Chapter XVII: Ladies Disputing

The next matter to be disclosed was the marriage of Isaac. It was not done immediately. As the reader may have surmised, the sole cause for his keeping it secret at all had its rise in the smuggling. So long as they ran cargoes into the vaults of the Red Court Farm, so long did Mr. Thornycroft lay an embargo, or wish to lay it, on his sons marrying. The secret might be no longer safe, he said, if one of them took a wife.

With the departure of Richard the smuggling would end. Without him, Mr. Thornycroft would not care to carry it on: and Isaac felt that _he_ could never join in it again, after what it had done for Cyril. There was no need: Mr. Thornycroft's wealth was ample. But some weeks went on before Isaac considered himself at liberty to speak.

For the fact was this: Richard Thornycroft on his departure had extracted a promise from Isaac _not_ to disclose particulars until they should hear from him. Isaac gave it readily, supposing he would write before embarking. But the days and the weeks went on, and no letter came: Isaac was at a nonplus, and felt half convinced, in his own mind, that Richard had repented of his determination to absent himself, and would be coming back to Coastdown. With the disclosure of his marriage to the justice, Isaac wished to add another disclosure--that _he_ had done with the smuggling for ever; but a fear was upon him that this might lead to a full revelation of the past; and, for Richard's sake, until news should come that he was safe away, Isaac delayed and delayed. His inclination would have been less willing to do this, but for one thing, and that was, that he could not have his wife with him just yet. Mrs. Sam Copp, poor meek Amy, had been seized with a long and dangerous illness. Anna was in close attendance upon her; Mrs. Copp stayed to domineer and superintend; and until she should be better Anna could not leave. Thus the time had gone on, and accident brought about what intention had not.

May was in, and quickly passing. Pretty nearly two months had elapsed since Richard's exit. One bright afternoon when Amy was well enough to sit up at her bed-room window, open to the balmy heath and the sweet breeze from the sparkling sea, Sarah came up and said Mr. Isaac Thornycroft was below. Anna sat with her; the captain and his mother were out.

"May I go down?" asked Anna, with a bright blush.

"I suppose you must, dear," answered Mrs. Sam Copp, with a sigh, given to the long-continued concealment that ever haunted her.

Away went Anna, flying first of all up to her own room to smooth her hair, to see that her pretty muslin dress with its lilac ribbons looked nice. Isaac, under present circumstances, was far more like a lover than a husband: scarcely ever did they see each other alone for an instant. This took her about two minutes, and she went softly downstairs and opened the parlour door.

Isaac was seated with his back to it, on this side the window. Anna, her face in a glow with the freedom of what she was about to do, stepped up, put her hands round his neck from the back, and kissed his hair--kissed it again and again.

"Halloa!" roared out a stern voice.

Away she shrunk, with a startled scream. At the back of the room, having thrown himself on the sofa, tired with his walk, was Captain Copp, his mother beside him. The two minutes had been sufficient time for them to enter. The captain had not felt so confounded since the night of the apparition, and Mrs. Copp's eyes were perfectly round with a broad stare.

"You shameless hussey!" cried the gallant captain, finding his tongue as he advanced. "What on earth--"

But Isaac had risen. Risen, and was taking Anna to his side, holding her up, standing still with calm composure.

"It is all right, Captain Copp. Pardon me. Anna is my wife."

"Your--what?" roared the captain, really not hearing in his flurry.

"Anna has been my wife since last November. And I hope," Isaac added, with a quiet laugh, partly of vexation, partly of amusement, "that you will give me credit for self-sacrifice and infinite patience in letting her remain here."

Anna, crying silently in her distress and shame, had turned to him, and was hiding her face on his arm, A minute or two sufficed for the explanation Isaac gave. Its truth could not be doubted, and he finished by calling her a little goose, and bidding her look up. Captain Copp felt uncertain whether to storm or to take it quietly. Meanwhile, he sat down rather humbly, and joined Mrs. Copp in staring.

"A ghost one week; a private marriage the next! I say, mother, I wish I was among the pirates again!"

This discovery decided the question in Isaac's mind, and he went straight to the Red Court to seek a private interview with his father. But he told only of the marriage: leaving other matters to the future. Rather to his surprise, it was well received: Mr. Thornycroft did not say a harsh word.

