BURIED DIAMONDS
VOL. II.

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.

BY

SARAH TYTLER
AUTHOR OF ‘SAINT MUNGO’S CITY’ ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. II.

London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1886

[The right of translation is reserved]

‘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 2convicted 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 3host 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 4had 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?’

5

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 6their 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. 7‘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 8you 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.’

9

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 10man’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, 11that 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 12and 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.

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 14greyer 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 15also, 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.

16

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.

17

‘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 18of 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 19to 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 20it 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 21by 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 22water 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. 23The 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 24as 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 25Prior’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, 26bullying, 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, 27coolly 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 28a 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 29wild 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 30were 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 31smoking-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 32had 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 33her 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 34her 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 35him 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.

36

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 37loud, 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 38affray. 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 39making 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.

40

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.

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 42Prior 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 43young 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 44Gray, 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. 45Prior 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 46opinion, 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 47remain 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 48ever, 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 49friends’ 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 50introduction 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 51Crabtree 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 52quite 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 53nice 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 54in 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 55their 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 56couple 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. 57He 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 58which 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 59great 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 60littered 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 61fierier 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 62the 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 63in 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, 64was 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, 65unworldly, 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 66seem 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 67situated, 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 68at 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 69here 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 70she 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 71order 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 72have 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 73what 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 74have 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.

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 76day, 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. 77He 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 78almost 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 79was 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, 80harassed 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.

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‘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 82from 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 83hair, 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.’

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‘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 85made 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 86would 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 87laughed 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 88my 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

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 89Haybridge 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, 90at 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 91such 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.

‘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 93must 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 94there 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.

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 95bluestocking 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. 96He 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.’

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‘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,’ 98objected 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 99took 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 100on 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 101house 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 102moment, 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 103good 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 104did 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 105time 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 106deserted 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.

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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.

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 109her 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 110don’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, 111peachy-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 112him 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 113of 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 114regret—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 115this 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 116bracelet? 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 117a 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 118meaning 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 119did 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 120traitresses 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.’

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‘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 122she 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.

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‘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 124the 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 125examination—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 126glad 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 127at 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 128happy, 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 129looks 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, 130have 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 131believing, 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 132upon 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 133sincerity 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, 134when 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 135bodiless 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 136stood. 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, 137but 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.

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 139boating 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 140leaves 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 141hedgerows. 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.

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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 143Charlotte, 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, 144in 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.

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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 146which 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 147chums. 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 148haunts 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 149Boffin’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 150of 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 151Mat 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 152in 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 153of 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 154looked 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 155which 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 156to 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 157that 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 158victories, 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 159self 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 160scores 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 161his 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 162these 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. 163Haybridge 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.

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 165unexpected 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 166pounds, 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 167was 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 168and 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 169at 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 170of 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 171seen 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 172and 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 173of 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 174about, 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 175look 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 176this 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 177Tommy 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 178impulse, 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 179was 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 180friend. 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 181her 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.’

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‘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 183only 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 184had 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 185from 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 186anything 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 187will 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?’

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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 189argument 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.

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 191of 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 192have 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 193Jack 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 194had 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 195plighted 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. 196He 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 197told, 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. 198Some 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 199sight, 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, 200but 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.

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‘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 202parts 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.’

203

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.

204

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 205exaggerated 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.

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. 207Prior 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.

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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.

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‘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 210plaintive, 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 211she 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.’

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‘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, 213as 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 214Crabtree 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 215from 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.

216

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.

217

‘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 218had 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, 219and 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 220must 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 221Bennet 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 222under 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.

223

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 224himself 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 225Crabtree 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 226that 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. 227But 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 228glory 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.

229

‘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 230she 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 231being 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.

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. 233He 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 234by 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 235experience 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, 236a 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 237without 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 238of 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 239there 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 240end, 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 241half 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 242any 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 243enough, 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 244invalided. 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 245with 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.’

246

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 247left 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 248addition 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 249what 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

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 250There 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.

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 252was 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 253equipped 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. 254The 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 255a 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 256proposing 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 257powerless 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 258has 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 259father’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 260than 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 261to 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 262chief 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 263on 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 264had 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, 265bad, 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 266till 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 267machinery 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 268from 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, 269taking 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 270you. 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 271thrust 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.’

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 273excuse 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, 274before 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 275learnt 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 276tender 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 277preceded 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. 278Indeed 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.

279

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, 280into 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.

281

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.’

282

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 283in 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’ 284Ditch 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 285good 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 286was 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 287lay 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 288to 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 289upon 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 290mists 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.

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 292are 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 293walked 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, 294kicking 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.

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‘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 296not 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 297husband, 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 298their 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 299Lambert 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 300what 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!’

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‘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 302assets, 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 303purpose, 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 304to 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 305more 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. 306‘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 307breakfast 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.

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