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I began to see that my friend Goodge and the rector of Dewsdale were very different kind of people, and that I must play my cards accordingly. "That will depend upon the nature of your information," I replied diplomatically; "it may be worth something to us, or it may be worthless." "And in case it should be worth something?"
I fancy it is thus made very clear that at this period Matthew Haygarth was secretly married and living at Spotswold, where his wife and son were afterwards buried, and whence the body of the son was ultimately removed to Dewsdale to be laid in that grave which the father felt would soon be his own resting-place.
"I should recommend you to adopt the following tactics: "1st. Go to the house at Dewsdale, inhabited by M.H. and his wife. You may have some difficulty in obtaining admission and full liberty to explore and examine from the present servant or owner; but you are not the man I take you for if you cannot overcome such a difficulty. I enclose a few of my cards, which you can use at your discretion.
The rev. intestate must have been at the University when he made the sale; and a young Cantab would in all likelihood pass over his ancestral chairs and tables to the purchaser of his ancestral mansion, as so much useless lumber. It is proverbial that walls have ears. I hope the Dewsdale walls may have tongues, and favour you with a little information. "3rd.
The room which is now my study she furnished with a small reading-desk and a couple of benches, now in my nursery, and made it into a kind of chapel, in which the keeper of the general shop who was, I believe, considered a shining light amongst the Wesleyan community was in the habit of holding forth every Sunday morning to such few members of that sect as were within reach of Dewsdale.
I had seen nothing so fair as those English fields and copses since I left the pine-clad hills of Forêtdechêne. An idiotic boy directed me across some fields to Dewsdale. He sent me a mile out of the way; but I forgave and blest him, for I think the walk did me good. I felt as if all manner of vicious vapours were being blown out of my head as the soft wind lifted my hair. And so to Dewsdale.
I want to fathom the mystery of that midnight interment at Dewsdale; I want to know the story of that Mary Haygarth who lies under the old yew-tree at Spotswold, and for whose loss some one sorrowed without hope of consolation. Was that a widower's commonplace, I wonder, and did the unknown mourner console himself ultimately with a new wife?
I asked permission to see the register containing the entry of the mysterious interment; and after the administration of a shilling to the clerk a shilling at Dewsdale being equal to half a crown in London the vestry cupboard was opened by that functionary, and the book I required was produced from a goodly pile of such mouldy brown leather-bound volumes. The following is a copy of the entry:
However, as I was on the point of saying when my boy John disturbed us, though I have heard a great deal of gossip about the Haygarths, I fear I can give you very little substantial information. Their connection with Dewsdale lasted little more than twenty years.
Anon comes that strange foreknowledge of death that instinctive sense of the shadowy hand so soon to lay him at rest; and with that mystic prescience comes a yearning for the little child M. to be laid where his father may lay down beside him. There are many passages in the latter letters which afford a clue to that mysterious midnight burial at Dewsdale.
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