"Be it so, Isaac. Of business I am thinking we shall do no more. And if I am to be deprived of two of my sons--as appears only too probable--it is well that the third should marry. As to Anna, she is a sweet girl, and I've nothing to say against her, except her want of money. I suppose you considered that you will possess enough for both."

"We shall have enough for comfort, sir."

"And for something else. Go and bring her home here at once, Isaac."

But to this, upon consideration, was raised a decided objection at Captain Copp's. What would the gossips say? Isaac thought of a better plan. He wanted to run up to London for a few days, and would take his wife with him. After their departure, Sarah might be told, who would be safe to go abroad at once and spread the news everywhere: that Miss Chester, under the sanction of her mistress, the captain's wife, had been married in the winter to Isaac Thornycroft.

Mrs. Copp, whose visit had grown to unconscionable length, announced. her intention of proceeding with them to London. The captain's wife was quite sufficiently recovered to be left: to use her own glad words, she should "get well all one way," now that the secret was told. So it was arranged, and the captain himself escorted them to Jutpoint.

A gathering at Mrs. Macpherson's. On the day after the arrival in London, that lady had met the three in the crowd at the Royal Academy, and invited them at once to her house in the evening. Isaac, who had seen her once or twice before introduced Mrs. Copp, and whispered the fact that Anna was no longer Miss Chester, but Mrs. Isaac Thornycroft.

"You'll come early, mind," cried, the hospitable wife of the professor. "It's just an ordinary tea-drinking, which is one of the few good things that if the world means to let die out, _I_ don't; but there'll be some cold meat with it, if anybody happens to be hungry. The Miss Jupps are coming, and they dine early. Tell your wife, Mr. Thornycroft--bless her sweet face! there's not one to match it in all them frames--that I'll get in some wedding cake."

Isaac laughed. The jostling masses had left him behind with Mrs. Macpherson, who was dressed so intensely high in the fashion, that he rather winced at the glasses directed to them. However, they accepted the invitation, and went to Mrs. Macpherson's in the evening.

Miss Jupp had arrived before them; her sisters were unable to come. She was looking a little more worn than usual, until aroused by the news relating to Anna. Married! and Miss Jupp had been counting the days, as it were, until she should return to them, for they could not get another teacher like her for patience and work.

Ah, yes: Anna's teaching days were over; her star had brightened. As she sat there in her gleaming silk of pearl-grey, in the golden bracelets, Isaac's gift, with the rose-blush on her cheeks, the light of love in her sweet eyes, Mary Jupp saw that she had found her true sphere.

"But, my dear child, why should it have been done in secret?" she whispered.

"There were family reasons," answered Anna, "I cannot tell you now."

"Since last November! Dear me! And was the marriage really not known to any one? was it quite secret?"

"Not quite. One of Isaac's brothers was present in the church to give me away, and Captain Copp's wife knew of it."

"Ah, then you are not to be blamed; I am glad to hear that," sighed Mary Jupp.

"And now tell me, how is my dear Miss Thornycroft?" cried Mrs. Macpherson, as the good professor, in his threadbare coat (rather worse than usual) beguiled Isaac away to his laboratory. "I declare I have not yet asked after her."

"Had Mrs. Macpherson been strictly candid, she might have acknowledged to having purposely abstained from asking before Isaac. The fact of the young lady's having got intimate with Robert Hunter at _her_ house, and of its being an acquaintance not likely, as she judged, to be acceptable to the Thornycrofts, had rather lain on her mind.

"She looks wretched," answered Mrs. Copp.

"Wretched?"

"She has fretted all the flesh off her bones. You might draw her through the eye of a needle."

"My patience!" ejaculated Mrs. Macpherson. "The prefessor 'ill be sorry to hear this. What on earth has she fretted over?"

"That horrible business about Robert Hunter," explained Mrs. Copp. "The justice has not looked like himself since; and never will again."

"Oh," returned the professor's lady in a subdued tone, feeling suddenly crestfallen. Conscience whispered that this could only apply to the matter she was thinking of, and that the attachment had arisen through her own imprudence in allowing them to meet. She supposed (to use the expressive words passing through her thoughts) that there had been a blow-up.

