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Title: Buried diamonds, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Author: Sarah Tytler
Release date: October 18, 2026 [eBook #79822]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Chatto & Windus, 1886
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79822
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BURIED DIAMONDS, VOL. 2 (OF 3) ***
BURIED DIAMONDS
VOL. II.
THREE-VOLUME NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES.
OTHMAR. By OUIDA.
FIRST PERSON SINGULAR. By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY.
CAMIOLA. By JUSTIN MCCARTHY.
THE UNFORESEEN. By ALICE O’HANLON.
London: CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly, W.
BURIED DIAMONDS
BY
SARAH TYTLER
AUTHOR OF ‘SAINT MUNGO’S CITY’ ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ ETC.
[Illustration]
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1886
[_The right of translation is reserved_]
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LEARNED LADIES 1
II. THE MEETING AND PARTING AT THE RATS’ DITCH 13
III. THE RETURN OF A LAGGARD AND TRIFLER 41
IV. MRS. LAMBERT CRABTREE’S RECEPTION OF HER BROTHER 75
V. SUSIE’S DESCRIPTION OF MISS GRAY 92
VI. JACK PLAYS THE SPY 108
VII. OXFORD WITH ESCORTS SEEN AND UNSEEN 138
VIII. THE NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH WHICH CARRIES MAT CRABTREE AND JACK PRIOR
SIMULTANEOUSLY TO ST. GILES’S 164
IX. THE RETURN TO NEWTON--FRESH DETAILS 190
X. REDCOT, WITH SUSIE IN POSSESSION 206
XI. JACK PRIOR AND MAT CRABTREE RIDE ON A JOINT ERRAND 232
XII. A BROKEN BANK 251
XIII. MAT CRABTREE AND JOHN PRIOR BEAR THE BURDEN 272
XIV. RELIEF; BUT A DEADLIER BLOW THREATENED 291
BURIED DIAMONDS
CHAPTER I.
LEARNED LADIES.
‘Well, Miss Gray,’ Susie suddenly changed her tone, like the most
accomplished actress, as she took a step or two forward and greeted,
in a way the most disengaged and free from any tinge of consciousness,
the dangerous person. ‘I trust the nest was worth the trouble of going
in search of it. Do you include ornithology among the other ologies at
your finger ends? How delightful for these lucky nephews and niece of
mine.’
In the meantime Jane was left to hang back and look miserably glum, as
if she had been convicted of speaking scandal of Miss Gray and Mr.
Crabtree behind their backs.
‘I am absolutely frightened to open my ignorant mouth before you and
Jane,’ ran on Susie, showering her sugar-plums of speech all around.
‘Is not Haybridge delightful? The garden, like everything else, so
fresh and flourishing, and without any little plagues to do mischief
within its bounds.’
‘I hope you include the master of Haybridge in your compliments to the
place, Susie,’ said Mat, raising his hat with a little mockery. He
had interposed to cover a slight confusion on the part of Miss Gray,
who had echoed ‘Nest!’ in a bewildered voice, as if she had already
forgotten all about the wonderful specimen of bird architecture which
she had gone aside for the purpose of inspecting. She bit her lip the
next moment, and stood silent, but she looked bright and contented; and
Mat Crabtree, too, had a gay and well-entertained air.
When the party returned to the house, the host took the ladies
into his study to have tea, while the children gathered again round
the dining-room table, under the auspices of the housekeeper. Mr.
Crabtree’s study was his snuggery and sanctum, where he spent the most
of his time. It was a comfortable, really good library, not seriously
marred by traces of a country gentleman’s pursuits. These were the
‘Agricultural Calendar’ above the writing table, part of which was
fitted up like a cabinet, only the specimens were not of coins or
shells, but of grasses and seeds: the local newspaper folded to show
the market prices; the barometer and rain-gauge inside and outside
the window; the gun, about to be used against the young crows, still
standing in one corner.
But it was to the well-filled bookcases that Jane and Miss Gray were
irresistibly drawn, while Susie prowled mouse-like about the room, and
peeped knowingly at everything. Mr. Crabtree joined the young women.
He had a scholar’s pride in his choice and complete editions, and
liked to have them valued; but it was not a mere grasping, grudging,
dilettante satisfaction in the possession of treasures, and in denying
an approach to them to less fortunate mortals, lest a touch should
impair spotless perfection, or render what was rare cheap and common.
His stores had been more particularly at Jane Prior’s service ever
since she had coveted them. He invited her to take from them now
whatever she cared to have. ‘What is it to be to-day, Jane?’ he asked
cheerfully. ‘Has your cormorant appetite exhausted my modest larder, or
have you got quite beyond me? I warn you that in spite of Max Müller I
have not a single word of Sanscrit. My Hebrew literature is confined to
the Talmud--in English--absolutely a translation. Did you ever hear of
anything so cowardly and compromising? Will you condescend to patronise
my book-shop after you have heard that?’
But Jane hung back determinedly from the shelves laden with massive or
subtle philosophies, and waved forward her companion.
‘Miss Gray may profit by your liberality also, Mr. Crabtree, may she
not?’ said Jane, a little in her solemn cathedral manner. ‘She has gone
a great deal further than I have into ancient history and literature,
and I happen to know she wants Grote and Merivale, and particular
editions of Thucydides and Livy and Sophocles.’
‘Now this is crushing,’ exclaimed Mat Crabtree, looking from the one to
the other, with all the merry marvel in his eyes with which he had been
accustomed to regard Jane alone. ‘You do not mean to say that there
are two of you in the same country and of the same generation, in the
same house, out of Oxford or Cambridge, or ancient Padua, where one
woman was a professor. There were not two Sapphos or two Hypatias in
the Greek isles, or in Alexandria, at their respective eras. It is too
hard on a belated man who has not even his college at his back. Say,
Miss Gray, that you never heard of a battle in Cæsar, that you have not
read a line of Homer or Virgil.’
‘I am afraid I cannot, Mr. Crabtree,’ answered Bennet, with her tuneful
laugh, ‘not even to please you;’ and there was undoubtedly a shade of
grateful emphasis on the pronoun.
‘Then there are two young ladies who read Latin and Greek, and, no
doubt, beat men to sticks on the ground which we poor male wretches
used to hold undisputed. I can’t and I won’t believe it. Save my
credit, Miss Gray. Profess you do not even know whether the Greeks
or the Romans came first. Profess any amount of ignorance you like.
Why, ignorance is as divine as melancholy--in a woman. Only restore
my self-respect; give me back my proper intellectual supremacy in the
creation.’
‘Not in the way you wish,’ refused Bennet. ‘But, oh, dear! I am only a
poor scholar; comfort yourself; you would soon convict me of a thousand
inaccuracies in particles. Women are proverbially inaccurate, aren’t
they? Though I will not flatter you more than I can help, I do believe
it has been by reason of the poor creatures’ defective education, as a
rule. And do not blame me too much for feminine presumption. I learnt
in order to teach, and do you know there was an idea of little boys
like Tom and Sam grown a few years older, as well as of little girls
like Ally, profiting by my instructions at the same time?’
‘That is some small excuse. Miss Gray. But when you give up teaching,
when you return to the society of men and women, what then? What do you
mean to do with your superfluous learning--ill-gotten gear I call it?
Jane here has some difficulty in bestowing hers away gracefully--I mean
so as not to extinguish her brother-man--and you may find it equally
hard. I assure you there are men, nice enough fellows, with whom it
would be quite easy and pleasant to live in other respects, who have
not won laurels in the schools.’
Again there was the twinkle that Jane had caught before of fun, and
of a mutual understanding between him and one of the company, in Mat
Crabtree’s blue eyes.
There was an answering flash, half of uncontrollable amusement, half of
lively indignation, which overcame the confusion in Bennet Gray’s eyes,
as she looked up, and replied with spirit--‘I do not know whom you call
nice enough fellows, but any really nice fellow--any man worthy of the
name I have ever known--would never wish to strip a woman of whatever
small triumph she had gained. He would not need; he would have plenty
of triumphs of his own of another kind. He would be proud--the proudest
of all--though it would be foolish, for her sake.’
She stopped with a little catch in her voice, for she had spoken so
fast that she had lost breath.
‘You are right,’ he said cordially, smiling benignly on the eager
speaker.
The conversation, if not idle words, was completely mystifying, a
veritable dead language, to Jane. Not only did she fail to understand
a syllable of it, at no time could she have bandied jests and kept her
own with Mat Crabtree as Miss Gray was doing. Jane had always been too
much in earnest in the argument.
No wonder he liked the badinage and looked full of admiration at his
antagonist. Even when they talked seriously afterwards, Jane could see
it was no pretence--that it did seem to him an amazing, admirable,
diverting thing for a girl like Miss Gray--a simple enough young
girl, made to be taken care of--bundled about, petted and found fault
with by people who were come to man’s estate when she was born--a
pretty creature, too, as he had ever seen--to know what she knew. She
could prattle with the wisdom half of a child, half of a sage, as
it sounded to him, of the hoary campaigns of vanished empires. She
quoted with spontaneous, keenest appreciation the very passages which
were his favourites in the sweetest, the most sonorous of tongues
which no living lip now spoke. He was reminded of picturesque stately
figures among the learned ladies of Old England, of ‘Sidney’s sister,
Pembroke’s mother,’ of gentle, hapless Lady Jane, of the noble shrew,
Queen Bess.
Just so, Mr. Crabtree had been wont to stare and to smile at Jane’s
attainments. Now Miss Gray shared both the surprise and the ridicule.
Somehow it had no galling side for her. She was able to pay him back
lightly in his own coin. It was something strange for Jane to stand
aside and witness the transfer of the tribute, such as it was, that
Mat Crabtree had paid her to another. She had never cared for it
when it was entirely hers; indeed, she was convinced it had rather
provoked her and filled her with disdain. Why should he be astonished
at what girls could do in learning any more than he would be struck by
the small feats of lads? Above all, why should he laugh? Jane could
solemnly pledge herself--and it was balm to her hurt mind to be able to
do so--that she had never for an instant regarded her relations to Mr.
Crabtree in the odious light in which Susie had represented them. But
when all was said and done, Mat Crabtree’s books and his talk of them
to a woman, his interest in a woman’s studies, had been her peculiar
property till this day. It was bewildering, to say the least, to be
called on at a moment’s notice to share her property with some one
else, even though the sharing was at her own suggestion, and the sharer
was her chosen friend.
The position was rendered still more bewildering and trying by the
circumstance that, during the whole time the conversation lasted
between Mat Crabtree and Miss Gray by the bookcases, Susie kept casting
covert significant glances from them to Jane, and from Jane to them
back again at the same time. Susie pointed the glances by imperceptible
shrugs of her graceful shoulders, elevations and depressions of her
beautiful eyebrows, and instantaneous raisings and sinkings of her
small, expressive hands.
Jane was above betraying any vestige of pique, but she was very silent
in the middle of the children’s chatter, and after it had subsided
into cross drowsiness in the drive home. She was unusually silent and
thoughtful for days to come.
CHAPTER II.
THE MEETING AND PARTING AT THE RATS’ DITCH.
It is difficult to believe, nevertheless it is true, that the fiery
trial to which John Prior was subjected had lasted till within a week
of this time. With hardly an exception he had gone every lawful day,
no longer unobserved, it is true, for the secret could not be kept so
long--but, however speculated upon, unmolested, and with his privacy
uninvaded, to Redcot Quarry, under Redcot Spinny--now all bursting
into tender green and alive with feathered choristers. He had stood
for stated intervals settled upon between the man and himself, at his
post, watching for his ruin or his deliverance. On the surface he did
not look much gaunter and greyer than he had looked in the beginning,
though under the skin the ordeal had done its work.
When, after sundry signs of abating energy and dying out hope, about
a week before a certain day in the beginning of April, the boring
implements and tackle which had been in persistent use for seven
or eight months were carted away from Ladslove finally, John Prior
stood and gazed at their departure as he had gazed at their arrival.
He was not taken by surprise. He had been reduced into entering on
debateable dealings with one of the borers formerly in his employment.
This worthy man had eventually, like the illustrious John Churchill
Duke of Marlborough, and many other famous magnates, consented to
sell himself to both sides. He was paid by Lambert Crabtree for
giving him the double benefit of the collier’s skill as a borer at
Ladslove, and of his old acquaintance with the dip of the minerals at
Redcot. The enterprising miner was also, it has to be owned, paid
privately by John Prior for bringing to him the practical result of
the boring in such abstracted specimens of rocky soil as the operation
produced, and as the operator could carry away hidden in his blue
cotton handkerchief. It was further understood that this obliging
and unscrupulous gentleman should act in his acknowledged master’s
employment--rather as a decoy-duck than as a faithful guide--while all
the time John Prior comprehended perfectly that Mr. Jacob Evans was,
for his part, closely watching, as far as his obtuseness would allow,
the run of what he called luck, and that it rested on the turning of
a straw whether he would ultimately betray his new master or his old.
Alas, alas! Mr. Jacob Evans was not a unique specimen of humanity.
There have been great captains, great statesmen, ay, and great
so-called Christians seeking to make the best of both worlds, who have
not been beyond playing the same lucrative but not very noble game.
John Prior had gone through his last interview under cloud of night,
behind the disused mill, with the spy whom he had consented to keep.
Once more Mr. Jacob Evans had by the light of a candle, that was found
among other conveniences in his jacket pocket, drawn forth a moist,
irregular calico ball. It had unrolled itself, as before, into a small
pudding of clay, with morsels of stone stuck in it by way of raisins.
The manipulator of the pudding had kneaded it into fresh proportions,
as if it were a dish to set before a king, and had been guilty of
slowly closing one bloodshot eye while he repeated his formula.
‘This here stuff ain’t no go, māāster, and I’ll be blowed if it ever do
be a go. Not a crumb of coal as would sile a babby’s fingers, or of the
black slaty layers as might be lying aboon the coal has come to light;
no, nor never will in any of them shifts.’
The prophecy had been uttered in loud, boastful defiance.
‘The chances are it will not,’ Mr. Prior had been wont to say coldly
and evasively.
When the busy man who had so many irons in the fire was forced
reluctantly to contemplate the withdrawal of one iron in the admission
that the gang of borers at Ladslove had received their dismissal, his
employer had awakened to something like animation. ‘Then you need not
come again, Evans. There is your pay, and I’m obliged to you.’ ‘Oh,
yes, I’ll write a line to Mr. Willet,’ naming the manager of the Redcot
collieries at Kershaw, ‘and he will take you on again.’ John Prior was
in a hurry to get rid of the unattractive instrument of his will, and
to forget the dirty piece of work he had engaged in the moment the
need for it was at an end; at the same time the promise he felt bound
to keep was sufficient in its fulfilment to expose the nature of the
recent connection between the two men.
After all, the world held that stratagems were allowable in love and
war, and the squire of Redcot was only treating his son-in-law as his
son-in-law had treated him. If only John Prior could have forgotten
that there had been a time in his life when he would have scorned such
stratagems and declined to deal in such debateable ware.
How does a man feel when he is reprieved from an impending doom? Dazed,
incredulous, giddy, mentally-intoxicated for days and days. John Prior
was well aware that he was only reprieved, not finally delivered.
Lambert Crabtree might bore again on Ladslove next year, or he might
let the farm with its minerals to a better-informed, more fortunate
speculator. He might sell the land out and out, and its sale might
involve new perils, as well as put the Rats’ Ditch farther beyond
John Prior’s reach. But it was always something to have the evil day
indefinitely deferred.
Gradually the squire of Redcot yielded to the comfort, the positive
exhilaration of the relief. Under its influence he allowed himself to
do what he had not dared do during the months of suspense when the
borers had been engaged at Ladslove. He turned his feet, as he had
turned them on many a previous occasion farther back in his history, to
the field known as the Dutch clover field. He had to leave the road and
climb over a stile to get to the spot, but he had taken out with him a
young fox terrier, and for the first time for many a day his master had
whistled on old Tommy to join company with his young foxy brother. As
it was easy to imagine beforehand, the dogs had shown an inclination
to stray and to wallow in the shallower part of the rat-haunted ditch
in a manner which threatened Tommy with hopeless rheumatism for the
rest of his life. John Prior whistled in an abstracted fashion at
intervals, and stood with his hands in his pockets staring fixedly at
the ground wherein his treasure--no, his it had never been, might never
be--somebody’s treasure lay hid. This man had known of it and dreamt of
it for the better part of his whole existence, till it had gained a
desperate fascination for him, and changed him from a person naturally
careless in money matters to a covetous craver of the inheritance of
another. But he had no more title to the strip of land on which he was
gloating with greedy eyes, than the poorest pauper in the parish could
claim. It was another Naboth’s vineyard.
The hour of the afternoon was that at which the master of Redcot had
accustomed himself to go to the quarry and watch what was going on
in the meadows below, where the borers had sometimes advanced and
sometimes retreated. And they had once been within so small a number
of yards of this ditch that, in looking back, the fact that the men
had missed its secret struck John Prior anew as if Providence had
interposed and worked a miracle on his behalf.
It was a blustering, windy day, with bursts of sunshine and shade. The
effect was increased by the gusts bending and lashing the boughs of
the trees, ruffling the leaflets on the hedges, and twisting the blades
of grass and spring wheat, until it seemed as if every five minutes
or so all the world was seen on its wrong side--that paler reverse
side on which everything is dimmed and loses its individual character,
much as distant slanting rain washes out the landscape. The time was
far distant as yet from the midsummer and autumn wealth of rank reeds
and rushes, meadow-sweet and brook-lime, iris and horehound, the
indisputable property of the ditch. But the primroses were beginning
to blossom thickly at the hedge-roots, and the duck-weed was showing
patches of vivid green. Though the water ranunculus remained snugly
ensconced in its muddy lair, and Crazy Betty, the Bride-of-the-Sun,
would wait till Lent and Easter were past before she ‘shone like fire;’
impulsive, tall kingcups were already shooting their way through the
withered tangle of the last year’s growth of weeds. The water ousel,
as well as the rat, frequented the ditch, and the lark hovered over the
field beyond, pouring forth his spring song.
But it was not to look at early wild flowers or listen to ‘dicky birds’
that John Prior was there. He did not even notice his four-footed
companions, that had ostensibly led him across the fields, whisking
round, whining, scraping, and indulging in sudden plunge-baths that
would have filled Tommy’s mistress with well-founded apprehension.
After staring down at his feet in a brooding way for a little space,
John Prior advanced as close as he could to the ditch without missing
his footing. The season had not been a wet one, and the water was
comparatively low--several inches beneath the ordinary level. He
stooped and stretched forward, pressing back all he could gather in
his arms of the straggling fringe of sedges, and keenly scanned the
discoloured side of the ditch, down to the stagnant water, as if he
vainly sought to penetrate its sullen depths. The dogs, mistaking his
action, turned and tore to his side, under the innocent impression that
he was summoning them to a raid on the denizens of the place, with whom
it was their natural duty and delight to wage war.
‘Get away, Fly! Down, Tommy, you old idiot,’ Mr. Prior cried
impatiently, driving his satellites back.
As he did so he was hailed by a loud voice from behind. ‘Hallo, Prior,
what are you doing there?’
John Prior started back with the tremor of a guilty man, and saw the
burly figure of Lambert Crabtree in his white cords and hunting-coat on
a tall bay horse in the grassy field a few paces off.
The appearance of the man happened in broad day in the open
field--moreover, it was his own field, where he had every right to be,
yet the apparition was as appalling as could well be imagined. John
Prior was ashy white as he staggered up to his feet from between the
dogs.
His challenger was moved to call, ‘Good Lord, man, what is the matter?
You look funky all over.’ Then he added, with his peculiar delicacy,
‘You ain’t going to take a fit, eh? Remember though there’s water
handy, I’m on the back of my beast, and Proossian is a tearer in a
fix. I saw you from the road, and spotted you by the dogs. I came over
because I want a word with you; but if you want a lift from me I’m
afraid there’s, not to say two, but three at a bargain making--the
third being Proossian, whose hash I’ll not undertake to settle.’
‘There will be no occasion,’ said John Prior, who had recovered
himself. He was on the man’s ground, and though when he thought what
ground it was, every nerve in his body tingled, still there was no
longer even the apology for a quarrel; and a quarrel here--while
the idea of it flashed across John Prior’s mind as an ominous
coincidence--would be the most ill-judged, reckless proceeding which
angry passions could bring about. ‘I suppose stooping and struggling
with the dogs made me dizzy,’ muttered Mr. Prior; then he added with
grim, abrupt ceremony, ‘I ought to ask your pardon for trespassing,
Crabtree.’
‘Oh, you’re welcome to come here or on any of my fields; they ain’t
very many. It is you and Mat who are the landowners,’ answered Lambert,
carelessly, shrugging his brawny shoulders and flourishing his riding
whip. ‘We are near relations when it comes to that; and at this season
in these meadows, where there is no game to be disturbed, I should be
a curmudgeon if I refused you an exercise-ground for poor old Tommy. I
thought you had given up taking him out--left him to toddle after his
missus. Mange ain’t showing, really?’
The man could not help being bragging, bullying, insolent, though he
was on the point of soliciting a favour--nay, of pleading for mercy.
There was one thing to be said for Lambert Crabtree, that he was not
naturally a hypocrite.
‘I told you I wished to speak with you, sir,’ he said, with a greater
effort of courtesy the next moment, ‘and there is no time or place like
the present. We shan’t be disturbed here. No listeners or interlopers
save the dogs and Proossian. Plague take the beast, how am I to dispose
of him? I must take the chance of getting off and tying his bridle to
that stump,’ pointing with his whip to a pollard willow near. ‘If I
keep the bridle over my arm, the devil will paw and prance in a circle
round us in a fashion an elderly gentleman with ticklish nerves might
not stand. No offence, Prior, I’ve seen you ride well to hounds before
you gave up hunting.’
Lambert Crabtree had sat till this moment, coolly looking down from
the vantage ground of his elevation upon his companion, but as he
prepared to leap off John Prior hastily interposed. He had said he
would never receive his son-in-law at Redcot again; but the elder man
would break his word, he would do anything to get the younger away from
that spot of earth. Every second that passed rendered the necessity
the more urgent. Wherever the interview was to take place, whatever
was to be its nature, it could not be on the haunted ground where the
men had met. The dogs were restlessly scrambling down the bank again.
Was it possible the dumb animals could tear down the screen of weeds
and nozzle out a black morsel of more moment than any yellow nugget in
Australia or California?
‘Come up to the house with me, stable your horse, and say what you have
to say in peace.’ John Prior tried to speak calmly and civilly, even
with a show of friendliness contradicting a certain stern, tragic tone
in his voice.
‘Then it is to be peace, Prior, since I’ve given up my diggings for the
present?’ questioned Lambert Crabtree sharply. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear
it; but don’t you think it would have come more handsomely, if it had
come earlier--on your side, I mean? For I was always ready to shake
hands across the holes.’ Then the brutal doggedness of the man came
into play. ‘No, I am not going up to your house,’ he said, as he sprang
from his horse and strode off towards the pollard. ‘I don’t want any
witnesses--any women at hand, to pry and carry tales. I don’t mean your
women in particular, so you need not look blood and thunder. We can
settle our differences here as well as elsewhere.’
‘As you like,’ yielded John Prior, steadying the slight quiver of his
lips, while the clouds came over the sun, which was ‘wading’ like the
moon on a stormy night, and the wind in wild gusts swung the bushes
and swayed the grasses.
‘Well, Prior,’ began Lambert Crabtree, coming back with an inevitable
swagger from fastening his prancing, evil-eyed horse, his own big red
face looking swollen and slightly bloated, either from the effects of
the wind or of the agitation under which it began to be plain he was
labouring. ‘I have been sold as regards this cursed farm. The search
for coal has been fruitless, though, according to every recognised
sign, it ought to have been in these meadows. Where the foul fiend is
it?’ he cried passionately. ‘I have made up my mind to ask you what you
know; you must have an idea. You cannot have been all these years the
owner of the Redcot mines without speculating on what might blow you up
any day.’
‘How should I know,’ stammered John Prior, ‘and why on earth should I
tell you if I did know?’ he added, recovering from a crazy fancy that
the ground on which they were standing ought to find a voice and speak
the truth.
‘Because I’m the very man you should tell if you have anything to
say on the subject,’ announced the other boldly. ‘Look here, Prior,’
he went on, with his half assumption of bluff frankness along with
something in his voice which was at once slyly coaxing and savagely
threatening, and of the two inflections of the voice, his hearer liked
the first the worse. It filled him with sick disgust. ‘I’ll show you
why you should join forces and go halves with me. I’ll make it as
good as that if you’ll come to the scratch. You’re all but used up at
Redcot. If you have any knowledge to sell it won’t pay you to keep it
up. You can’t buy Ladslove--for that matter it ain’t in the market
again--not yet. That son of yours--Jack, Johnnie, whatever you like to
call him--will do no good with any information you may choose to hand
on to him. He may be a good enough sort at cricket or billiards, in a
smoking-room or a drawing-room, but that’s about it. He will neither
make a spoon nor spoil a horn, you are aware of that? Susie is as near
you as Jack is, faith! with her children she has the greater claim of
the two. If you’ll put me up to a wrinkle or two I’ll come round and
make an arrangement, so that you, and Mrs. Prior, and Jack and Jill
after you may have an equal share in the benefits of my purchase and
the profits of any minerals that may be worked on Ladslove. Come, I
cannot promise fairer than that, and you’ll be a dashed fool if you
refuse my offer.’
‘I may be permitted to judge for myself, I suppose, on the worth of
the proposal,’ said John Prior, with dry lips, stung to madness, and
restraining himself by a tremendous effort. ‘You have my answer. I can
only repeat what I have already said. You have no reason to suppose
that I have anything to tell you, and you take still more upon you,
for which you have still less right, when you imagine that if I had I
should tell it to you, of all people. My opinion of my son is my own
affair. I have yet to be informed that he has been guilty of anything
which merits your contempt. When it comes to that I do not know what I
myself have done that you should propose to buy me up.’
Lambert Crabtree had exchanged his grin for a scowl.
‘Take care, John Prior, you had better think twice what you are about.
I don’t mind letting you into a secret which will be public property
very soon, if you don’t think better of it. I’m on my last legs. That
infernal bank for which I’ve done my best--drudged--and lied, and
cheated, I suppose you would say--is coming to grief as sure as fate.
Do you wish to see Susie and her children beggars?’
‘Susie must drink as she has brewed,’ said her father bitterly. ‘She
took her lot into her own hands, and she must abide by it. Your ruin,
if you are going to be ruined, is your and her business. At the same
time, it is a fine story for you to come and tell me, or any other
listener, at this time of the day, considering the gross extravagance
of which you have been guilty.’
‘It is as true as gospel--rather truer, I daresay,’ said Crabtree,
with shameless bravado. ‘Seems to me, however, Susie had learnt the
taste for spending money before she came to me, though she was reared
in your virtuous and frugal household. Are you prepared to take the
consequences, John Prior, if you drive me to extremity?’ he ended
fiercely.
‘I have no choice, as I happen to be an honest man--I will not add with
some small claims to be a gentleman,’ answered Mr. Prior with a sneer.
‘An honest man!’ echoed Lambert Crabtree, with a peculiar intonation
in the middle of his fury. ‘Come, we may see what is the extent of the
family honesty before long. It seems Susie is not likely to fare the
better for her father’s consideration; that will be a sweet morsel for
you to roll under your tongue some day. If you are destitute of natural
feeling where she is concerned, if you do not care a curse for her
because she bears my name, other names than the one she has acquired
may not come off without loss. Even her precious brother, your heir and
representative, Prior, your Oxonian athlete and swell without a degree,
with only scrapes and debts to show for his college career, who has,
nevertheless, the making of a capital man of business, a stunningly
energetic and successful future squire and coal-owner in him--oh! never
doubt it, even he may have to smart for it, were it only to have his
glory tarnished by his sister’s downfall.’
It was the frantic raving of a man blind with rage, and it might be,
as he said, under the black shadow of despair. Rude and regardless as
he was at all times, largely destitute of kindlier feeling and of any
capacity for sympathy, he spoke as if he were lashing round him with
a whip--careless where the lashes fell, so that they raised a long red
weal which would inflict cruel pain.
While the men had been disputing, the younger dog had remained
in the ditch actively occupied with his own business, but Tommy,
already exhausted with his unusual efforts, had scrambled for his
footing up the bank. He now presented himself as if to claim the
attention to which he was entitled, whilst he was incapable of any
sense of intrusion, draggled and panting, his tongue hanging out of
his mouth--altogether a sorry object. He came among the feet of the
disputants so that Lambert Crabtree, making a sudden movement, as he
raged and fumed, nearly stumbled over the obstacle.
‘Get out of my way, you mangy cur, or I’ll kick your brains out,’ he
shouted, accompanying the word by an appropriate action with his booted
and spurred foot, that sent the yelling dog spinning across the grass.
A mist came over John Prior’s eyes, and a frenzy seized his brain. It
seemed for a moment that it was not Tommy, but Tommy’s mistress, John
Prior’s wife, the mother of his children, the love of his youth, whom
Lambert Crabtree, in his ruffianly strength, had spurned. John Prior
was an undersized man beside Crabtree, he was nearer twenty than ten
years the elder of the two, and he was a man broken by disappointment
and disaster, but he sprang straight at his son-in-law and caught him
with such force by the neckerchief that Crabtree, totally unprepared
for the attack, was wheeled half round, and reeled on his feet. ‘Stop
that, you brute, waging war with women and dumb animals,’ cried John
Prior hoarsely through his teeth, that kept clenching themselves, ‘or
I’ll throttle you before I’m done.’
