PAGE 19
Squire Toby’s Will
by
Cooper was awfully frightened, and the odd smile on the squire’s lips frightened him still more. He dropped his pipe, and stood gazing in silence at his master, and feeling as if he were in a dream.
“If ye think so, ye should not be smiling like that.” said Cooper, grimly.
‘Tm tired, Cooper, and it’s as well to smile as to’other thing; so I’ll even smile while I can. You know what they mean to do wi’ me. That’s all I wanted to say. Now, lad, go on wi’ yer pipe-I’m goin’ asleep.”
So the squire turned over in his bed, and lay down serenely, with his head on the pillow. Old Cooper looked at him, and glanced at the door, and then half-filled his tumbler with brandy, and drank it off. and felt better, and got to his bed in the dressing room.
In the dead of night he was suddenly awakened by the squire, who was standing, in his dressing gown and slippers, by his bed.
“I’ve brought you a bit o’ present. I got the rents o’ Hazelden yesterday, and ye’ll keep that for yourself-it’s a fifty-and give t’other to Nelly Carwell, tomorrow; I’ll sleep the sounder; and I saw Scroope since; he’s not such a bad ‘un after all, old fellow! He’s got a crape over his face-for I told him I couldn’t bear it; and I’d do many a thing for him now. I never could stand shilly-shally. Good night, old Cooper!”
And the squire laid his trembling hand kindly on the old man’s shoulder, and returned to his own room.”I don’t half-like how he is.
Doctor don’t come half-often enough. I don’t like that queer smile o’ his, and his hand was as cold as death. I hope in God his brain’s not a-turnin’! With these reflections, he turned to the pleasanter subject of his present, and at last fell asleep.
In the morning, when he went into the squire’s room, the squire had left his bed.”Never mind; he’ll come back, like a bad shillin’,” thought old Cooper, preparing the room as usual. But he did not return Then began an uneasiness, succeeded by a panic, when it began to be plain that the squire was not in the house. What had become of him? None of his clothes, but his dressing gown and slippers, were missing. Had he left the house, in his present sickly state, in that garb, and, if so, could he be in his right senses; and was there a chance of his surviving a cold, a damp night, so passed, in the open air?
Tom Edwards was up to the house, and told them that, walking a mile or so that morning, at four o’clock-there being no moon-along with Farmer Nokes, who was driving his cart to market, in the dark, three men walked, in front of the horse, not twenty yards before them, all the way from Gylingden Lodge to the burial ground, the gate of which was opened for them from within, and the three men entered, and the gate was shut. Tom Edwards thought they were gone in to make preparation for a funeral of some member of tile Marston family. But the occurrence seenled to Cooper, who knew there was ilo such thing, horribly ominous.
He now commenced a careful search, and at last bethought him of the lonely upper story and King Herod’s chamber. He saw nothing changed there, but the closet door was shut, and, dark as was the morning, something, like a large white knot sticking out over the door, caught his eye.
The door resisted his efforts to open it for a time; some great weight forcedit down against the floor; at length, however, it did yield a little, and a heavy crash, shaking the whole floor, and sending an echo flying through all the silent corridors, with a sound like receding laughter, half-stunned him.
When he pushed open the door, his master was lying dead upon the floor. His cravat was drawn halter-wise tight round his throat, and had done its work well. The body was cold, and had been long dead.
In due course the coroner held his inquest, and the jury pronounced that “the deceased, Charles Marston, had died by his own hand, in astate of temporary insanity.” But old Cooper had his own opinion about the squire’s death, though his lips were sealed, and he never spoke about it. He went and lived for the residue of days in York, where there are still people who remember him, a taciturn and surly old man, who attended church regularly, and also drank a little, and was known to have saved some money.