CHAPTER XLVII

PARTED

If anything had been needed to clinch in Pasco Pepperill the sense of his conduct being irreproachable, the ovation on his return to Coombe-in-Teignhead would have served this purpose; but nothing was necessary after that the insurance office had thrown up the ball. The retirement of the Company from the contest, and the payment of the money for which his stores were insured, acted on his conscience as much as would a plenary papal absolution on that of a Roman Catholic.

Previous to this his conscience had given occasional twitches, now it glowed with conscious sense of righteousness. It was vexed with neither qualm nor scruple. He held his head higher, boasted louder, strutted with more consequence, and became impatient and offended at his wife’s maintaining her distance. He might deceive himself, deceive the world, but he could not blind her, and this made him angry. He was slighted in his home, where he had best claims for recognition.

He was, moreover, disappointed that there was so little real enthusiasm for himself at the back of the demonstration, which was organised rather in honour of the parish than of himself. The same suspicion attended him, the same reluctance to deal with him, and the same indifference to his society.

The demonstration was destined not to pass without leaving some unpleasant consequences.

At the urgency of Farmer Pooke, Miller Ash, the second churchwarden, had forced the belfry door and admitted the ringers, and authorised them to give a peal of welcome to the returning conqueror.

Mr. Fielding was of a mild and kindly disposition, but he was a stickler in matters of discipline, and he could not suffer this high-handed conduct to pass unquestioned. Ash was cited before the archdeacon, and legal proceedings were instituted to establish the sole right of the incumbent to order when and by whom the bells should be rung. Ash was dismayed at the prospect of a suit. He attempted to fall back on Pooke, but found that Pooke was by no means inclined to find money for the defence.

Mr. Fielding was reluctant to proceed against a parishioner and a churchwarden, and a man eminently worthy, but he considered that it would be a neglect of duty not to do so. Twice had he been defied, and twice had the bells been rung on improper occasions. He was aware that his action must produce ill-feeling against himself, but he was too conscientious a man to allow this consideration to weigh with him. Nothing is easier than for a man in authority to court popularity by giving way at every point. Mr. Fielding did not desire popularity, and he did not believe that in discharging a duty he would interfere with his ministerial influence in the place.

And, in fact, Ash did not so much resent the action of the rector as the unreliability of Pooke’a man who had urged him to act, and had promised to take the responsibility on himself for such action; a man whose son was about to marry his own daughter. Ash was bitter at heart, in the first line with Pooke, and the second with Pepperill, for having occasioned this affair. If Pepperill had never insured, never had allowed his warehouse to be burnt, never had confronted the Company, this unpleasantness would not have arisen; and only in the third line did his resentment touch the rector. Moreover, Pooke was discontented and uncomfortable. He was well aware that he was morally responsible for the infraction of the belfry, but he would not admit it, lest it should cost him money. Pooke was a man ready to admit a moral obligation up to ten-and-six; not a penny beyond. He allowed that the parson was in the right to stick out for his authority, and if the law gave him command of the bell-ropes’well, he was justified in trying to obtain it. But it was Pasco Pepperill who was really to blame. He ought not to have delayed his return from Exeter. Why did he stick at that city for seven whole days after he had got what he wanted? Had he come flying home by the Atmospheric the day he received payment, there would have been no demonstration. By dawdling in Exeter, he allowed time for the organisation of a demonstration, and he did not deserve one, Heaven knew! So Pooke’s self-reproach converted itself into anger against Pepperill. In the physical world all forces are correlated, and it is so in the world of feeling. Love becomes hate, and joy turns into grief, and, as we have seen, compunction glances away from self and converts itself into a sting aimed at another.

Kitty’s position in the place became one full of discomfort. Not only was she regarded as guilty of the fire by one body of the inhabitants, but she had given offence to others by her engagement to the schoolmaster.

Walter Bramber was not merely a pleasant-looking man, but a good-looking one as well, and several young and middle-aged women in the place had set their caps at him.

One of these was the distorted milliner, designed for him by his landlady, and encouraged by her in hopes of exchanging her condition of maid without a home for wife in the schoolhouse. This person went about to all the farmhouses making garments for the farmers’ wives and daughters, and was able, without allowing it to transpire that she had aspired to Bramber, to stir up a good deal of ill-feeling against Kitty, who had been lucky where she had failed.

Another was a good-looking wench with a flaw in her reputation, who had hoped that the new-comer would be ignorant of her past history, and would succumb to her charms, and enable her to repair her faulty character out of the respectability of the position she would acquire.

Another, a damsel of erratic ecclesiasticism, who became a Particular Baptist or an Anglican Churchwoman, according as desirable young men attended chapel or church.

The last was a widow on a nice income of her own, some twenty years Bramber’s senior, who had made up her mind to marry again, and marry a young man.

Pasco was subjected to passive suspicions, Kate to active hostility. The art of ingeniously tormenting is one that men are too dull to acquire, and too clumsy to exercise. It is an art easily exercised and rapidly perfected by women. In a hundred ways Kate was annoyed by those of her own sex in Coombe; and these were ways skilfully contrived to excite the maximum of pain. She endeavoured to keep entirely to herself, but this was beyond her power. No mosquito curtains have been contrived which a person can draw about himself as a protection against malignant and poisonous tongues.

Without malicious interest’on the contrary, with the kindest desire for Kate’s welfare’Rose Ash interfered and caused her the greatest distress.