Lambert Crabtree wrenched himself free, and raised an arm that could
have felled an ox, but thought better of it the next instant, let it
drop by his side, and stepped back with a loud, derisive laugh. ‘We
are a fine father and son-in-law, ain’t we?--an improving specimen of
a happy family? But murder is not for my book. I have never counted
myself a shining example. It is you, sir, who are a _gentleman_, as you
suggested--though I don’t know that the Priors monopolise the stamp
of gentility. There were such people as the Crabtrees, I believe,
who settled in the shire, and furnished sheriffs to the county,
quite as soon as the other race rendered the same service to their
neighbours--which, I venture to say, the neighbours could have spared
at their hand. But you have certain advantages over me which nobody can
deny. You are the middle-aged father of grown-up sons and daughters, a
magistrate, a church member who keeps regular hours and calls up his
servants to prayers, and so forth--all that belongs to the essence of
respectability and the odour of sanctity. Yet you propose to come to
fisticuffs with your unworthy son-in-law, who declines the unseemly,
ill-matched affray. Upon my soul, I’m astonished at you. I suppose I
had better say good-day.’
Lambert Crabtree ended his taunt after he had ostentatiously
re-arranged his neckerchief and coat. ‘But remember, Prior, you have to
thank me for sparing your life, which you were prepared to throw away
like an intemperate fool. You were in my power, and I had got jolly
good provocation. I could have knocked you into the ditch there, and
kept you down easy, and pled self-defence--the first law of nature--if
the deed had ever been called in question, with as little trouble as
I could despatch that disgusting beast you patronise. You owe me that
good turn when the time comes.’
John Prior stood gasping with passion, and fighting to recover the
mastery over himself. Tommy, who happily had been more frightened than
hurt, crept whining to his protector’s heels.
Lambert Crabtree walked over to his bay horse, which, as he had
predicted, had been making a circle, pawing, flinging up his heels,
and tossing a vicious head. His master untied him, and managed to bolt
upon his back. Then commenced a second and more equal struggle for
supremacy. The animal reared and plunged without advancing a yard on
his road. Lambert Crabtree’s great body, with not too secure a seat,
though he was a practised rider, swayed and lurched as if he would
lose his balance every instant and fall heavily among the quivering
feet prepared to smash whatever they encountered. It was clear that
the rider resented the opposition to his will, lost his temper, and
behaved as he would have done in any human encounter. He struck his
spurs into his foe without mercy; he tugged and tore at the bridle,
galling the animal’s distorted mouth. The issue seemed to hang in the
balance. It appeared as if murder must be done, and the sacrifice of
a man’s life offered in the clover-field by the Rats’ Ditch, with its
jealously-guarded secret.
At last Lambert Crabtree triumphed. With a great trembling bound of
anger, torture, and terror the bay yielded and galloped off in the
direction the man wished. As it did so, its master turned in the
saddle, waved an arm, and gave a mocking view-halloo which mingled with
the shrill whistle of the wind in John Prior’s ears.
CHAPTER III.
THE RETURN OF A LAGGARD AND TRIFLER.
Only the other day visitors had been invited to Haybridge because
crocuses were out in the garden borders and young lambs were to be seen
on the hill. Now plumed lilac, trailing laburnum, and the clustering
snow of double cherry blossom were making gay the Redcot shrubberies.
Great red peonies, nodding white narcissus--flowers and tulips--striped
all the colours of the rainbow or the sunset sky, were paving the way
for the roses. As for the lambs, it is to be feared a goodly number had
passed under the butcher’s knife, and figured at good men’s tables.
Those Oxford examinations in which Jane Prior and Bennet Gray
desired to figure were close at hand. Jane had never swerved from
her determination that Miss Gray should have the same opportunity of
distinguishing herself that Jane had. It made no difference that Mat
Crabtree took a frankly acknowledged interest in the subject. After the
breaking of the ice, which his brother’s operations had created for a
time between Haybridge and Redcot, Mr. Crabtree came more frequently
than ever to the Priors’. It was evident to all that he had a great
regard for Miss Gray, and that there was a growing friendship between
them. In addition to lending her books, as he lent them to Jane, and
discussing their contents, it was clear that he liked to talk on other
topics with Bennet, and availed himself of every opportunity for a
_tête-à-tête_. The air of a good understanding between the two, which
had existed since the day at Haybridge, increased till it approached
to a confidential intimacy. Such an intimacy between an exceedingly
attractive young woman and even a ‘confirmed old bachelor’ like Mat
Crabtree, especially if his years do not exceed forty-five, is apt to
receive only one interpretation even from the least match-making of
onlookers.
For the last three months Susie Crabtree had been saying more and more
pointedly, ‘I told you so.’ She had plaintively reproached Jane for her
imprudence in bringing such a governess to Redcot, and her parents for
their supineness in the interests of Piers; Mr. and Mrs. Prior ought to
have seen at once what Miss Gray’s little game was, without meaning any
great offence to her. It was positively a woman’s duty to better her
position. But it was also the duty of the master and mistress of Redcot
to nip the governess’s chances in the bud, by throwing cold water on
Mat Crabtree’s visits till she was honourably got rid of.
Even Mrs. Prior had alluded in conversation with Jane to such a
termination of the acquaintance between the squire of Haybridge and
Miss Gray, and in place of pouring forth wrath had bestowed pleased,
disinterested smiles on the latter’s brightening prospects. For surely,
however well-equipped, independent, and satisfied the young lady was as
a schoolmistress, there was some foundation still for the old-fashioned
prejudice in favour of a happy marriage and a comfortable, secure
establishment. It would be a love-marriage on Mat Crabtree’s part, and
there was nothing to hinder it from being the same on Miss Gray’s. He
was his own master, and could please himself. He was an excellent,
scholarly man, not past his prime, fine-looking for his years, in
high repute in the neighbourhood--a man that any girl might be proud
to win and not slow to love. It would be a lucky thing for everybody
if, after they had all learned to be fond of Miss Gray, she should be
established for life so near them. Of course, Mr. Crabtree might have
chosen a wife with available connections and some amount of fortune,
but he knew his own requirements best, and Mrs. Prior believed he had
more than sufficient for the kind of life he preferred. He was in the
habit of calling himself a farmer, though everybody knew the Crabtrees
were gently born and had always been in the rank of squires. But he was
totally without his brother’s taste for display and passion for filling
the first place. It was nonsense about little Piers’s being deprived of
his inheritance. It was one of Susie’s idle affectations. Mrs. Prior
looked affronted and even angry when she referred to this extreme view
of the case. The child’s father and mother had no right to count upon
his uncle’s remaining unmarried for his sake. It was most unjust--a
piece of selfish impertinence. It would show much more proper regard
for little Piers and Molly’s interests, if Lambert Crabtree and Susie
sought to make retrenchments in what had become the gross extravagance
of the Bank House.
Jane listened and assented sedately to what her mother said. She
delivered it as her opinion, not without a certain haughtiness and
hardness, as well as an unswerving rectitude of tone, that nobody had
the slightest call to interfere with Mr. Crabtree and Miss Gray as to
what they thought fit to do, either in marrying or in not marrying. For
her part, she thought people would often do better not to marry; but
let the world judge for itself.
It was plain Miss Prior was not going to forbid her friend’s banns if
it ever came to that. Jane was not the style of woman who played the
dog in the manger. She did not even change her mind about Miss Gray’s
being easily spared by the children to go for a day or two to Oxford.
When it came to that, the candidates’ presence in the town with the
examiners was not absolutely necessary. It was the women’s papers and
not themselves that were wanted. The matter might have been managed
by correspondence, only it would be so much more exciting to be on
the spot, to learn their fate at once. The little Woods could remain
under the care of their grandmother, to whom Bennett’s views on their
education had been bringing the children nearer, thus restoring some of
the privileges of the relationship which Jane had begun by impairing.
Neither did Jane Prior cause the whole project to crumple down like a
house of cards by withdrawing from her share in the expedition, when
she heard Mat Crabtree announce, half coolly, half mischievously, that
he thought he would improve the occasion. He would see them to their
destination, revisit his college, and be at hand to witness their
triumph, though it should cause him to hide his diminished head. He
even insisted on writing to an old landlady to secure lodgings for the
ladies.
Jane accepted all these demonstrations very much as a matter of course,
with a gravity of acquiescence that fitted in with the extent to
which she was engrossed by her final preparations. The last ‘reading
up’ was so close and persistent that Jane was driven to be more than
ever, during all the moments she could call her own, reduced to the
company of her books, and buried in them. She drifted away from her
fellow-competitor no less than from her interim coach. Bennet Gray
could not give herself up so thoroughly to the coming contest, but the
absorption did not seem unnatural in Jane. Mat Crabtree was the only
person who remarked upon it and was disturbed by it to no purpose, so
far as producing any relaxation on Jane’s part. ‘She’ll study herself
ill,’ he complained to his ally. ‘She is in a fair way to break down.
Think of a Trojan of a young woman like Jane breaking down! and how
will she stand it? It is too bad. I wanted this visit to Oxford to be
pure enjoyment, an instance of “_veni, vidi, vici_” to everybody; and
here is Jane, will not give an old friend the rise of making her angry,
not to say of making her laugh. Why, I have not seen her eyes sparkle
for a month. She has ceased to pay me the compliment of putting me
down.’
But if Jane had become so impervious to her friends’ influence as
not even to be nettled or amused by them against her will, she was
incapable of standing in their way or of doing what is vulgarly called
spoiling sport. She would never bring upon herself the humiliation of
having to own, even in her secret chamber, that she had deliberately,
of malice aforethought, as it were, come between the couple whom she
had not only called friends, but who had been both of them, as she now
knew, the most intimate and valued friends she had possessed. It would
not signify whether the interference were successful or unsuccessful.
They should never have that service to thank her for. Distrait as Jane
Prior’s manner was apt to be at this time, while she was accused of
being constantly in a brown study and laughed at because of it, there
was a dignity about her silent, austere self-restraint that made itself
dimly perceptible.
Jane had ceased to fret over the ambiguous circumstances in connection
with Miss Gray’s introduction to Mat Crabtree, which in the beginning
had so startled the listener. Whatever was the truth concerning
Berkshire and the gentleman and lady’s encounter or non-encounter
there, together with Miss Gray’s reasons for making a mystery of it,
the responsibility of that too was shifted from Jane’s back, and rested
on Mr. Crabtree’s broad shoulders. He had become accountable to his
friends for the knowledge he possessed, so far as they might become
implicated in its consequences. But if what people began confidently to
anticipate were to be fulfilled, the matter concerned himself much more
nearly than it concerned any other person. And Jane Prior was large
enough minded, and pure enough hearted, to be able to trust both Mat
Crabtree and Bennet Gray in the sequel.
An unthought-of and, in Jane’s mood, a vexatious interruption to the
object on which the girls were bent thrust itself in between them and
their visit to Oxford. Lambert Crabtree was Colonel of the Newton
Volunteers, and, as one among his many noisy bids for popularity,
he had established the practice of giving his men an annual jovial
entertainment, to which each volunteer could bring one of his friends.
Sometimes the entertainment had been a dinner, sometimes a railway
excursion, supplemented by abundant opportunities and means for
refreshment. This year it was to be a ball given in the Volunteer
Hall, with the services of the adjoining White Hart Inn called into
requisition.
For Lambert Crabtree’s credit it behoved his friends to support him in
what was sometimes called his noble generosity. The feminine element
in the entertainment this year also rendered it Susie’s affair, and
she had set her heart on its being a complete success. It would be
dreadful if her own family did not stand by her in her laudable wifely
exertions to do her husband honour. There were so many things against
her, she pleaded quite piteously, casting up her big dark eyes as if
she were appealing to Heaven to interpose on her behalf. It was a bad
time of the year for a ball, though it suited Lamb and the volunteers.
The member, on whom they might have depended for help, was up in town
in the heat of his duties at Westminster. Several families in the
neighbourhood had started earlier than usual, after an epidemic of
measles among the children, for their summer stay at the coast.
Painters had been in the Bank House, which had been running to seed and
calling in the most crying manner to be done up. Susie and Lamb and
the children had been cooped into corners and all but poisoned with
the smell of paint. The smell was there yet, and the whole house was
in disorder. She did not have it in her power to invite her friends
to come down for a week from town--though it was in the height of the
season--stay with her, attend the review, and make up a nice large
party for the ball, as a proper compliment from the colonel’s wife to
his troop. She had done what she could. She had gone evening after
evening to be present at drill. She had taken rooms in the White Hart
for any ladies with whom she could use the liberty of inviting them
for a single night, and then finding accommodation for them out of
her house. But the arrangement could neither be complimentary nor
comfortable--though the White Hart was charming as an old inn--and
naturally she had been disappointed in a good many of her guests. She
might make a tolerable muster on the stand at the review, but she was
very much afraid the attendance of her friends would fall short at
the ball. It would look like a slight to the poor dear men, who had
always been so good in presenting arms to her when she walked along the
line. It would do Lamb harm with them and with everybody--especially
since that low, pottering branch of a London bank had been opened in
the town. Fancy any bank except Crabtree’s Bank in Newton! She knew
a banker was a public servant, like a clergyman, or a physician, and
people expected a great deal at his hands.
Surely Susie might count on her own sister and Miss Gray--dear Miss
Gray--who was so obliging to her friends. She had probably not been
at many balls--they could hardly have come in her way--so that this
one, though it went without saying that it was of a mixed character,
might be quite a little treat for her. She, Susie, would try and settle
everything so as to suit the two young ladies from Redcot. She was
aware they were just starting for Oxford to give an account of their
studies and reap the fruit of them, in acquiring a right to put certain
letters after their names--was not that it? It would be a most imposing
conjunction, and the ambition to command it was meritorious in the
extreme. Her anxieties did seem those of a frivolous wretch beside
their aspirations. But what could she do? She was a married woman, and
must do her little best to keep up her husband’s dignity and please
him, poor soul! She would never dream of their appearing at the review,
but just for a couple of hours at the ball. She would not detain them
a minute longer than she could help, as they were to leave early the
next morning. But for the very reason that the ball would be the last
thing, even their books--if these were to be taken with them, though it
sounded like carrying coals to Newcastle--would be packed, and minds
like theirs were too superior to be unhinged by a poor piece of gaiety.
No, she was not jesting. She had never been further from jesting in her
life. She felt hurt that they should think she was laughing when she
was begging a tremendous favour of them. She would not ask her sister
and Miss Gray to do more than dress comfortably at home, drive straight
to the hall, dance a couple of dances or so, and, if the girls could
not stay for supper, they might drive right out to Redcot, and be back
by twelve o’clock. Any kind of evening dresses, even though they were
a little old-fashioned or soiled, would do for a volunteer ball. The
dear citizen soldiers were not hard to please, though she liked to
give them her best--of course it was a different thing where she was
concerned--their colonel’s wife, who belonged to them as Lamb did in a
way.
Jane Prior could not refuse to lend her countenance to Susie and her
husband in such a trifle, especially after Susie whispered aside to
her sister that there was only one reason which could reconcile her to
the absence of Jane and Miss Gray. Susie had a terrible fear that her
brother-in-law might expose his deplorable infatuation. He might dance
with Miss Gray, though he had said as far back as when Susie married
that his dancing days were over, and he had not danced for a century.
He might set all the laws of etiquette at defiance--he had always been
a bungler when he had to do with these very necessary rules--by taking
in Miss Gray instead of some officer’s wife to supper. The expression
of that apprehension decided the question for Jane. Susie’s importunity
prevailed with her sister whatever might be at its foundation. For
it remained doubtful what caused Mrs. Lambert Crabtree to be so very
urgent. It might be a determination on Susie’s part to get her own
way, which had always been a passion with her. Or she might have an
ardent desire to appear before the unappreciative Jane, and the more
appreciative Bennet, in the glory of the unapproachable dress Mrs.
Crabtree had provided for so humdrum and mixed a gathering as a Newton
volunteer ball. Or she might really be prompted by a principle of
policy in reference to Lambert Crabtree’s interests.
John Prior heard of the volunteer ball at his son-in-law’s expense
with the gloomy brow which had become habitual to him. To Mrs.
Prior’s secret disappointment there had been no lightening of the
gloom coinciding with the withdrawal of the borers from Ladslove.
‘Did the fellow tell me a parcel of lies about the shaky state of the
bank?’ John Prior asked himself. ‘I incline to think not, from sundry
disquieting symptoms that have come under my notice lately. I wish to
goodness people would take alarm and make themselves safe in time, if
there be time. Good heavens! Crabtree’s Bank coming to grief would mean
desolation far and wide round Newton. At the same time, for him to
serve up the bank difficulties so as to make them appear in the worst
light to me, in order to suit his own purpose, would be of a piece with
the rest of the scoundrel’s conduct.’
But Mr. Prior did not forbid the attendance of his daughter and her
friend at the festivity. He felt himself standing there gagged and
fettered, unable, it might be, to prevent a great public wrong, but
at least he would not precipitate it. He would not expose to the world
any more than he could help--any more than he had exposed already--the
terms on which he stood with Lambert Crabtree. What had occurred in the
clover-field by the Rats’ Ditch must remain for ever a secret between
the two men, even though its proclamation were to save the pockets of
Newton and the neighbourhood from being turned inside out.
The night before the volunteer ball Newton from the highest to the
lowest was astir, and engrossed with its preparations. One or two _bona
fide_ upholsterers, and a score of willing amateurs of both sexes and
every degree, were transforming the drill hall into a huge bower with
evergreens. Susie had commissioned such a superabundance from Redcot
and Haybridge, that not only were the stairs of the hall converted into
an avenue--the box, holly, yew, and ivy flowed out into the streets,
and littered both pavement and causeway there as with trophies strewn
in a conqueror’s path. The greenery afforded uncloying delight to
the small fry among the populace. They appropriated the spoil, and
straightway converted themselves, in all unconsciousness, into a highly
dramatic representation of miniature hosts advancing on haunted Birnam
and doomed Macbeth.
In the White Hart Inn a marvellous man-cook, come straight from London,
and dressed characteristically all in white like a ghost, flitted here
and there. He caused the servants to give him room while he performed
his incantations and displayed his achievements in jellied calves’
heads and pyramids of whipped cream, to match the iced champagne and
the claret cup for the cross table, which was to accommodate the cream
of the company. More substantial _pièces de résistance_, in roasts and
rounds, pies and puddings, well flanked by pale ale, black stout, fiery
sherry, and fierier gin, covered the long table running down from the
cross, destined for the mass of the guests.
Dressmakers, professional and private, were working with their hearts
in their seams, for their own hand as well as for their betters’
benefit.
There was a great addition of traffic at the station where Miss Gray
had made her first acquaintance with Newton six months before. But
the traffic was so thoroughly local, and belonged so entirely to the
volunteer movement, that any traveller outside the special cause
attracted less attention than usual.
It was a rainy evening, though the statement did not imply a
tempest--on the contrary, a soft summer rain, more full of promise than
of threat to the corn in the ear, the root crops in fresh green leaf,
the fruit beginning to be well set. Still the state of the weather
did not conduce to unnecessary travelling apart from the volunteer
movement. The volunteers indeed disdained to notice the weather when
there was a question of exhibiting their uniform; and the friends of
the willing soldiers liked to share in the exhibition. Both friends
and soldiers rushed to and from the nearest stations, though there
were few arrivals by the trains which did not stop every half-dozen
miles. It was from one of these ‘through’ trains, dashing in after ten
o’clock, when the station lamps--which in summer were thriftily dealt
with, and unless on great occasions like that of the ball, showed only
a glimmer--that a gentleman with no more luggage than the portmanteau
he carried in his hand, got out. Without looking round or asking his
way, or even giving up his ticket, he walked through the gateway. He
left the ticket collector, who was at that moment hailing a batch of
volunteers in the act of entering the station to wait for their train,
to account for his neglect of duty to the station-master, similarly
engaged in receiving another detachment of the country’s defenders.
The traveller who set the railway authorities at defiance, was a young
man, undersized, rather thick-set than slim, and at a single glance
almost grotesquely plain, under an unusual amount of tanning. The
bullet forehead, the shaggy eyebrows, the somewhat Tartar nose were a
singularly close replica of the forehead, brows, and nose of John Prior
as those might have been when he had just attained the five-and-twenty
years of young manhood, fairly emancipated from the last lingering
touches of boyhood. The full sensitive mouth might have been the same
also, but it was hidden in this case by a heavy dark brown moustache,
which, while it relieved the odd plainness of the features, and lent
them a certain dignity of vigorous young manhood, was also too weighty
for the thinness of the cheeks, and increased the bizarreness of the
face otherwise. The face, barring the moustache, was the face of John
Prior of Redcot grown young again; the figure, though stalwart enough,
was inferior to his, and lost the quality of distinction which his
amount of height conferred. This shorter, squatter figure was not that
of a weakling. The walk and general gait were firm and easy, like those
of a man who had been well trained, who might have come to the front in
the cricket-field, and even been the best dancer in a ball-room when
dancing and not lounging was the order of the day. In spite of these
reservations the figure was not elegant any more than the face was
handsome, and it was less striking for a figure than the face, with its
gurgoyle peculiarities, was for a face.
People had always thought and said that young Jack Prior, who was
so like his father bodily, bore not the smallest resemblance to
him mentally--in fact, that he carried his mother’s spirit in his
father’s person. Nothing was more bewildering than to detect the
kindly, unworldly, fanciful, and determinedly-cheerful attributes of
the one as they were expressed by traits which bore a very different
association in the other.
But to-night Jack Prior looked as splenetic as his father was fit to
do. In place of showing the pleasure which the young man might have
been expected to feel on his unexpected, unannounced return safe and
sound from his voyage to Australia; instead of displaying the liveliest
inclination to shake every woman by the hand and take every man by
the button-hole to exchange inquiries and congratulations, he looked
decidedly out of sorts and verging on sulkiness. It may as well be said
that this was a condition of mind remarkably foreign to the individual
in question. But, as not infrequently happens with sweet-tempered
mortals, wrath was no joke with Jack Prior, and tended to perpetuate
itself in a kind of mulish doggedness, the germs of which he might have
inherited from both father and mother. He did not seem inclined to
greet or be greeted by his neighbours, as he thrust his disengaged hand
down into his pocket, hunched up his shoulders in correspondence with
the action, so that the collar of his coat was nearly coming in contact
with the rim of his travelling cap, shouldered his portmanteau and
strode on. If any enemy such as Lambert Crabtree had seen Jack Prior
coming back in that mood, the assailant might have pointed to the lad
and cried, ‘The Prodigal’s return,’ with some apology in his bearing
for the slander.
As Newton was not Redcot--was, indeed, distant from it by a longish
drive, and had not been frequented to any great extent by Jack
Prior--above all, as the town was at that moment over head and ears
in its volunteers and their ball, the newcomer carried his point and
was not hailed and stopped while he pursued his way. It was not till
he was well quit of the station, and entering the street in which
the Volunteer Hall and the White Hart were situated, that he was
sufficiently roused from his bad humour to observe the festive element
in the town. ‘What the mischief is up?’ he asked himself more irritably
than sympathetically. ‘Has there been an election, and is the new
member coo-tooing the free and independent electors? Is the Duke dead,
and has the new Duke come to his kingdom? Oh! the volunteers, is it?’
Comprehending the situation as he approached the lit-up Volunteer Hall,
with its trail of evergreens, ‘then, of course, Susie and Crabtree
have their fingers in the pie.’ He hesitated. Before him lay the road
through the outskirts of the town to Redcot, which he could reach
either by taking a trap from the White Hart, if an available trap were
procurable at such a season, or by walking. He was a good walker, and
it would be a relief to his hot young blood and the trouble on his mind
to tramp through the wet and the friendly shrouding darkness all these
miles.
But in that case Jack Prior would not arrive at home till after
midnight. He would have to ring up the house and alarm his mother--not
to say incense his father. No, Jack’s home-coming was not likely to be
so welcome, unless where his mother was concerned, for him to propose
to accomplish it with a ringing of bells.
On the other hand, Susie, unless her house were full--and if it were
he had not gone so far without being able to rough it if she would let
him--could put him up for the night, and tell him all that was going
on. Crabtree, whatever he was, and he was no favourite with Jack,
did not fail in hospitality, and Susie would dispense the news. Jack
had met with one ‘extinguisher,’ as he called it, since he landed in
England, and it had not only ruffled him to an unwonted extent, it had
shaken his faith in what else might befall him. He had missed all the
last letters from Redcot, and he had heard nothing of his family for a
long time. If things had gone wrong in other quarters, why not here
also? How did he know what changes might not have come to pass in the
interval? A sudden consternation and cowardice seized upon the young
man of another sort from the mere reluctance to encounter his father’s
bitter disapproval.
Jack Prior’s steps grew slower and heavier as he drew near the High
Street, at right angles from Market Street. Crabtree’s Bank and the
Bank House, with the church and a cluster of the best houses in the
town, were situated at the aristocratic end of the High Street. Should
Jack Prior shirk for this night the ordeal that lay before him? Should
he decline to face the worst without being forewarned and forearmed?
Should he take refuge with Susie, who would at least be gushingly
good-natured and amusing? Susie was not like Jane, who sat upon a
fellow as if she were his senior instead of his junior, and had, to
say the least, a maiden aunt’s right to find fault. He could tell Jane
that cleverer women than she was had overlooked his lack of brains or
application, or whatever it was, and listened to him in spite of his
ugliness, and given him their best.
Ah! had they--had the one clever woman whom he had been generalising
really given him her best, or had she, on second thoughts, changed
her mind and drawn back in time? He was obliged to confess it looked
like it after his interview with that prim young woman--that born
schoolmistress, that ready-made spinster, Miss Burton. How on earth
could Bennet pin her faith to such a stick, and lavish her confidence
on a stickler for school forms and social etiquette? He had burst in
on Miss Burton on his way south, after leaving his luggage at Hull, to
ascertain at once--as he had a right, and she knew he had a right to
know--whether Miss Gray had left Berkshire. She had thought it probable
she might do so when he last saw her, and in that case he wished
to learn where she was to be found, in order to prevent vexatious
mistakes and delays. And Miss Burton had got red, and hummed and hawed,
and been as much flurried as if she was Miss Gray, and had yet to be
made acquainted with his intentions. She had managed to make him feel
that it was an unwarrantable indiscretion for him to be there at all in
the schoolmistress’s reception-room. She had hurried him away without
a particle of satisfaction. Satisfaction! It had been anything save
that. She had admitted that Miss Gray was no longer in Berkshire, but
she had refused, absolutely refused, knowing what she knew, to give
him Bennet’s present address till she had time to think and consult
the person principally concerned. This detestable Miss Burton had been
agitated, as if there was sufficient cause for what appeared to him her
unpardonable reticence. Moreover, she had prevented Jack from seeing
her father, who, as he was a man, might have listened to reason. (Jack
would have come nearer the truth if he had put it--would have been
more likely to see the difference between the spirit and the letter of
an obligation.)
In the end Jack Prior had departed from the girls’ school half-stunned
and wholly exasperated and affronted, without condescending to give
Miss Burton any hint of what was to be his next destination.
The interview had only taken place that afternoon. The young man, who
had been travelling for the greater part of the day, had not recovered
from the effects of it, or made up his mind what step he should take to
procure the information Miss Burton had most unjustifiably denied him.
He had come on to Newton and there the question forced itself upon him,
should he go straight to Redcot and perhaps receive another blow--be
told that somebody was ill or----. Jack in the middle of his dudgeon
did not say the other word, or have recourse to Susie, who would
prepare him for what he had to expect. If nothing was wrong--what
could be wrong? it was only his disturbed consciousness which fancied
that something must be the matter--his sister would smooth him down and
entertain him for the night.
Jack paused irresolute. The man or woman who hesitates is lost, says
the adage. If ever human being was so lost it was Jack Prior. At that
moment two ways lay before him in more senses than one, for that was
the turning point, not only of his journey for the night, but of the
journey of his life. He chose, as so many of us choose, the nearer,
shorter, easier way, and suffered for it, as so many of us suffer for
listening to the arguments of sloth and cowardice. The choice had been
his, and if he had made it differently, if he had elected to play the
braver, truer part, his history would have been different, he would
have been saved the punishment which sooner or later overtakes the
sinner. But with the punishment he would have missed the lesson which
scotched the snakes’ heads of sloth and cowardice which beset him, then
and for ever, and changed a loveable, vacillating lad into a man strong
to bear and to do.
CHAPTER IV.
MRS. LAMBERT CRABTREE’S RECEPTION OF HER BROTHER.
A strange servant opened the hall-door of the somewhat stately portico
to the Bank House in answer to Jack Prior’s knock. As if he was
destined to be overwhelmed with strangeness on his arrival, he was
shown into the newly-painted hall, up the newly-painted staircase, into
the newly-painted, freshly-arranged drawing-room. It was harmonious
and dark in grey greens, olive browns, dead gold, and wrought brass,
not unpleasant to contemplate first and last, but making him feel as
if he had never been in the house before. Susie might only have taken
possession of the house that day, with nothing save the fundamentals
in the public rooms set in order.
