A Fatal Silence (Complete)
9781465536747
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Market day at Haltham, and the primitive little town in an uproar. Huge oxen, with shaggy coats and wide-spreading horns, were being driven along the road, and floundering in their dismay against any luckless passenger that crossed their path. Meek sheep, with their lambs trotting by their side and all baa-ing in concert, followed after, whilst ducks and geese quacked and hissed, and the ploughboys and farming maidens shouted at each other with scarcely less discordant noise. Miss Stafford was glad to be above it all. She stood on the rustic pathway, which was raised several feet above the road, and was protected by stout green posts connected by iron chains, on which the country children loved to swing. Lottie and Carrie Gribble, who had been left in her charge, had run into the very midst of the excitement, and she looked as concerned as a hen whose foster ducklings have taken to the water as she drew her dainty cambric skirts closely around her, to prevent contact with the dirty crowd, and called to them to return to her side. Market day was the one great event of the week to the inhabitants of Haltham, but Miss Stafford came from the neighbouring village of Deepdale, seven miles off, and was not used to so much bustle. She looked annoyed as she was elbowed and pushed by farming men and market women eager to reach their stalls, or to inspect the tempting array of articles exhibited in the shop windows for their benefit. There was only one shop of each kind in Haltham, so that the spirit of competition did not run high. Mr Spring, the stationer, was standing at his door, rubbing his hands and smiling, as Miss Stafford called to the Gribble girls. He knew her well. She was the certificated schoolmistress of Deepdale, and all the slates and copy books and pens and ink for the use of the school were bought at his shop. ‘Ah, Miss Stafford,’ he exclaimed, ‘anything in my line to-day? I have just received the choicest selection of hymn books. Won’t you step in and look at them?’ ‘In a moment, Mr Spring—indeed, I have a long list for you. But I must wait for Lottie and Carrie Gribble. They are very naughty. They have run right across the road. And you know how very particular Mrs Gribble is.’ Mr Spring lifted his hands and eyes as though to intimate that no one knew it better than himself, but at that moment quite a little crowd entered his shop, where he sold all sorts of fancy articles, and he was compelled to go and attend to them. Presently, Miss Stafford, having recaptured the children, two ugly little animals of eight and ten, followed in his wake, and took her stand by the counter till he could attend to her. She looked singularly interesting as she did so, and very different in appearance from those around her. Indeed, she was more than interesting, she was a very handsome young woman of about five-and-twenty, but she seemed to have taken great pains to conceal her beauty. She could not hide her soft, white skin, nor her long-fringed, dark-blue eyes, but her mass of reddish-brown hair was strained off her face in a most unbecoming manner, and tucked away at the back of her head, and she wore a coarse straw bonnet which almost concealed her features. Her slight figure was plainly draped in a lilac cambric gown, covered with a summer shawl; but there was an unmistakable air of refinement about her—to those who knew how to read the signs—that her dowdy attire had no power to take away, and which made it difficult to believe that she was only a village schoolmistress. Some people in Deepdale (but they were mostly women) thought that Mr Gribble and Mr Axworthy (who were the churchwardens of the place) had not acted with their usual discretion in engaging Miss Stafford to superintend the education of the rising generation.