"It wasn't no fault of mine," she said, after a pause. "Who was to suspect they were going to fall in love with each other in that foolish fashion? She a schoolgirl, and he an old widower! A couple of spoonies! Other folks as well as me might have been throwed off their guard."

Since Mrs. Macpherson had mixed in refined society she had learnt to speak tolerably well at collected times and seasons. But when flurried her new ideas and associations forsook her, and she was sure to lapse back to the speech of old days.

"Then there _was_ an attachment between him and Mary Anne Thornycroft!" exclaimed Mrs. Copp, in a tone of triumph. "Didn't I tell you so, Anna? You need not have been so close about it."

"I do not know that there was," replied Anna "Mary Anne never spoke of it to me."

"Rubbish to speaking of it," said Mrs. Copp. "You didn't speak about you and Mr. Isaac." Anna bent her head in silence.

"And was there a blow-up with her folks?" inquired Mrs. Macpherson, not quite courageously yet. "Miss Jupp! _you_ remember--I come right off to you with my suspicions at the first moment I had 'em--which was only a day or so before she went home."

"I don't know about that; there might have been or there might not," replied Mrs. Copp, alluding to the question of the "blow-up." "But I have got my eyes about me, and I can see how she grieved after him. Why, if there had been nothing between them, why did she put on mourning?" demanded the captain's mother, looking at the assembled company one by one.

"She put it on for Lady Ellis," said Anna.

"Oh, did she, though! Sarah told me that that mourning was on her back before ever Lady Ellis died. I tell you, I tell you also, ladies, she put on the black for Robert Hunter."

"Who put on black for him?" questioned Mrs. Macpherson, in a puzzle.

"Mary Anne Thornycroft."

"I never heard of such a thing! What did she do that for?"

"Why _do_ girls do foolish things?" returned Mrs. Copp. "To show her respect for him, I suppose."

"A funny way of showing it!" cried Mrs. Macpherson. "Robert Hunter is doing very well where he's gone."

Mrs. Copp turned her eyes on the professor's wife with a prolonged stare.

"It is to be hoped he _is_, ma'am," she retorted, emphatically.

"He is doing so well that his coming back and marrying her wouldn't surprise me in the least. The Thornycrofts won't have no need to set up their backs again him if he can show he is in the way of making his fortune."

"Why, who are you talking of?" asked Mrs. Copp, after a pause and another gaze.

"Of Robert Hunter. He has gone and left us. Perhaps you did not know it, ma'am?"

"Yes, I _did_," said Mrs. Copp, with increased emphasis. "Coastdown has too good cause to know it, unfortunately."

This remark caused Mrs. Macpherson to become meek again. "I had a note from him this week," she observed. "It come in a letter to the prefessor: he sent it me up from his laborory."

The corners of Anna's mouth were gradually lengthening, almost--she could not help the feeling--in a sort of fear. It must be remembered that she knew nothing of the fact that it was not Robert Hunter who had died.

"Perhaps you'll repeat that again, ma'am," said Mrs. Copp, eyeing Mrs. Macpherson in her sternest manner. "You had a note from _him_, Robert Hunter?"

"Yes, I had, ma'am. Writ by himself."

"Where was it written from?"

Mrs. Macpherson hesitated, conscious of her defects in the science of locality. "The prefessor would know," said she; "I'm not much of a geographer myself. Anyway it come from where he is, somewhere over in t'other hemisphere."

To a lady of Mrs. Copp's extensive travels, round the world a dozen times and back again, the words "over in t'other hemisphere," taken in conjunction with Robert Hunter's known death and burial, conveyed the idea that the celestial hemisphere, and not the terrestrial, was alluded to. She became convinced of one of two things: that the speaker before her was awfully profane, or else mad.

"I know the letters were six weeks reaching us," continued Mrs. Macpherson. "I suppose it would take about that time to get here from the place."

Mrs. Copp pushed her chair back in a heat. "This is the first time I ever came out to drink tea with the insane, and I hope it will be the last," she cried, speaking without reserve, according to her custom. "Ma'am, if you are not a model of profanity, you ought to be in Bedlam."

Mrs. Macpherson wiped her hot face and took out her fan. But she could give as well as take. "It's what I have been thinking of you, ma'am. Do you think _you_ are quite right?"

