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After an experience extending over forty years, I may declare that I never saw any such disreputable and horrifying spectacle." So the Lezzard family withdrew and, on the following day, Mrs. Coomstock passed through most painful experiences. To the clergyman, with many sighs and tears, she explained that Mr. Lezzard's character had been maligned by Mr.
I cling to the flesh I have, for I know that Nature will very soon want back the dust she has lent me." Agreeably to the prediction of Doctor Parsons, Mrs. Lezzard's journey was ended in less than three weeks of her conversation with Clement Hicks.
He helped her, filled Lezzard's empty glass for himself, and then, finding his future wife thick of speech, bleared of eye, and evidently disposed to slumber, he departed and left her to sleep off her varied emotions. "I'll mighty soon change all that," thought Mr. Blee. "To note a fine woman in liquor 's the frightfullest sight in all nature, so to say.
Lezzard's home, Clement met Doctor Parsons himself and asked concerning his aunt's true condition. "She gave you the facts as they are," declared the medical man. "Nothing can save her. She's had delirium tremens Lord knows how often. A fortnight to a month that's all. Nature loves these forlorn hopes and tinkers away at them in a manner that often causes me to rub my eyes.
Lezzard's fortune, for he always kept aloof from her; but women cannot easily shut their lips over such tremendous matters of news, and so it came about that some whisper from Chris or dark utterance from old Mrs. Hicks got wind, and a rumour grew that the bee-keeper was the dead woman's heir.
He also was worth something less indeed than three hundred pounds; though, seeing that he had been earning reasonably good wages for half a century, the fact argued but poor thrift in Mr. Blee. Of course Gaffer Lezzard's alleged legacy could hardly be a sum to count with Mrs.
Then the company spoke its mind, and Mary Lezzard's clay might well have turned under that bitter hornet-buzz of vituperation. Some said little, but had not strength or self-command to hide tears; some cursed and swore. Mr. Lezzard wept unheeded; Mrs. Hicks likewise wept.
Presently they returned to Chagford, and life resolved itself into an unlovely thing for both of them. Time brought no better understanding or mutual confidence; on the contrary, they never ceased from wrangling over money and Mrs. Lezzard's increasing propensity towards drink.
Some fifty or sixty pounds in my hands will be absorbed by the calls of the estate. Mrs. Lezzard's tastes I sorrow to say it were expensive in some directions. There is an item of ten pounds twelve shillings for for brandy, if I may be pardoned for speaking plainly. The funeral also appears to have been conducted on a scale more lavish than circumstances warranted.
The conversation with Mr. Blee was of short duration, and ended by Billy calling down a comprehensive curse on the faithless one and returning to Monks Barton. He had attached little importance to Lezzard's public protest, upon subsequent consideration and after the first shock of hearing it; but there was no possibility of doubting what he now learned from Mrs. Coomstock's own lips.
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