The mistress of the house was absent, out at the drill-hall, if Jack
had been told. On the whole, he did not look a suspicious character, so
the servant who had answered his inquiry left him, though the hour was
not a canonical hour for any visitor, save the habitués of the house,
to wait for Mrs. Crabtree’s return. Jack had time to fret and fume,
turn over the newspapers and club books, wonder if the children were in
bed so that he might not ask for their company, speculate what Lambert
Crabtree did with himself in the evenings, and question what on earth
Susie could be about abroad at this hour. She could not be at church,
because it was too late for any service, even for choral practising;
besides, Mrs. Lambert Crabtree held advanced views which dispensed with
all save the most perfunctory church attendance. She could hardly be
out at dinner, else the servant would have mentioned it. He had time
to doubt and feel remorseful, to think he had better have gone on to
Redcot, faced his father’s caustic coldness, and given the fragments
of the first evening to the mother. He owed it to her. He was giving
her cause to reproach him, though certainly the reproach would never be
uttered.
At last Susie came in, still wearing her hat and light summer mantle.
The same servant who had admitted Jack had told her mistress that there
was a gentleman--a stranger--in the drawing-room who had asked to see
her. Susie had made a little _moue_ as if her patience was worn out.
She had come up the stairs slowly as if she felt tired, and was turning
over in her mind how she might dismiss the intruder most plausibly and
urbanely, for Susie was plausible and urbane if she was anything.
She must have been very wearied and worried, apprehensive of fresh
fatigue and trouble, for she entered the room quietly, with almost
an intermission of her wonted graces. In place of casting a sidelong,
languishing look at Jack from her lovely eyes, she darted out sharp
glances from under her lowered eyebrows straight at him. The servant
had lit the lamp, and of course Susie knew her brother instantly,
though he had grown a large moustache and was tanned considerably
deeper than she had ever seen him. With a little spontaneous shriek of
delight, she sprang to him and clutched at him rather than clung to him.
‘Jack, you here! come back to stay with me?’ she cried so breathlessly
that her accents were broken with joy.
Jack had entertained an impulsive liking rather than a deliberate
preference for his sister Susie. What man could refrain from admiring
and seeking to cherish so beautiful, pleasant, and dependent a
creature? But the truth in Jack Prior had been enough to inspire an
uneasy, mortifying suspicion, even when this vision was most agreeable,
that the pleasantness was too sweet to be wholesome, and did not
ring true. However, the most sceptical could not have doubted that
Mrs. Lambert Crabtree was glad to see her brother. The proof of her
affection coming at such a time not only helped to restore Jack’s
self-respect, it touched him keenly. ‘Thanks, Sue,’ he said quickly as
he kissed her; ‘it is good that somebody is happy to have me back.’
‘Happy!’ cried Susie enthusiastically, and there was actually moisture
glistening in her fine eyes. ‘Happy is not the word. I am enchanted, my
dear boy; and I shall have you all to myself, for Lamb has been called
up to town on business this very afternoon. Horrid, isn’t it, with all
this volunteering going on? However, he hopes to get down to the ball
at least. But you will stay with me, and take care of me, and keep me
company, dear.’ She heaped up the affectionate, appealing words. ‘I
shall not be obliged to have in that poor, tiresome, Mr. Parsons,’ and
an aggrieved, harassed look came into her face at the mere mention of
the official’s name. ‘You know Roger,’ mentioning the man-servant, ‘who
has been slaving all day at that blessed hall, sleeps in the bosom of
his family above the coach-house. We have always to get Mr. Parsons to
stay in the house--not to leave it to unprotected females, on account
of the bank--when Lamb is from home. I cannot avoid inquiring if Mr.
Parsons is made comfortable, and bidding him good night, when he will
call me “ma’am,” and detain me with long-winded speeches about giving
me trouble and being in my way. Bless the man! on ordinary occasions
I smile and say, “Not at all, I am the obliged person. The interests
of the bank are sacred. I would not endanger them for worlds,” and
think no more about him, beyond bidding the maids look after the worthy
creature. But to-night, when one is worn off one’s feet already, with
this miserable ball, it is the last straw which breaks the unfortunate
camel’s back.’ That was settled.
‘And now, Jack dear, what have you had to eat, or rather, what will
you eat?’ urged Susie. ‘Did you dine early or late, or not at all?
For I know you are a foolish, careless boy in not making it a duty to
look after yourself. Shall we have a cosy supper together, whatever
and whenever the dinner was? What do you say to a veal cutlet or a
salmon steak? I am so sorry we cannot have a game pie, but you have not
forgotten my lobster salad, I hope?’ As she spoke she pulled off her
long gloves and laid aside her mantle and hat, putting them down on the
sofa beside her. She was left in the demi-toilet of a faint-coloured
thin evening gown, with sleeves reaching to the elbow and a square-cut
bodice finished with frills of lace. It was a pretty and becoming house
dress in itself, but the dimness of the colour seemed to be reflected
in her face, and to cause her warm and brilliant brunette complexion
to pale to a wan sallowness--the change in such a colour as hers when
from any cause it is blanched. In the same manner the softness of the
stuff of her gown resulting in lines almost as straight, and folds as
close as Jane patronised, exaggerated Susie’s smallness and slimness.
It made her appear for the moment almost meagre--a minute specimen of
humanity afflicted with a strange nervous springiness rather than a
perfectly-proportioned sylph gifted with exhaustless skimming grace and
an Atalanta swiftness of movement.
Jack observed the effect with a little vague surprise and regret,
and referred to it the next moment. He had been saying, ‘You are the
old woman, Susie, spoiling a fellow through his baser appetites.
Do you think I have been feasting on game pie and lobster salad in
the bush?’--when he broke off to add with brotherly, blundering,
plain-speaking, ‘But what have you been doing to yourself, little
woman? You are not up to the mark. Have you been ill, or what? You
might have lost your teeth and hair, and been as old as Crabtree--not
that he is bald and toothless--to see you to-night.’
Jack ought to have known that he could not have said anything more
certain to offend his sister, even though the speech was off-hand and
half in jest. But he was not prepared for the something more serious
than petulance, the passionate vexation and alarm in her voice when she
answered him. ‘What do you mean by speaking like this to me, Jack?’ she
protested. And the scarlet flush of her anger instantaneously recalled
the bloom that had gone for the time, while the swelling of the throat
and neck restored the roundness of the shrunk lines. ‘It is too bad.
You must be aware that I hate the idea of growing old and ugly. With
this incubus of a ball hanging over my head--when everybody will be
remarking upon my looks--after I have taken such pains, too, to be
myself--it is very unkind of you to tell me in this rude, abrupt way,
that you see how much I have fallen off of late.’
‘My dear Susie,’ remonstrated Jack, half amused, but still more
astonished and distressed, ‘you cannot think for a moment I meant to
hurt you. “Fallen off!” you are anything save fallen off now. You
are as red as a rose, and you look as if you were towering up to the
roof, a dragon ready to come down and crush a repentant sinner. “Old
and ugly!” What ridiculous bosh! When you are not thirty, and you
have always been--well, not a fright, Susie. Come, forget my speech,
which was not a compliment; but I am sure you have had compliments
enough from all the world--there, that is better as a specimen of
politeness--to dispense with them from me. How are they all at home?
Has the poor pater got over my lack of brains, sense, and go? Is the
mother still pretending to have no attention to spare from her quilts
and her novels, dear soul? What is Jane about with the little Woods?
How are Crabtree and the babies?’
Susie was not hard to appease; indeed, she made a half apology to
her brother for being touchy, explaining plaintively how much she had
been put about, what a great deal of thinking she had been obliged
to do within the last few weeks, between the painters in the Bank
House and the calling out of the volunteers. ‘Not a corner quite in
order, not a hole we could call our own till the tradesmen departed
finally with their brushes and pails yesterday. To think that I
have the Pierrepoints, mother and daughter, and Netty and Gerty and
May Allardyce all established in the White Hart Inn. Bertie and Ben
Girdlestone are there also. Ben saw me to my own door ten minutes ago.
I have just come from them, and I ought to have stayed with them. I
don’t deserve to be rewarded by a cosy supper and chat with you, Jack
dear, which will be so much nicer and more refreshing.’
Susie was as good as her word. After she had despatched a message to
Mr. Parsons, Lambert Crabtree’s head clerk, that his services would be
dispensed with, she ordered up everything that the heart of man could
desire for Jack’s bodily solace. She set herself to entertain him, and
when she had recovered from the fatigue she complained of, and the
affront he had inadvertently dealt her, she was her bewitching, amusing
self again.
‘Poor little thing, she has been done up, and was out of sorts, I
suppose, with all this fuss,’ Jack thought. ‘It is kind of her to exert
herself on my account. I did not give Susie credit for so much family
affection,’ he reflected remorsefully. But Jack did not approve; nay,
he was secretly aggrieved, and a good deal ‘riled’ by what might have
been called the irreverent affectionateness of the tone in which Susie
spoke of their father and mother’s foibles, and made good stories out
of pap-pa’s growls and close-fistedness and mam-ma’s weakness for
Tommy. Still, it was done so lightly and divertingly that Jack laughed
against his conscience, and could not put a stop to the raillery.
‘Let me see,’ said Susie, resting her two elbows on the table in
a free-and-easy fashion which had recently found favour in polite
society. In doing so she lifted up her slender arms--from which the
lace fell back, and supported her chin on the little clasped hands.
There sapphires and emeralds blazed in a style hardly in accordance
with the position of the wife of a local banker, even though she was a
Prior of Redcot, and he a Crabtree of Haybridge. ‘Where are we at?’ as
if she were speaking of their place in a book they were reading. ‘What
is the greatest event that has happened in your absence? Oh, I have it,
the advent of Janie’s idol, the Redcot governess.’
‘Is she such a stunner?’ asked Jack, clasping his hands behind his
head, smothering a yawn, and not exhibiting much curiosity.
‘Well, you know, I always say she’s not my style,’ explained Susie,
with her ingenuous coquettishness. ‘That makes me dispassionate,
but, on the other hand, it hinders me from being so appreciative as
I might have been even with a heart devoured by jealousy. She is
reckoned handsome, and she’s quite awfully clever--knows both Latin and
Greek--that goes without saying--and I daresay could
Solve a problem
In Euclid before she could speak.
What is of more consequence to her and to everybody,’ went on Susie,
with her affectation of cynicism, ‘she is perfectly well aware on which
side her bread may be buttered. If you will believe me, she has been
employing herself making up to my elderly brother-in-law, Mat, and I am
not at all clear that I may not have to welcome her as a sister-in-law,
one of these days, with all the grace I can muster.’
‘The plot is thickening and getting interesting,’ declared Jack, waking
up. ‘She must be a clever woman. Mat Crabtree of Haybridge is not a
bird to be caught with chaff.’
‘Oh! Mat has an idiotically soft side,’ said Susie, shaking her small
worldly-wise brown head, that had sometimes the pretty pert air of a
charmingly knowing linnet or hedge-sparrow. ‘And Miss Gray has “come
over him,” as Lamb says, where that vulnerable region is concerned.’
‘Miss Gray!’ muttered Jack, unlocking his fingers and letting his
arms drop, with so irrepressible a start that it was well for him the
drawing-room in the Bank House, in which the new chandeliers were
set with wax candles, furnished only a dim, religious light, most
æsthetically obscure. He was telling himself, in the same breath, what
a self-conscious ass he was. There was not a commoner name in England.
There were Grays and Grays of all shades, as his sister had said before
him, though the plagiarism was involuntary. What on earth should his
Miss Gray be doing here, at Redcot of all places in the world? His?
Was she his if there was a particle of truth in Susie’s outrageous
story--if Miss Burton had any tangible ground to go upon when she
refused him the information to which he was entitled, that very morning?
‘Where does this marvel come from?’ he steadied his nerves to ask, in
an odd voice which did not fail to strike on Susie’s quick ear.
‘Why do you inquire?’ she turned upon him. ‘Are you going in for a
share of her smiles? You men are so gregarious, that if one of you
leaps the hedge the rest are sure to follow, mad to see what the other
side is like. That is why widows are so popular. I always tell Lamb
that if he would do me the favour to make me a widow, even though I
should not be without encumbrances, I could have three times more
offers yet than I had to pick and choose from in my maiden days. Where
does Miss Gray come from? You don’t think she is such a fool as to
go about proclaiming that?’ answered Susie, laughing with the strain
of hardness in her laugh that sometimes prevailed till it spoilt its
melody. ‘Her crony Jane told me that the father Gray was an attorney in
London--respectable enough, you see, and may judiciously be manipulated
till it sounds like a barrister, a sergeant-at-law, anything up to the
Attorney-General.’
London, like Gray, was a wide word, Jack was reminding himself
desperately, and it contained enough limbs of the law to form a
Briareus.
CHAPTER V.
SUSIE’S DESCRIPTION OF MISS GRAY.
‘Can’t you give me a clearer idea what Mat Crabtree’s flame is like, if
you cannot swear precisely to her antecedents?’ Jack pressed hoarsely,
with a feint of carelessness.
‘Give me a moment,’ begged Susie, sitting silent afterwards with her
eyes on her lap, as if trying to conjure up the salient points in the
lady’s attractions. In reality she was saying to herself, ‘Mr. Jack
has been in mischief again. It is highly improbable that he can have
come across Miss Gray, but he may have met with somebody in similar
circumstances, who may easily have proved too much for him. Mamma’s boy
may have left a wife--the family must still be in the future--behind
him in Australia, or why not at the railway station here? His coming
first to me instead of going to Redcot was rather incomprehensible.
Well, pap-pa will not be very sweet to Mrs. Jack when she appears on
the scene. I don’t think she’ll find quarters at Redcot. What a fool
Jack must have been! and there he sits staring at the wall, gulping
down what he has on his mind. What a mercy he is not a girl! Ugliness
doesn’t signify much in men; women don’t want rivals. Lamb never was
an Adonis, but he has thews and sinews, while poor Jack is short as
well as ugly--ugly enough to frighten babies when he is in this mood.
As like pap-pa as two peas, but not the more likely to agree on that
account. I wonder if the disagreement, and whatever trouble Jack is
in--he is pretty sure to be in some mess--could be any good to us now?
If we promised to back him through everything, whether he would not
help us and be of use--only he is such a stupid boy when there is
such need! But perhaps there will be no need after all. Lamb goes from
one extreme to another, and likes to play the wolf and terrify me,
poor little Red Riding Hood, needlessly, sometimes. He may come down
to-morrow, and say it has all blown over, as he has said before.’
These thoughts had crossed Susie’s mind with the rapidity of lightning.
Now she looked up, and apparently gave the result of her cogitations
with her usual vivacity.
‘A daughter of the gods!
Divinely tall and most divinely fair,’
she quoted, laughingly; ‘in sober prose, not so tall as Jane, about
the middle height, and not fair at all in the sense of a blonde.
Brown-haired, hazel-eyed, broad browed, straight nosed, fresh coloured,
with good teeth but too square a jaw. Not bad style but not much of it.
A comely young women in rude health, who might have been a milkmaid or
a simple squiress, like mam-ma, if she had not been a bluestocking
some shades lighter than Janie, and not half such a prig.’
There was a pause in the semi-darkness.
‘Miss Alice Gray must be a lucky young woman with such a bodily and
mental physique,’ said Jack at last; ‘ain’t there an old song with her
name in it?’
‘I don’t know; but our Miss Gray, as shop-people say, is not an Alice.
She signs herself “B. Gray,” and mam-ma told me that B. stood for the
surname Bennet.’ Jack rose from his chair precipitately and began to
walk backwards and forwards on the side of the room which was most in
the shade, and to stand with his back to Susie, looking out at one
or other of the windows, which, as they commanded the lower part of
the garden, presented only the rainy sky and the hardly-discernible
flower-beds for his inspection. His heart was now throbbing like a
paddle wheel, now standing still; his face was red with rage and white
with pain by turns; he was hot and cold in swift alternations. He
could not sit still and face Susie’s scrutiny. He must get up, or die,
or tell everything.
Susie seemingly took no notice of what might be colonial manners,
taken on with Jack’s acknowledged facility for picking up unprofitable
acquirements. She went on with her chat. ‘You will see the young woman
at the ball to-morrow night. Of course, you will go to the volunteer
ball. It is quite as much my ball as it is Lamb’s, and you must do it
honour. You will be a lion--the newly-returned traveller. You will
dispute the _pas_ with the beautiful Redcot governess--she has risen
into a beauty on the score of her success--who is going to make a
marriage above her in station, having captivated that incorrigible old
bachelor, Mat Crabtree of Haybridge.’
‘I fear I can’t,’ stammered Jack, like a man who had well drunk.
Indeed, though he had never been accused of the vice of drunkenness,
Susie was tempted for a second to suspect him of it. ‘I am too modest.’
‘Oh, no, you are not. You will go, Jack dear. Now that I think of it,’
cried Susie, full of zeal to inaugurate a new enterprise, ‘do cut
him, Mat, out, just to oblige me. He deserves it; he is good game--a
man old enough to have had a grown up daughter. To throw over little
Piers!--he ought to be ashamed of himself. But that sort of girl is apt
to lose her head with her greed, she never knows when she is well off.
She will snatch at another chance--you are not a better match than old
Mat, but then you are young, and the son of her employer. I don’t say
sacrifice yourself--not for worlds--I would not be so treacherous to
my family. But draw her out, play off your admiration at first sight.
She is probably mad on making conquests. Get her to flirt with you. Mat
would not forgive that, he is as prudish as an old maid about women’s
behaviour. I don’t know what I should have done if he had been Lamb.’
‘No man would stand such behaviour,’ objected Jack, roughly. ‘But I
can’t, Susie; I’m too honest,’ the last word said almost with a groan.
‘No,’ exclaimed his sister, ‘not when you will be conferring a public
benefit by warning off other young women like Miss Gray from stealing
a march upon unsuspecting families. Men are so unprotected--so open
to attack--yet I don’t suppose Mat is so purblind as to be beyond
enlightenment. You may open Jane’s eyes too; sisters may be brought to
see to a wonderful distance when their brothers are the unconscious
operators. It will only be for a night, and she is really a handsome,
agreeable girl, if you can swallow a walking dictionary. After
to-morrow night I am afraid it will be too late for this reason--the
two learned ladies, with the grizzled victim Mat in their train, are
to start the next morning for Oxford. It is the thing now for women to
take degrees instead of men, my child,’ with a wicked glance over her
shoulder at Jack. ‘Unfortunately, Mat took his ages ago; he cannot
undo the deed; but he is so willing that the future Mrs. Mat should
have her innings and share his honours, that he is going down with the
girls to see justice done. He has secured his old lodgings in St. Giles
Road for Jane and Miss Gray. By-the-bye, they were your old lodgings,
too, where I flatter myself I worked sad havoc among the undergraduates
more than once at Commem. Don’t you remember? I have no doubt Mat’s
proposal will be made in due form, and most appropriately among
academic groves.’
‘There may be two at a bargain-making. I think I’ll take your advice,
Susie,’ said Jack, with flaming face, furious eyes, and a harsh laugh
as he turned round. ‘I’ll go to your ball, and have what you call my
innings. But you must give me quarters here till the ball. I cannot
walk over to Redcot and have it out with them there first. The mother,
God help her, would not let me go so soon, and, if I’m to do such
damage on the spot, I ought to flash on the pair like a meteor, I take
it.’ He spoke foolishly, almost incoherently, but Susie caught at the
proposal.
‘Oh yes, Jack, stay with me, darling,’ she implored as when she had
come in without any expectation of finding her brother. ‘Help me with
the wretched ball and all the rest. They need not know that you have
come, out at Redcot. They will have enough of you since you have
returned to settle at home, no doubt. They need not grudge you to poor
me for a day or two--Lamb away, and everything. Jane and Miss Gray are
so occupied with their studies that they will not be in Newton till the
evening, and then they drive straight to the ball, and straight home
again when they have had enough of the thing. If you really want it not
to be known that you are here,’ continued Susie, breathlessly, her eyes
sparkling with her swift scheming and fondness for the manœuvring--even
when it was not wanted, which Jane hated, ‘you can stay in the house
all the morning. But mind, I don’t pledge myself that you will lie
_perdu_, since there are hundreds of chances against it, and birds
of the air carry tales. Only I’ll do what I can to humour you, for,
oh, dear, dear, you have lifted a load from my mind, you jewel of a
brother!’
‘It is well when a fellow can be accommodating,’ said Jack, dryly, ‘and
can kill two birds with one stone.’
After Susie had bidden Jack good night she came back, put her two hands
on his shoulder, and looked wistfully in his face. These two members of
one family were totally unlike; but because of their very unlikeness,
and also because they were brother and sister, and not two brothers or
two sisters, they had been happy together in many a light-hearted hour
of the past. Was there compunction in Susie’s woman’s breast as she
looked into the homely young face, with the weariness and trouble in
it, which made it look, for the moment, so much more like her father’s
than it had ever looked before? Had she a passing yearning simply to
comfort Jack, returned from his wanderings and come first to her before
he had gone to his mother? Did she relent in her half-defined purpose
to make gain of his trouble, and employ it to render more secure the
tottering plank on which she might have to cross a yawning gulf, not
caring though Jack, too, were dragged down with her to perdition?
What Susie did say when she opened her mouth was, ‘Now, Jack, speak the
truth. Is it your candid opinion that to have things on your mind--your
conscience, if you will--to be forced to keep secrets you never can
tell the world, must make you haggard and hideous, and cause all your
good looks to go off before your time?’
‘Oh! confound good looks!’ cried poor Jack, becoming worse mannered
than ever. ‘Who cares for good looks unless fools of women? A morsel of
heart is worth all the good looks in the world. What do I know of the
interesting subject? Nobody can pretend it is in my line,’ with a sneer
that only half hid an ancient soreness. ‘You have had your share and
mine too, you grasping individual,’ he said more lightly, ‘and it has
made you a conceited little wretch for your pains.’
Next morning, having tossed and tumbled through a miserable night,
Jack abruptly demolished the flimsy fabric of a stratagem which Susie
had reared, and to which he had consented the night before. He was not
going to the volunteer ball. It was high time that he and some other
people, who should be nameless, had done with balls. For his part he
was sick of them. No, he would not go in morning dress, and he could
not send out to Redcot for his clothes without letting his people know
that he had come, and was staying in the neighbourhood, and so giving
fresh offence in that quarter. But he would tell his sister what he
would prefer to do, if she would let him. He did not care to go to
Redcot without a farther notion of how the wind blew in reference to
his father. He (Jack) would like to have a word with Jane first. He
would be glad of a day’s rest and respite, for he was about done for;
but next morning he could take a run down to Oxford, catch up the party
from Redcot, get out of Jane what he wanted to hear, and make up his
mind there what he ought to do. After all, he wound up grimly, he might
be of some service in preventing the proposal among the academic groves
which Susie had predicted. Jack was sulky again, contradictory and
cross, in a mood which, though rare, was not altogether unprecedented
with him.
One might have thought that Mrs. Crabtree would have been grievously
disappointed by this frustration of her benevolent intentions and
high moral aims--to wit, the rescue of a gentleman of mature years
incapable of looking after himself from the snare into which he had
fallen, together with the exposure and disarming for all time to come
of a young woman found guilty of a too vaulting ambition. Arguing from
Susie’s zeal the evening before, it would seem as if the weight of her
vexation at its being baulked should have been considerable. Above
all, one might have fairly expected Susie to be exceedingly piqued by
the necessity for that word with Jane, to which Jack confessed after
she--Susie--had expended upon him ever so many words. But the check
came when she was too much engaged to resent it or protest against it.
She had a telegram from her husband that he could not come down till
night--if then, he would make a great push, just to show his face at
the ball, but he must leave within a couple of hours and return to town.
‘All the affairs of the volunteers, supper and speeches included,
seem to fall upon me,’ Susie complained. She was overwhelmed with
obligations. She was only too glad to have Jack in the rear to fall
back upon. He need fear no visitors, for the Bank House was positively
deserted in the general festivity. Everyone knew it had been given
over to painters, and that she was receiving all her guests at the
White Hart. It was dreadfully awkward, but what could she do? And as
she had said, she was only too glad to have Jack to come home to, and
consult and to keep with her another night as the male guardian of
the place instead of that depressing Mr. Parsons. ‘Well, do as you
please, Jack,’ was the _carte blanche_ she accorded him at last; and
though she spoke in the pathetic, dependent way which was a habit
of hers, at times, she had recovered completely from the signs of
over-exertion and strain which she had shown the evening before. She
was almost radiant in her alertness, flying here and there, the moving
spirit of the scene, her eyes beaming, her cheeks glowing, her mind
working with marvellous quickness, precision, _finesse_. It was as if
excitement suited her, and she found in it the most powerful, subtle,
and exquisite of stimulants.
As for poor, distrustful, credulous Jack, with poison working in his
mind and despair knocking at his heart, he hung about the Bank House
drawing-room and garden, playing languidly with the children, smoking
innumerable cigars, exchanging a word with Susie when she darted in
occasionally, but speaking to no one else, and religiously abstaining
from quitting the place, or even from looking out of the front windows.
For in the middle of his selfish wrath and grief the thought smote
him sharply every now and then that he would be doing ‘the mother’ an
unpardonable wrong if he let her learn his return from any mouth save
his own.
CHAPTER VI.
JACK PLAYS THE SPY.
Jane Prior and Miss Gray were dressing in their several rooms for the
volunteer ball at Newton. Jane had put off the necessary duty to the
last moment, but, while she went about it reluctantly, she accomplished
it with characteristic despatch. However, she had not acted on Susie’s
accommodating suggestion that any old-fashioned soiled evening dress
might do for the occasion. Jane had too much self-respect to be a
sloven, though she had a fancy for being severely plain in her attire.
She was plain to-night, in a quite simple white gown, with no ornament
except the crimson flowers in her hair and bosom. But the plainness
suited her wonderfully. Had the red flowers been absent she would have
looked like a vestal virgin, or Norma ere she was wooed and won and
undone. Even the red flowers in Jane’s breast and hair had something
earnest in their depth of colour--something of the solemnity of a
sunset. The hue recalled the words, ‘angry and brave,’ which George
Herbert applied to it. Jane was not angry, but she was brave with a
good and true woman’s courage not to fail in what was required of
her--to be just, generous, magnanimous in whatever trial she had to
encounter and overcome.
Jane’s toilet was so soon made that her mother--with no tremor shaking
her from a presentiment of who was at Newton--coming to help to
dress her daughter, and bringing her jewel-cases with her in order
to ask Jane to choose what she liked best among their contents, was
disappointed to find herself too late. ‘I am all ready, mother, thank
you; but I think I am better without ornaments. They don’t suit this
dress; you see I have these flowers, and jewels would not harmonise
with the flowers, as Susie would tell you if she were here. We may
safely leave jewels to her; we may be sure she will have enough.’
Mrs. Prior hesitated. Then she went on, with Tommy waddling at her
heels as if he, too, had an interest in the toilets. In spite of his
canine sagacity Tommy, as well as his mistress, remained profoundly
unconscious of whose footsteps were sounding fitfully in the near
distance. The mistress of the house, with her velvet-lined morocco
cases still in her hand, knocked at Miss Gray’s door, and was admitted
gladly and gratefully. Bennet had committed the extravagance of having
a dress from town. The gown was not sufficiently fine to attract
attention; it was not so choice as the delicate plush at which she
had gazed ruefully on the evening of her arrival at Redcot. Still the
creation did its artiste credit. It was a charming lacy, feathery,
peachy-coloured composition, in which the fresh youthful bloom of the
wearer was set off to perfection.
The moment Mrs. Prior entered, she cried out with delight, ‘What a
pretty dress, my dear! I suppose I must not say how pretty you look in
it, but it is true, nevertheless,’ while Tommy sniffed his approbation.
‘I am so happy you like it,’ said Bennet, looking happy indeed. ‘It is
so nice to have you look at it and praise it. It is so kind of you to
come up. I was just wondering whether I might go down and show myself,
though I am afraid I am not worth looking at, and we shall all be
terribly outshone to-night by Mrs. Crabtree. Ah! here is Tommy come to
pay me a visit and see what I am like in a ball-dress. He has no nursie
to carry him off to bed like poor Ally; as for Tom and Sam they have
been sleeping like tops for a couple of hours. What, begging, sir! Is
it water? No, I am afraid it is chocolate. I must give him one, just
one, Mrs. Prior, when he has mounted the stairs to call on me.’
‘You are too good to him. I am afraid he is a little greedy, poor old
fellow--he has so few pleasures now; but you will spoil your pretty
dress if you kneel down on it,’ said Mrs. Prior, shaking her head, but
very open by force of contrast to the delicate attention to Tommy. She
hesitated a little, struggling with her constitutional shyness; which
always became conspicuous when she proposed to confer a favour. She
opened a little nervously the jewel cases, exposing their not very
extensive contents. ‘I have been wondering whether I have anything
which you are without that you would care to wear,’ she said. ‘Jane has
refused the loan, but you may like something here, though I am afraid
the sets are all old-fashioned.’
Bennet did not so much draw back as shrink back.
‘Oh, no,’ she cried, with a gasp and flush of shame and distress. ‘I
cannot take anything of yours--I could not bear to wear it.’
‘Of course there is no occasion for it, if you do not like it,’ Mrs.
Prior acquiesced hastily, evidently hurt by the refusal and the manner
in which the refusal was given. ‘I know some people do not care to
appear in borrowed plumes,’ the elder woman went on, with a forced
laugh to get rid of the awkwardness; ‘but I had already offered these
to my daughter,’ Mrs. Prior added the next instant, feeling compelled
to defend herself, ‘so that there need not have been any thought of
offence.’
