All this time the woman had never touched the money—never indeed turned from the window by which she stood; but she now came up to the table, and took the sovereigns up one by one.
“After what you have said to me this day, I would see this child starve, hour by hour, and die a slow death before my eyes, before I would touch one morsel of bread bought with your money. I have heard that the waters of that river are foul and poisonous, and death to those who live on its bank; but I know the thoughts of your wicked heart to be so much more foul and so much bitterer a poison, that I would go to that black river for pity and help rather than to you.” As she said this, she threw the sovereigns into his face with such a strong and violent hand, that one of them, striking him above the eyebrow, cut his forehead to the bone, and brought the blood gushing over his eyes.
The woman took no notice of his pain, but turning once more to the window, threw herself into a chair and sat moodily staring out at the river, as if indeed she looked to that for pity.
The dumb man helped the landlord to dress the cut on Jabez’ forehead. It was a deep cut, and likely to leave a scar for years to come.
Mr. North didn’t look much the better, either in appearance or temper, for this blow. He did not utter a word to the woman, but began, in a hangdog manner, to search for the money, which had rolled away into the corners of the room. He could only find three sovereigns; and though the landlord brought a light, and the three men searched the room in every direction, the fourth could not be found; so, abandoning the search, Jabez paid his score and strode out of the place without once looking at the woman.
“I’ve got off cheap from that tiger-cat,” he said to himself; “but it has been a bad afternoon’s work. What can I say about my cut face to the governor?” He looked at his watch, a homely silver one attached to a black ribbon. “Five o’clock; I shall be at the Doctor’s by teatime. I can get into the gymnasium the back way, take a few minutes’ turn with the poles and ropes, and say the accident happened in climbing. They always believe what I say, poor dolts.”
His figure was soon lost in the darkness and the fog—so dense a fog that very few people saw the woman with the fretful baby when she emerged from the public-house, and walked along the riverbank, leaving even the outskirts of Slopperton behind, and wandered on and on till she came to a dreary spot, where dismal pollard willows stretched their dark and ugly shadows, like the bare arms of withered hags, over the dismal waters of the lonely Sloshy.
O river, sometimes so pitiless when thou devourest youth, beauty, and happiness, wilt thou be pitiful and tender tonight, and take a poor wretch, who has no hope of mortal pity, to peace and quiet on thy breast?
O merciless river, so often bitter foe to careless happiness, wilt thou tonight be friend to reckless misery and hopeless pain?
God made thee, dark river, and God made the wretch who stands shivering on thy bank: and may be, in His boundless love and compassion for the creatures of His hand, He may have pity even for those so lost as to seek forbidden comfort in thy healing waters.
VI
Two Coroner’s Inquests
There had not been since the last general election, when George Augustus Slashington, the Liberal member, had been returned against strong Conservative opposition, in a blaze of triumph and a shower of rotten eggs and cabbage-stumps—there had not been since that great day such excitement in Slopperton as there was on the discovery of the murder of Mr. Montague Harding.
A murder was always a great thing for Slopperton. When John Boggins, weaver, beat out the brains of Sarah his wife, first with the heel of his clog and ultimately with a poker, Slopperton had a great deal to say about it—though, of course, the slaughter of one “hand” by another was no great thing out of the factories. But this murder at the Black Mill was something out of the common. Uncommonly cruel, cowardly, and unmanly, and moreover occurring in a respectable rank of life.
Round that lonely house on the Slopperton road there was a crowd and a bustle throughout that short foggy day on which Richard Marwood was arrested.
Gentlemen of the Press were there, sniffing out, with miraculous acumen, particulars of the murder, which as yet were known to none but the heads of the Slopperton police force.
How many lines at three-half-pence per line these gentlemen wrote concerning the dreadful occurrence, without knowing anything whatever about it, no one unacquainted with the mysteries of their art would dare to say.
The two papers which appeared on Friday had accounts varying in every item, and the one paper which appeared on Saturday had a happy amalgamation of the two conflicting accounts—demonstrating thereby the triumph of paste and scissors over penny-a-liners’ copy.
The head officials of the Slopperton police, attired in plain clothes, went in and out of the Black Mill from an early hour on that dark November day. Every time they came out, though none of them ever spoke, by some strange magic a fresh report got current among the crowd. I think the magical process was this: Some one man, auguring from such and such a significance in their manner, whispered to his nearest neighbour his suggestion of what might
