know whether the man was still living there, or indeed living at all, and my suspicions spread no farther than to one of my schoolfellows, till they were revived some weeks afterwards by a paragraph in one of the papers pointed out to me by Mr. Carter, whereby it appeared there had been a quarrel betwixt two of the servants at Elfdale, which had terminated in the death of one of them. They were both gardeners, and it was Phibbs who had killed his adversary by a blow under the left ear; nevertheless, as it was given in fair fight, and the deceased was considered to have led on to the catastrophe by a series of aggravating taunts and insults in reference to the fate of Martha Penning, the survivor got off with a year’s imprisonment. But it was the source of the quarrel, as it was revealed at the inquest, that interested me, and re-awakened my suspicions, which had evidently been shared by poor Goring, who had got his quietus for giving them utterance.
It appeared that, my father being absent, there was but a small establishment at Elfdale, just enough to keep the place in order. The servants retained were left on board wages, with liberty of using the vegetables out of the garden, and the pike out of the pond, at the discretion of the head gardener, the latter privilege being granted to prevent the pike getting too much ahead of the other fish, which they were apt to devour. As the housekeeper had a savoury way of dressing the pike, the dish was in high favour, and with nobody more than with Phibbs, who had been known to give up going to a flower-show at Buxton, where some of his own productions were to be exhibited, because just as he was setting off, dressed in his Sunday attire, he was told there was a fine pike for dinner. In spite of this decided and acknowledged predilection for the fish, however, he had latterly declined to eat it. If this refusal had only dated from the period of poor Matty’s body being found in the pond, he would only have been doing what all the rest did—the fish, since that painful discovery, being left to eat each other if they liked—but the remarkable feature in the case was, that this squeamishness on the part of Phibbs had been nearly simultaneous with the poor girl’s disappearance. It appears to have been Goring who first remarked this coincidence; and, when the body was found, he called the attention of the other servants to the circumstance. Whether the others drew any conclusion from it or not remained doubtful. If they did, they had the discretion to keep their thoughts to themselves; but Goring, more impetuous, or possibly from being an out-door servant having other reasons for suspicion, could not “keep his tongue quiet,” as one of the witnesses said, when examined before the Coroner with respect to Matty’s death. He would be continually throwing something in Phibbs’s teeth about the pike, taunting him with turning as white as a cauliflower whenever it was brought to table.
It came out, in the course of the inquiry, that all the witnesses had observed the same particularity, and that Phibbs had even become so ill as to be obliged to leave the room, one day, when out of jest, they had forced some of the fish upon his plate. They also unanimously agreed that this distaste had shown itself, about the period the dairy-maid was missed, and at a time that nobody had the slightest suspicion of her being in the pond.
Phibbs admitted at once that he had taken a dislike to the dish, assigning as a reason, that the last time he had eaten it, possibly from partaking of it too fully, it had made him very ill. “He thought he’d got a surfeit,” he said; and it was admitted by everybody that he had been for some time looking unwell, and that his appetite was not what it used to be.
Whether Goring could have thrown any more light on the affair, had he been alive, there is no saying. As it was, the mystery of poor Matty’s death remained unrevealed; and Phibbs escaped with the penalty of a homicide, instead of a murder, which in my heart I believed him to deserve.
I, however, kept my thoughts to myself, not choosing to confess the story of the flageolet to Mr. Carter, lest it should reach my father’s ears.
To return from this digression to the course of my life at Elfdale, I fancy the dull and even tenor of it can have furnished very little worth relating; for scarcely an incident survives in my memory, except those trifling ones I have mentioned; the uniformity of our existence, however, was interrupted by two events of more importance, the last of which completely changed the current of mine. The first of these was the sudden disappearance of my mother from Elfdale; to me it was actually a disappearance, for I knew neither the manner nor the moment of her going; I had observed no preparations for her departure; nor did I hear any comments made upon her absence after she was gone. As, I fancy, she had no authority in the house, my grandmother having usurped it all, everything went on as before. Her name was never mentioned, at least in my presence; I suppose the servants had been forbidden to mention it; and I only gradually learnt to understand that she was really gone, and that her return was not looked for. Of my father and grandmother I never asked questions; but when nearly a whole day had passed without my seeing her, I said to one of the maids:
“Where’s mamma?”
“I don’t know, sir!” was the answer; and as every time I made the inquiry the response was the same, whilst the person I addressed, whoever it might be, made off from me as fast as he or she could, I soon ceased to trouble them, or myself, about the matter; but it did not escape me that her picture, which hung in the dining-room, was removed, and replaced by a large landscape.
What a child hears or sees nothing of he soon forgets; at least that was the case with me: and indeed the departure of my mother made little change in my daily life; she having, I suspect, been under considerable restraints even in regard to her intercourse with me. In short, my grandmother had contrived completely to place herself betwixt us; and although she had certainly not usurped my affections, she had completely arrested them in their natural course, which ought to have been towards my mother, who, I believe, to the