‘I am not offended; if you will believe me, I never was further from
being offended. Don’t misunderstand me, dear Mrs. Prior,’ implored
Bennet, in her agitation. ‘It is not that. Do you suppose I should not
be proud to wear anything of yours--your old slippers, if they would go
on my feet. It was only because I thought you might regret--you might
accuse me of having taken advantage----’
Miss Gray stopped, unable to say any more.
Mrs. Prior’s brow cleared at once. She imagined Miss Gray hinted at Mr.
Crabtree’s attentions and at the probability that the Priors might not
approve of them.
‘No, indeed,’ she said with kind emphasis, ‘you may depend upon it I
shall never regret lending you anything of mine or accuse you of taking
advantage of that or of any other small mark of my regard I have ever
given you. I wish you to make the best of everything. I desire your
happiness above all things--almost as if you belonged to me, and I am
not without the hope of being permitted to witness it.’
Bennet was mystified now, and stood staring with lips apart and breast
heaving. Could Mrs. Prior have learnt the truth? Had Jack written to
his mother? Was this her way--modest and tender it was sure to be--of
granting her forgiveness and bestowing her blessing?
For a moment it hung in the balance whether Bennet would not act on the
strong impulse which had laid hold on her; whether she would not steal
her arms round Mrs. Prior’s neck, and with hidden face appeal to her
as ‘mother’--Jack’s mother, who was already in her good motherliness
replacing the mother whom Bennet had lost when a child?
But too much was at stake to be risked on an impulse, and before it was
fully entertained the sudden flash of hope had faded. Mrs. Prior, in
place of waiting as might have been expected for such a movement, was
already turning away from Bennet, and placidly examining the cases she
held.
‘Now, which shall it be?’ she proceeded calmly, as she lifted up
article after article. ‘This cross or one of the necklets or a
bracelet? The whole set might be conspicuous, but do you fancy any of
these? Young ladies don’t wear brooches nowadays, but I used to be fond
of this heart,’ holding up a little gold heart transfixed by an arrow,
‘and it might fasten one of these knots of riband or sprays of white
blossom.’
‘Yes, if you will be so good--the little brooch,’ murmured Bennet, not
recovered from her burst of feeling.
‘It was John Prior’s first gift to me,’ said Mrs. Prior, looking at
the trinket with pensive interest as she prepared to fasten the pin in
Bennet’s dress.
‘Then please don’t put it in,’ objected Bennet in renewed trouble. ‘It
is far too precious. I would rather not have the responsibility.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs. Prior, shaking off her pensiveness as she
persisted in fastening the brooch. ‘There, it is quite secure. I do
not remember its coming loose once. It is not a bad omen--we must all
expect failures and shortcomings--but the sign of the true love of an
honest man can never be a bad omen.’
Bennet only looked the sweeter because of that perplexing passage of
arms between her and Mrs. Prior before the girls started. Bennet’s
fluttering heart lent a softness to her whole aspect. The charm which
old-fashioned writers were fond of descanting on under the term
‘sensibility’ was in her varying colour, her eyes, more frequently
cast down than usual, the tender curves of her lips. Her heart felt
very warm beneath the quaint little brooch which had been John Prior’s
first gift to his love, and under the locket which had been another
John Prior’s first gift to his love. Surely the two gifts were well
met on that kindly bosom. Nobody looking at Bennet Gray that night
could fail to see that she was a very happy, very lovely girl, and that
there was a meaning in her happiness and loveliness--the meaning which
constitutes a woman’s earthly bliss.
But Bennet was not the queen of the Newton Volunteer Ball. What she
had said proved true. Susie far outshone all rivals. Any person in
search of mere beauty would not look twice at another woman when Mrs.
Lambert Crabtree was by. Nay, there was more than beauty in Susie on
this occasion. There was an indefinable fascination as she stood near
the door of the room receiving her guests unsupported by a foil in
the shape of her big red-faced husband, but eagerly backed by every
man in his troop, to which she was doing honour. She outshone herself
to-night. It was not in her dainty, exquisite Titania size, or in her
glowing beauty, beside which every other woman appeared colourless
and insipid. It was not in her cooing, caressing ways, alternating
with the summer lightning of her playful wit and malice. It was not
in her magnificent dress, which everybody who did not pronounce it
glorious, called utterly absurd for a volunteer ball. To be particular,
Susie wore a gown which had some of the burning glory of fire in its
rich nasturtium colour, toned down, as in the flower, by depths of
brown. Instead of short sleeves, the white arms were only encircled
below the shoulders by long trailing wreaths of orange and brown
nasturtium flowers, with their cool, round green leaves. In opposition
to Jane’s theory, Susie’s neck and wrists were glittering with jewels,
before which Mrs. Prior’s modest sets would have sunk into utter
insignificance. Susie’s very hair was powdered with diamond dust, so
that every time she turned her shapely head a thousand tiny sparkles
came into play. But it was not in her dress any more than in her grace
and beauty. It was more in the bearing--a certain imperious challenge
and triumph of defiance--a faint reflection of what dazzled and blinded
old corrupt civilisations and barbarous tribes in the beautiful, sleek
traitresses and human tigresses of history and myth. The unholy spell
arrested and held fast the spectators, who did not pause to analyse the
secret, from which they would most of them have recoiled if they had
suspected its nature. But they contented themselves with saying there
never was such a wonderful little woman as Mrs. Lambert Crabtree.
Even Lambert Crabtree, though he must have been tolerably used to his
wife’s fascinations by this time, showed himself anew impressed by
them, as he came in close upon supper for his brief stay. He loomed
immense in his volunteer’s uniform, in spite of the fact that uniforms
have long been at a discount in a ball-room. His large, light goggle
eyes were lit up with admiration when they fell upon the entrancing
vision. He went up to his wife’s side, and spoke for her ear alone.
‘You are in high feather to-night; that’s right. You are a beauty and
no mistake, Sue, and, what is better, you are a brick.’
‘Do you think so?’ she asked, sharply, as if the lateness of his
arrival or something in his speech provoked her. She turned a white
shoulder to him, and spoke over it--‘What I am I owe to you, Lamb.’ But
there was no gratitude in her voice; for the second time it was hard
and cold, and cutting like a knife.
To Bennet’s surprise Jane Prior danced a great deal in a somewhat
stately, steady, grave way, as if she were going through with a duty
she was bound to perform. Her popularity was not entirely personal; she
was the hostess’s sister--she was a Prior of Redcot, the last unmarried
daughter; but there was no doubt that Jane also made an impression as a
fine-looking girl, when it came to that, with a repose about her which
Susie, in her brilliance, lacked. And Jane did not seem to desire to
shirk her obligations. She was very often on the floor, the consequence
being that she could not interfere with the arrangements of the sitters.
Bennet did not dance nearly so often, though she might have had plenty
of introductions. Her remaining seated frequently was not due to her
being a stranger, but to her being commonly attended by Mat Crabtree.
He did not dance with her, or with anybody else for that matter,
thus showing a due sense of his weight of years. But he betrayed a
considerable inclination to drop into the seat next to Miss Gray and
talk to her. If his sister-in-law had found leisure to think over
the matter, it might have struck her as fully more compromising than
dancing once or twice with the young lady, nay, or even than taking
her in to supper--which, in fact, he summed up the impropriety of his
behaviour by doing.
What might have been looked for under the circumstances happened.
Many comments were made on the conspicuous association of the couple,
and on the rumour of a marriage on the _tapis_ between Mr. Crabtree
of Haybridge and the beautiful governess at Redcot who had been so
injudiciously brought forward by Jane Prior.
‘A stick to break her own head,’ some cynical tongues quoted.
The notice which Mr. Crabtree and Miss Gray drew down upon them
culminated at the moment when the two were standing together apart
from others, but certainly not aware that they were the observed of
all observers, looking at some conservatory flowers which had been
brought to do duty among the evergreens at the head of the room. The
pair lingered as if they were counting the petals of the camellias
and the leaves of the pelargoniums. The proposal which Mrs. Lambert
Crabtree had relegated to the dignified shades of academic groves might
have been made and accepted in the presence of hundreds, amidst the
convenient blare of the volunteer band. So eagerly did the gentleman
talk, so animated, yet so moved did the lady show herself--now speaking
a few necessary words, now looking up in the still handsome, mature
face bending over her, now glancing away among the ranks of the
dancers, with shining, softened eyes.
If any lady had been near enough to have heard the conversation between
Mat Crabtree and Bennet Gray, the reality and the supposition did not
quite correspond. Mat was saying emphatically, ‘In what request Jane
Prior is to-night! That is right.’
‘She is looking very well,’ Bennet had answered, with hearty
satisfaction.
‘Yes,’ he had resumed with fervour, ‘and it is good for her to meet
her kind, and have her play. Why not? She is as handsome a girl as
any of them--handsomer, to my mind, since she does not care about it.
But her looks are not the best of her. I have known her since she was
not much older than her niece Molly, and a more sterling soul never
breathed--the daylight is not more transparent. But too much work
is good for no man or woman either; Jane takes everything _au grand
sérieux_, which makes me fear for her chances in this examination--for
her chances in everything. But we must think for her, take care of her,
and see that she does herself justice. Eh, Miss Gray?’
‘Yes, indeed, Mr. Crabtree,’ acquiesced Bennet cordially, but still a
little mechanically and absently. For a new light was dawning upon her
as she saw and heard more of his interest in the subject than he had
any idea that he was exhibiting, or than he perhaps acknowledged, even
to himself.
She was trying to read between the lines an open secret which was
filling her with surprise, joy, and indignation at her own stupidity.
Dear wise Jane, who had been so good to her! And he was worthy of her,
and Jack and everybody at Redcot would be pleased. Bennet had great
difficulty in restraining herself, and answering as if she suspected
nothing. No wonder the lustre of her eyes was getting always brighter
and brighter, and she became more and more conspicuously invested with
an atmosphere of glad content, which was yet wistful in its fulness.
At the main door, mingling with the humbler, more bashful volunteers,
was a small, rather motley crowd made up of townspeople, commercial
travellers, and servants who could be spared from the neighbouring
inn, standing lounging and looking in at the fine sight. There was
a certain element of confusion and a shifting character about these
outstanding groups, which rendered it possible that an intruder in the
throng, a comparative stranger, and a secret spy, might pass muster
and escape detection, if not absolutely, at least to a great extent.
There was a young man in that unpleasant indefensible position, with
a rough coat buttoned up to his ears and a travelling cap drawn down
to his eyes, much as he had worn them the previous evening. He stood
where he could see into the hall, while he kept himself as well back
from observation as he could contrive. He watched a girl whom he had
known intimately at a previous stage of her history, though he had not
seen her for many months. He had never beheld her in this guise--this
softly gay peach-blossom gown delicately flowing, daintily trimmed,
implying to him something far costlier than the reality--with the
white flowers in her hair. It formed a whole very different from the
demure schoolroom costume, or even the quiet economic holiday clothes
of the schoolmistress abroad. This was a change which, as it seemed
to him, only one justification--the speedy termination of the days of
bondage--could warrant. He had seen her face wear an expression akin to
that it wore at this moment, for a false woman’s face can take the look
it should bear only for one, and hold it up to every newcomer who plays
the same part. But never had he beheld the open brow so unruffled, the
eyes so clear, the mouth so peaceful--though the lips trembled a little
with subdued feeling in the middle of the brightness of their smile.
Before, when he had seen that face happy, it had still been clouded
with a lurking doubt, a haunting trouble, a shade of fear--even of
forced condemnation--together with a determined struggle to do right,
at whatever cost, warring with the sweet, tumultuous happiness. The
woman was certain of her happiness at this moment. She had acquired
some later good, which caused her to cast care to the winds. Her mind,
her conscience--strange as it seemed--were both at rest. Whoever
broke in upon her recently won satisfaction, and startled her by an
inopportune presence which she did not expect, would scatter her hopes,
shatter her prospects, and do her a wrong which she would never forgive.
‘Do you see that pair that ain’t dancing, but have been looking at
the flowers for the last ten minutes? It don’t want a prophet to tell
what they’re talking about,’ said one observer, with a well-worked
vein of jocularity, to another. ‘Everybody is crying out that will be
a match, and they ain’t so ill-suited neither when one looks twice.
They’re regular strappers, both of them. Crabtree of Haybridge is a bit
up in years, to be sure, but, bless you! that ain’t nothink when he
carries them as lightly as he do, and is a fine man to this day, and
will be for a many to come--a deal finer than most lads half his age.
Give me a man as is in his prime, says I, and then you sees the best
and the worst of him till he begin to grow down instead of up. Many a
comely youngster is as coarse as a cow-feeder before he’s a greybeard.
Crabtree of Haybridge is a good sort too--all that has to do with him
swears he ain’t a slippery customer--whoever else may be. It’s great
promotion for her that is only the governess at Redcot; but she’s a
bonnie lass as ever stepped. There ain’t a handsomer in the room,
barring the banker’s little lady, and she’s beyond compare.’
Another person than the one intended to receive the gossip who had
been wedged into a corner so that he could not, though he would, have
avoided hearing every word which was not meant for his ear, now, by a
considerable effort, shouldered his way out, and descended the stair to
reach the street.
‘Hang it! Couldn’t he have stayed where he was?’ cried a third
looker-on, whose equanimity was disturbed and his toes trampled on.
‘I’m blowed if it ain’t young Prior, of Redcot,’ protested a fourth,
incredulously. ‘Him that was in disgrace with the squire, his father,
and went to furrin’ parts a year agone. What the dickens is he seeking,
back so soon, and standing out here glowering like a cat at his kind?
Why, the Colonel and his lady--the givers of this here ball--are own
brother and sister to young Prior.’
‘Which is thundering strong proof that you’re mistaken in your man,
Charlie,’ the first speaker tried to put the last down.
Jack Prior, hard hit, dazed, and dumb-founded, kept telling himself
that seeing was believing, that no sane man could or should distrust
the evidence of his senses. He stumbled back to the Bank House,
deserted by all but its compulsory keepers, wandered through its vacant
rooms, and refused supper. He was worn out with wretchedness, and
sensible only that in his present frame of mind he could not endure
another encounter with Susie. She would return from the ball, and
bring him confirmation of the fact he had ascertained for himself. He
could not stand it--not just yet--so he retired to his room, and there
brooded over the maddening enlightenment of this night and the night
before, and sought to crack a nut which he found cruelly hard.
Bennet Gray, of all women--Bennet, in whom he had placed implicit
faith, to whom he had looked up as to a guardian angel, who had
sent him on the very voyage to Australia which was likely to cost
him dear--had taken advantage of his absence to steal a march upon
him, and throw him over for the first available suitor who presented
himself. She had come to Redcot, of all places, to do it, and chosen a
man who was an old friend connected with Jack by family ties, so that
unless he abjured his former relations he could not escape constant
association with the husband and wife. It was like seething a kid in
its mother’s milk. It was being heartless far beyond the ordinary range
of women’s heartlessness.
What had brought Bennet to Redcot in the first place--whether it was a
mere accident--an answer to an application through an agency--a chance
recommendation presenting a temptation that had proved irresistible
(which was virtually the truth), he could not tell. But, after she was
at Redcot, the opportunity of seeing the poverty of the land, and of
becoming acquainted with Mat Crabtree, in conjunction with the hateful
material provided by the innate fickleness of a nature for whose
sincerity and loyalty Jack Prior would have stood up against the whole
world, rendered the explanation comparatively easy. Such occurrences as
preferring a rich suitor to a poor one happen, if not so brazenly every
day, at least with sufficient frequency to entitle men to say that they
have been since the world began, and will be to the end.
Jack was half distracted and entirely forlorn, but sleeplessness is
not apt to be long the portion of the young and healthy, however
sorely tested. He had tumbled about three-fourths of the time wide
awake last night, he lost consciousness now until he awoke from one
disturbed dream, to believe himself the victim of another, with its
incidents happening there in the very room in which he lay. He imagined
he opened his eyes and saw Susie in such a white dressing-gown as he
had known her use, but with her hair still the same as she had worn it
at the ball. Only in the clear, silvery light of early morning, when
the sunbeams are not golden, but have something of the whiteness of
moonbeams, the diamond dust had ceased to sparkle, and looked more as
if it were a powdering of ashes over the dark hair. There were two
burning red spots on her cheeks, her whole face was keen and sharp-set,
and her eyes were opened wide and staring wildly, like a creature in
desperation and terror. She walked quickly yet so noiselessly into the
room that he at once guessed she had left her high-heeled slippers
behind her. But he was not prepared for what he saw when he glanced
down on the floor, that the little feet which moved so fleetly and
lightly, gripping the ground with hardly a perception of noise, were
bare. She went straight to the toilet table, and appeared to fumble at
the stand of the mirror.
‘Susie!’ cried Jack in a voice half-subdued by surprise and by a
nameless creeping fear, as if this presence of his sister were indeed
a bodiless ghost. He sat bolt upright in bed, and asked himself with
an effort of thought whether it was a waking dream on his part or a
case of sleep-walking on hers. Waking or sleeping, she heard him in an
instant, and her face showed an agony of consternation, though she did
not give him an immediate answer. Instead, she instinctively held up
her hands and made a warning gesture with them, as if she were pushing
him away and imploring him to lie down again and keep silence. Then
he thought he heard her murmur--‘Hush! hush! Jack. For mercy’s sake,
be quiet.’ The next instant she was gone as she had come. Jack roused
himself thoroughly, got up and opened the door, but there was nobody in
the corridor, which had a western aspect, and looked shadowy and chill.
He could hear a little sound in the house as of servants stirring,
which presently died away. He came back and walked to the toilet-table,
where the figure which had seemed Susie had stood. But everything was
unchanged and as he had left it the night before.
Jack Prior told himself the untoward events of the last forty-eight
hours had been too much for a fellow; they were going to his head and
distempering his mind. He had been dreaming, and had been unable to
separate his dream from the reality. He lay down again, and tried to
compose himself afresh and take refuge in sleep. At last he succeeded,
and awoke in full sunshine. It was still early, but he must start if he
meant to reach the familiar junction on the line from which he would
get a train that ought to reach Oxford in the middle of the day. He
was feverishly restless; he must do something, and he was still bent,
not on having a word with Jane, as he had said, but on seeing _her_
again--on confronting her, though it were for the last time, and giving
her a taste of what her work was likely to be. Before he had dressed
and gone downstairs, the servants were about, but he would not make
himself late by waiting for breakfast, which he could have in the
refreshment-room at the station. He contented himself with leaving a
message for Mrs. Crabtree, and went.
CHAPTER VII.
OXFORD WITH ESCORTS SEEN AND UNSEEN.
Jane Prior and Bennet Gray were, as might have been supposed, charmed
with Oxford. They had been there on visits and sight-seeing expeditions
before, but the city of Alfred and Wolsey, Wycliffe and Cranmer, does
not easily exhaust the admiration of its pilgrims. This visit was
paid at the most desirable season. It was close upon the summer glory
of Commemoration, but May had not ended, and the men generally--not
the freshmen alone--were still up, crowding the streets. With pale
scholars in cap and gown? By no means; with sunburnt, ruddy, muscular
youths, in every picturesque variety of cricketing and boating
costume, taking their pleasure with all their might. The scholarly
element was left largely to the dons, whose winged black gowns and
trencher hats--relics of the monk’s frock and hood, adapted for tutor
and professor--contrasted broadly with the white flannels and striped
jerseys and caps showing the colours and badges of the different
colleges, worn jauntily by the favoured lads. At them the accumulated
learning of centuries was launched, they met and assimilated it, or
turned it aside with consummate coolness and carelessness.
The great old trees in St. Giles’s and in the college gardens were
in full foliage without having lost the early flush--free from
sombreness--of their summer green. The giant wisteria on St. Edmund’s
Hall was covered with clusters of delicate lilac blossoms like paler
grapes. In other quadrangles and cloisters the grey walls, massive
pillars, and deep door-ways were set in green, in vine leaves and
Virginian creeper, in budding flowers of clematis and jessamine.
Many a quaint or stately mullioned window began to blossom over with
roses red and white, with the scarlet and gold and purple and blue of
geranium and calceolaria, heliotrope and lobelia, built up in fragrant
piles, to do honour to the undergraduates’ festival. Then they welcome
their friends from far and near, and old Oxford for a week holds its
carnival, and is gay and gallant as Rome taking its fling before the
austerities of Lent.
The thrushes, which love Oxford, abide patiently and sing a mellow
song, braving the raw, harsh winds of the early spring, had not wholly
ceased their note. It was not yet eclipsed by the liquid cadences of
the nightingale, buried in the shade of the most retired and exclusive
of college gardens, or, with human-like inconsistency, away out by the
common high roads, indifferent to the white dust of ordinary traffic
lying thick on the hedgerows. In the Broad Walk the huge elms formed
an aisle grander than any cathedral on earth can show. The Founder’s
Tower of Magdalen looked down on the hoary Grove grown young again, and
the deer in the park tossing their new antlers.
The meadows and the river banks had not done with their yellow cowslips
and dusky fritillaries when the creamy foam of the hawthorn, rose-red
in the parks and gardens, hung over the water. But the meadows and
twin rivers were by no means left to the wild flowers--no, nor to
what fish had stout enough hearts to abide in the pools, nor to the
shy kingfisher lingering by the higher reaches of the Isis and the
Cherwell. The favourite resort of the city of students, was alive from
morning till night with crews practising for the Eights, solitary men
and lads rowing and paddling for their private solace, family parties,
and gay gatherings of friends bound for Iffley and Godstowe.
Yet none of these things were the real Oxford. They were pleasant
enough touches, but they might be found elsewhere. The very historical
memories of burnings and sieges and riots, of martyrs at the stake, of
a pale discrowned king, who for many a year bore the title of Martyr,
did not truly represent Oxford. Neither did the traditions which
cluster round such a place, as parasites cling to forest trees; of the
scholar of Queen’s, who, with no better help than an ‘Aristotle,’ slew
the wild boar in Shottover Forest; of Amy Robsart ‘slain’ or ‘murdered’
at Cumnor Hall, and buried in state in St. Mary’s Church; of Lady
Isabella Thynne tripping along the flagged pathways before she met her
own ghost in broad day; of ‘Sarah Marlborough’ driving in from Blenheim
after a hot dispute with Sir John, its builder--all these did not
make Oxford. Neither did lighter-hearted annals of masks, revels, and
royal progresses, Queen Bess in her pride of maidenhood, King George
and Queen Charlotte, patterns of conjugal felicity; Queen Victoria
and her royal wedded lover. History and legend belonged as freely to
other places, and might be found to flourish as abundantly wherever an
ancient building reared its moss-grown, ivy-shrouded walls.
But there were special attractions in which Oxford was unique. There
scholarship had reigned while Time had been unfolding her long roll.
There, among all the dry dust of technical attainments and martinet
cleverness; among drowsy sinecureships droning out their existence,
constantly opposing all progress, among arrogant flippant trifling
with high issues, Oxford had still vindicated her existence by a
deep under-current of learning pure and simple. In her noble halls,
quiet rooms, and tranquil walks, which men in times ruder and more
ringing with strife than our own, provided in munificent reverence for
knowledge--knowledge had still had its chance and its day. Leaders
of the people in Parliament, at the bar, in the Church, as heads of
great schools, as governors of men everywhere, had spent the momentous
period between youth and manhood in keeping their terms at Oxford as
at her sister Cambridge, and in drinking to their fill of that stream,
ever broadening and deepening, of human wit and wisdom, achievement and
discovery. Still more was possible. A man could come a raw lad under
the shadow of the towers which group themselves amidst the very type of
English landscape--in its rich pastures and woodlands--never cease to
feel the spell, and die grey-headed to the sound of the mellow bells
which are among the glories of Oxford. Such a man would fight the good
fight of light against darkness, truth against error, lead a modest
and laborious life, heap up fresh stores of thought--the precursor of
trustworthy action--or sift the wheat from the chaff of other men’s
convictions, and die leaving the world wiser and stronger, better and
braver for the scholar’s life.
Jane Prior was carried away by this view of Oxford. She had done her
dancing coldly if indefatigably at the ball the night before. But
the refined pomp of schools did not so much take her breath away as
take her out of herself. She forgot the very object for which she was
there. She ceased to consider with irksome pertinacity the hard-headed
arguments as to demand and supply, and the good of the many dominating
the needs of the few, or the more abstract questions of mind and matter
with which her thoughts had been busy lately. She actually lost sight
of some womanly considerations which, however insignificantly personal,
unacknowledged, and kept in the background, had still served as a stern
rule for her conduct since a certain spring day. In her exaltation she
failed to remember Mat Crabtree had given the world reason to believe
that he and Miss Gray belonged to each other, and ought to be told
off to share everything they cared for in common. Engrossed by the
influences which had such a strong hold on Jane Prior, she walked
between Mat Crabtree and Miss Gray, or sometimes went on before with
him, leaving Bennet to follow.
Happily, both of her companions enjoyed exceedingly seeing Jane so
enthralled and enthusiastic. They were more or less affected in the
same fashion, particularly Mr. Crabtree. He loved Oxford as a son
who had spent some of his happiest days and won distinction he could
not help continuing to prize, within her bounds. He held up his head
and looked about on well-known land-marks with filial pride, and
breathed the air with long breaths, as if it was native to him. He
grew elated and enthusiastic in his turn. He expatiated eagerly and
unweariedly on the lines of study followed and the victories won in
this or that college. He would show his companions where Shelley had
written his ‘Queen Mab.’ He would take them to Oriel, and let them
see where Whately, Arnold, and Keble had sat when they were chums.
He, Mat Crabtree, would point out the window from which Bishop Heber
looked when he was a lad composing his poem of ‘Palestine,’ to win the
Newdegate. The same eager lioniser could carry his friends to Christ
Church, to the quarters of two of the ‘Jems,’ who were afterwards, as
Marquis of Dalhousie and Earl of Elgin, Governors-General of India.
Mat Crabtree was acquainted with what had been Newman’s retreat before
he took refuge in a Roman Catholic oratory, and Pusey’s corner when he
wrote in the Bodleian. Mat even yearned to have the chance of letting
the women see some of the living men worth looking at, for there
never had been a day when Oxford was without celebrities of European
reputation.
Above all, Mat Crabtree would ask the girls to do him the honour of
going with him to his own college, where he had still cronies to whom
he must introduce the ladies.
Jane had seen some of Mat Crabtree’s haunts and heroes before, but
she was bent on seeing them again, as he was bent on showing them. The
two most concerned were as eager to accomplish all that was possible
in the long light hours of a summer’s day as if they had been boy and
girl visiting Oxford for the first time. To-morrow, the day before
the examination, would be time enough to think of work. To-day was
for play--to recruit from the fatigues of the journey--to soothe the
candidates’ nerves.
And Bennet, standing a little apart, kept smiling benignly to herself
and down upon Jane Prior, who was in general so much the more sedate
woman of the two, and on Mat Crabtree, old enough to be their father,
as if she--Bennet--had been their guardian angel.
So, in accordance with their professions, the little party proceeded
to recruit their strength after a three or four hours’ journey, and
to refresh their jaded minds after a prolonged course of study, by
snatching a hasty lunch at Boffin’s. The new-comers wandered here and
there while they discussed by the way academic problems, fragments of
ancient misty philosophies, verses full of the wild colossal woes, and
the vanished hopes and beliefs, sombre and dim, alternating with the
cynical joviality of earlier civilisations. The group regarded the dark
front of the old Schools, and entered the great square of the Bodleian
with profound satisfaction, not unmingled with awe to this day, when
the Latin inscriptions were no longer in a dead language to the
readers. They spared a glance to the Sheldonian, still retaining the
echoes of speeches and essays and boyish clamour, and to the Radcliffe
where demure silence prevailed. They went along picturesque streets and
lanes flanked by college walls, where every house differed from its
fellow and some bits seemed stolen from Bruges or Ghent. Into halls and
chapels innumerable--unable to refrain from straying once more into
Wolsey’s princely hall--and hitting the hours of service at those
chapels where the most melodious organ and the most exquisitely trained
choir piped and chanted evensong. Down to the river which was in a
state of ecstatic commotion, where Mat Crabtree, deserting his friends,
hailed each barge and boat. He was in danger of forgetting more
flagrantly than ever not only the dignity but the weight of his years
in order to shout himself hoarse with the most energetic of coaches and
run himself lame with the most reckless of freshmen. For had he not
coached and been coached, rowed, given bumps and been bumped, and run
himself off his legs in his day with the best? Back as far as Wadham’s
and St. John’s under the sinking sun, with slowing feet and aching
eyes, to watch the long shadows from the wide cedars and tall elms on
the velvet turf of two glorious college gardens.
The apartments hired for Jane and Bennet, the same that had been
occupied in turn by Mat Crabtree and Jack Prior, after their terms
of residence in their colleges were ended, were almost opposite to
St. John’s. To Bennet’s gratification they were in just such a yellow
house, with gables to the street, cornices to the different storeys, a
broad stone canopy to the door, and primitive windows, as might have
been found in Holywell. Nearly in front of these was the older portion
of St. John’s, where Bishop Juxon had ruled and Laud’s crozier was
preserved. Lower down rose the tower of the Martyrs’ Monument, with
its effigies, in ruff and gown, of Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley--close
to Dovorgilla’s tribute to Balliol--the college beloved of Scotch
and Yorkshire men. Beyond, half hidden by the elm trees which line
the road, the little grey church of St. Mary Magdalen barred farther
view. Directly opposite the windows was a salmon-tinted house, with
one wing built over a wide entry; beside it a scarred, battered,
balustraded house, called attention to its venerable antiquity, and
blinked in grim disdain across some intervening buildings at a Queen
Anne or earlier Georgian mansion, with its tall pillared gateway,
flight of broad easy steps, and long French windows. The judges were
wont to occupy that house when the assizes were in Oxford, and vulgar
substantial crimes cropped up brutally as topics of the hour among the
fine traditions of intellectual subtlety. Another tree-girdled grey
church, with its low tower--St. Giles’s--once in the fields, closed the
parallel vista. It was all wonderful, esoteric, Oxfordish, pertaining a
little on the surface to blue china, peacocks’ feathers, and the French
renaissance, but at the core stately and refined.
