The Misses Harmer, with their usual deliberate walk, went down stairs, and then into the library.
Mr. Harmer was sitting at the table, with his back to the door, and did not turn round at their approach. They went up. Beside him on the table lay an open letter—the one from Sophy;—in his hand was a pen, and before him a sheet of paper. On it he had written: "My dearest Sophy, come back; I forgive"—but the handwriting was strangely indistinct, and the last word, the word "forgive," was large and sprawling, like a schoolboy's writing, and then the pen stopped, and had stopped for ever;—Herbert Harmer was dead.
Chapter XIII.
A Bad Business.
"Mr. Harmer is dead! Sophy Needham is missing!"
Such was the news a groom, riding into Canterbury for a doctor, brought; such was the telegram which a friend at once sent down to us at Ramsgate.
Mr. Harmer dead! Sophy Needham missing! It flashed like wildfire through Canterbury, and the quiet old town was again shaken out of its lethargy by the intelligence. Mr. Harmer, during his lifetime, had been a standing topic of conversation; he had on several occasions quite roused it from the even tenor of its way, but this last sensation was greater and more astounding than any of its predecessors, and Canterbury enjoyed it with proportionate gusto.
"Sophy Needham eloped with that notorious reprobate, Robert Gregory"—for the Misses Harmer, by their invectives on reading the letter, at once had told those round them with whom Sophy had fled— "and poor Mr. Harmer gone off in a fit in consequence!!" It was indeed a terrible affair, and it was not mended in the telling. By the time the tale had made its round, it had swollen to extraordinary proportions—fresh additions were made by each mouth through which it passed, until at last it was extremely difficult to find out what the truth of the matter was.
From the simple report that Sophy Needham had eloped with Robert Gregory, and that it had killed poor Mr. Harmer, the transition was easy to—"and he had killed poor Mr. Harmer;" and details of the supposed murder grew till it became a tragedy of the most coldblooded description.
The groom's statement that the Misses Harmer were in a dreadful state about it, soon lost the last two words, and grew into,—"The Misses Harmer were also attacked, and were lying in a dreadful state."
Altogether, although Robert Gregory and Sophy were undoubtedly much to blame, and had acted very wrongly, I believe they would hardly have recognised themselves or their doings, in the two fiends in human shape, whose deeds were commented upon in Canterbury that afternoon.
The next day the real truth of the story became known, and there was some feeling of disappointment that things were not as bad as had been reported; but even then the opinion in respect to Sophy and her lover were hardly modified;—give a dog a bad name and you may as well hang him.
This couple had been accused of murder and violence, and, although the charge was now disproved, yet it was universally agreed that these crimes might, and in all probability would have been perpetrated, had the fugitives been detected at the time of their flight. Sophy's conduct was so atrocious, her ingratitude to Mr. Harmer so base, that there was no question that a nature so depraved would hesitate at nothing. The ladies of the Canterbury society were the more inclined to insist upon this, as it justified the views they had originally entertained of the impropriety of calling upon the young person at Harmer Place, and the doubts, they now affirmed they had always experienced of the possibility of such a person ever turning out otherwise than badly. They felt, therefore, that they had attained a great triumph over their husbands, who had been, on the whole, inclined to differ from their opinions. They had always, they said, predicted something of the kind from the time when they had heard of Mr. Harmer's intention towards her, and it really appeared to them to be almost a judgment upon him, for his infatuation, and for his venturing to fly in the face of the public feelings of morality and propriety in the way he had done.
Some of the husbands, indeed, even now ventured to offer excuses for Sophy, and to point out that a good deal might be urged in her behalf—her lonely position, her ignorance of the world, and of the character of the man she had gone off with; and, still more, the temptation to which she would be exposed by such an unprincipled blackguard as Robert Gregory. But these suggestions were contemptuously put aside. The bad character of the man, in place of being a palliation, was an aggravation of the offence, and this was satisfactorily proved by that argumentum ad hominem in which women so delight.
"You know very well, my dear, that if your own daughter had gone off with such a man, you would have considered it a very much worse business, and have been far more angry about it, than if she had run away with some gentleman of position and character; so how can you now talk such nonsense as to say that the man's bad character is a palliation of her fault?"
I have often wondered why it is that we women are so much more severe upon offenders of our own sex than men are. Is it that men know so much more of life and human nature than we do? Is it that they know how comparatively few women ever are seriously thus tempted during their lives, and how hard it is to withstand great trials of this kind? Is it because they know, too, that very few of us who are so loud and so bitter in our contempt for those who fall, but would, if placed under the same circumstances, and exposed to the same temptation, have acted precisely in the same way? I think it must be that; and when I hear women so loud and bitter in their denunciations, and when I see men look grieved and sorry, but say nothing, I cannot help thinking sometimes, that it would be better if we judged not so harshly and scornfully of those who have fallen under a temptation to which we, through God's mercy, have never been exposed.
Of course, next to the startling events which had taken place, the great question upon which the interest of Canterbury was fixed, was whether Mr. Harmer had destroyed his will or not before he died. But this was a point upon which no one could enlighten them, and all awaited with intense interest the day of the funeral, after which it would, of course, be known all about it.
To us at Ramsgate the news came with a terrible shock. Papa, who had settled to have gone over on that day, had, from some reason or other, postponed it to the next; consequently, he was with me when the boy arrived from the station with the telegram at about twelve o'clock.
It happened to be a wet day, so that, contrary to our usual habit, we were indoors when the boy came up with the note. Papa signed the receipt, and the lad left before he opened it. When he did so, he glanced at the contents, and dropped it on the table with almost a groan.
"What is it, papa?" I asked, dreadfully alarmed; "may I read it?" Papa motioned assent, and my heart almost stood still as I read the terrible tidings—
"Mr. Harmer is dead; Sophy Needham is missing."
It was a dreadful shock; and yet we had talked and thought so much the last two days of Sophy and Robert Gregory, and of the consequences the discovery of their connection might have upon Mr. Harmer, that it could be hardly said to come upon us as a surprise. For some time we were too shocked to speak at all. At last I said—
"Poor Mr. Harmer! how dreadful!"
"Rather poor Sophy," papa said. "Unfortunate, misguided girl, how bitterly she will repent this! What a life-long remorse hers will be! She has sacrificed the happiness of her own life by joining it to that of Robert Gregory, and she has caused her benefactor's death; and whatever be the folly, whatever the terrible fault of Sophy's conduct now, undoubtedly she loved him dearly."
While papa was speaking, another telegram arrived, and this time from Miss Harmer, for the former one was sent by a friend who had heard the news, and knowing our interest in it, had at once forwarded it to us, while the groom who brought it in, was searching for a doctor to go over at once. Miss Harmer's message was only—
"Please come at once. My brother