"I right!" screamed Mrs. Copp in a fury. "What do you mean?"

"What do _you_ mean?--come!--about me?"

"_That's_ plain. I never yet heard of a man who is dead and gone writing back letters to his friends. Who brings them? How do they come? Do they drop from the skies or come up through the graves?"

"Lawk a mercy!" cried Mrs. Macpherson, not catching the full import of the puzzling questions. "They come through the post."

Mrs. Copp was momentarily silenced. The answer was entirely practical: it was not given in anger; nor, as she confessed to herself, with any indication of insanity. Light dawned upon her mind.

"It's the spirits!" she exclaimed, coming to a sudden conviction. "Well! Before I'd go in for that fashionable rubbish! A woman of any pretension to sense believe in _them!_"

"Hang the spirits!" returned Mrs. Macpherson with offended emphasis. "I'm not quite such a fool as that. You should hear what the prefessor says of them. Leastways, not of the spirits, poor innocent things, which is all delusion, but of them there rapping mediums that make believe to call 'em up."

"Then, ma'am, if it's not the spirits you allude to as bringing the letters, perhaps you'll explain to me what does bring them."

"What _should_ bring them but the post?"

Mrs. Copp was getting angry. "The post does not bring letters from dead men."

"I never said it did. Robert Hunter's not dead."

"Robert Hunter _is_."

"Well, I'm sure!" cried Mrs. Macpherson, fanning herself.

"Robert Hunter died last January," persisted Mrs. Copp, in excitement. "His unfortunate body lies under the sod in Coastdown churchyard, and his poor restless spirit hovers above it, frightening the people into fits. My son Sam saw it. Isaac Thornycroft saw it."

"Robert Hunter is not dead," fired Mrs. Macpherson, who came to the conclusion that she was being purposely deceived; "he is gone to the East to make a railroad. Not that I quite know where the East is," acknowledged she, "or how it stands from this. I tell you all, I got a letter from him, and it was writ about six weeks ago."

"If that lady is not mad, I never was so insulted before," cried Mrs. Copp. "I----"

"There must be some mistake," interposed Mary Jupp, who had listened in great surprise. Of herself she could not solve the question, and knew nothing of the movements of Mr. Hunter. But she thought if he were dead that she should have heard of it from his sister Susan. "Perhaps it only requires a word of explanation."

"I don't know what explanation it can require," retorted Mrs. Copp. "The man is dead and buried."

"The man is not," contended Mrs. Macpherson; "he is alive and kicking, and laying down a railroad."

"My son, Captain Copp, was a mourner at his funeral."

"He wrote me a letter six weeks ago, and he wrote one to the prefessor; and he said he was getting on like a house on fire," doggedly asserted the professor's wife.

"Stay, stay, I pray you," interposed Miss Jupp. "There must be some misunderstanding. You cannot be speaking of the same man."

"We are!" raved both the ladies, losing temper. "It is Robert Hunter, the engineer, who met Mary Anne Thornycroft at my house; and the two--as I suspected--fell in love with each other, which made me very mad."

"And came down to see her at Coastdown, and Susan Hunter was to have come with him, and didn't. Of course we are speaking of the same."

"And I say that he come back from that visit safe and sound, and was in London till April, when he went abroad," screamed Mrs. Macpherson. "He dined here with us the Sunday afore he was off; we had a lovely piece o' the belly o salmon, and a quarter o' lamb and spring cabbage, and rhubub tart and custards, and a bottle of champagne, that we might drink success to his journey. Very down-hearted he seemed, I suppose at the thoughts of going away; and the next day he started. There! Ask the professor, ma'am, and contradict it if you can."

"I won't contradict it," said Mrs. Copp; "I might set on and swear if I did, like my son Sam. You'll persuade me next there's nothing real in the world. Anna Chester--that is, Anna Thornycroft--do you tell what you know. Perhaps they'll hear you."

"Oh, I'll hear the young lady," said Mrs. Macpherson fanning herself violently; "but nobody can't persuade me that black's white."

Anna quietly related facts, so far as her knowledge extended: Robert Hunter had come to Coastdown, had paid his visit to the Red Court Farm, and on the very night he was to have left for London he was shot as he stood at the edge of the cliffs, fell over, and was not found until the morning--dead!

