The man was wearing his black Sunday trousers, which seemed odd to Frampton.
“Mr. Mansell, sir,” the man said, “they been trying to get at you, sir. I hope as someone told you the sad news.”
A pang of coming frightful disaster went into Frampton’s very soul and was then turned out by an act of will, so that he might deal with the situation.
“What news is that?” he asked.
“There’s been an accident, Mr. Mansell; to poor Miss Margaret.”
He was a simple good soul; he began to cry; his wife was crying at his side and mopping her eyes with the end of her apron.
“She was killed, sir, in her motor-car,” the wife sobbed.
“Along about twelve o’clock, sir,” the wheelwright said. “She was turning into the road in her car when a London car went into her. She was killed, sir, and the London man not far short of killed.”
Stunned as he was, Frampton thanked them. He remembered something in the life of Drake, when disaster threatened, how Drake had contrived to keep going, and to keep his crew going.
“‘There will be time,’” he quoted to himself; his world was spinning about him, as he walked on; “‘that will be the end of me, pretty much,’” he said. Odds and ends of verse rang in his head, about the little house they had built to be so gay with. That came into his mind over and over again. Yet he felt now and again that perhaps the news was not true. In the village, there was a sort of awe, as he passed; all stood to look.
“Look, damn you,” he muttered savagely, as he saw the elbows nudging and the faces turning. “Here you’ve got a moving picture for nothing; and to-morrow you’ll have the gutter press. Take a good look.”
At the outside of
“Look this way, Mr. Mansell; just turn your head. Won’t you just look this way a second?”
He was the corpse, they were the cannibals; there could be no doubt that the news was true. The vultures would not gather for Life.
The news was true. Presently, he was at the old house, speaking to Margaret’s sister. Margaret’s body was upstairs. He heard all that was known. It was an accident, like most of the disasters on the road. The chief cowman at the dairy farm was the only man who had with his own eyes seen it happen; two had heard it from a little distance; these two dairymen had seen a big car going at great speed along the road, and had then heard a crash at the corner. They had no doubt that the car was going too fast, and cutting across side roads without warning. All three men swore to having heard Margaret sound her horn as she drove out.
At the inquest, these things were repeated and sworn to. The London man had died by that time. He was a well-known sporting man, who had had his licence endorsed for careless driving. He had had four whiskies, topped off with a gin “to settle them,” at a road-side inn, a few miles away, and was supposedly hurrying to keep a luncheon engagement with his fiancée. His car was smashed almost beyond repair. It was supposed that at the moment of impact, he was moving at sixty miles an hour. All the upper part of the car was torn clean off the body and flung along the road. The coroner’s court found that deceased met their ends as the result of accident, due primarily to drunkenness and want of common caution in the male driver. They expressed their sympathy with the two bereaved fiancées, and recommended that a danger sign be placed near the turning where the disaster had occurred. One of the jury wished it to be set on record that the accident was directly due to the abuse of alcohol, and that it ought to be made a penal offence, to serve alcohol of any sort to one in charge of a car.
That was the end of Margaret Holtspur, a charming and beautiful woman, “killed on the eve of her wedding,” as the gutter press printed in big type.
Margaret was buried. The whole village turned out to the funeral. The grave was heaped with flowers. Photographers on the churchyard wall got various views of Frampton and his father as they stood near the grave during the service. These were in the evening papers that night, and in the cheaper morning papers next day. “Well-Known Gun Manufacturer Mourns Fiancée Dead in Car Smash,” was one heading; “Frampton Mansell at Grave,” was another; “The Long Farewell: Frampton Mansell Bids Adieu to Love,” was a third.