up before the door.

Mr Gribble sat in it pompously. He was a little man, with a ferrety face and weak eyes, and he was obliged to make up by his manner for the dignity with which nature had not seen fit to endow him. He had married late in life, and his two daughters were the only produce of his union. It was a pity they were daughters, for they had inherited their father’s prematurely aged appearance and general want of comeliness, joined to unpleasant dispositions. Still, three Mr Gribbles might have been too much for this world. He was a retired corn-chandler, but still held some interest in the shop at Haltham, which he visited each market day. Generally, Mrs Gribble, in a wonderful velvet bonnet, which she wore all the year round, sat in state by his side, but she had been unable to come on the present occasion, and so he had offered the vacant place to Miss Stafford. He professed to be laying her under an immense obligation by driving her into Haltham, but he had only asked her in order that she might look after his unruly children. It was not the only offer of an escort that she had received that day, although she considered it the most discreet for acceptance. But she hated Mr Gribble, and, as she issued from the stationer’s shop to join him, her eyes almost said so.

‘Come, now, Miss Stafford,’ he exclaimed snappishly, ‘jump in at once, and don’t keep the mare waiting. She has had several stoppages this morning, and it has made her fidgety.’

He did not move from his place, nor offer to assist her in any way, and the parcel from the stationer’s being stowed under the seat, she prepared to step into the rickety old phaeton, for which purpose she had to descend by some rugged steps cut at intervals in the raised pathway to the road.

‘Let me help you, Miss Stafford,’ cried a young, cheerful voice.

Mr Gribble glanced up quickly at the newcomer, and the school teacher blushed. He was a man of perhaps seven-and-twenty, dressed in a brown velveteen coat and knickerbockers. His worsted stockings showed off a well-covered and well-made leg, and the white silk handkerchief knotted loosely round his throat, and the rose in his buttonhole, proved he was somewhat of a provincial dandy. He had a frank, open countenance, a clear eye and complexion, and a genial smile—taken altogether, indeed, he was a model of a fresh, good-looking young farmer, with a fair amount of intellect added to his personal characteristics.