As Bennet tried to take the prospect in, a party of roving sailors,
with their round caps, blue collars, bare throats, and bronzed faces,
came swinging in rollicking style up the street, bringing with them a
flavour of the salt sea, of the shrill whistling wind in the rigging
and shrouds of ships, in foreign harbours, of wastes of water, storms
and wrecks, and lives of action and adventure. The group and their
associations came with the force of a strong contrast, as far removed
from the prevailing tone of Oxford as were the rude figures in the
assize calendar. But the very depth and breadth of the contrast only
served to bring out in more delicate relief the essential features of
the place.
Mat Crabtree went away with a friend to dine in his college, and left
the women to well-earned rest. But they could not rest; Jane wandered
about the room, staring at bookcase, writing-table, and mantelpiece,
which had served generations of undergraduates. In her mind they bore
reference to no more than two--her brother Jack, who had been idle and
foolish, and failed to take his degree here, and Mat Crabtree, who a
quarter of a century before had worked hard and won honour within these
walls.
Bennet sat at one of the windows, and looked out till the fleeting
crimson of the western sky faded to pale rose, to nankin, to primrose,
to faintest green, to full blue. She pursued a train of thought not
altogether dissimilar. _His_ rooms, to which his foot had mounted
lightly hundreds of times, where he had stored away his bat and fencing
foil and skates in winter--where he had Tommy down to visit him. Fancy
Tommy perambulating the streets of classic Oxford, seated ruefully,
collared and chained, in a porter’s lodge, superciliously sniffed at
by fussy young fox-terriers, haughty mastiffs, and dour bull-dogs,
and taken down to bathe in the Cherwell! Here Jack had written his
letters home to his mother. Here he could not have studied much, she,
Bennet, must admit that. But she had no doubt he had thought the
better, manlier, higher thoughts which must have come to him, made
repentant resolutions--doomed to be broken in the overwhelming tide of
temptation, formed in vain some of those good resolutions which pave
comfortably many a downward road.
But it was not for her to blame him, or if it was for her she could
not do it. She had never done it very effectually. She could do it
least of all in the old room where he must have suffered sharp pangs
of regret and shame, foreign to his cheery, sanguine temper, when his
wasted college course came to an end, and he had to face his failure,
his difficulties, his father’s keen disappointment. Yet in spite of it
all, she could not have loved him better though he had been as learned
as Casaubon and as wise as King Solomon, who had never gone to college
and played when he ought to have worked. It might not be the most
sternly lofty moral; still, could there be a higher than that of love,
open-eyed, not blind, merciful, and tender as yon great canopy of blue
sky, folding all in its embrace, true as steel that has been tempered
in the fire?
And it was over. He was coming home to make up for everything. And
what would he think when he heard that she had been here staying
in his very rooms, looking from the window, out of which he had
leant, doubtless, smoking and chaffing other undergraduates as gay,
thoughtless, idle, and lovable as Jack himself? Oh! Jack, dear,
sweet-tempered, generous, facile Jack, he will learn to do himself and
his friends credit at last.
Patter, patter, went the continuous tread of feet beneath the window of
the yellow house in St. Giles’s. But after the twilight had passed into
dusk one footstep came and went, went and came, backwards and forwards,
in regular fall, again and again. Bennet did not dream of rising and
looking out. Why should she? How could she connect the heavy step which
never came nearer with the light one entering and mounting the stairs
at a rush, without fear or doubt, as she had pictured it to herself a
few minutes ago?
Jack Prior came to another Oxford than that which his friends had
found. He had neglected to calculate on a probable change in the
trains, and so had arrived much later in the day than he had counted
on. He took it for granted that the party would be out, and he dared
not go in their absence to his old lodgings, where his landlady would
recognise him and announce his arrival before he could make the
unexpected entrance he had proposed. He could only lurk and dodge
about as he had done last night at the door of the Volunteer Hall,
and catch glimpses, or only fancy he caught glimpses, which caused
his heart to thump violently, of the trio for whom he was looking.
Oxford was full towards the close of the last term, and seen at a
distance there was more than one big man--not in gown and cap, but
in a rustically, well-bred morning suit of a squirish cut--escorting
ladies. It was easy to guess they had come betimes to do honour to some
lad’s triumph, or to revisit on the man’s account the scenes of his
early struggles and victories, that the often-mentioned localities
might be exhibited to his daughters or his nieces, or his young wife
and one of her friends. The tableau they presented was a very familiar
one in the gathering before the great dispersal. For heads of colleges,
tutors, and professors of every degree, with their womenkind and
children--unencumbered Fellows in the pensive rather than hilarious
ease of their single-blessedness--reading parties as full of frolic
as of application to business, were on the eve of the longest of the
perpetually-recurring holidays to which studious Oxford is prone,
whether the flight be to mountain or moor, or seaboard, across the
Channel, or across the Atlantic to the Golden Horn or the Golden Gate.
Jack had been left to his own company from the time of his arrival,
and he had not relished the experience. He was thrown back on himself
at the very moment when himself was most hateful to him. Though this
offended self turned from the Oxford of the past rising again before
his eyes with quick disgust, the old slang names of street, hall,
and college rose to his lips, the ‘Broad’ and the ‘High,’ ‘Skimmery’
and ‘Teddy’s,’ and plain ‘John,’ with their appropriate people and
incidents, were once more fresh in his mind. How often he had fled
from the proctors. How many times he had been ‘gated’ and sent up to
his dean. How few lectures he had found ‘tippy.’ Of what ‘howlers’
he had been guilty when he went up for his disastrous examinations.
He remembered that he had been concerned in the blocking up of that
chapel door and in the sticking of a striking caricature on that
superciliously sported oak. What endless hours he had spent at tennis
and billiards, as well as at football and cricket, in floating in punts
no less than in rowing in his college boat. He had ridden capital
horses when he ought only to have afforded himself hacks or to have
walked. He had run up scores of bills which his allowance would not
meet. The life had been pleasant enough at the time; he had meant no
harm. He had not gone farther wrong than was implied in idleness,
and trifling, with the briefest spurts of repentant diligence. But
he could not take the comfort of the limitation; he could not call
it a merit when practices, in which some of his companions indulged,
had been simply distasteful, and, in certain instances, abhorrent to
him. The busy, largely open-air life, including the means of work, if
he chose to work, which unfortunately had been rarely, with abundant
companionship and numerous engagements, had been perhaps, as people
said, the typical life for a lad of his age and rank, and had been
shared in by hundreds of fellows no better and no worse than himself.
But, like many things pleasant at the moment, there had been a lurking
sting in it which pierced on more days than that on which he was
‘bossed’ and left Oxford without his degree. He had to meet his
father and hear that a university education had been thrown away on a
fool. Money, which could ill be spared at Redcot, had been as good as
flung into the fire. He had to confess that his allowance had not been
enough--make a clean breast of his debts, and see the expression on
his father’s face when he wrote the cheque. It was a case of ‘Rejoice,
O young man, in thy youth.... But----’ That ‘but’ had been fulfilled
where he was concerned. He had seen the payment exacted in other
instances. There was poor Thurles, who had been a plucky, nice enough
fellow when he knew him first, had taken to drink hopelessly, and was
little better than an imbecile; Clive Lowndes had gone to the bad in a
more blackguardly heartless way; while Estcourt, who had been hard-up
even in these early days, had since been accused of so ‘dirty’ a racing
transaction that he had been forced to leave the country because no
honourable man would keep company with him. No doubt these were only
stray examples of the many black sheep fed on Oxford pastures. Now it
was his turn; and it was in the scene of his follies, possibly in the
very rooms where he had been wont to whistle thought down the wind,
that he was to meet his desert. He did not know how many similar debts
were discharged in a variety of ways, but discharged in some sort the
obligations must be, for this was the lane from which there was no
turning. It was in his old rooms at Oxford that Jack was to see Bennet
again. It was there he was to be told his fate by her after he had
travelled far to make a home for her by his own efforts, according to
her decree. He had been persuaded that he had succeeded in the first
step, and had hurried back to tell what he had judged would be his
thrice-welcome tale, when she had a different tale to tell. She had
reflected and weighed the risks, and found them too great. Mat Crabtree
was a man to be depended on, a man to be proud of at Oxford and
elsewhere. Haybridge was a safe and honourable home which any woman
might be excused for preferring to a squatter’s shanty.
So Jack Prior lashed himself metaphorically, and did not spare the whip
as he paced before his former lodgings, well into the summer night,
knowing who was within, burning to see her. Yet not going to her. He
had come there for the purpose of having it out with Bennet Gray, but
when he was close to his goal his heart sank to such a degree that he
put off the die for a few hours longer. He would wait till the morning,
and then finish the chapter which he had held to be the key to his life.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH WHICH CARRIES MAT CRABTREE AND JACK PRIOR
SIMULTANEOUSLY TO ST. GILES’S.
Mat Crabtree slept that night at the Mitre, and Jack Prior at the
Clarendon. Both men--though the one was so unreasonably happy that
the old Norse superstition about being ‘fey’ might have occurred to
his well-stored memory, and the other was profoundly miserable--did
precisely the same thing. Each man called for the newspaper reflecting
his particular shade of political opinions, and read it over his
breakfast. In each case the reader’s eye was caught by a prominent
paragraph, the heading of which had a strangely familiar yet utterly
unexpected look. It struck each man like a bullet fired at himself.
Both stared ‘as if they had been shot,’ devoured the paragraph, got
up, and, leaving the rest of their meal untasted, set off, after the
fashion of spiritual twins whose moods corresponded exactly, and who
had established a ghostly telegraphic communication between them,
straight for St. Giles’s.
The paragraph was not the announcement that within the last twenty-four
hours the country house of Redcot, in ----shire, had been burned to the
ground, and that its master had, unhappily, perished in the flames.
Neither was it a ‘scandal in high life,’ with the name of Mrs. Prior
figuring in association with that of a certain ‘gallant Lovelace,’
young enough to be her son. Still the news was sufficiently astounding
and alarming.
‘BANK ROBBERY AT NEWTON.--On the night before last, or early yesterday
morning, Crabtree’s Bank was broken into, and Bank of England notes to
the value of seven thousand pounds, together with a parcel containing
Mexican 3 per Cent. bonds taken from the safe. Mr. Lambert Crabtree,
the head of the bank, was from home on the night of the robbery. He has
been sent for, and is hourly expected. The affair, which was promptly
put into the hands of the police by the wife of the banker, is creating
a great sensation in the town and neighbourhood. The only suggestion
which has been offered as to the perpetrators of the robbery, which
was discovered when the clerks opened the bank, is that the Bank
House, communicating with the bank, was recently in the hands of
house-painters, who may thus have become acquainted with the premises.
On the other hand, as the men employed to repaint the house are workmen
in the service of a respectable tradesman in the town, it is invidious,
without further ground for suspicion, to connect the burglary with
them at this stage of the proceedings. A more allowable remark is that
the time of the commission of the crime was well chosen. The night
of the robbery was the night of a volunteer ball given by Mr. Lambert
Crabtree, as Colonel of the Newton troop of volunteers, in which he
took so much interest that, though he had been absent on important
business in London for some days previously, he came down expressly
to be present at the supper, returning, as it unfortunately happened,
by the last train. The stir and general confusion of the night of a
ball, with which the whole town, and particularly the occupants of the
Bank House had to do, may be safely judged to have afforded special
facilities for carrying out so daring a crime.’
‘Good Lord! How does this affect Lambert?’ groaned Mat Crabtree, in his
inmost soul, as he instinctively buttoned up his coat and snatched at
his hat and gloves.
‘Crabtree’s Bank robbed the night before last when I was in the house!’
Jack Prior said to himself incredulously ‘Impossible! It must be a
_canard_. But didn’t I hear something and dream that Susie came into
my room?’ Suddenly his lips closed. He had no conception of the truth,
but some impulse which he could not define checked his very thoughts
and tinged his incredulity with a monstrous intangible dread, so absurd
that, if he had allowed it to take form, he must have laughed aloud.
A restless, uncomfortable excitement and uncertainty took possession
of him, overshadowing his pressing personal concerns, throwing his
half shaped plans into disorder, and forcing him to take an immediate
resolution. ‘The others will get this piece of news,’ he told himself
vaguely. ‘They may leave Oxford and return home without delay. Crabtree
will, I have no question. I must see Jane at once when I have too good
an excuse, if I am to intercept her.’
Mat Crabtree went through the Turl with its colleges, looking cool and
grey in the summer morning. Jack Prior walked up the High Street. The
two men came upon each other at the corner of Broad Street. Jack, who
was looking straight before him, was the first to recognise the other
and hesitated. Mat Crabtree had his eyes cast down, and was only roused
from anxious thought by the half pause of the man in the act of passing
him.
Mat looked up. ‘Hallo, Jack Prior. How have you come here? Have you
fallen from the skies?’ he cried in genuine amazement, which overcame
every other feeling. ‘When did you return? Did you come on from Newton
last night? I say, what is this about the bank robbery?’ And he eagerly
button-holed Jack, who, taken aback in his recent hostility to the
person addressing him, out of which he had been, as it were, driven
by the extraordinary tidings of the morning, stammered out, ‘I know
nothing about it. I slept at Susie’s the night before last, and left
early next morning, when there was no word of a robbery. I missed the
train at the junction. I was on my way to Jane.’ He ended stiffly, with
a suspicion of sullenness coming into his voice. What had Mat Crabtree
not done to him, though it might have been unadvisedly, that he should
be thus stopped and cross-questioned in the public street?
‘Ah!’ said Crabtree, with a gulp, half of disappointment, half of
relief, ‘then you are in the dark also. But I cannot make it out,’ he
added, in perplexity. ‘You say you were at Newton the night before
last, yet you did not appear at the ball, while your mother will take
it ill that you should make a halt so near home. I’ll engage Jane does
not know of your arrival--Susie must have said nothing of it. Perhaps
you came too late, when Susie was gone and the fun half over. Well,’ he
added, knitting his brows sharply, ‘it seems it has been followed fast
enough by a calamity. Come along, Jack,’ Mat resumed, as if he were
recalled to the exigencies of the moment, ‘I have no time to lose. I,
too, was going to your sister to tell her what has happened. She may
not have seen the papers, and she might be startled and put out if she
heard the thing spoken of without warning. Besides, I can’t go without
bidding the girls good-bye. Of course, I must leave by the next train.’
Jack did not appear to have any choice. He did not see how he could
avoid accompanying Mat Crabtree, incongruous as the action was, after
what had been in Jack’s mind, unless he were prepared to come to an
awkward explanation then and there.
In the midst of his steady tramp past Balliol there flashed upon Mat
Crabtree through the cloud of family trouble which had fallen upon him
a recollection that had a great deal to do with two people in whom he
took a natural interest. His step involuntarily slowed, a half smile
broke across the gravity of his comely middle-aged face. ‘You know who
is in Oxford besides Jane?’ he inquired tentatively, ‘and now that you
have turned up so opportunely, wonders will never cease,’ he said,
with a shrug and a forced laugh, which would not have been forced
yesterday. ‘My boy,’ he went on kindly, ‘you are the luckiest beggar
in every respect that I know--luckier than you guess; though I don’t
mean that you are not acquainted with your greatest piece of luck. But
I have not time to expatiate on all your good fortune and the marvels
that have come to pass on your behalf--I must leave that to a more
fitting occasion. I’ll just ask if you have written home. There will be
no difficulty there; but you ought to make the explanation easier for
her.’
Jack stared blankly. What could Mat Crabtree mean? Was he mocking him?
Had the man taken leave of his senses?
But there was no further opportunity for enlightenment. The couple were
at the well-known house in St. Giles’s, at which both men looked up
with strangely mingled feelings. There were no faces at the windows,
out of which Jack and his comrades had been guilty of leaning
smoking, and, when they were on their worst behaviour, chaffing their
acquaintances among the passers-by.
A young maid-servant answered Mr. Crabtree’s knock. ‘Yes, the young
ladies were at home.’ Somebody behind corrected the statement, and the
girl made a corresponding amendment. One of the young ladies was at
home, but the other--Miss Prior--had gone out for a book which she said
she wanted, while the other young lady was getting ready.
‘I know,’ said Mat Crabtree, ‘Jane must have gone to Acock’s for one
of Price’s books which we looked at yesterday. She must have been in
the shop when I passed. I’ll go back and meet her, and leave the field
free for you, Jack. There is your good fortune again, my lad;’ and Mat
Crabtree faced about actively, and was retracing his steps before Jack
had recovered himself.
Yes, however oddly it might be brought about, and by Mat Crabtree
of all people, it was a lucky chance, it was better to see her first
alone, and have it out with her, as he had said. He let the girl show
him up, though he could have found his way blindfold. As he entered his
former sitting-room, where a scarf and a parasol lying on a side-table,
a bit of embroidery, not Jane’s, on the broad window sill, a different
arrangement and a greater profusion of flowers on the chimney-piece,
made the place look as it had been wont to look in Commemoration
Week, Bennet Gray came in from an adjoining bedroom, wearing her hat
and jacket, and in the act of buttoning her long gloves. The eyes of
the two met and spoke volumes. Bennet’s lighted up instantaneously
as by a lightning flash--danced--ran over with unspeakable joy and
thankfulness, while Jack’s sought to read her soul.
She came forward with one step and took hold of his two hands,
surprised out of herself. She was nearly as tall as he was, and she
could look straight into his brown face, more _bizarre_ than ever
when it was working with emotion, as if she distrusted her eyes, as,
indeed, she distrusted them for the moment. ‘Jack, you have come back
safe!’ she cried in exultation that was so vibrating with gratitude,
it was more pathetic than any lamentation. ‘The sea is crossed--it is
all over--there will be no more parting.’ If one can imagine a human
being standing on the eternal shore and hailing a friend after all the
waves and billows of time are past, the greeting will be like that
which Bennet Gray gave Jack Prior when he returned to her, safe and
sound, from the Antipodes. Mortal love cannot say more--nay, the love
is immortal which expresses itself in such simple, universal language.
Jack, who had been so easily touched by Susie’s welcome, was moved to
his heart’s core when truth itself, and love stronger than death, thus
met him. He could have humbled himself in the dust for his doubts--his
disbelief in this woman who had honoured him with her pure, tender,
deep affection, restrained and scarcely shown hitherto, only leaping up
and bursting its bounds at the sudden shock of his presence. He kept
her two hands in his, and kissed them before he kissed her lips, and
said again awkwardly in his agitation, ‘Then you’re happy to have me
back, Bennet, little worth as I am?’
‘Happy!’ she too exclaimed reproachfully, with her head against his
breast; ‘if this is happiness, I have never known what it is to be
happy before. It is not a question of being little or much worth, Jack,
it is of being all the world to one joyful woman.’
Then her generous heart flew straight to another whose share in her joy
Bennet was more inclined to hug than to spurn. ‘How glad Mrs. Prior
must have been at your arrival. Do you know, I am a little sorry that
I did not see the meeting with your mother? but, perhaps, she would
prefer it unseen. And did Tommy know you again? Did the dear old beast
leap up to your head?’
‘I have not seen my mother yet,’ he said, more gravely than he had
before spoken; for he had done her wrong, and he had wronged his mother
also, while he was aware of difficulties at home which would not be
improved by the disaster to Lambert Crabtree. Bennet, though she had by
an incomprehensible arrangement been living in the house for the last
six months, could not clearly understand these difficulties. He tried
to shake off his gravity. ‘The dear old beast, as you call him--to
think Tommy should be a personal acquaintance of yours, Bennet--has had
no opportunity of so much as licking my feet, which he abased himself
to do the last time I saw him.’
A throb of pride which was half a pang of pain swelled her bosom. She
was the one woman, supplanting all others--even his oldest and best
friend--to whom he had come first to announce his arrival, by a right
and natural impulse, as a man leaves father and mother and cleaves
to his wife. Yet she had a sense as if she had defrauded, as well as
deceived, the woman who had known and loved him so much longer, to whom
he was so much, who had been so good to her--Bennet. She looked up
wistfully in his face, prepared to urge him to quit her and go at once
to Redcot, while he was pursuing a totally different line of thought.
‘What made you go and be a governess at Redcot, of all places, Bennet?’
he asked. ‘Was it for my sake? How did it come about?’
‘Why, I told you the whole story in my letter,’ she answered quickly.
‘What letter?’ he inquired as quickly. ‘I did not get a letter from you
except the one on landing. I accounted for it by your not having any
settled address to which you could write until I got to Tumut, where
I did not wait for the arrival of the mail. I left because of that
splendid “run” I wrote to you about. There was a fear that it would
be taken up soon, and I thought I had better not let the grass grow
beneath my feet before I returned, and persuaded you, darling, to keep
your promise and come out with me.’
‘You are the pink of politeness and consideration,’ said Bennet
merrily, ‘to send me an address and not wait for your letters. You have
not heard from me!’ she repeated, in fresh wonder and confusion of
mind. ‘Then all my trouble went for nothing, and my news has yet to be
told.’
He had no fear of that news now, and no devouring curiosity to hear
it; but he felt it would be a satisfaction to him to pour out to this
sympathetic listener some part of his story, what he had suffered since
he set foot in England again. ‘I went to Miss Burton, from whom you
said I could always hear tidings of you in case of any difficulty,’ he
said, a little reproachfully, ‘and the deuce was in it, Bennet dear,
I cannot think what came over your friend. She owned you had left
Berkshire; but not another word could I get out of her, till she waited
and took counsel with some other schoolmistress, I suppose,’ complained
Jack resentfully.
‘You rude boy, you forget that I am a schoolmistress,’ cried Bennet,
bubbling over with laughter.
But Jack was too full of his grievance to apologise. ‘What business had
she to keep back the knowledge from me, when she was aware that I had
a right to hear? She would not even say where you were gone or what
you were doing. She put me out horribly; any fellow would have been
nonplussed; I cannot tell what she did not tempt me to think.’
‘Oh, dear old foolish Jack,’ cried Bennet again, rather relishing the
dilemma in which she had not been involved, that, like the voyage
to Australia, was over and done with; ‘and oh, poor dear Mary, how
you must have taken her by surprise, and frightened and bewildered
her. I hope you did not stay long, Jack, or argue loudly in the
schoolmistress’s parlour--Mary is so prudent and particular.’
‘Very prudent and particular,’ grumbled Jack; ‘but the qualities strike
me as slightly overstrained and morbid.’
‘For one thing, she knew that I was at Redcot--where, by the way, she
did not approve of my going, unless the family knew everything--she
could not tell how you would receive the information.’
‘She might have tried to find out. She might have guessed that I should
ascertain it for myself the moment I went home. She had better have
prepared me,’ retorted Jack.
‘Perhaps,’ admitted Bennet, ‘but I dare say you did not tell her you
were going home.’
‘I told her nothing I could help,’ acknowledged Jack. ‘I was too much
taken aback. I was completely knocked on the head, and in too great a
rage.’
‘There, you see, you were as bad as poor Mary, and she had other things
weighing upon her mind which I know she did not like to mention without
getting liberty. No doubt she believed she ought to leave it to the
person principally concerned to tell her secrets at her own time and
in her own way.’ Bennet was smiling all over like a child. There was
little question she would break to Jack in the pleasantest fashion a
certain matter Mary Burton had declined to impart which would work a
revolution in the lovers’ affairs.
Not a word had been said of Mat Crabtree; not a syllable of his
attendance on Bennet the night of the ball. Indeed, she had as yet a
confused idea of the precise date of Jack’s arrival, the length of
his stay at the Bank House, and the manner in which he had employed
his time there. Susie’s malicious gossip, and what had appeared
confirmation strong at the time, faded into a trifle light as air
before Bennet’s welcome, in Jack’s mind. He was not only quite
content without further explanation; he had a wholesome dislike to
enter on the subject in detail. Since he was restored to his right
mind he had a tolerably correct realisation of the light in which a
right-minded, high-spirited woman like Bennet Gray would view his
doubts and suspicions. She would regard them as small honour to him and
no compliment to her.
The moment Bennet was about to introduce a different element into the
conversation, the steps and voices of Mat Crabtree and Jane Prior
were heard approaching, and the pair in the little sitting-room were
conscious of nothing save a shy inclination to draw apart from each
other.
Mat Crabtree had told Jane of the robbery of his brother’s bank, and
of her brother’s return. He had even found time to say some words
which, if his mind and Jane’s had been sufficiently disengaged, might
have sounded equally significant and astonishing, though they had not
been breathed till that day--that there was a previous acquaintance
between Jack Prior and Miss Gray, who were awaiting the others in the
old lodging. But Jane, who was matter-of-fact and straightforward
to excess, was too overwhelmed by the first communication to pay
much attention to what followed. She knew enough of the reckless
extravagance of the Lambert Crabtrees; she had too plainly before her
mind’s eye Susie as she had appeared at the ball two nights before, in
glaring contrast to what might be just coming on her and her husband,
not to have a tolerably clear conviction that the misfortune of the
robbery meant subsequent ruin and disgrace to Jane’s sister and
brother-in-law.
Jane’s honest, honourable nature shrank from the pictures thus placed
side by side. She looked in Mat Crabtree’s face, and saw how the lines
about the eyes and the mouth had deepened, as if by a miracle of the
Great Graver’s chisel, since her friend had parted from her in high
glee last evening. She saw further, for she held a talisman which
rendered her eyes keen here; she recognised what others might have
overlooked--a deadly sickness of apprehension, a haggard horror of
the shame that another day or hour might bring forth, which ought not
to have lurked on a good man’s face and voice behind a veil of decent
composure and ordinary comment and surmise. Her own heart was ready to
faint at that under-current of expression which she detected coming and
going on Mat Crabtree’s countenance and in his tones. Before the misery
of it she had little notice to spare to the facts of the sudden turning
up of Jack as a roving brother, who, like a rolling stone, gathered
no moss, with the additional abrupt intimation that he had known Miss
Gray ‘all the time.’ Yet oddly, Miss Gray had not chosen to mention the
acquaintance, which had been made somewhere at some time before she
came to Redcot; it might have been in a previous state of existence
for anything that Jane knew or cared to know for the moment, when
all the world seemed turning upside down, and nobody could tell what
might happen next. Jane only heard the vague announcement in a faint,
far-away manner, like a truth communicated in a dream. It aroused no
other feeling than a dull, sore sense that Miss Gray had a superfluity
of mysterious acquaintanceships, and unadmitted, unaccounted for
incidents in her past. But that was her affair, and possibly Mr.
Crabtree’s; it was certainly not Jane’s.
A more definite impression was produced on Jane by the circumstance
that when she came hurrying in with Mat Crabtree, went up to Jack, and
hastily bestowed on him a sisterly kiss, as a necessary accompaniment
to the half-mechanical questions, ‘When did you come, Jack? Why have
you followed us?’ then sat down, looked round with her blanched face,
and demanded generally, ‘Isn’t it dreadful? A bank robbery at Newton!
What will Susie have done?’ Miss Gray uttered an exclamation, as if
the word had all the rousing freshness of novelty to her. ‘A robbery!’
she cried. ‘What robbery? When and where did it happen? You don’t mean
to say it had to do with Mr. Lambert Crabtree’s bank?’
Explanations ensued, everybody speaking at once, but through the hubbub
the thought crossed Jane’s pre-occupied mind, ‘Mr. Crabtree said he
left Jack at the door here. He must have had ten minutes in which to
renew his acquaintance with Miss Gray, yet he never told her of the
robbery at Newton, of which the greater part of England must be talking
this morning. What could they have found to speak about which occupied
them so completely that a bank robbery only a day old, happening to
Jack’s brother-in-law’s bank, and when, as it transpired, Jack himself
was sleeping in the Bank House on the very night in question, should be
passed over like the most common trivial occurrence?’
After a brief consultation with Bennet, Jane made known their
determination not to go on with their examination, but to return with
Mr. Crabtree and Jack.
Mat Crabtree, with a pained recollection--almost fatherly in its tender
consideration of the enthusiastic preparation for the examination,
of the high hopes with which the candidates had come up, and of
yesterday’s proud parade of Oxford, tried languidly to combat the
resolution. But he could not avoid the perception that the women’s
minds were upset. He had to grant that it was better to withdraw than
fail. He had even to yield to the secret, unpalatable conviction that
Jane recoiled from further publicity to her family at this crisis.
For she had a quick sense that it would hardly be seemly for her
name to appear, even in an honour-list, with what might be brought
to light in reference to her sister’s husband in a different part of
the newspapers. As for Miss Gray, the same argument applied to her
to a greater extent than people guessed as yet. Mat Crabtree admitted
also with a sigh that it would be a comfort for them all to go back
together, ascertain exactly what had occurred, and, though he did not
say the last clause of the sentence aloud, face the worst, whatever it
might be, at once.
CHAPTER IX.