Rose had set her mind on matching Kate with Noah; she by no means approved of the engagement to Walter Bramber. A girl like Kate, enjoying her friendship, might look higher, do better than throw herself away on a two-penny-ha’penny schoolmaster, of whose origin nobody knew anything; and when Rose took an idea into her head, she left no stone unturned till she had carried it out.

She visited Kate, she assured her that a union with Bramber was out of the question. There was so strong a feeling against her in the place that, were she to marry the schoolmaster, it would damage his prospects. The farmers would withdraw their subscriptions from the school, and the parents refuse to send their children to be educated there.

“Of course,” said Rose, “I don’t believe you burnt the warehouse, but a lot of people in the place do. Some say you did it out of spite, because your uncle wouldn’t let you have the schoolmaster; others say he sent you back to set the wares alight, being too much of a coward to do it himself. I know better’but folks won’t listen to me. I don’t see how you can put the notion out of them but by marrying Noah. He’s related to nearly everyone in the place, and if you became his wife, you see, all the relations of Noah would take your part; they’d be bound to do it. Noah is a good fellow, and he’s terribly in love’got a pain under his ribs, and walks bent’all along of love. You’d best chuck over the schoolmaster and stop their mouths with Noah. There’s no other way of doin’ it.”

“You really think that my engagement to Walter Bramber will injure him?”

“If it goes on, he may as well leave the place. It would be made too hot to hold him. You see, Kitty, the Coombites ha’ never taken much to him’he bain’t like Mr. Puddicombe in nothing. But they might get used to him and put up wi’ him. If you go on holding him to his engagement, then’what everyone says is’he must go.”

Zerah, moreover, sought to influence her niece. She was a selfish woman, and now that she had opened her heart to Kitty, she was jealous of anyone else claiming a share in the girl. Moreover, she could not endure to live at the Cellars if left there alone with Pasco, of that she was convinced. She therefore extorted a promise from Kate not to leave her.

Kitty had become more than ever thoughtful, and was nervous and depressed in spirits. She could not clear herself of this suspicion that attached to her without incriminating her uncle, and she greatly doubted whether her word would avail against his. She could not hear anything of her father, the same mystery enveloped his fate unrelieved. She would have liked to pour her troubles into the ear of Walter, but her uncle had forbidden his coming to the house, and she would not go and seek him, observed, watched by all, and everything she did subject to misconstruction. Kate’s time was more at her disposal than formerly, as Jane Redmore came in charing. This was a disadvantage to her, so far that it allowed her time to brood over her troubles and annoyances.

After Rose had gone, she went on the water side of the house and seated herself on the parapet above the rippling inflowing tide, with her head sunk on her bosom.

Presently the tears began to course down her cheeks. She had not been seated there long before the timid, feeble Jane Redmore came fluttering out to her, looking over her shoulder as she came. The woman touched her: “I wouldn’t take on so,” she said. “You ain’t sure Jason Quarm’s dead, you know. He wasn’t found, and for why?”

Kate looked at the poor woman with tear-filled eyes.

“I can’t say nothin’,” said Mrs. Redmore hastily. “Only’there’it makes me bad to see you cry, it do, and I reckon there’s no reason.”

Then she slipped back in the same wavering, timid manner to the kitchen, without another word.

But Kate’s distress of mind was not due solely, as the woman believed, to her anxiety concerning the fate of her father. She had been debating in her heart whether she ought to continue her engagement with Bramber, and, perhaps, never had Kitty felt how truly she was “alone” as now, when she had satisfied herself that for his sake it were well for her to release him.

She stood up, when her purpose was formed, and walked quietly, firmly, to the Rectory. One friend she had there, ever faithful’the parson. He knew that she was innocent, he alone could appreciate her difficulties, and he would approve her determination.

She entered the study where he was at work on a sermon. He smiled, and his face brightened when he saw her, and he signed to a chair.

Kate, direct, clear, and firm in all she said and did, told the rector of her intention. She informed him of what he knew already, that a body of feeling was engaged against her, that she was incapable of establishing her innocence. That, under the circumstances, it was out of the question her holding Walter Bramber to his promise. She had, furthermore, passed her word to her aunt not to leave her. Mr. Fielding, though disappointed, saw that under the circumstances nothing could be done; and he felt that Kate was acting honourably and in accordance with her conscience. He knew, therefore, he must not dissuade her from obedience to that inner voice. He took a more hopeful view than did she, and this he expressed.

“If things change, then no harm has been done,” said Kate. “I have to say what is in my mind as made up on things as they are. Will you be so kind, sir, as to speak to Walter?”

“I see him coming in at the gate,” said Mr. Fielding. “He is with me about this time every day for a Greek lesson’a bit of New Testament in the original tongue.”

Kate stood up.

“Yes,” said he. “You go to meet him at the mulberry tree.”

The girl left quietly and composedly, as she had entered, and, crossing the lawn, came on the young man just as he reached the bench under the mulberry.

“Walter,” she said, “I want a word with you. Have you a knife?”

“Yes; why?”

“Will you cut this in the mulberry bark? Mr. Fielding will not object’

‘O Tree, defying time, witness bear, That two’”’

She hesitated, slightly coloured’

“‘That two friends met and parted here.’”

“What do you mean, Kitty?”

“Ask the rector’he will tell you all.”

Then hastily, unable further to control herself, she passed him, and left the garden.