Her calm manner, impressive in its truth, her minute relation of particulars, her unqualified assertion that it was Robert Hunter, and could have been no one else, staggered Mrs. Macpherson.

"And he was shot down dead, you say?" cried that lady, dropping the fan, and opening her mouth very wide.

"He must have died at the moment he was shot. It was not discovered"--here her voice faltered a little--"who shot him, and the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown."

"Was there a inquest?" demanded the astonished Mrs. Macpherson, "on Robert Hunter?"

"Certainly there was. He was buried subsequently in Coastdown churchyard. His grave lies in the east corner of it, near Mrs. Thornycroft's."

"Now you have not told all the truth, Anna," burst forth Mrs. Copp, who had been restraining herself with difficulty. "You are always shuffling out of that part of the story when you can. Why don't you say that you and Miss Thornycroft saw him murdered? Tell it as you had to tell it before the coroner."

"It is true," acknowledged Anna.

"And Miss Thornycroft put on mourning for him, making believe it was for Lady Ellis, who died close upon it," cried Mrs. Copp, too impatient to allow Anna to continue. "And the worst is, that he can't rest in his grave, poor fellow, but hovers atop of it night after night, so that Coastdown dare not go by the churchyard, and the folks have made a way right across the heath to avoid it, breaking through two hedges and a stone fence that belongs to Lord What's-his-name--who's safe, it's said, to indict the parish for trespass. Scores of folks saw the ghost. Anna saw it. My son Sam saw it, and he's not one to be taken in by a ghost; though he did think once he saw a mermaid, and will die, poor fellow, in the belief. Robert Hunter not dead, indeed! He was barbarously murdered, ma'am."

"It is the most astounding tale I ever heard," cried the bewildered Mrs. Macpherson. "What was the ghost like?"

"Like himself, ma'am. Perhaps you knew a coat he had? An ugly white thing garnished with black fur?"

"I had only too good cause to know it!" shrieked out Mrs. Macpherson, aroused at the mention. "That blessed prefessor of mine bought it and gave it him; was _took in_ to buy it. He's the greatest duffer in everyday life that ever stood upright."

"Then it always appeared in that coat. For that was what he had on when he was murdered."

"Well, I never! I shall think we are in the world of departed spirits next. This beats table-rapping. Why, he brought that very coat on his arm when he came on the Sunday to dine with us! The nights were cold again."

"And the real veritable coat has been lying ever since at the public-house where he was carried to. It's there now, stiff in its folds," eagerly avowed Mrs. Copp. "Ma'am, what you saw at your house here must have been a vision--himself and the coat too."

Mrs. Macpherson began to doubt her own identity. The second coat never crossed her mind. It happened that she had not looked into the lumber closet after it, and could have been upon her oath, if asked, that it was there still. Her hot face assumed a strange look of dubious bewilderment.

"It never surely could have been his ghost that came here and dined with us!" debated she. "Ghosts don't eat salmon and drink champagne."

"I don't know what they might do if put to it," cried Mrs. Copp, sharply. "One thing you may rely upon, ma'am--that it was not himself."

"The prefessor doesn't believe in ghosts. He says there is no such things. I'm free to confess that I've never seen any."

"Neither did I believe before this," said Mrs. Copp. "But one has to bend to the evidence of one's senses."

How the argument would have ended, and what they might have brought it to, cannot be divined. Miss Jupp had sat in simple astonishment. That Robert Hunter had died and been buried at Coastdown in January, and that Robert Hunter had dined in that very house in April, appeared absolutely indisputable. It was certainly far more marvellous than any feat yet accomplished by the "spirits." But Isaac Thornycroft solved it.

He came in alone, saying the professor was staying behind to finish some experiment. Upon which the professor's wife went to see, for she did not approve of experiments when there was company to entertain. Mrs. Copp immediately began to recount what had passed, making comments of her own.

"I have come across many a bumboat woman in my day, Mr. Isaac, and I thought they capped the world for impudent obstinacy, for they'll call black white to the face of a whole crew. But Mrs. Mac beats 'em. Perhaps you will add your testimony to mine--that Robert Hunter is dead and buried. Miss Jupp here is not knowing what to think or believe."