THE RETURN TO NEWTON--FRESH DETAILS.
During the railway journey the whole talk was naturally of the robbery.
Even if the little party had been disposed to discuss other matters the
speakers would have been perpetually recalled to the main theme. Every
time they stopped at a station and saw the newspapers on a bookstall,
there would be a reminder. Wherever people strolled up and down on the
platform talking to each other, passing and repassing the open windows
of the carriages, certain words would be overheard. If fresh passengers
entered, after the staple remarks on the weather were got through,
the speakers had immediate recourse to the topic of the hour. ‘Seen
the papers? Heard of the bank robbery at Newton, in ----shire? Most
audacious thing of the kind that has happened for a long time. Bankers
had better look sharp.’ Sometimes the remarks were more personal.
Crabtree’s Bank was mentioned, and Mat Crabtree began to wince at the
association of the two words, while his companions felt conscious and
uncomfortable. A knowing stranger was heard to observe, ‘The banker’s
having been absent was a dooced unlucky coincidence--I should not like
to be the fellow,’ then Mat Crabtree frowned heavily and Jane Prior
felt furious for him. It was that strangest experience which comes to
some of us in the course of our lives, which strikes us with a curious
disembodied sensation--as if we were dead and buried, and the surviving
world were discussing us and our affairs impartially over our graves.
The experience occurs when, by some unusual chance, some notable deed
or misdeed we or our friends have done, some striking misfortune or
stroke of luck which has befallen us, we are talked about by absolute
strangers. They discuss the matter as we have discussed similar events
relating to others, in our very presence, of which the speakers
are unaware. We feel that we ought to enlighten their ignorance
and warn them of the interested character of their audience; but
something--sheer wretchedness or recklessness, or pride or shame--holds
our tongues. And we listen like ghosts to what men and women say about
us when they think we do not hear and that there is little likelihood
of their words ever reaching our ears.
A growing constraint laid hold of the travellers. At the beginning of
their journey they might have addressed their fellow travellers without
scruple, careless of concealing any Crabtree or Prior identity--though
they could not have made stock of it, as Susie would have done in the
circumstances--and asked for the latest intelligence. But now Mat
Crabtree and Jack Prior, with the girls, drew apart, and conversed
only among themselves of the all-engrossing subject.
Jack Prior said least of all, which was not like him, for he had
naturally plenty to say, and when a burden had been lifted off his
mind, he might have been expected to show himself diffuse in his
lightness of heart. He only declared, in answer to questions, that,
except for the Bank House’s having been repainted, the place was the
same on the night he had slept there as it had always been. He was not
prepared with the slightest statement of anything that had happened
where he was concerned. He said this a little impatiently and doggedly,
as if it annoyed him to be brought into the story, and as if he did not
wish his mind to dwell on his personal contact with it, which was a
mere accident.
Indeed, Jack had happier things to think of. His course was not clear,
so far as he saw, by any means. But the simple fact that he had been
grossly mistaken in his temporary misjudging of Bennet Gray, together
with their present relations to each other, was joy to him. She was
there in the same carriage with him, so that by a little manœuvre he
could sit opposite her, look out of the same window, touch her fingers
incidentally, as they lay on the sash, hand her out and in, exchange a
sentence aside with her at intervals, and always have her fair, sweet
face, brimming over with wit and intelligence, a beacon and loadstone
for any man to watch covertly. No horribly awkward, unpropitious
position on his part, no thunder-cloud of disaster hanging over others,
no crazy suspicion of his--which he put sternly from him--could
shroud his joy in gloom. The unconfessed, disallowed lovers had not
seen so much of each other--above all had not established so clear an
understanding between the two before, as to make the company of the
one comparatively indifferent to the other, or the knowledge that they
were fully plighted to each other, with the next step in their history
excitingly uncertain, a thing of no consequence to either.
Bennet was still happier than Jack, in spite of her sympathy with Mr.
Crabtree and Jane, and her alarmed, vague comprehension that there
was sorrow on its way to all the Priors through the robbery of Mr.
Lambert Crabtree’s bank. But she herself could not be very sorry--not
on this day, which had brought back Jack to her. How brave and manly,
and a thousand times better than handsome, he looked. But for that
matter he was ‘handsomely ugly’; he had turned the corner and arrived
at that pitch of plain looks which is as good as beauty, and has a
more unique attraction. Besides, beauty fades, whilst Jack’s ugliness
would never fade. Dear, short, broad, hard-favoured Jack, his mother’s
darling and hers! And he had come straight to her without an instant’s
hesitation, not knowing a syllable to this moment of the change in
her circumstances. He was going back with her to own her and their
engagement before his people--to brave, as he imagined, his father’s
anger and his mother’s entreaties and reproaches. She knew it by the
droop of his lips and the sudden gravity which came over his face when
he ceased to look at her.
This woman was in some respects more intellectual than Jack Prior.
She had shown far greater courageous self-denying application and
diligence, she had no particular reason to feel proud of him according
to the common standard. Yet she had honest pride and delight in his
truth and disinterestedness. She so longed that he should have the full
credit of the qualities, and they were so sweet to her that she dallied
still with her secret and kept it back, though it could not be much
longer withheld, especially when Mr. Crabtree was privy to it. Poor
Mr. Crabtree! he had no common sense remonstrance and covert amusement
to give to it to-day. The truth must be told, for everybody’s sake,
presently; and though Bennet was in thought a little abashed and a
little frightened before Mrs. Prior, strange to say, even more than
before Mr. Prior or Jane the culprit, would not be really sorry that
everything should be known. On the contrary, it was part of her
pleasant meditations to consider how the good news was to be broken,
and whether she might be allowed for once to give everybody--down to
the youngest child and the lowest servant--down to Tommy in fried
liver and sponge cake--the wish of the soul of each individual out of
Bennet’s abundance.
As the train drew near Newton, even Jack and Bennet--the former with
a peculiar reluctance--gave themselves up to the consideration of
the robbery. They greedily listened to the conflicting rumours which
were openly discussed and frankly addressed to Mr. Crabtree and the
Priors by people who knew them, as to persons deeply interested in the
business. Some said the money had been recovered, some that it had not
been traced. It was confidently asserted that Mr. Lambert Crabtree had
arrived late last night. It was alleged that he had not yet come back,
as he had been out of town when the telegram was delivered, but he was
expected every moment. All agreed that the police were in possession of
the Bank House, and that detectives had been brought down from London.
‘You had better take your sister and Miss Gray to the White Hart, and
wait there till a trap can be got to drive over to Redcot,’ suggested
Mat Crabtree to Jack. ‘I’ll go up to the Bank House and see what Susie
is doing, and what has turned up. I’ll be back to let you know before
you start.’
The girls were glad to go to the inn, which was not far off, where the
Redcot phaeton and horse were put up when they were not accommodated in
the Bank House stable. Jane and Bennet wished to be under cover and out
of sight, though they had done no wrong. Jack shared the inclination.
The whole three had an uncomfortable impression that the old-fashioned
streets were unusually crowded, though it was not market day. There
were loungers about, and the shopkeepers were standing talking in their
shop doors. The place was not like itself, or like what it had been
on the evening of the volunteer ball. The town had been in a state of
excitement then, but it was mere pleasurable, ordinary excitement. Now
everybody was experiencing a strong sensation outside of himself or
herself, and was on the _qui vive_ for more thrilling sensations of a
similar kind. The summer sunshine felt overpoweringly hot and dazzling.
Scores of eyes seemed greedily following the Priors and Miss Gray, who,
if not the victims of the robbery, were the next thing to them--near
relations and familiar acquaintances.
Mat Crabtree was as good as his word. He came in trying to look
cheerful and indifferent, but he was more flushed, and there was a
deeper contraction between the whitening brows than when he went away.
Yes, the police were there. Susie was not.
‘What?’ interposed Jack sharply, ‘where is she?’
‘At your father’s, of course,’ answered Mat Crabtree. ‘Though she sent
for the police the first thing yesterday and told them all she knew,
I suppose she was put about by their investigations, for she went off
with the children in the course of the afternoon to Redcot. It was
so natural that nobody could say anything against it, only Spiers,’
naming his brother’s lawyer, ‘whom I had the good luck to see in the
street, who had been sent for along with the police, told me it was an
injudicious step, and he had hinted as much to Susie. But I don’t fancy
it matters.’
‘Has her husband----Is your brother not there?’ faltered Jane, not able
to look him in the face.
‘Not yet, I am sorry to say,’ he replied briefly, turning half away,
and turning as quickly back again. ‘There is sufficient explanation
of his delay. He had gone out of town without leaving his address. In
fact, it was thought at the hotel that he had taken a run to Scilly
with a yachting man who had been staying in the house. They have sent
after him as well as they could. He may have written to Susie.’ There
was a constrained silence, broken by Jack’s remarking, with an effort,
that Lambert Crabtree was fond of yachting when he had the chance.
‘I saw the head of the police,’ Mat Crabtree resumed his story with
greater ease. ‘Of course, he was cautious, and declined to supply me
with information; but I believe the money, or the greater portion of
it, has been found.’
‘Oh, how fortunate,’ was exclaimed simultaneously.
‘How thankful I am,’ cried Jane.
‘Yes; but as it had been secreted in different parts of the house,’
Mr. Crabtree went on, drily, ‘the circumstance seems to criminate
somebody who had a knowledge of the locality--not a strange thief. Do
you know anything in particular about the servants, Jane?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jane, considering, ‘except that Susie was continually
praising them and making them presents, and very often changing the
whole set. It appeared to me that though they gave her satisfaction she
tried them by asking too much from them and overworking them. You know
Susie has a habit of thinking that nobody can do too much for her. The
servants always began splendidly, and the next thing one heard of them
was that they were gone.’
‘I know Parsons, the old clerk who used to sleep in the house when
Lambert was away, is as honest a soul as ever breathed,’ said Mat
Crabtree.
‘Parsons was not there,’ put in Jack, abruptly; ‘it was I.’
By a curious impulse, common to everybody in the room, they all turned
to Jack and looked inquiringly at him.
He coloured crimson, under the tan of his voyage. ‘Who knows but that
the police and the public may accuse me of the robbery?’ he said, with
a laugh that did not sound natural. There was something discordant not
merely in the tone, but also in the ill-timed jocular defiance.
‘For Heaven’s sake don’t say anything so horrid, Jack,’ protested the
literal Jane.
‘They are not such idiots,’ said Mat Crabtree impatiently.
Only one person present replied to Jack’s laugh with another, which
rang out for a second with blithe, fearless scorn. The laugher was
Bennet Gray.
‘I shall wait here for Lambert, but, at all events, I shall try to ride
over and see your father to-night; tell him so,’ was Mat Crabtree’s
parting assurance as he despatched the party.
Everything that could be brought forward with regard to this last
mystery of the lost money having been found in the Bank House had been
said long before the dogcart which Jack was driving reached Redcot. For
the shadows of the afternoon were lengthening--it was just about the
time when Mrs. Prior--in Jane’s absence--would be having tea brought
into the drawing-room. Extreme quiet had fallen on the party, when Jane
raised her voice and said she thought it would not do for them to make
so much of this robbery of Lambert Crabtree’s bank, or to take it so
greatly to heart. It was most distressing, everything considered, but
it seemed to her that they ought to be careful, on Susie’s account, to
prevent her from being more put out and unable for what she must go
through. Jane had known her sister, in spite of her airy, inconsequent
ways, get hysterical on occasions. The party were bound to spare her
father and mother, who must have received a shock, and should seek to
silence exaggerated talk--among the servants, for instance. They--the
family--ought to look on the affair calmly, and not let it weigh on
their minds as it was doing, particularly when Jack’s coming home just
at this time would afford a natural diversion.
Jane’s listeners started--started guiltily at her sage injunction,
delivered solemnly. The couple had actually been forgetting all about
the robbery which she was urging them not to take so greatly to heart.
Young love would have its way and its day in the face of all obstacles.
This was the first time the man and woman had been together in scenes
of which the two had often spoken, amidst which, if all went well with
them, they ought to spend the greater part of their lives. Every field,
every coppice, was full of interest. Long eloquent looks around and
loving glances interchanged were serving Jack Prior and Bennet Gray for
reminders in speech when Jane thus inopportunely broke in upon their
thoughts.
CHAPTER X.
REDCOT, WITH SUSIE IN POSSESSION.
Driving up the avenue, the arrivals came upon the little Woods and
their cousins the Crabtrees at play on the lawn.
Immediately a shrill chorus was set up, ‘Here they are already--Miss
Gray and Aunt Jane! Miss Gray, have you brought us the Banbury cakes
and the little boats like Uncle Jack’s you promised us? Oh! here is
Uncle Jack himself! Hurrah! hurrah!’
The noise must have penetrated through the open drawing-room windows
instantly. But there was not the immediate rush out Bennet Gray
expected--only a muffled barking within which showed that Tommy was
on the scent and giving tongue. At last eager eyes saw Mrs. Prior in
her daintily neat dress appearing on the threshold, but John Prior,
with a newspaper in his hand, stood arrested in the hall, while
Susie, in the most elegant of tea-gowns, only nodded languidly from
a window. It was for the new-comers to enter and pay homage to her,
in the melancholy importance of the misfortune that had happened to
Lamb, and through Lamb, to his wife. Even Mrs. Prior’s steps seemed
to be clogged by some invisible burden. For the first time in Jack’s
many returns to Redcot his mother did not hasten to meet him. After a
moment’s puzzled disappointment the explanation occurred to him and
Bennet simultaneously, and Bennet’s heart fell. Susie had told her
garbled tale of Jack’s appearance two days before, of his tarrying with
her, and of his unnecessary detour to Oxford. Jack was the same man,
unstable and trifling as ever, and yet not the same, for he had grown
unfaithful to his first love, his affection had cooled to his mother.
Mrs. Prior could not altogether conceal her mortification, though she
was steeling herself to do so. But Tommy forced his way past her, got
among everybody’s feet in an injudicious attempt to clear at a bound
the distance between him and his young master, and finally rolled
over in his foolish bliss, not minding at all that Jack was standing
stock-still, taking no notice of him. Then Mrs. Prior got a full view
of her son’s beetling brow, wistful eyes, and clumsy vigorous young
figure, and she could resist no longer--she put her arms round his
neck and forgave him without a word, though whether she would forgive
another was quite a different story.
‘So you’re here again, Jack, though you’ve been in no haste to report
yourself,’ said John Prior, in as chilly and aggrieved a tone as if
he had every reason to feel hurt and resentful at Jack’s vagrancy and
supineness, and none to take himself to task for the development of the
objectionable qualities.
‘It is all there is for me, father, and it is not so much worth that my
staying away a day or two longer need be of any moment,’ answered Jack,
with equal curtness, and perhaps more heat and soreness than had been
usual with him, for was not Bennet Gray a grieved witness of his sorry
reception after many months of absence, and a long voyage, with its
chances and changes?
That was the beginning of one of the most miserable evenings Bennet
Gray had ever spent--the evening of the day when Jack had come back to
her, she reflected piteously. She might have anticipated it, she had
not deserved anything better, still this reversal of what had been her
foolish day-dream had not come into her reckoning.
True, Susie Crabtree was more than willing to fill the foreground
and engross the canvas with her adventures and woes. She hailed her
brother and sister and Miss Gray when they came into the drawing-room
with a half plaintive, half imperious demand. Why had they lingered
outside and not hurried in to speak to her and comfort her? They ought
to have done so, after all she had gone through. She might have been
murdered since they saw her last. Of course it was the greatest wonder,
a perfect interposition of Providence on her behalf, that she had not
been put to death--a violent and shocking death--by the brutal wretches
who had broken into the bank in Lamb’s absence. Had Jane and Miss Gray
heard all about it? And oh! was not Jack astonished after he had left
in the morning without suspecting anything? But nobody save herself
could tell what she had undergone. She was afraid she would never get
over it or sleep quietly again. She had started up a hundred times the
previous night, though she was sensible she was away from it all, safe
at dear old Redcot.
Susie’s looks were not without confirmation of her words. In the middle
of her excitement she had a certain strained, spent air as if her
great dark eyes had been wide awake and wide open for an unconscionable
time. The carmine of her cheeks had settled into two fixed red spots,
which spoke of feverish fatigue and unrest.
‘What frightened you first, Susie?’ inquired Jane.
‘Oh! all sorts of things--the turning of locks, and the scraping of
files, heavy feet, and men’s voices,’ enumerated Susie, with rapid
precision. In fact she had told her tale till she had it by heart.
‘Did you not call out or ring the bell?’ asked Miss Gray, naturally.
‘Of course not,’ answered Susie, almost petulantly, ‘I did not wish
to bring the monsters upon me and Piers, whose crib had been carried
into my room. I did get up and put on my dressing-gown and steal to the
door, wondering if I might venture to go to Jack.’
‘You did get up,’ exclaimed Jack eagerly, ‘and you came----’
‘No farther than the first lobby,’ she interrupted him, not only with
her flow of words, but with an unflinching stare, under which his eyes,
not hers, fell. ‘I cannot tell what happened then. I think I must have
fainted, crouching down against the wall, for when I came to myself
I was so cold, huddled up in the corner, between the cabinet and the
pedestal with Lamb’s bust. It was all I could do to creep back to my
room and get into bed again. There was no more noise and I felt sick
and giddy. I fell asleep at last, and when I awoke I persuaded myself
it had been a dreadful dream,’ ended Susie, with a deep sigh and an
expression of injured innocence, as she examined the costly rings on
her slender fingers.
‘Were your ears so impervious to sounds that you heard nothing outside
your room, Jack?’ John Prior asked his son, with several shades both
of suspicion and irony in his voice, as if he implied ‘Has it come to
this, that you drug yourself and sleep like a log? Are you not even of
as much good as a reasonably alert watch-dog?’
Susie put up her hand to her temples. She had the air of suffering from
a twinge of neuralgia. She shaded her face with her hand, and bent her
head in the best attitude for catching the first syllables of the reply.
‘Outside my room?’ muttered Jack, repeating his father’s words, and
articulating them as if he were speaking in his sleep. ‘No; I heard
nothing outside my room, unless a slight slamming of doors, which was
not likely to be the work of thieves, and that must have been after the
time which Susie refers to.’
He was silent, and so was Susie, while the rest of the company were
left to compare and do what they could to reconcile the conflicting
statements. Jack’s room had been, in fact, nearer the room which held
the safe in the adjoining bank. It was odd that Mrs. Lambert Crabtree
had detected conspicuous signs of the presence of burglars and yet he
had distinguished nothing. There was no explanation of the discrepancy
unless, as somebody obligingly pointed out, in the different degrees
of light and heavy sleep which are to be found in members of the same
family.
Susie had not heard from her husband with any announcement of his trip
to the Scilly Isles. All that she had to say of his absence was that it
was _silly_ of him to go yachting at such a time; though of course he
could not foresee the bank robbery. He would be worse than silly--he
would be like a madman when he did know, which she had no doubt would
be presently.
During the first part of the evening Susie--who made herself much more
the lion of the circle than the returned traveller put in any claim
to the rôle--either went over her story with slight variations again
and again, or she managed to lose sight of her terrors, passing from
one extreme to the other, and getting into outrageous spirits. She
returned to the details of the volunteer ball and tore them to tatters,
laughing and jesting over them. The servants when they passed in and
out stared at the incongruity. The cloud which she had brought with
her to overhang the house only grew the darker for Susie’s frantic,
intermittent efforts to escape from it. She insisted on having music
and played and sang herself, though she complained that the piano was
out of tune, and it was clear to the listeners that she herself was
out of the little voice she had, for she sang hoarsely before she
stopped--an accident which annoyed her out of all proportion to its
slightness. ‘I am not going to get like a raven,’ she kept telling
herself indignantly. She teased her mother till the elder woman sat
down and played her pieces, her ‘Light of other days,’ and so on,
without much spirit. Finally, Susie fell back on Miss Gray as the
musician, and then the _contretemps_ of the evening occurred.
Poor Jack had always been famous for blundering, and it seemed that
he was to keep up his character for proficiency in that questionable
accomplishment. He was standing a little way from the piano turning
over some illustrated papers lying on one of the gilt legged tables.
Miss Gray was singing a Berkshire ballad, without the aid of printed
music. Like everyone else that night she was absent-minded, and was
staring straight before her into one of the large mirrors. It reflected
the room and its occupants, including Mr. Prior, making a feint of
reading his Quarterly at his own little table, as he had sat and read,
and nervously tapped with his paper knife, on the night of Bennet’s
arrival eight months before.
On the spur of the moment, as usual, Jack called out when the song was
finished--‘There is another verse; won’t you give us that?’
‘I do not remember any more of the song,’ said Bennet Gray, in a hasty
undertone which ought to have conveyed a warning.
‘But you used to sing another verse,’ insisted the incorrigible Jack,
and the young fool spoke reproachfully. ‘I cannot be mistaken; you sang
another verse down in Berkshire.’
Dead pause, but for the rustle of the pages of John Prior’s magazine
and the faint stir of the fall of part of the quilt at which Mrs. Prior
was working.
Bennet felt compelled to stare aghast in the great mirror before her,
like one who would read her fate there, and met the reflection of a
group of faces marvelling, indignant, incredulous, distressed. One
of them--that of Mrs. Prior--was as white as her own. But for the
culprit’s, it was not white; successive waves of red were mounting to
his hair, while he bit his lips--as the next best thing to biting his
tongue out, and bent again over his _Graphic_.
Susie’s voice broke the silence, rising into a shrillness of mingled
surprise and gratification because her prophecy had come true, and she
had stumbled on what appeared on the face of it a not particularly
honourable secret. Her elation at the discovery broke down the barrier
against interesting herself in anything save her own concerns which she
had erected for the present. ‘Why, Jack, how can you tell Miss Gray’s
songs? I thought you had never met each other before to-day.’
Jack mumbled something of having had the pleasure or the honour before
he went to Australia.
Then good, true-hearted Jane, who had never had an awkward secret of
her own, but could not bear to witness the discomfiture of another
woman, especially when that woman was Miss Gray, came to the rescue,
and tried to turn off the unpleasantness of the moment, even at the
risk of incurring blame herself.
‘I knew that Miss Gray and Jack were acquainted before,’ she said, with
an effort at carelessness, as if the fact were of no consequence, and
without descending to particulars--such as the date of her knowledge.
‘It is a pity Miss Gray did not do us the favour of mentioning the
circumstance,’ said Mrs. Prior icily, while John Prior took no notice
of the turn the conversation had taken, unless by a restless movement,
akin to a weary shrug, which said that nothing signified much. That
revelation was what might have been expected. Jack’s friends or enemies
were no business of his father’s, beyond the fact that either were
pretty sure to be an annoyance, for where Jack was there was mischief.
Miss Gray had been a nice girl enough, and all had gone smoothly
till Jack had appeared on the scene, when, presto! Miss Gray, of
whom everybody had thought so much, was found to have been imposing
upon them the whole time, and another vexatious and objectionable
entanglement of Jack’s had come to light.
In despair Bennet played on. She did not know what she was playing, but
she felt she must be making horrible discord with her hands if they
reflected her state of mind. This was Jack’s disinterested owning and
claiming of her before his kindred on which she had plumed herself, for
which he was to have had so much credit--this standing at the first
brunt, bending down over the paper which everybody there knew he was
not reading or even seeing, hanging his head and saying not a word
after the slip of the tongue which had compromised them both! This was
not particularly heroic behaviour. But what could he have done at the
time and under the circumstances? It was not likely that he would stamp
and stride to her side, draw her arm through his, and announce to his
father, on whom he was dependent, and to the rest of the family--full
of another pressing care, ‘This is my future wife. This is your
future daughter and sister, who has been living for these many months
unsuspected in the house, serving you for hire.’ The conventionalities
and probabilities of the situation, which Bennet had ignored in her
glad anticipation of the tableau, ought to have been taken into account.
While one of the _suspects_ was breaking the intolerable silence with
a crashing noise, Susie shifted her seat to one next Jane’s and poured
out her feelings to her sister. ‘I told you so, and if it was not Mat,
it had been Jack all the time. She must be a perfect _intrigante_. What
a woman to have in the house with us! I remember how Jack glared the
evening he came back, when I spoke of the governess here. I saw that
there was something wrong. I thought he was in a scrape with a girl
beneath him, but I did not follow it out and connect it with this girl.
I should not have thought that she could have had the audacity to come
here. Oh, and I gave him such a pat piece of advice,’ and Susie began
to titter in a way that was ominous of the hysterics to which Jane had
said her sister was liable.
‘Oh, hush, Susie, for shame,’ cried Jane under her breath, and Susie
did hush in an instant to what Germans call ‘a mouse stillness,’ when
a servant with a particularly grave air entered and said that Mr.
Crabtree of Haybridge was in the library wishing to speak to Mr. Prior.
Mr. Crabtree would not come up to the drawing-room to disturb the
ladies at so late an hour.
There was one good in these two entirely distinct and different sources
of excitement and anxiety, that they seemed to balance and neutralise
each other, just as a sick man with a brain ailment is said to have
the current of disease diverted from the original channel and another
chance of recovery granted to him by an attack of lung complaint. There
is a limit to our capacity for astonishment, anger, apprehension.
Having reached, or nearly reached, the limit at the first assault on
our nerves and tempers, we have not unstinted forces to draw on for the
second charge made on us from an opposite quarter.
Mr. Prior was out of the room before the messenger had done speaking.
Susie’s eyes seemed to stand in her head as the others exchanged
startled glances.
‘What is it?’ she demanded, almost wildly. ‘Mat has no right to come
like this. I am entitled to hear first. Has Lamb come? Has he said
anything? I will be told at once. I am going to them.’
She was on her way to the door when a new impulse seized her.
She shrank back and sank into a chair, weeping passionately, and
resentfully repulsing her mother and Jane when they came to her and
sought to comfort her. ‘You know nothing about it. Why should you care?’
Jack was not among the would-be comforters, kind to soft-heartedness as
he had shown himself hitherto. He remained standing aloof, with the air
partly of a man in a suppressed rage, partly dazed and thunder-struck.
He was like one who cannot bring himself to admit--who fights hard
against the conviction that he is wounded to the quick, sick with
loathing, appalled and outraged to the very centre of his being. The
same look, wondering, questioning, horrified, had come over him in a
faint and flitting fashion with the first news of the robbery, but he
had put aside the recollection which lay at the root of the sensations
with something like fierce shame. He had trampled it with all his
might under foot, being stern and stubborn in his unbelief. He had
been helped by the tumult of other interests--the most important to
him--which had come between and usurped his attention. But now the evil
foretaste of unexampled misfortune and disgrace was again upon him, and
he could not go forward and try to soothe Susie; he could only writhe
under what seemed to him abject and helpless wretchedness.
The suspense did not last long. Mr. Prior, in common humanity to
his daughter, came back in a few minutes to say, not only that Mat
Crabtree was gone, but to explain that the errand he had come upon had
no immediate connection with Lambert Crabtree--who was not returned,
nor, for that matter, with the robbery. It was simply a detail of bank
business which Mr. Crabtree had ridden over to report. As John Prior
made the brief statement to all whom it might concern, his deep-set
eyes looked more sunken than ever under their pent-house brows, and his
under-lip quivered so that he could scarcely hold it tight to render
his words plain. His wife, who, under the individual blow which had
been dealt at her, still watched her husband narrowly, trembled in
sympathy with his repressed agitation, but nobody doubted his words.
Susie composed herself. She glanced up like a child with a fluttering
smile beginning to hover again over her mouth, and the tear-drops
still hanging on her long lashes. She claimed from all around her the
concession that after she had borne up wonderfully throughout the
affair, it was little wonder that she had broken down at last. She
allowed herself to be taken away to her room with the expression of the
sweetest of martyrs.
Everybody retired. The ill-starred evening had come to a close. Bennet
Gray was at liberty to bemoan herself in private, a good deal more
quietly, but certainly as sincerely as Susie had been doing in the
family circle half an hour before. Bennet was seeing plainly in the end
how wrong she had been, what a silly deception she had practised, what
a foolish romance she had indulged in. It all appeared doubly wrong,
silly, and foolish in the reality of the trial which had befallen the
Priors. Bennet would be punished. For this painful experience was
the first result of the explanation on which even that morning, and
during the journey from Oxford, she had still been confidently and
complacently counting. But Jack could not help himself, poor dear
fellow! Bennet stuck to that conclusion not incorrectly. He had not
trained himself in deceit as she had done, and already he had been
snubbed and sat upon all round, instead of being received with open
arms, as he should have been. What actual harm had he done? Whom had
he injured save himself--at least as Bennet put it to herself when
she stood convicted of sophistical reasoning, he had injured himself
worst of all, and for the injury to others there was ample reparation
in store, if they would but wait and take it. But even his mother--oh,
dear! oh, dear!--here was ‘the most unkindest cut of all.’ The only
thing worse was that the chapter of disasters had happened on the
evening of the day, long looked and prayed for, of Jack’s return to
Bennet, and after the secret triumph of what had occurred in his
absence, which was to have burst on those interested with all the
glory of the _dénouement_ of a fairy tale--the transformation scene of
a pantomime.
Bennet Gray was a woman rather of tender, tenacious affections than of
strong passions. She had been extremely fond of Mrs. Prior, both for
her own sake and for Jack’s. Bennet had been very proud of winning Mrs.
