Уилки Коллинз - Hide and Seek

On leaving Zack, he walked straight on; not slackening his pace, not noticing whither he went, not turning to go back till daybreak. It was past nine o’clock before he presented himself at the tobacco-shop, bringing in with him a goodly share of mud and wet from the thawing ground and rainy sky outside. His long walk did not seem to have relieved the uneasiness of mind which had induced him to separate so suddenly from Zack. He talked almost perpetually to himself in a muttering, incoherent way; his heavy brow was contracted, and the scars of the old wounds on his face looked angry and red. The first thing he did was to make some inquiries of his landlord relating to railway traveling, and to the part of London in which a certain terminus that he had been told of was situated. Finding it not easy to make him understand any directions connected with this latter point, the shopkeeper suggested sending for a cab to take him to the railway. He briefly assented to that arrangement; occupying the time before the vehicle arrived, in walking sullenly backwards and forwards over the pavement in front of the shop door.

When the cab came to take him up, he insisted, with characteristic regardlessness of appearances, on riding upon the roof, because he could get more air to blow over him, and more space for stretching his legs in, there than inside. Arriving in this irregular and vagabond fashion at the terminus, he took his ticket for DIBBLEDEAN, a quiet little market town in one of the midland counties.

When he was set down at the station, he looked about him rather perplexedly at first; but soon appeared to recognize a road, visible at some little distance, which led to the town; and towards which he immediately directed his steps, scorning all offers of accommodation from the local omnibus.

It did not happen to be market day; and the thaw looked even more dreary at Dibbledean than it looked in London. Down the whole perspective of the High Street there appeared only three human figures—a woman in pattens; a child under a large umbrella; and a man with a hamper on his back, walking towards the yard of the principal inn.

Mat had slackened his pace more and more as he approached the town, until he slackened it altogether at last, by coming to a dead stand-still under the walls of the old church, which stood at one extremity of the High Street, in what seemed to be the suburban district of Dibbledean. He waited for some time, looking over the low parapet wall which divided the churchyard from the road—then slowly approached a gate leading to a path among the grave-stones—stopped at it—apparently changed his purpose—and, turning off abruptly, walked up the High Street.

He did not pause again till he arrived opposite a long, low, gabled house, evidently one of the oldest buildings in the place, though brightly painted and whitewashed, to look as new and unpicturesque as possible. The basement story was divided into two shops; which, however, proclaimed themselves as belonging now, and having belonged also in former days, to one and the same family. Over the larger of the two was painted in letters of goodly size:—

Bradford and Son (late Joshua Grice), Linendrapers, Hosiers, &c., &c.

The board on which these words were traced was continued over the smaller shop, where it was additionally superscribed thus:—

Mrs. Bradford (late Joanna Grice), Milliner and Dressmaker.

Regardless of rain, and droppings from eaves that trickled heavily down his hat and coat, Mat stood motionless, reading and re-reading these inscriptions from the opposite side of the way. Though the whole man, from top to toe, was the very impersonation of firmness, he nevertheless hesitated most unnaturally now. At one moment he seemed to be on the point of entering the shop before him—at another, he turned half round towards the churchyard which he had left behind him. At last he decided to go back to the churchyard, and retraced his steps accordingly.

He entered quickly by the gate at which he had delayed before; and pursued the path among the graves a little way. Then striking off over the grass, after a moment’s consideration and looking about him, he wound his course hither and thither among the turf mounds, and stopped suddenly at a plain flat tombstone, raised horizontally above the earth by a foot or so of brickwork. Bending down over it, he read the characters engraven on the slab.

There were four inscriptions, all of the simplest and shortest kind, comprising nothing but a record of the names, ages, and birth and death dates of the dead who lay beneath. The first two inscriptions notified the deaths of children:—“Joshua Grice, son of Joshua and Susan Grice, of this parish, aged four years;” and “Susan Grice, daughter of the above, aged thirteen years.” The next death recorded was the mother’s: and the last was the father’s, at the age of sixty-two. Below this followed a quotation from the New Testament:— Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. It was on these lines, and on the record above them of the death of Joshua Grice the elder, that the eyes of the lonely reader rested longest; his lips murmuring several times, as he looked down on the letters:—“He lived to be an old man—he lived to be an old man after all!”

There was sufficient vacant space left towards the bottom of the tombstone for two or three more inscriptions; and it appeared as if Mat expected to have seen more. He looked intently at the vacant space, and measured it roughly with his fingers, comparing it with the space above, which was occupied by letters. “Not there, at any rate!” he said to himself, as he left the churchyard, and walked back to the town.

This time he entered the double shop—the hosiery division of it—without hesitation. No one was there, but the young man who served behind the counter. And right glad the young man looked, having been long left without a soul to speak to on that rainy morning, to see some one—even a stranger with an amazing skull-cap under his hat—enter the shop at last.

What could he serve the gentleman with? The gentleman had not come to buy. He only desired to know whether Joanna Grice, who used to keep the dressmaker’s shop, was still living?

Still living, certainly! the young man replied, with brisk civility. Miss Grice, whose brother once had the business now carried on by Bradford and Son, still resided in the town; and was a very curious old person, who never went out, and let nobody inside her doors. Most of her old friends were dead; and those who were still alive she had broken with. She was full of fierce, wild ways; was suspected of being crazy; and was execrated by the boys of Dibbledean as an “old tiger-cat.” In all probability, her intellects were a little shaken, years ago, by a dreadful scandal in the family, which quite crushed them down, being very respectable, religious people—

At this point the young man was interrupted, in a very uncivil manner, by the stranger, who desired to hear nothing about the scandal, but who had another question to ask. This question seemed rather a difficult one to put; for he began it two or three times, in two or three different forms of words, and failed to get on with it. At last, he ended by asking, generally, whether any other members of old Mr. Grice’s family were still alive.

For a moment or so the shopman was stupid and puzzled, and asked what other members the gentleman meant. Old Mrs. Grice had died some time ago; and there had been two children who died young, and whose names were in the churchyard. “Did the gentleman mean the second daughter, who lived and grew up beautiful, and was, as the story went, the cause of all the scandal? If so, the young person ran away, and died miserably somehow—nobody knew how; and was supposed to have been buried like a pauper somewhere—nobody knew where, unless it was Miss Grice—”