The Queen of Hearts by Wilkie Collins (best sci fi novels of all time .TXT) 📕

“Not dead! Oh, sir, don’t say she’s dead!”

“She is dead to pain and sorrow—dead to speech and recognition. There is more animation in the life of the feeblest insect that flies than in the life that is left in her. When you look at her now, try to think that she is in heaven. That is the best comfort I can give you, after telling the hard truth.”

I did not believe him. I could not believe him. So long as she breathed at all, so long I was resolved to hope. Soon after the doctor was gone, Sally came in again, and found me listening (if I may call it so) at Mary’s lips. She went to where my little hand-glass hangs against the wall, took it down, and gave it to me.

“See if the breath marks it,” she said.

Yes; her breath did mark it, but very faintly. Sally cleaned the glass with her apron, and gave it back to me. As she did so, she half stretched out her hand to Mary’s face, but drew it in again suddenly, as if she was afraid of soiling Mary’s delicate skin with her hard, horny fingers. Going out, she stopped at the foot of the bed, and scraped away a little patch of mud that was on one of Mary’s shoes.

“I always used to clean ‘em for her,” said Sally, “to save her hands from getting blacked. May I take ‘em off now, and clean ‘em again?”

I nodded my head, for my heart was too heavy to speak. Sally took the shoes off with a slow, awkward tenderness, and went out.

An hour or more must have passed, when, putting the glass over her lips again, I saw no mark on it. I held it closer and closer. I dulled it accidentally with my own breath, and cleaned it. I held it over her again. Oh, Mary, Mary, the doctor was right! I ought to have only thought of you in heaven!

Dead, without a word, without a sign—without even a look to tell the true story of the blow that killed her! I could not call to anybody, I could not cry, I could not so much as put the glass down and give her a kiss for the last time. I don’t know how long I had sat there with my eyes burning, and my hands deadly cold, when Sally came in with the shoes cleaned, and carried carefully in her apron for fear of a soil touching them. At the sight of that—

I can write no more. My tears drop so fast on the paper that I can see nothing.

March 12th. She died on the afternoon of the eighth. On the morning of the ninth, I wrote, as in duty bound, to her stepmother at Hammersmith. There was no answer. I wrote again; my letter was returned to me this morning unopened. For all that woman cares, Mary might be buried with a pauper’s funeral; but this shall never be, if I pawn everything about me, down to the very gown that is on my back. The bare thought of Mary being buried by the workhouse gave me the spirit to dry my eyes, and go to the undertaker’s, and tell him how I was placed. I said if he would get me an estimate of all that would have to be paid, from first to last, for the cheapest decent funeral that could be had, I would undertake to raise the money. He gave me the estimate, written in this way, like a common bill:

A walking funeral complete…………Pounds 1 13 8 Vestry…………………………………0 4 4 Rector…………………………………0 4 4 Clerk………………………………….0 1 0 Sexton…………………………………0 1 0 Beadle…………………………………0 1 0 Bell…………………………………..0 1 0 Six feet of ground………………………0 2 0

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Total Pounds 2 8 4

If I had the heart to give any thought to it, I should be inclined to wish that the Church could afford to do without so many small charges for burying poor people, to whose friends even shillings are of consequence. But it is useless to complain; the money must be raised at once. The charitable doctor—a poor man himself, or he would not be living in our neighborhood—has subscribed ten shillings toward the expenses; and the coroner, when the inquest was over, added five more. Perhaps others may assist me. If not, I have fortunately clothes and furniture of my own to pawn. And I must set about parting with them without delay, for the funeral is to be to-morrow, the thirteenth.

The funeral—Mary’s funeral! It is well that the straits and difficulties I am in keep my mind on the stretch. If I had leisure to grieve, where should I find the courage to face to-morrow?