Prior’s regard. The girl had looked forward in the most shortsighted
style--clever woman though she was--to the exquisite reward of letting
Jack see what his mother thought of her, as well as what she thought of
his mother, and of winning the son’s pardon no less than her own for
the concealment they had practised. Bennet had coveted the generous
satisfaction which not every wife or husband is wise enough to impart
to her or his mate, of showing Jack unmistakably that his mother was
her mother in very truth, as his people were her people, and she
trusted humbly and reverently his God was her God. The fair fabric was
dashed to the ground.
‘She used to be so glad to see me back,’ lamented poor Bennet simply,
‘but she did not care to have me again this time. She was too much
put out by Jack’s having stayed away, and I suppose she connected me
intuitively with his delay, though really I don’t know that I had
anything to do with it beyond the fact that he heard I was going with
Jane to Oxford. I don’t know what took him to Susie first, or what she
said to him--no good, I am afraid. _She_ kissed me when I went away. I
don’t mean that Susie kissed me--she would not have gone so far as to
dab a schoolmistress’s cheek, and I should not have cared if she had.
I cannot help thinking Susie’s kisses, like her tears, are crocodile
productions, though she is to be pitied just now, poor little society
queen. I mean my dear Mrs. Prior, the most magnanimous and kindest of
unappreciated women, and I seemed to carry off her kiss on my lips
like a blessing--Jack’s mother’s blessing on my head. Will she ever
kiss me again? When shall I be able to persuade her that I have not
taken her son from her--not really, not more than any other woman would
have taken him, and she would not have wished him to remain single for
her sake--to have gone without a wife, Jack, of all men! When will
she believe that I did not steal into her good graces, and cheat her
into caring for me?--when I did, I did! _Mea culpa._ When will Jane,
who stood by me even in her sturdy truth, believe in me once more?
Mary Burton was right--it would have been ever so much wiser, better,
honester in all respects, if I had let matters take their course--if
I had waited to be introduced to Jack’s family in the ordinary way.
Now, when I tell them of my money it will be like a bribe flung in
their faces to close their mouths. And the whole family are so worried
about the robbery of that detestable Lambert Crabtree’s bank, that to
introduce my affairs is like an impertinent intrusion, while, in place
of being able to comfort them, I am only causing them fresh chagrin
and affront.’
To a woman of Bennet Gray’s cast of character the punishment which she
thus shadowed forth for herself was severe.
CHAPTER XI.
JACK PRIOR AND MAT CRABTREE RIDE ON A JOINT ERRAND.
John Prior had to give his son a commission to execute for him next
morning. The elder man, besides being fretfully anxious to hear what
was passing at Newton, had business to see to in the town, while he
could not bring himself to go there. His nerves were in a jarred and
shattered state from having been long stretched on the rack. He felt
as if he could not stand having more screws and pincers applied to his
quivering flesh. He shrank even from trivial encounters, and he was
beginning to cling more and more to solitude as the best refuge for
a stricken man. He gave Jack a cheque to a considerable amount on
Crabtree’s bank, and sent him in to Newton to cash it.
John Prior held no partnership in the bank, such as had been proposed
to him at the time of Susie’s marriage. He would not countenance his
son-in-law even to that extent; besides, the squire of Redcot needed
all his resources for the expenses of his mines. On the other hand, he
had been, for his own convenience, one of the larger depositors at the
bank. Lately, after he had heard from Lambert Crabtree’s own lips what
sounded confirmation strong of sundry disquieting rumours of shakiness
in the affairs of the once flourishing firm, John Prior had acted like
himself. He had behaved with a curious mixture of reckless disdain
and generous forbearance, in only beginning to withdraw partially and
gradually the amount of his ready money that was in the bank. He had
taken no decisive step which could have farther endangered the concern
and precipitated a crisis by removing at once, and in a lump, the sum
to his credit.
It had become absolutely necessary that John Prior should act on the
defensive from the positive information he had received the night
before, without any breach of confidence or divulgence of professional
knowledge, for Mat Crabtree was not a partner in his brother’s bank
any more than John Prior was. Mat had succeeded to the position of a
junior partner when he became squire of Haybridge, but almost at the
commencement of his brother’s reign the elder man had differed from the
younger on the question of the latter’s management of the business. Mat
Crabtree had withdrawn from the responsibility of a partnership--all
the sooner, no doubt, that, like John Prior, he wanted his capital for
his own purposes, the improvement of his land and stock, so that Mat,
too, was but a depositor in the bank which had been his father’s and
grandfather’s. But he knew enough from former experience to recognise
the first symptoms of serious mischief. He scarcely needed the
premonitory growlings of wrath and fright from the remaining partners,
who, though they were all more or less subsidiary to Lambert Crabtree,
had, on the alarm of the robbery, hastily called a meeting without
waiting for the return of the head of the bank.
The doubt was whether any precautionary measure would not now be taken
too late; but, in time or not in time, John Prior could not nerve
himself to make it personally. He could not ride in to Newton with the
intention of presenting his cheque over the bank counter and see what
he expected to see in the town. The words might not be spoken to him,
but he would hear ringing in his ears what everybody was saying of the
scandalous extravagance of Lambert Crabtree and Susie, his wife, so
conspicuously displayed with a brazen face within the very week. This
was an extravagance which, together with its usual accompaniment, a
mad haste to grow rich, had largely contributed to a public calamity.
Worse than that, he, John Prior, would be conscious in his inmost soul
that it was possible he might, by a word of his mouth, have prevented
ruin and misery beginning with his own flesh and blood, and spreading
far and wide.
For the first time in his life the squire of Redcot shirked an absolute
obligation, and called on another man to pay the penalty due from his
neighbour.
True, it was Jack his father pitched upon--Jack, who knew nothing,
whose scatter-brains, where the grave conduct of his life had been
in question, would not have been likely to have either profited or
suffered by any amount of business knowledge. If a man could not take
advantage of his own thoughtless, useless son on such an emergency,
what more irresponsible substitute was there any hope of his finding?
Jack complied with his father’s request without offering an objection,
though he had reasons of his own which made Newton and Crabtree’s
Bank highly distasteful to him that morning. The young man would
rather have hung about the house at Redcot on the precious chance of
another _tête-à-tête_ with Bennet Gray, perhaps a stroll with her,
on the apology supplied by the presence of the children, as far as
the mill, or the barn, or the cunning labyrinth which led to the rose
garden. He would even have been thankful for an opportunity of coming
to an explanation with his mother or Jane. But neither among Jack’s
attractive qualities, nor among his failings, had there been developed
hitherto a facility in saying No; and, as he looked more directly at
his father when he was speaking to him, a painful conviction smote upon
Jack. How his father had aged since he (Jack) had gone away, and how
terribly cut up the governor must be about this abominable robbery!
Poor old fellow, he had chafed sufficiently about his (Jack’s) lack
of brains, how would he look if--if----. But no, such baseness and
degradation could never be--it was all a hideous dream, a ghastly
delusion. Of course he would do what he could to be of any use. He was
secretly pleased that his father had not been above applying to him for
the smallest assistance which had been John Prior’s repellent attitude
to his son formerly. Jack wished to Heaven he had not been such a
heedless ass, and had been a little more comfort to his father.
So the young squire of Redcot rode in betimes on a sultry, cloudy,
summer morning to Newton, and there he saw such a sight as amidst more
personally overwhelming spectacles he never afterwards forgot. In the
first place, he met Mat Crabtree also on horseback. He had turned
aside, and was spurring along in order to intercept John Prior or his
representative. The road was not in general much frequented, leading,
as it did, only to a few scattered country houses and cottages, and
as yet there were not many wayfarers. Nobody was within hearing when
the elder man drew bridle the instant he spied the other rider, and
called to him--‘Make haste, Jack, the whole town and country are up and
flocking to the High Street. Your one chance is to push through on your
beast as far as the bank door, and be among the first comers. You must
do it. Your father cannot be left penniless.’
‘But it is not bank hours,’ protested Jack; ‘the bank doors will not be
open.’
‘Ay, my lad; but there is a host of claimants waiting for the opening.
You must get into the front rank and head the host.’
Mat Crabtree had turned, and was riding rapidly along with Jack. He
looked eager, flushed, and excited. His manly face seemed to have
recovered the lines of its earlier manhood; instead of looking older
he held his whitening head erect and squared his broad shoulders.
He was in the thick of the battle, and he warmed to it, and would
fight it to the end, though he knew it was a losing game. And behind
this morning’s struggle and clamour there lay a load as of lead on
his breast, a burden which would send him scouring the country on a
hopeless quest before the sun went down.
‘I remember something of the same kind in 18--,’ Mat Crabtree told Jack
Prior out of the elder man’s experience, mentioning a year memorably
fatal in trading and banking annals, ‘but it was a trifle to this.
There was still something to be done. The case was by no means beyond
recovery. I was a partner then, and was with some of the other partners
in the bank parlour, when the crowd came streaming into the street.
But we were able to meet the run. Old Fairfax was alive, and he was
wonderfully shrewd and cool. He had anticipated the panic after the
failure of Ford & Wetherby. He had gone up to London for gold, and got
it and brought it down by a special engine after midnight. We kept one
half of the door shut, and admitted the applicants in single file,
paying in full without a moment’s delay. Before the afternoon half of
the people had gone home ashamed to present their books or our paper,
and the throng was no greater than on an ordinary market day.’
‘Can’t it be done again?’ Jack asked naturally enough.
Mr. Crabtree shook his head, and his face fell like a soldier’s when
he has been beguiled into giving the tactics of a past victory, but is
recalled to face the signs of an impending defeat.
‘Is it the robbery which has played the deuce?’ asked Jack, his voice
sinking and thickening, while he kept his eyes fixed on his horse’s
head. ‘At the same time, I do not see how that can be when the money
has been recovered.’
‘It is the robbery in part,’ answered Mat Crabtree shortly, in the
tone of a man referring to a subject which he did not care to discuss
any more than Jack cared. ‘It shook the public confidence, which was
already tottering, and did not recover from the shock, though it turned
out that the bank had sustained no loss. The attempted robbery gave the
alarm, and between you and me, Jack--for I believe there is no further
possibility of concealment--everything is in a mess; long-drawn bills
that ought never to have been granted, rotten securities which ought
not to have been taken up, funds wasted. My brother was always rash and
absurdly sanguine. Metcalfe is no better, and he, too, has been betting
on the turf and indulging in similar vices and follies for a man in his
position. He has been cutting a dash and going at a pace which would
have brought him down any time these five years had it not been for
the unfortunate bank at his back. There was a mighty difference in my
father’s day, but that is a story long gone by. Only one of that set
of partners survives, poor old superannuated Hutchinson, and he is
trustworthy enough, though he may not be able to retain the clutch of
his money-bags which he has gripped so long. The younger men will have
to account, and Lambert first of all,’ said Mat Crabtree, setting his
face sternly.
Jack Prior could only mutter he was sorry, without any absorbing pity
for his brother-in-law. He had a tolerable share of what was likely to
be the public’s sweeping condemnation of the man who had bidden for
its favour swaggeringly and with a fair amount of success, while the
delusion lasted.
‘The worst of it is Coplestone’s bonds,’ said Mat Crabtree, almost
with a groan, fain to make a clean breast of it, even to no more
qualified a councillor than Jack Prior, before the two entered on the
sharp contest. ‘These bonds had been taken from the safe, and were
not found with the bank notes after the robbery. The police have not
discovered any trace of the papers. The poor beggar--a good sort who
never considered himself--is invalided. He has stayed too long at his
post out in India, where he has been baked and battered, seeing service
far up the country in order to make the future safer for his wife and
children. Now, when he has more reason than ever to be convinced that
soldiering is a poor trade, he returns--I expect him on the scene
at any moment, he may arrive in the middle of the racket, this very
morning, though God forbid--to find the nest-egg on which he married
gone, and his family not provided with more than bread and water after
all.’
‘What are you going to do, Mr. Crabtree?’ inquired Jack doubtfully.
‘Nothing, sir, save see fair play,’ answered Mat Crabtree grimly. ‘What
can I do? I may be mortally ashamed that I resigned my trust and sold
out nearly twenty years ago, though I did no wrong. I cannot see yet,
while I keep my senses, that it was not the best thing I could do.’
‘I don’t see how anybody can find fault with you,’ said Jack. ‘How
could you guess what would happen a score of years beforehand?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mat Crabtree bitterly; ‘yet, upon my soul, lad,
I had rather at this moment that I had remained a partner, because of
the name I bear. I might have restrained Lambert, though he was at the
head of the concern, if only by being a drag upon him. But now, though
I were to sell Haybridge to-morrow, and divide it piecemeal among the
poor creatures who have been robbed of their savings and deprived of
their incomes, it would not be a mouthful to each. What would become of
your sister Susie and her children? It is not just, it is not honest,
that every burden should fall on your father.’
‘My father will do his part,’ said Jack hastily and gruffly. ‘Your
brother may not have been the only person to blame. I mean,’ he added
quickly, ‘Susie is as good at cutting a dash and throwing away money as
the best.’
Mat Crab tree was following the current of his thoughts, and not paying
much heed to the hesitating plea, put in awkwardly, and as with a
reservation of meaning no less than of determination.
‘The most needy,’ went on Mat Crabtree, ‘may have the benefit of what
little money is lying in my name, though the greater probability is
that it is the greedy and importunate who will chiefly profit by it.
But anyhow I would not have the face to anticipate them and make good
my claim. There have been no bonds hitherto over Haybridge, and I can
raise the wind in that way as well as many another and better man, I
daresay,’ he said with a sigh, speaking more to himself than to Jack
Prior. ‘And after I have stood guard over the weakest in this morning’s
work, I shall follow the principal offender though he were ten times my
brother, and bring him back to do what he can to atone for his offence,
if he has a man’s heart left in him.’ Mat Crabtree ground the last
words through his teeth. ‘That is about the sum-total of what I am able
to do for the sufferers by the failure of Crabtree’s Bank.’
Not a word had Mat Crabtree or Jack Prior spoken of Bennet Gray; not a
thought had they spent on her. For, though love stands between birth
and death the greatest earthly factor in human existence, the giant
power is at rest for long intervals and does not by any means pervade
every idea and action of the man.
The two riders were already on the outskirts of the town where it was
entered from the railway station. As the men came in sight of the road,
‘Look there, Jack,’ said Mat Crabtree, indicating numerous groups of
old and young, men and women, some of them in working clothes, the
pedestrians making their way as fast as they could hurry towards the
church end of the High Street, in which the bank stood. There was in
addition a considerable sprinkling of market-carts, dog-carts, and
old-fashioned gigs heavily freighted with human cargoes.
Crabtree’s Bank stood in a peculiar relation to the town and
neighbourhood. At the date of its establishment there had been no other
bank in the place, and the gentleman who founded the firm, a man at
once sagacious and kindly, had afforded the greatest facilities which
the laws and customs of banking would allow for the use of the bank
by the smallest admissible depositors, thus antedating the savings
bank, which had only taken a slight hold on Newton. Crabtree’s Bank
had included in addition to its richer clients a large leaven of
the small tradesmen, yeomen--farmer, well-to-do mechanic, and upper
servant class. In later years when available investments multiplied
on all sides, and still more recently, when suspicions of the bank’s
stability began to be whispered warily, those most in the way of
hearing the whispers and most able to do what they would with capital,
had withdrawn to a considerable extent from the old enterprise. The
threatened calamity was likely to fall most heavily on the less
well-provided, well-informed folk, who in other circumstances would
have patronised a savings bank. It was this portion of the community,
apt to be impulsive and demonstrative, whose
Manners have not the repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere,
that were rapidly assembling in Newton streets.
There was no loitering, dallying holiday air about the gathering crowd.
Their faces were like flint, as had been said of men of old. The
wayfarers pressed on as if goaded by an errand which would not let them
rest. It forbade them to turn their eyes to the right or the left. It
gagged even women’s mouths, so that the tongues within wagged only on
the one engrossing topic, and did that in jerking sentences and single
monosyllables There would be time enough for those interested to pour
out their souls in shame-faced repentance or in righteous indignation
and fierce denunciation when the devouring anxiety gnawing at every
heart was allayed or when all was lost. Now breath was wanted for speed
and caution--nay, cunning came into request, that each candidate might
gain on another, and, if possible, outrun his neighbour.
Some of the women carried market baskets to conceal the bearers’
real intent, or from a mechanical notable habit of improving every
opportunity of visiting the town. Others, the more reckless or the
weaker vessels, openly held fast by slim little books, treasured and
conned as few weighty tomes have been faithfully studied, or clutched
homely purses stuffed with bank notes, which had been as good as gold
this morning, yet might be little better than waste-paper before night.
CHAPTER XII.
A BROKEN BANK.
When Mr. Crabtree and Jack Prior were fairly into the town the various
groups resolved themselves into a living mass through which there was
difficulty in penetrating on horseback. The two men, carefully guiding
their horses, had time to contemplate Newton under a third aspect--not
grinning and prancing as on a yearly festival, not gaping and staring
at the tale of a crime committed in the midst of them yet apart from
them--but hand in pocket and heart in mouth, in sharp dread of a
_theft_ which should have stolen from each man or woman his or her
piece of money, hardly earned and religiously kept. For this was no
gathering of the rich who could preserve their polite equanimity under
the temporary locking up, or even the entire loss of considerable sums
in Crabtree’s Bank; because the losers would not feel sensibly the
worse of the misfortune, or else might hope to retrieve the disaster.
To those who can thus lose and win by turns in the game of trade an
adverse stroke comes as part of the day’s obligations, and is taken
as a matter of course--to be balanced in a debit and credit account,
to settle which a lifetime is needed. But this was a hand-to-mouth if
respectable mob--many of its members the old, the disabled, the feeble,
who had yet contrived to scrape together a pittance for a rainy day--a
pittance which, if scattered to the winds, would never be painfully
collected again.
Instinctively Mat Crabtree and Jack Prior shrank from individual
recognition. They had no wish to know and be known by injured men and
women, whose injuries the better equipped new-comers could not heal.
But, as the couple slowly made their way in the centre of the throng,
even Jack Prior, who was much less at home in Newton than Mat Crabtree,
could not fail to identify homely figures striving for precedence with
a strange, tragic element of fixedness and fatality of circumstance in
their very convulsive eagerness.
Yonder was the big old yeoman, more slouching in figure and less ruddy
in colour than formerly, who had sold his inheritance of Ladslove
for deliverance from a debt which he had never contracted unless in
becoming surety for its payment. What was left over of the purchase
money had set him up as a coal agent. But even the Bank House patronage
had not caused the leased coalyard, so grimy an exchange for the
paternal fields, to flourish. It flourished the less, doubtless,
because the ale-house had become the more congenial resort to the
broken-down man. The coal bank was pledged already, and if the slender
store of ready-money in Crabtree’s Bank were gone also, the ex-yeoman
was in a worse condition than a day labourer, who could hire himself
out to-morrow and earn enough by the sweat of his brow to keep his wife
and sick daughter from starving.
The elderly woman in a thick jacket and battered straw bonnet, who was
squaring her shoulders and elbowing a path for herself like a man, was
Widow Maxey, who had been left an unprotected female with a house full
of young children a quarter of a century before. The family’s sole
means of support were the horse and cart with which her late husband
had driven coals from the Kershaw heaps, before the railway and the
agencies which had sprung up in its track had come into play. She had
been a comely young woman then, when she put her shoulder to the wheel
and entered the ranks of the carters. She had grown weather-beaten, and
learned to smoke a tobacco-pipe in self-defence against the elements,
but had shown no worse signs of deterioration. On the contrary, she
had maintained a spotless reputation which no man dared assail, in her
Amazonian occupation and surroundings. But toil and exposure had told
upon her robust constitution, so that she had aged rapidly, and had
been forced by rheumatism to resign her seat at the head of the cart,
yield her whip to a half-grown lad, her son, and return, perforce, to
the corner of the hearth. It had become as much alien ground to her
as it would have been to a man overtaken by infirmity, cut off from
an active out-of-doors life, and reduced to hang about the house, in
which he was a useless and listless supernumerary. Widow Maxey had only
become reconciled to her abdication because, as was well known, she
had remained in possession of the sinews of war--that is the actual
proprietorship of the horse and cart, in addition to her savings. She
had been for years proposing to lay the savings out in the purchase
of a new horse, to replace the worn-out animal which had in its
turn replaced her husband’s old mare. She had held frequent solemn
consultations on the important transaction, which was never likely
to take place, with Jack Prior, for she was one of Jack’s Kershaw
acquaintances. He dreaded to meet her eye now, as if he was at the
bottom of her cruel disappointment.
It was still harder for Mat Crabtree than for Jack in the _mêlée_,
since Mat not only knew dozens where Jack knew one person involved, but
these persons, by common consent, appealed to the squire of Haybridge
to see justice done. It was exactly what he was seeking to do, but in
a far less effectual manner than they were quick to conceive. They
knew him as one of the Crabtrees, who had always owned the bank; nay,
as the elder brother of the banker. Mat had a name for liberality and
kindness, and the suppliants could not realise how powerless he was in
the emergency. ‘You’ll see us paid, Mr. Crabtree, won’t ye?’ was the
unanimous, importunate cry. ‘We might never have had ought to do with
the bank if it had not been for your name--the name of your father, as
was well known far and near for a just and honourable gentleman, the
friend of the people. Lord, when he were made Mayor--you must mind,
squire, for you’re not a young man yourself--he found work for every
idle hand in the town. His son will not see us robbed and cheated of
our all.’
Harrowing details were spread out without disguise for Mat Crabtree’s
reluctant inspection. A long, lean man, a gardener, who had been
conspicuous for his aggressive respectability and the crustiness which
has distinguished all gardeners since Adam partook of the fatal apple,
was the first to be betrayed into sentiment. ‘It was my lad’s money--my
lad as were wild and went off to be a sodger,’ said the father with
trembling lips; ‘but he has taken up and riz to be a corporal, and we
were main proud, the lad’s mother and me, afore the neighbours, when he
kept sending us home shares of his pay as he fought and bled for. We
didn’t spend a farthing of the money; bless you! we would have starved
first. We kept it against Ned’s return, that it might be all awaiting
him though we were in our graves. Surely, sir, no strange swindler, let
alone a townsman, one of the old country gentry, would touch what was
the price of a brave man’s blood?’
‘You must mind us, Mister Crabtree, my sister Ann and me,’ pled a
scarecrow of a little woman, with a bunch of faded roses stuck jauntily
in the round hat meant to cover her grey head. ‘I’d never have been
so bold as to bring us back to your recollection, though we did do
plain sewing for Madam, your mother, when she came in from Haybridge
to the Bank House in winter, as the family were wont to do in your
honoured father’s lifetime. But Ann has gone blind, and there is only
me to trust to, as is not so strong as I ’ave been. We would have
been in the workhouse afore now, if it had not been for the legacy a
well-to-do cousin were worked on to leave us. We took the advice of
your respected brother, Mr. Lambert, and he bought a bank share with
our legacy, for which we drew the interest regular. We had not wished
to touch the principal as long as we could help it. We kep’ it to bury
the last of we two. Oh, sir, Ann won’t see the road she’s going--that’s
one comfort, but it will break her poor heart--as were broken already
in her youth by the false lies of a journeyman tailor--to die in a
workhouse.’
What could Mat Crabtree do but push forward, looking neither to right
nor left, and muttering, ‘Yes, yes,’ as the Iron Duke looked and spoke,
when he was beset by the London populace clamouring for nothing more
personal than justice to foolish, hardly used Queen Caroline.
As Jack Prior had conjectured, the clock on the church tower close
to the bank had not struck the hour for the bank’s opening. But the
pressure was so great round the building that he had some trouble in
following his companion’s example. They had to edge in their horses
like mounted policemen on a public show-day, so as not to produce
another description of panic and stampede, till the riders found
themselves stationed as if on guard on each side of the great bank
doors. Other horsemen and a variety of vehicles were in attendance, but
none had got so far forward, none had been made way for like these two.
Jack spared a passing thought that it was a mercy Susie was not within
the Bank House, which was left to the servants and the police, for no
woman’s heart, however innocent, could well have stood the sight. Then
he set himself to endure in company with Mat Crabtree a bad quarter of
an hour.
From their saddles the two men commanded a sea of heads which filled
an open space into which the street suddenly spread after the fashion
of some old-world streets. It left room for a small green, with an old
elm in the centre, and behind it the parish church, with its square
Norman tower. This was the aristocratic as well as the ecclesiastical
centre of Newton. Good old houses, with white facings round the long
French windows, and pillared entrances to extensive gardens, marked
the quarter. The house next the church was the vicarage, other houses
belonged to the principal doctor, the principal lawyer, the retired
military and naval officers--a few specimens of whom are generally
found settled in a country town. But the bank and the Bank House,
quite a spacious pile of masonry, cast all the other buildings
into the shade. This bit of Newton, even on market days, when the
chief business was done at the bank, preserved an air of dignified
repose which was not easily disturbed. The present scene formed a
remarkable contrast. Fustian jackets jostled lingering smock frocks,
country-made coats kept rustic plaid shawls in company, and tradesmen
in shirtsleeves lent countenance to respectable women with no other
covering for their heads than the housewives’ caps, in which the
wearers would not willingly have been seen abroad on any occasion save
one of life and death. But men and women had been suddenly infected
with the fever which was raging, and had rushed out as they were
dressed, from behind their counters and from their domestic work,
without so much as waiting to whip on coats and bonnets. Many of
the mothers were of necessity lugging children, and the unconscious
creatures, unaffected by the silence and suspense tugging at every
mature heart, raised at intervals a clamour of their own, which broke
with startling discordance on what was by comparison the unnatural
quiet.
As the crowd waited--growing always denser, a stir and motion
fluttering its edges, the turning of many faces and a hum of suppressed
exclamation, showed that by some of those unaccountable modes of
communication that convey news of general import with the speed of
lightning, fresh tidings had reached the throng. The train had arrived
with the London newspapers, and in the list of bankrupts figured the
name of ‘James Metcalfe, Gentleman.’ This was the bank partner to whom
Mat Crabtree had referred in conversation with Jack Prior half an hour
before as a man who cut a dash like Lambert, who had been going at
such a pace for years that only a bank behind him could have kept him
up. James Metcalfe had spoken the first word in the controversy about
to be entered upon between himself as a bank partner and the other
partners and customers of the bank. He had frankly announced himself
impecunious as a private person, whatever he was as a public character.
Smothered groans of jealous rage responded to this further darkening
of the horizon. ‘He were in the town driving four-in-hand not a month
agone,’ cried one voice. ‘His wife and daughter were presented to the
Queen this very spring,’ cried another. ‘I seed his name, leastways his
horse’s, in a list of the runners at some dashed races,’ chimed in a
third.
‘Ay, races and balls, fine clothes, and fine eating, them’s the ways of
the gentlefolks, and we pay the piper,’ growled a humble cynic.
‘Hold on,’ remonstrated a volunteer, a self-complacent little man,
who was loyal in his self-complacency, and at the same time oppressed
by the consciousness that the squire of Haybridge and young Prior
of Redcot were at his elbow. ‘Gentlefolks ain’t all alike any more
than we are. I take it there are good, bad, and indifferent among
them as among smaller fry, and I for one won’t hear a word till it be
fairly proven against the Colonel. I’m a volunteer. I ain’t in any
ways ashamed of it, and Colonel Crabtree is as hearty and free as any
gentleman or officer need be. It is a mean dodge--yes, I say it is a
low, dirty trick to come down upon him like this, when his back is
turned too, after all he has done for the troop and the town--just
because he has had the misfortune to have his bank robbed.’
‘We are seeking no more than our own,’ his hearers defended themselves
with one voice--dull, decisive, and striking with sledge-hammer weight.
‘It is better to be just than to be generous.’ ‘His back is turned?
Whose fault is that? Why don’t Mr. Lambert Crabtree show face and
render up his accounts?’
Mat Crabtree sat like a stone while he tried to turn a deaf ear. Jack
Prior winced and fumed and involuntarily kicked with his heels till
he was recalled to what he was about by his long-suffering horse
threatening to rear.
Another pause and another commotion aroused the pent-up crowd. ‘Eh!
what was it? What do you say?’ ‘Old Mr. Hutchinson taken with a
fit--doctor galloping out like mad--not thought patient will live over
the day--another of the bank partners!’ ‘The judgment of Heaven, do you
think? But the old man were clean past business. He were the age of
father, I’ve heard him tell. Judgment should begin nigher-hand with the
able-bodied and capable.’
The brooding heat of a lowering, sultry morning made the circumstances
harder to bear. The whole outlook suggested a bad thunderstorm--another
sign to the ignorant and credulous, who are fond of signs of the wrath
of God against the unrighteous dealings of men. Would the church clock
never strike? Had it been tampered with too? Had its machinery run
down to defer the evil hour which must come?
At last, with a creak and swing, the ponderous double doors opened, and
revealed pale, anxious faces of bank officials at their posts before
the human tide began to pour in. Jack sprang from his horse, a bank
porter took the bridle, instinctively a passage was yielded to ‘young
Prior of Redcot’ till he reached the counter and had his father’s
cheque cashed in the gold and Bank of England notes--of which there
were piles and rolls ready to meet the demand upon them. But as for
the Crabtree bank notes they were nowhere, except in the hands of many
of the applicants. It was clearly understood that as an issue from the
bank they were utterly rejected, till their credit should be restored,
if that day ever dawned.
When Jack struggled out he saw Mat Crabtree still immovable, to some
extent stemming the rush and preventing the stronger from pushing
aside and bearing down the weaker.
