Entering the shop, after a moment or two of hesitation, he asked if he could see Mrs. Peckover.
"Mother went away, sir, three days ago, to nurse uncle Bob at Bangbury," answered the girl.
(Here was a second check--a second obstacle to defer the tracing of Arthur Carr! It seemed like a fatality!)
"When do you expect her back?" asked Mat.
"Not for a week or ten days, sir," answered the girl. "Mother said she wouldn't have gone, but for uncle Bob being her only brother, and not having wife or child to look after him at Bangbury."
(Bangbury!--Where had he heard that name before?)
"Father's up at the rectory, sir," continued the girl, observing that the stranger looked both disappointed and puzzled. "If it's dairy business you come upon, I can attend to it; but it's anything about accounts to settle, mother said they were to be sent on to her."
"Maybe I shall have a letter to send your mother," said Mat, after a moment's consideration. "Can you write me down on a bit of paper where she is?"
"Oh, yes, sir." And the girl very civilly and readily wrote in her best round hand, on a slip of bill-paper, this address:--"Martha Peckover, at Rob: Randle, 2 Dawson's Buildings, Bangbury."
Mat absently took the slip of paper from her, and put it into his pocket; then thanked the girl, and went out. While he was inside the shop, he had been trying in vain to call to mind where he had heard the name of Bangbury before: the moment he was in the street, the lost remembrance came back to him. Surely, Bangbury was the place where Joanna Grice had told him that Mary was buried!
After walking a few paces, he came to a large linen-draper's shop, with plenty of light in the window. Stopping here, he hastily drew from his pocket the manuscript containing the old woman's "Justification" of her conduct; for he wished to be certain about the accuracy of his recollection, and he had an idea that the part of the Narrative which mentioned Mary's death would help to decide him in his present doubt.
Yes! on turning to the last page, there it was written in so many words: "I sent, by a person I could depend on, money enough to bury her decently in Bangbury churchyard."
"I'll go there to-night," said Mat to himself, thrusting the letter into his pocket, and taking the way back to the railway station immediately.
CHAPTER XIV.
MARY'S GRAVE.
Matthew Grice was a resolute traveler; but no resolution is powerful enough to alter the laws of inexorable Time-Tables to suit the convenience of individual passengers. Although Mat left Rubbleford in less than an hour after he had arrived there, he only succeeded in getting half way to Bangbury, before he had to stop for the night, and wait at an intermediate station for the first morning train on what was termed the Trunk Line. By this main railroad he reached his destination early in the forenoon, and went at once to Dawson's Buildings.
"Mrs. Peckover has just stepped out, sir--Mr. Randle being a little better this morning--for a mouthful of fresh air. She'll be in again in half-an-hour," said the maid-of-all-work who opened Mr. Randle's door.
Mat began to suspect that something more than mere accident was concerned in keeping Mrs. Peckover and himself asunder. "I'll come again in half-an-hour," he said--then added, just as the servant was about to shut the door:--"Which is my way to the church?"
Bangbury church was close at hand, and the directions he received for finding it were easy to follow. But when he entered the churchyard, and looked about him anxiously to see where he should begin searching for his sister's grave, his head grew confused, and his heart began to fail him. Bangbury was a large town, and rows and rows of tombstones seemed to fill the churchyard bewilderingly in every visible direction.
At a little distance a man was at work opening a grave, and to him Mat applied for help; describing his sister as a stranger who had been buried somewhere in the churchyard better than twenty years ago. The man was both stupid and surly, and would give no advice, except that it was useless to look near where he was digging, for they were all respectable townspeople buried about there.
Mat walked round to the other side of the church. Here the graves were thicker than ever; for here the poor were buried. He went on slowly through them, with his eyes fixed on the ground, towards some trees which marked the limits of the churchyard; looking out for a place to begin his search in, where the graves might be comparatively few, and where his head might not get confused at the outset. Such a place he found at last, in a damp corner under the trees. About this spot the thin grass languished; the mud distilled into tiny water-pools; and the brambles, briars, and dead leaves lay thickly and foully between a few ragged turf-mounds. Could they have laid her here? Could this be the last refuge to which Mary ran after she fled from home?
A few of the mounds had stained moldering tomb-stones at their heads. He looked at these first; and finding only strange names on them, turned next to the mounds marked out by cross-boards of wood. At one of the graves the cross-board had been torn, or had rotted away, from its upright supports, and lay on the ground weather-stained and split, but still faintly showing that it had once had a few letters cut in it. He examined this board to begin with, and was trying to make out what the letters were, when the sound of some one approaching disturbed him. He looked up, and saw a woman walking slowly towards the place where he was standing.
It was Mrs. Peckover herself! She had taken a prescription for her sick brother to the chemist's--had bought him one or two little things he wanted in the High Street--and had now, before resuming her place at his bedside, stolen a few minutes to go and look at the grave of Madonna's mother. It was many, many years since Mrs. Peckover had last paid a visit to Bangbury churchyard.
She stopped and hesitated when she first caught sight of Mat; but, after a moment or two, not being a woman easily baulked in anything when she had once undertaken to do it, continued to advance, and never paused for the second time until she had come close to the grave by which Mat stood, and was looking him steadily in the face, exactly across it.
He was the first to speak. "Do you know whose grave this is?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," answered Mrs. Peckover, glancing indignantly at the broken board and the mud and brambles all about it. "Yes, sir, I do know; and, what's more, I know that it's a disgrace to the parish. Money has been paid twice over to keep it decent; and look what a state it's left in!"
"I asked you whose grave it was," repeated Mat, impatiently.
"A poor, unfortunate, forsaken creature's, who's gone to Heaven if ever an afflicted, repenting woman went there yet!" answered Mrs. Peckover, warmly.
"Forsaken? Afflicted? A woman, too?" Mat repeated to himself, thoughtfully.
"Yes, forsaken and afflicted," cried Mrs. Peckover, overhearing him. "Don't you say no ill of her, whoever you are.