Thank God they did not want me at the inquest. The verdict given, with the doctor, the policeman, and two persons from the place where she worked, for witnesses, was Accidental Death. The end of the cravat was produced, and the coroner said that it was certainly enough to suggest suspicion; but the jury, in the absence of any positive evidence, held to the doctor’s notion that she had fainted and fallen down, and so got the blow on her temple. They reproved the people where Mary worked for letting her go home alone, without so much as a drop of brandy to support her, after she had fallen into a swoon from exhaustion before their eyes. The coroner added, on his own account, that he thought the reproof was thoroughly deserved. After that, the cravat-end was given back to me by my own desire, the police saying that they could make no investigations with such a slight clew to guide them. They may think so, and the coroner, and doctor, and jury may think so; but, in spite of all that has passed, I am now more firmly persuaded than ever that there is some dreadful mystery in connection with that blow on my poor lost Mary’s temple which has yet to be revealed, and which may come to be discovered through this very fragment of a cravat that I found in her hand. I cannot give any good reason for why I think so, but I know that if I had been one of the jury at the inquest, nothing should have induced me to consent to such a verdict as Accidental Death.

After I had pawned my things, and had begged a small advance of wages at the place where I work to make up what was still wanting to pay for Mary’s funeral, I thought I might have had a little quiet time to prepare myself as I best could for to-morrow. But this was not to be. When I got home the landlord met me in the passage. He was in liquor, and more brutal and pitiless in his way of looking and speaking than ever I saw him before.

“So you’re going to be fool enough to pay for her funeral, are you?” were his first words to me.

I was too weary and heart-sick to answer; I only tried to get by him to my own door.

“If you can pay for burying her,” he went on, putting himself in front of me, “you can pay her lawful debts. She owes me three weeks’ rent. Suppose you raise the money for that next, and hand it over to me? I’m not joking, I can promise you. I mean to have my rent; and, if somebody don’t pay it, I’ll have her body seized and sent to the workhouse!”

Between terror and disgust, I thought I should have dropped to the floor at his feet. But I determined not to let him see how he had horrified me, if I could possibly control myself. So I mustered resolution enough to answer that I did not believe the law gave him any such wicked power over the dead.

“I’ll teach you what the law is!” he broke in; “you’ll raise money to bury her like a born lady, when she’s died in my debt, will you? And you think I’ll let my rights be trampled upon like that, do you? See if I do! I’ll give you till to-night to think about it. If I don’t have the three weeks she owes before to-morrow, dead or alive, she shall go to the workhouse!”

This time I managed to push by him, and get to my own room, and lock the door in his face. As soon as I was alone I fell into a breathless, suffocating fit of crying that seemed to be shaking me to pieces. But there was no good and no help in tears; I did my best to calm myself after a little while, and tried to think who I should run to for help and protection.

The doctor was the first friend I thought of; but I knew he was always out seeing his patients of an afternoon. The beadle was the next person who came into my head. He had the look of being a very dignified, unapproachable kind of man when he came about the inquest; but he talked to me a little then, and said I was a good girl, and seemed, I really thought, to pity me. So to him I determined to apply in my great danger and distress.

Most fortunately, I found him at home. When I told him of the landlord’s infamous threats, and of the misery I was suffering in consequence of them, he rose up with a stamp of his foot, and sent for his gold-laced cocked hat that he wears on Sundays, and his long cane with the ivory top to it.

“I’ll give it to him,” said the beadle. “Come along with me, my dear. I think I told you you were a good girl at the inquest—if I didn’t, I tell you so now. I’ll give it to him! Come along with me.”

And he went out, striding on with his cocked hat and his great cane, and I followed him.

“Landlord!” he cries, the moment he gets into the passage, with a thump of his cane on the floor, “landlord!” with a look all round him as if he was King of England calling to a beast, “come out!”

The moment the landlord came out and saw who it was, his eye fixed on the cocked hat, and he turned as pale as ashes.

“How dare you frighten this poor girl?” says the beadle. “How dare you bully her at this sorrowful time with threatening to do what you know you can’t do? How dare you be a cowardly, bullying, braggadocio of an unmanly landlord? Don’t talk to me: I won’t hear you. I’ll pull you up, sir. If you say another word to the young woman, I’ll pull you up before the authorities of this metropolitan parish. I’ve had my eye on you, and the authorities have had their eye on you, and the rector has had his eye on you. We don’t like the look of your small shop round the corner; we don’t like the look of some of the customers who deal at it; we don’t like disorderly characters; and we don’t by any manner of means like you. Go away. Leave the young woman alone. Hold your tongue, or I’ll pull you up. If he says another word, or interferes with you again, my dear, come and tell me; and, as sure as he’s a bullying, unmanly, braggadocio of a landlord, I’ll pull him up.”

With those words the beadle gave a loud cough to clear his throat, and another thump of