‘Fair play,’ Jack heard him call, in his authoritative voice.
‘Englishmen like fair play.’
‘We’ll be fair enough if your brother the banker act fairly to us,’ was
called back roughly in the passion of the moment, and the squire of
Haybridge stiffened into silence as before.
Jack extricated himself and his horse, and lingered on the outskirts
of the company. He was fain to see the end of the day’s work, whether
the eager flow would relieve the current eddying in one direction with
fatal concentration--whether the supply would meet the demand after
all. If the bank were saved so far as to escape being violently brought
down, it would have time given it to wind up its affairs calmly and in
a sound mind, with the least injury to all concerned. But even as Jack
waited and looked, by a quick strategic movement, taking the pushing
crowd unawares, the heavy doors swung to in the very faces of the front
rank making good their entrance, and presented to horror-stricken faces
a placard already affixed--‘Crabtree’s Bank has stopped payment till
further notice.’
A muffled roar of baffled desire and despair rose on the heavy air.
Men gesticulated furiously. Women hid their faces and wept aloud. Jack
could distinguish Mat Crabtree’s voice again from where he still sat
on his horse by the bank-doors. ‘Men and women, I can do nothing for
you at this moment,’ he told those who pulled themselves together to
listen. ‘Nobody can do anything in the meantime. But go home. Have
patience. A bank is not crushed out of existence in a day. It has
funds and debts of its own to realise. There will be dividends more or
less, and the depositors are paid first. It is the law of the land.
Take heart. I wish to heaven I could give you more assurance. But I
have another word to say to you. I heard some of you say my brother
would not show face. Whether that be true or not, I am going after
him, and if he is alive he will be here to answer to you.’ He was
gone the next moment, steering his way so skilfully through the crowd
that it seemed as if it fell apart and dissolved in its hopelessness
and heavy-heartedness. Mat outstripped Jack. The latter had been
detained by an inclination which he could not resist. A cripple who had
over-exerted himself and was struck to the heart by the fruitlessness
of his exertions, staggered so wildly, and showed himself so faint that
he had to be dragged out of the press. Jack cleared a way and helped
the man out, clinging to his stirrup.
‘Thank you, governor,’ said the poor fellow, wiping his wan face, ‘it
were the heat, and the haste, and the money for the rent, which I might
have got yesterday, God help me, if I had knowed to come in time.’
Jack fumbled in his breast pocket and secretly thrust some of his
father’s guineas into the shaking hand. ‘Take that in your strait. It
is my father’s, not mine; but he would give it to you willingly if he
were here.’
CHAPTER XIII.
MAT CRABTREE AND JOHN PRIOR BEAR THE BURDEN.
Mat Crabtree was riding post-haste to Haybridge before he started on
his search, for which he had no more clue than has been laid before
the reader. He was not without a notion that Lambert might have taken
refuge in his late father’s house in Mat’s absence, doubling back, like
many another creature that feels itself at bay, to its starting point.
He was likely enough to display the unrepentant prodigal’s alacrity in
repairing to his injured relations--not to say that he has sinned, but
to dare them to dissever the tie they did not knot, which has long been
a whip to scourge them. He would make it an excuse for brazening out
his offence and his disgrace, and for demanding their aid to escape
just retribution.
In addition, Mat Crabtree had to set his house in order for what might
be an absence of some duration. Lambert Crabtree might have gone abroad
by this time. He might have reason to fear such disclosures as would
render it only prudent in him to retire precipitately from the scene
of action--either concealing his identity or repairing to one or other
of the few refuges left, from which an international treaty would not
dislodge him.
Mat Crabtree rode with bent head and a weight upon his breast, looking
neither to his sheep on the hill nor to his cattle in the meadows. He
could take no comfort from his roomy white house, with the well-kept
green of turf and trees, and palings, which looked wholesome, fresh,
and bright even on this breathless, lowering day. Crossing his
threshold he was met by his housekeeper, who, before he could ask a
question, gave him a visitor’s card.
Lambert would not offer a card at his brother’s house. The thought
passed silently across Mat’s mind as he instinctively took up the bit
of pasteboard and read, ‘Major Coplestone, R.A.’
All the rosiness had gone out of Mat Crabtree’s face when he confronted
his visitor. Mat was paler than the sallow invalid. When the latter
looked at honesty abashed in the person of his host, he rose gallantly
to the occasion, and played a soldier and man’s part in remembering old
friendship, and showing himself just in awarding blame only where blame
was due.
‘Never mind, Mat,’ he said, wringing the hand he had to take; ‘it is
not so bad that it cannot be borne. I heard from my solicitor the day
after I landed that the bonds were a missing. I was coming straight to
Lambert when I was told that he had not returned. I learnt what was
up in Newton. I knew I should hear the truth from you, but I did not
intend to put you out. There is no use in crying over spilt milk, eh?’
with a grimace of his lank jaws which might stand for a smile. ‘It only
means going back to India with the dregs of a life which would not have
been much good here now, and of trusting to the boys and girls doing
for themselves and looking after their mother when I am gone. Perhaps
it is best for them, after all.’
‘I wish I could change places with you, Jem Coplestone, I do indeed,’
was Mat’s sole reply.
But the generous forbearance of the injured man did the other good and
helped him to judge less harshly and be less resentful with regard to
his own share of the wrong which had been inflicted so unsparingly.
The storm in the sky had burst and passed away before Mat Crabtree set
out again. The sinking sun shone forth and gilded with a tender light
the raindrops which were hanging thickly on every twig and leaf. The
birds began to sing their vesper hymn. The cattle and sheep lowed and
bleated in sympathy. The whole earth looked tranquil, pure, and sweet,
as if its stains had been washed away in a tempest of Heaven’s tears,
so that the world of sin and sorrow was for a blessed moment forgiven
and at peace. The merciful blue sky was overhead. There was only a soft
bank of pearly clouds far to the south to show where the storm rack had
rolled.
Mat was riding to a railway station, but not to Newton. As it happened,
he had taken a road which his brother and he had often traversed
together as boys, when they went to say their lessons with the vicar’s
sons at the neighbouring vicarage. Lambert had looked up to Mat in
those far-off days. There had been comradeship, common proprietorship,
in many cherished possessions and family affection, till the inevitable
separation, when the elder preceded the younger at a public school
and at college. But even then, when Lambert’s time came, he had been
put under Mat’s care. The middle-aged man still remembered with what
anxious counsels from his father, what wistful charges from his mother,
the trust had been given. How had he fulfilled his obligation when
his brother and he had drifted so far apart? Had he, the elder, been
high-handed, domineering, impatient? He had been a scholar, while
Lambert was but a sorry student. He recalled his affront at the lad’s
deficiencies, though it was small blame to Lambert that he had not
been endowed with the pondering brains which make men book-learned.
Would that the lack were the worst which could be laid at Lambert’s
door to-day. Mat, with his cool head, his intellectual pursuits, his
tendency to fall among men who ‘sapped’ and were steady like himself,
without much credit to them, could not so much as comprehend the
temptations which visit lads like Lambert. Indeed he, Mat, had quickly
deprived himself of any chance of comprehending them by the intolerant
dislike and contempt with which he had shaken himself free from what he
had chosen to regard as disparaging associations, and left Lambert to
take his chance unhampered by a supercilious preaching prig of an elder
brother. How would it have been if he had been larger-hearted, more
liberal-minded, as a love of truth and knowledge ought to have made him?
Where was Lambert now? What was this miserable bank robbery which had
been eclipsed within the last few hours by the failure of the bank. Who
had been the thief or thieves, so well acquainted with the details of
the house as not only to steal but to hide the booty upon the premises?
There was one thing to be devoutly thankful for--all agreed that
Lambert had been absent. Jack Prior was the man who had slept in the
house, and it was impossible to suspect Jack.
Where had Lambert betaken himself to? The sweat-drops bathed Mat
Crabtree’s forehead as he asked himself the question and contemplated
the hideous possibilities in such cases. The perpetration of actual
fraud added to the misery caused by mingled greed and spendthrift
self-indulgence, bringing the man within the clutches of the law,
headed the list. Then followed his name dishonoured throughout the
country, till all who bore it were constrained to walk softly for the
rest of their days. Next came knavish, despicable flight to avoid
richly deserved punishment. This was succeeded by wolfish remorse and
Judas-hued despair, impelling him to make an unwarrantable exit from
the waste, howling wilderness of trouble into which his reckless steps
had carried him. He bequeathed the wilderness as a fitting region for
his unfortunate family and friends to inhabit during the natural term
of their lives. For the miserable catalogue was wound up by an impious
entrance, unsummoned, into the ante-chamber of the King of kings.
Over at Redcot, John Prior was questioning his son in the privacy of
the father’s study. It was a faded room, with neglected bookcases
and a far less inhabited, not to say genial, air than the library
at Haybridge possessed. As Jack looked round him he was assailed by
fragmentary recollections of trying interviews with the head of the
house following hard upon youthful delinquencies, especially by that
most painful _tête-à-tête_ when Jack had to divulge to his father the
extent of his college failures and debts.
John Prior himself had for once forgotten the unpalatable past in the
grievous present. ‘And so it is ended,’ he kept saying, as he walked up
and down the room. ‘Crabtree’s Bank is broken. The scoundrel has ruined
the whole town and neighbourhood.’
‘It will be the worse for him.’ Jack uttered a platitude for want of
anything better to say.
His father turned upon him.
‘The usual cant,’ he said. ‘He himself has the worst of it; he will
find a pack of fools ready to proclaim it, and so he appropriates the
very pity of the thing, after he has taken all else--even if he end by
shuffling off the coil on weaker shoulders, and making away with his
dastardly self.’
‘Surely it will not come to that,’ cried Jack, aghast at this new
suggestion. ‘Susie----’
‘Not a word more than you can help to her, boy,’ interrupted Mr. Prior,
speaking so hastily that both he and Jack failed to consider how long
it was since he had employed the old familiar term, the sound of which
nevertheless thrilled the two men. ‘Not a hint of what I have said
to your mother or any other of the women. This is not a subject for
them. Let Lambert Crabtree stay away as long as he chooses without
awakening premature horrors in their minds. They will hear soon enough
if anything has happened.’
It was clear that John Prior could not take the advice he gave, that he
was conjuring up terrible visions which any moment might realise. It
was curious how in his disordered frame of mind, without any striking
of colours or declaration of amnesty, he sought companionship from
his son, and kept Jack with him discussing the worst features of the
calamity and the blood-curdling dread which was not to be whispered
to the women. Jack’s presence served two purposes. He had not much
knowledge of business--indeed, his father had always resented his son’s
ignorance in this respect--but he knew a good deal more than the women.
He was, in proportion, a better qualified listener to the calculations
and speculations which the stoppage of Crabtree’s Bank called forth
from every man in the district.
More than that, Jack’s hale young life might keep away the ghosts that
were in imminent danger of intruding on John Prior at this date. He saw
them when he lingered in that dim and cheerless study. He heard them
when he paced up and down behind backs, amidst the antiquated glass and
gilt of the drawing-room, in the company of the ladies, yet keeping
himself and his heaviest cares and worst alarms apart from the women.
He both heard and saw these importunate ghosts when he strolled out for
a smoke or a breath of air, and stood in the shadow of one or other of
the disused outbuildings, given over to the rats and the bats, where he
had held his interviews with Mr. Isaac Evans. But the fantastic company
were most oppressive when he wandered instinctively from mere habit as
far as the quarry, where the wild roses had shed their petals, and nuts
were beginning to form on the hazel bushes.
More than one ghost became a constant attendant on John Prior wherever
he went. One was a grisly, coarse, brawling ghost--that of Lambert
Crabtree as he had urged and threatened on the gusty April day by the
Rats’ Ditch in the Dutch clover-field at Ladslove. Another was a
dainty, girlish ghost, a strangely incongruous figure, as she shrank
out of sight in the black and crape of the widow of a fraudulent
bankrupt suicide. And there was the semblance of two children, with
strongly-marked hereditary traits, coming up hand-in-hand to their
grandfather to look him in the face and demand why he had killed their
father and made them beggars.
So far as one woman was concerned, Mr. Prior might have spared his
solicitude. Susie, who ought to have been the most smitten by the ruin
of the bank and tortured by the uncertainty of her position, took
everything quietly, and was, unless by fits and starts when she elected
to bewail herself as a martyr, remarkably cool and composed. She was
even in better condition than those mourners of whom it is emphatically
reported that they are as well as can be expected. No doubt she made
large eyes at the accounts which Jack--never good at slurring over a
story of which he was full, and not seeing himself called on to attempt
the feat in relation to his experience of the morning--poured forth to
more sympathetic listeners. He told them to Mrs. Prior, hanging intent
and full of sorrow on his words; to Jane, fighting rebelliously against
the decree that there was no help for the misfortune; to Miss Gray, a
wistful hearer of the tale. Susie glanced round with quick inquiry,
as a child itself unaffected by the narrative might have glanced,
took in the expressions of the various faces, and adapted herself to
them. She uttered a few protestations that it could not be so bad as
Jack represented. Lamb would set all right when he came back. It was
abominably stupid of Lamb to stay away at such a time, but he would
be there presently, perhaps he was there already, and, of course, he
would reopen the bank and arrange about paying the people their money.
Surely they could do without it for one day. She did not mean to say
that Jack was talking fudge, but there was so much exaggeration in the
world--had they not found it so? Mam-ma need not be so vexed. There was
no occasion for Jane’s mounting her high-horse and calling for redress
to pillaged shopkeepers. Miss Gray had a fine faculty for being struck
dumb, but it was wasted in the present instance. She, Susie, wished
that Lamb were only at Redcot to laugh a little at their doleful, angry
faces.
However much or little of her assurances Susie believed, it was evident
that she attached no significance to her husband’s continued absence.
Yet the other women were beginning suspiciously to avoid reference to
it. They hurried over any inevitable allusion to the subject, with a
falter of the tongue and a flutter of the eyelids, to hide the palsy of
the lips and the scared gleam of the eyes behind the veil.
As for that simple, learned lady, Bennet Gray, she was still racked by
a distracting sense of the loss of Mrs. Prior’s esteem, which lay at
the bottom of her affection. The mistress of the house was even more
scrupulously courteous than before to the stranger within her gates.
But it was a strained and artificial courtesy, devoid of every particle
of the salt of thorough respect, kindly regard, and affectionate
interest which had permeated it before, and made it as natural and easy
as the process of breathing. From the moment of the betrayal which
Jack’s blunder had brought about the preceding evening, a door had been
closed and an iron bolt drawn, shutting out all save the most formal
intercourse between the two women, who, in spite of the difference in
their ages, had so much in common, and had been so strongly attracted
towards each other. ‘She won’t let her glance rest upon me. She
declines to catch my eye. I daren’t do anything for her,’ lamented the
hapless offender. ‘She sat ever so long trying to thread her needle
this afternoon--neither of her daughters saw it--nobody noticed it
except me. But she kept her back to me, and I could not come round
and offer to put through the silk, as I might have done last week,
when she would have patted me on the shoulder and hoped I should never
want young eyes to serve me when my sight failed. Oh, dear Mrs. Prior,
Jack’s mother, will you never forgive me, and will you seek to keep him
from me? You cannot do that, but you can make us all miserable.’
As a matter of fact, Jack was kept apart from Bennet, either by his
father or his mother, in the exigencies of the case, for the rest of
the day. Even if there had been the opportunity, Bennet felt paralysed
by the trouble around her. She was losing all heart for the telling of
her secret, which she began to be tempted to regard as such a little
wretchedly worldly secret, though it was to have aroused unalloyed
joy and thankfulness according to its owner’s old foolish notions.
Still less could Bennet commence her explanation by divulging the
full particulars to Jane, and throwing herself upon her friend’s
generosity, supposing poor Jane could have been torn from her grieved
preoccupation with other matters to listen to it.
The fault was not in Jane, she had from first to last stood by Bennet
in the most trying circumstances. So far from being hostile now, there
was a shy softness, an eager friendliness in Jane’s recent bearing
towards Bennet, of which the latter could have easily availed herself
had she retained the wish. But Bennet Gray, who had a brave heart and a
high spirit naturally, was for the moment baffled and broken down.
Mrs. Prior was a little better off than the sinner against good faith
whom the elder woman felt bound to punish, though the punishment should
recoil on the inflictor’s head. The wife and mother was swift to
detect the almost fretful movement of the husband and father towards
his son in the family anxiety. As death breaks all other engagements,
so sharp calamity sometimes dissolves long-standing mists and chills
of prejudice and alienation, and restores in some sort kindred
obligations. It was the one subdued glimmer of satisfaction in Mrs.
Prior’s sorrow and mortification for all connected with her, in her
almost intolerable pain with regard to those among them who had made
the community suffer, that father and son were in the slightest measure
in accord and in association. She did not appear to mind that John
Prior did not extend his confidence to her, and had even ceased to
growl his complaints into her ears. She was content to efface herself
for Jack; Jack, who yet had forgotten her, stolen a march upon her,
combined with another who had no doubt deluded him as she had deluded
his mother, to deceive and mock her, and render her foolish and
contemptible in her own eyes and those of her family, her neighbours,
her very servants.
CHAPTER XIV.
RELIEF; BUT A DEADLIER BLOW THREATENED.
When Mat Crabtree reached the railway station, the first person he saw
on the platform was Lambert, looming as large as life and larger in
the yachting costume and sailor’s hat he still wore, and looking a few
shades nearer a brick red, not from shame, but from recent exposure to
sun and wind.
Mat stood stock still under the shock, and blinked his blue eyes more
wildly than when he had first stumbled on his Berkshire Miss Gray,
while Lambert hailed his brother with one of his hoarse laughs. It was
Lambert who was the challenger, showing himself in the act, hilariously
defiant of eavesdroppers. ‘What are you seeking here, old boy? You
ain’t on a wild-goose chase after me? Thought I had bolted, hey?’ with
another haw-haw.
Mat’s heart had given a great bound of relief. Matters were ‘beastly,’
but they could not have been quite so bad as they had looked, else
Lambert would not be there to speak for himself. He had certainly not
entertained any thought of absconding. He had been cruising somewhere
in the latitude of the Scilly Isles as had been at first conjectured.
He had been wronged by the suspicions which had been heaped upon him.
These were the first reflections roused by Lambert’s sudden appearance
in a kindred breast as honourable and humane as Lambert’s was growing
always baser and more brutal. But they were quickly followed by a
boiling ferment of wrath at the cavalier tone assumed by the bankrupt
banker.
It was a country station little frequented, and the two brothers had
turned aside from the few lookers-on near the ticket office, and
walked to the farther end of the platform where they could be alone.
‘You have given room for talk,’ said Mat, more coldly and sourly than
he had ever before addressed a fellow-creature whose back was at the
wall. ‘Do you know what has happened in your absence?’
Lambert nodded. ‘That the concern has gone to pigs and whistles,’ he
said defiantly. ‘I confess I was prepared for that _dénouement_, and
wished it well over while my back was turned. But that some idiots
should open the ball by a frustrated robbery, of course I could not
foresee that little accident,’ he said hastily, glancing furtively from
beneath his light eye-lashes at his brother.
‘Who told you of the robbery and its frustration?’ demanded Mat,
sharply.
‘Who told me of the robbery? Why, I read it in the first newspaper
I got after I landed. I say, I ain’t going to stand being
cross-questioned here. I have been waiting, kicking my heels since
the train came in, to see if that ass of a station-master could find
me a conveyance to take me over to Haybridge. I’m too big a boy for
walking. Do you know what the hour is? Between eight and nine, by Jove!
I have not dined yet, and I hardly had a snack of luncheon. I daresay
you don’t care. It is too much to expect hospitality from a brother
when one has gone to the dogs. But I think I might have counted on a
friendlier reception after I came back of my own accord to stand the
row, just to save trouble, and not to leave Susie in the lurch.’
‘Susie! There are more than Susie in the lurch who have done less to
deserve it--not that I wish to throw the blame on any woman. You can
come along with me. The trap is not gone, but I must tell you Jem
Coplestone is at my house.’
‘The devil he is!’ ejaculated Lambert, growling, and stroking his hairy
upper lip viciously.
‘He arrived to day in time to hear that the bank had stopped payment.
He came on to me. I could not remain with him, but I persuaded him to
stay over the night, as he was knocked up by the journey and by the
blow he had received. He looks in miserably bad health.’
‘Oh! he was always a duffer,’ remarked Lambert, carelessly.
‘He has stood at his post like a man in that trying climate all these
years,’ said Mat with strong indignation. ‘He has done his best for
his family and his profession. He has not spent other people’s money
lavishing it on his own senseless extravagance.’
‘Nor robbed widows’ houses,’ chimed in Lambert, with mock gravity.
‘Well, anyhow you can’t say I’ve made long prayers.’
‘You had better come on and tell what you can about these bonds,’ said
Mat Crabtree sternly.
‘Not I,’ refused Lambert flatly. ‘I am not going to be sat upon by you
and him together--not if I know it. If I’m due anywhere it is in Newton
to Susie. I’ll rather go straight there and get the worst of it over.’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Mat, stiffly; ‘your place is among your
partners--such as are left--old Hutchinson is not expected to live
over the night--the shock has finished him. And you are due to your
customers, to render an account to them. But Susie is not at the Bank
House.’
‘Not at the Bank House!’ cried Lambert, arrested in his walk, his red
face getting purple in a second; his eyes--goggle at the best--looking
as if they were about to start from their sockets. ‘Where the hang is
she?’
‘She has gone with her children to her father’s. She has been at Redcot
since the day after the robbery.’
‘What made her do that?’ demanded her husband, angrily. ‘It was
doocedly foolish. She must have lost her head. What were you about that
you did not prevent it?’
‘I was not at home. I knew nothing of what had happened. I believe
Spiers tried to make her stay where she was, but he did not succeed.
It does not strike me as at all wonderful that she should have got
frightened and gone to her father’s when you did not come home. You
appear to have left the bank in ticklish circumstances, to say the
least, and to have stayed away with a light heart.’
‘I went up to town on urgent business,’ answered Lambert, more sullenly
than he had yet spoken; ‘and a man must have some relaxation. His nose
is not to be kept at the grindstone the whole year round. I have told
you already, I could not anticipate that the bank would be broken into
in my absence. It had never happened before, and it ain’t likely that
the thieves would take me into their confidence. I don’t see that my
presence would have been much good, unless as a supposed protection
against burglars. By-the-bye’--he broke off abruptly, and turned upon
his brother with a new light in his insolent eyes--‘Susie was not
without protection. She might have had Parsons, but I saw by the papers
that she had young Hopeful with her--that Johnnie--Jack Prior--whatever
you like to call my fine roving blade of a brother-in-law--turned up in
the nick of time and slept in the house on the night of the robbery.
I call on you to witness that was none of my doing. I did not put the
young gentleman--I’m afraid no stretch of politeness could call him his
father’s, only his mammy’s darling--into the place of danger. He chose
to stay in my house, instead of returning home after his long absence,
which one would have thought the more natural proceeding. It was what
pious folk call an interposition of Providence,’ and Lambert laughed
again maliciously, with the same evil light in his ugly eyes.
‘I don’t see that Jack Prior’s being with his sister had to do with
what happened,’ said Mat impatiently. ‘He was not aware of anything
unusual, and he had started for Oxford before the clerks discovered the
state of the safe.’
‘I’ll send over the carriage to fetch Sue home the first thing
to-morrow,’ said Lambert, pursuing his own train of thought. ‘The brats
can stay where they are at present, if they are not too much for the
other cubs and for Tommy. By the way, Mat, what is this that I hear
about you and the children at Redcot’s keeper? Ain’t you too old for
such folly? Why, I was not such a raging lunatic when I was ten years
younger. I certainly aspired to a daughter of the house, not to a
hired-servant.’
‘You had better mind your own business,’ his brother told him
sarcastically. ‘From what I can judge, it will require all your
attention. The carriage!’ and he put a marked emphasis on the word.
‘Does it not occur to you how it will feel to the people whom you have
rendered penniless to see your wife bowl past them in all the ease and
dignity of her carriage, on their dark day, which ought at least to be
as dark to her as to them?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Lambert, staring in amazement. ‘You would
not have Susie pad the hoof because the bank has failed? I should like
to hear anybody propose such a thing to her. I should like to see her
try it. Why, I ain’t up to it myself since I took on so many stones--I
say, Mat, you’ll have to give me a lift in your trap as far as the
cross-roads. And I do not know why you should be in such a funk, old
man. You have taken care that you are well out of the mess. Ah! if I
had been left the squire of Haybridge, it might have been different!’
‘You mean that Haybridge would have been mortgaged every acre, or sold
outright half-a-dozen years ago? No, there was nothing wrong with your
inheritance, Lambert, it was fair enough in all conscience--only, it
put too many people in your power, the worse for them.’
‘And do you think it is particularly pleasant for me to go back in
this fashion to Newton, where I have held my own for a good many years
now?’ demanded Lambert, speaking for the first time savagely, and
turning away his face. ‘I’ll give you a hint, my upright and prudent
brother--it is not wise to talk that rot of a fine inheritance, every
rap of which is gone, to a ruined man.’
Mat felt a little guilty. ‘What about the bank’s assets?’ he inquired,
recurring to a less personal topic.
Lambert began forthwith to vapour, but, so far as Mat Crabtree could
gather, the assets, like everything else, were of the plunging order,
wind bags and false lights, with just a little solid foundation to keep
them in existence. If it had not been for similar experiences which he
had both seen and read of, Mat could hardly have believed the amount of
capital and credit which his brother had contrived to squander within
a limited time, and the number of dupes he had found in every class,
whose credulity or avarice had made them his victims.
The interview between the couple ended characteristically, in Mat’s
declining to lend Lambert his company, but giving him the use of
his trap to Newton, while the owner of the trap plodded his way, a
heart-sore, harassed man, in the summer darkness back to Haybridge.
Before Mat Crabtree slept he despatched a messenger to Redcot with
a note to Mr. Prior--‘Lambert has turned up to give an account of
himself. I’m afraid it will not be to much purpose, but let us hope
the best. Be so good as to tell Susie.’
Of course Susie was glad that Lamb had come at last, but she showed
no overpowering joy. Her thankfulness was shown in a determination
coinciding with his opinion on the subject, as announced to his
brother, that she would go home to-morrow the first thing.
But there were others at Redcot less nearly related to Lambert
Crabtree, and by no means remarkable for personal attachment to him,
who drew a deep breath of relief and lay down to rest with their minds
lightened of a heavy load, because he was there alive and well.
The next day dawned without any trace of portent save that the sky,
after a renewed storm in the night, seemed uncertain whether to cloud
over again or to clear afresh, and the garden roses still hung their
heads surcharged with wet. After breakfast Jane Prior was with Miss
Gray and the children in the schoolroom, when, in answer to a knock
and a permission to enter, all present were startled by the sudden
appearance of Mat Crabtree in unusual guise. His coat was stained with
earth, and one sleeve was torn, so was the shirt sleeve within, showing
that the arm was grazed and bleeding, while his face was white as of
a man sick at heart. He anticipated the general exclamation of fright
and distress by an imperative ‘Hush. Don’t be alarmed--don’t rouse the
house. I have had a fall from my horse. I was riding fast and she cast
a shoe and stumbled when I was not attending to her, but there is no
harm done. I came in here--I know the room--to see if anybody could put
me right before I asked to see Mr. Prior. No, no, don’t speak about
getting brandy, thanks; I am not faint, just brush my coat, if one of
you will be so good, and fasten up my sleeve. I must see Mr. Prior
immediately, but I don’t wish to frighten people more than I can help.’
He had frightened some people very effectually. His abrupt, unnatural
manner, even more than his disordered dress and blanched face, had
filled all present with dismay. The children, of whom he took no
notice, fell back in a trembling group. Alice, indeed, prepared to flee
for assistance and to call out what had happened, but was arrested by a
grip like a vice and a ‘stay where you are,’ which reduced her to the
abject condition of her companions.
Jane Prior could not put into practice what she knew of stoic
philosophy. She grew as pale as the visitor, and since it was not
allowable to scream, she could not trust herself to speak.
Bennet Gray found a brush, and sought quickly to remove the marks from
the coat, while she succeeded in bringing together the rent cloth so
as to hide the hurt to the arm. All the time he was telling her to be
quick, for he had not a moment to lose.
Before Bennet had finished there was a ring at the hall bell, early
as it was for visitors. ‘Good Lord!’ Mat Crabtree cried aloud, ‘it
is too late to prepare them,’ broke away from her, and hurried off
to the morning-room where the family breakfasted. He left behind him
a deep impression. Those who had been his audience felt certain that
something quite out of the ordinary course of events had happened,
something terrible, overwhelming. It was like their all being about to
be swallowed up by an earthquake, little Sam, with a vague, frightened
recollection of the thunderstorm of the previous day, suggested in an
awed whisper to his sister. Unquestionably something had come to pass
which tended to break down in a second all artificial barriers and
distinctions between one human being and another, so that by common
consent, without pausing to think, the women and children streamed
after Mat Crabtree to seek Mr. and Mrs. Prior, Jack and Susie.
Breakfast was over, but Mr. Prior had still sat reading his newspaper
at the head of the breakfast table, Jack and his mother remained
standing at an open window, by which Susie had thrown herself in a
lounging chair, where they had been watching the operations of the
gardener on a bed of balsams beaten down by the recent rain.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious puncutation errors and omissions have been corrected.
Page 164: “strangely familar” changed to “strangely familiar”
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