Isaac Thornycroft hesitated. He went and stood on the hearth-rug in his black clothes. His face was grave; his manner betrayed some agitation.

"Mrs. Copp, will you pardon me if I ask you generously to dismiss that topic; at least for to-night?"

"What on earth for?" was the answer of Mrs. Copp.

"The subject was, and is, and always will be productive of the utmost pain to my family. We should be thankful to let all remembrance of it die out of men's minds."

"Now I tell you what it is, Mr. Isaac; you are thinking of your brother Cyril. Of course as long as he stays away, he'll be suspected of the murder, but I've not said so----"

"Be silent, I pray you," interrupted Isaac, in a tone of sharp pain. "Hear me, while I clear your mind from any suspicion of that kind. By all my hope of heaven--by all _our_ hope," he added, lifting solemnly his right hand, "my brother Cyril was innocent."

"Well, we'll let that pass," said Mrs. Copp, with a sniff. "Many a pistol has gone off by accident before now, and small blame to the owners of it. Perhaps you'll be good enough to bear me out to Miss Jupp that Robert Hunter was shot dead."

Isaac paced the room. Mrs. Macpherson had come in and was listening; the professor halted at the door. Better satisfy them once for all, or there would be no end to it.

"It came to our knowledge afterwards--long afterwards--that it was not Robert Hunter," said Isaac, with slow distinctness. "The mistake arose from the face not having been recognisable. Hunter is alive and well."

"The saints preserve us!" cried Mrs. Copp in her discomfiture. "Then why did his ghost appear?"

A momentary smile flitted across the face of Isaac. "I suppose--in point of fact--it was not his ghost, Mrs. Copp."

Mrs. Copp's senses were three-parts lost in wonder at the turn affairs were taking. "Who, then, was shot down? A stranger?"

Isaac raised his handkerchief to his face. "I dare-say it will be known some time. At present it is enough for us that it was not Robert Hunter."

"I knew a ghost could never eat salmon!" said Mrs. Macpherson, in a glow of triumph.

"But what about the coat?" burst forth Mrs. Copp, as that portion of the mystery loomed into her recollection. "If that is lying unusable in the stables at the Mermaid, Robert Hunter could not have brought it with him when he came here to dinner."

Clearly. And the ladies looked one at another, half inclined to plunge into war again. The meek professor, possibly afraid of it, spoke up in his mild way from behind, where he had stood and listened in silence.

"Mr. Hunter's coat was to have been sent after him from Coastdown; but it did not come, and I gave him mine. He supposed it must have been lost on the road."

It was the professor's wife's turn now. She could not believe her ears. Give away the other coat--when visions had crossed her mind of having that disreputable fur taken off and decent buttons put on, for his wear the following winter when he went off to the country on his ologies!

"Professor! do you mean to tell me to my face that that coat is not in the lumber-closet upstairs where I put it?"

"Well, my dear, I fear you'd not find it there."

Away went Mrs. Macpherson to the closet, and away went the rest in her wake, anxious to see the drama played out. Isaac Thornycroft alone did not stir; and his wife came back to him. Her face was white and cold, as though she had received a shock.

"Isaac! Isaac! this is frightening me. May I say what I fear?"

He put his hands upon her shoulders and gazed into her eyes as she stood before him, his own full of kindness but of mourning.

"Say as little as you can, my darling. I can't bear much to-night."

"Cyril! It--was----"

"Oh, Cyril! Cyril! could he not be saved?"

His faint cry of anguish echoed hers, as he bent his aching brow momentarily upon her shoulder.

"I would have given my own life to save his, Anna. I would give it still to save another the remorse and pain that lie upon him. He put on Hunter's coat that night, the other not wanting it, and was mistaken for him."

"I understand," she murmured. "Oh, what a remorse it must be!"

"Now you know all; but it is for your ear alone," he said, standing before her again and speaking impressively. "From henceforth let it be to us a barred subject, the only one that my dear wife may not mention to me."

She looked an assent from her loving eyes, and sat down again as the company came trooping in, Mrs. Macpherson openly demanding of her husband how long it would be before he learnt common sense, and why he did not cut off his head and give _that_ away.