Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/447

 9, 1864.] hollow. What a pity but Mr. Carton had brought the draught back here when he called.”

“Did you see him, Whittaker?” asked Stephen Grey.

“I saw him. There was only myself here. He came in and asked if he could speak a word to Mr. Stephen Grey. Mr. Stephen, I told him, was out, and he went away.”

“Well,” said Mr. Grey, “it does appear to be utterly incomprehensible; time, I suppose, will bring an elucidation upon it. As it does upon most things.”

morning arose, the morning subsequent to Mrs. Crane’s death, and South Wennock was in excitement from one end of it to the other. Everybody was out of doors discussing the fatal event. Groups gathered everywhere; on the pavement, in the high road, on the sills of shops, at private doors, they congregated; one only theme in their minds and on their tongues. The previous day, Monday, had been pretty fruitful for the gossip-mongers, inasmuch as they had found nuts from the accident to Mr. Carlton and his groom; but that paltry news was as nothing compared to this. You are aware how prone we are to pick up any little bit of mystery, how we dive into it and strive to make it ours, never resting until it is fathomed; you may then judge what a dish this must have been for South Wennock’s inhabitants, enshrouded on all sides, as it was, with mystery.

Mr. John Grey was right when he assumed that it was on his brother the onus of the affair would fall. Almost the universal opinion taken up was, that Mr. Stephen Grey had committed the error in carelessness, when making up the sleeping draught. The fact that he had been a correct mixer of medicines all his life, went for nothing now.

“I’ve druv my horses for fifteen year and never throwed ’em down to kill my passengers yet; but that’s no reason why I mayn’t have the ill-luck some day,” spoke the coachman of a four-horse stage, plying daily between two certain towns, and halting at South Wennock for breakfast, at the Red Lion inn. “And that’s just it, as I reckon, with Mr. Stephen Grey. He have been a accurate mixer of physic, up to now; but he may have made the mistake at last. The best of us is liable to ’em; as I’m sure the gentlemen standing round knows.”

The gentlemen standing round nodded. They formed part of a large group collected at the coach entrance of the Red Lion. The group comprised people of various degrees and grades—gentlemen, tradesmen, and labourers. In a small country place where the inhabitants are all known to each other, they are apt to converse together familiarly on local topics, Without reference to social standing.

“Like me,” struck in the blacksmith. “I druv a nail right into a horse’s foot last week, and lamed him; and I’ll be upon my word such a awk’ard accident hasn’t happened to me —no, not for years.”

“Look at poor Toker, too!” said a little man, hovering respectfully on the outside of the crowd,—Wilkes the barber. “How many a hundred times had he gone up the river in that punt of his, and always came home safe till last Friday was a fortnight, and then he got drownded at last!”

“I am sorry for Stephen Grey, though,” observed a gentleman. " If it has been caused by his mistake he will feel it all his life. A tender-hearted man is Stephen Grey.”

“It appears to me altogether most unaccountable,” remarked the Reverend Mr. Jones, who was the incumbent of St. Mark’s Church, and who had come out to join in the popular gossip and excitement. Perhaps because he was a connection of the Greys, his wife and Mrs. John Grey being sisters. “I hear that there was every proof that the jar containing the prussic acid—and they have but that one, it appears, in their surgery—had not been touched.”

“Mr. John Grey told me that himself, this morning,” interrupted another eager voice. “As a proof that their jar had not been touched, it was covered in cobwebs, he said, and remained so covered after the lady was dead; only young master Fred officiously wiped them off.”

There ensued a silence. The crowd generally were deliberating upon this last item of news. It was the first time it had reached them. A substantial grocer of the name of Plumstead spoke. He was not particularly affected towards the Greys, for they dealt at a rival shop; and his voice had a sarcastic tone.

“It had been better then that they had let the cobwebs remain, so that the coroner and jury might have seen them.”

“John Grey is a man of honour. He would not tell a lie.”

One or two shook their heads dubiously. “We don’t know what we might do, any of us, toward the saving of a brother.”

“Look here!” broke out a fresh voice. “How could the poison have got into the draught, except when it was being made up? And how could Mr. Carlton have smelt it, if it had not been in it?”