CHAPTER XLVIII

A SHADOW-SHAPE

Kate walked at once to the house of Mr. Puddicombe, and, without giving any reasons, announced to him that the engagement to Walter Bramber was at an end. She calculated on his publishing the fact, but she had not calculated on his inventing and promulgating reasons of his own supposition for explaining the rupture. According to him, she had formed a preference for Noah Flood, and regarded an alliance with Noah more to her advantage than one with a person of whose origin nothing was known, and whose prospects were uncertain. One of the first to hear the news was Rose Ash, and she made an excursion immediately to the house of the Floods, where Noah lived with his mother, a widow. The Floods were a well-to-do yeoman family, with land of their own. The father of Noah had died three years previous to the events recorded in this tale. Noah was the only child, and had been the idol of his mother. That he should seek a wife, she admitted, was natural. She would greatly have preferred his taking someone of more position and means, and in greater favour than Kitty Alone, but she was accustomed to regard everything her son did as right, and she would not offer any opposition to what he determined on. As Rose Ash was not to be won, he might take Kitty; though she would have vastly preferred Rose. The old woman was, it is true, made uneasy by the reports relative to Kitty and the fire at the Cellars, but her son knew how to set her mind at rest, by ridiculing them as idle and baseless, bred of malice or stupidity.

Rose was really energetic on behalf of Kitty. She did brave battle for her, and combated every adverse opinion. She was thoroughly resolved to forward the match between Noah and Kate, and now that the field was cleared of the schoolmaster, she hurried to the house of the Floods to spur on Noah to immediate action.

The evening was already closing in, and the house of the Floods was at some distance out of Coombe; but Rose was impulsive, and what she did was done in impulse. She was generous, so far as did not interfere with her own prospects and wishes and comforts. Mrs. Flood was her aunt, and with her she was ever welcome. Noah was happily at home when Rose arrived. She was not the girl to beat about the bush, and she rushed at once upon the topic uppermost in her mind.

“You must put on your hat at once, Noah, and come with me. I’m going to the Cellars, and going to make all right between you and Kitty. The time has arrived. The door is ajar, and you must thrust your shoulder in before it is shut. It’s off with the schoolmaster, and must be on with you at once.”

“Noah hasn’t been hisself of late,” said Mrs. Flood. “I don’t think he ought to be out with the dew falling heavy.”

“Nonsense, Aunt Sally! it’s love,” said Rose. “The dew won’t hurt. It’s his disappointment has upset him.”

“He’s been off his feed terrible,” said the mother; “there is a nice piece of boiled bacon I’ve had cold, but he don’t seem to relish it.”

“That’s love,” said Rose; “and I heard Mr. Pepperill say that Noah had a pain under his ribs.”

“It’s like a hot pertater lodged here,” said Noah; “I can’t get no rest at all from it.”

“That’s love also; I know it. I’ve had the same till Jan came to his senses.”

“And I don’t seem to take no interest in the farm; do I, mother?” asked Noah.

“Indeed you don’t, Noah.”

“That also is love,” said Rose; “we’ll soon put that to rights.”

“I thought it was liver,” observed the mother; “and that blue pill”’

“Oh, nothing of the sort,” interrupted Rose. “I know all the symptoms: hot potato, distaste for biled bacon, and indifference to farm affairs’it’s love; I had it all badly till Jan came round. Love turns heavy on the chest, if disappointed. That’s what Noah feels under his ribs. Come on, Noah, take your hat, and we will go to the Cellars together.”

Noah complied with as much alacrity as he was capable of displaying. He was a docile youth; he had fallen in love with Kitty, partly at Rose’s bidding, partly out of compunction at his conduct at the fair.

That evening had closed in rapidly. There were dense clouds overhead, so that the twilight was cut off, also all danger of dew, as Rose at once pointed out to Mrs. Flood. As, however, the mother feared her dear boy might get wet in the event of rain, Noah was induced to take a greatcoat.

The young man was shy and timid.

“You know, Rose, I treated her terrible bad at Ashburton, when I knocked away the workbox from under her arm.”

“She will like you all the better for it,” answered the girl. “Young maidens like a lad of spirit, and you may be sure it gave her pleasure to see you and Jan punching each other’s heads. That schoolmaster! he ain’t up to nothing but whacking childer with a cane. If you like, I’ll try and egg him on to fight you, and then you can knock him all to pieces; and there’s nothing surer for finding your way to Kitty’s heart. If she’s like me, she’ll like to see lads fighting about her.”

“You don’t think, Rose, she really had anything to do wi’ the fire?”

“The fire?” snapped the girl. “No more than you or I. Her uncle did it. He wanted the insurance money. That’s a fine tale’that she set fire to the warehouse, because her uncle wouldn’t hear of her marrying the schoolmaster’and now, of her own accord, she throws the fellow over. If she had been so set on him, she wouldn’t have done _that_. Can’t you see, Noah, or are you stupid, that her giving up Mr. Bramber is the best answer to that story? It shows it could not have been. And then, as to that other tale,’that Mr. Pepperill sent her back to set the place in a blaze,’no one who knows Kitty can believe _that_. She’s not the girl to do a wrong thing at anyone’s bidding. Besides, what good would it have been to her?”

Noah did not answer.

“You can’t do better than go right up to her and ask her to be yours’now. Everything is in your favour. Folk talk a pass’l of nonsense and spiteful lies about her. It makes her cruel unhappy. She’s been doing little else but cry for some days. You show her you don’t mind one snap what folks say, and you don’t believe a word o’ the lies against her, and I tell you she’d jump into your arms. It’s my belief that the schoolmaster turned nasty’that he began to show her he thought there might be something in it, that he knew people said they’d take away their subscription if he married her, and he made it so unpleasant for Kitty that she gave him up. And now you march in and conquer.”

“I’ll do so,” said Noah.

“And,” pursued Rose, “you must begin by making Kitty cry; that’s the preparing of the ground.”

“How am I to do that?”

“Talk about her father. Ask if she has heard any news of him.”

“Why? it don’t seem kind to make her cry.”

“What a noodle you are, Noah! Nothing is more profitable for what you intend than to get her into a crying mood, regular soft and tender, and then pity her about her father, and so out with it when she is in tears. That’s the way to win her!”

Noah mused awhile, walking by the side of Rose, in silence. After a minute he said, “What is your notion, Rose? I mean about Jason Quarm. Is he dead or not?”

“Of course he is. Burnt to ashes.”

“But the ashes were not found.”

“My dear Noah, you saw the fire as well as I; you know with what fury it burnt, and how it lasted three days. He was no Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego all pounded into one.”

“You really think he is dead?”

“Sure of it. Would he not have turned up and let folk know he was alive, if he had not perished? Would he have allowed Kitty to go on’and not Kitty only, his sister Zerah as well’all this long time, suffering and miserable, because they believe he died a terrible death, if he could relieve their minds by a letter, or, better still, by appearing?”

Suddenly Rose started, caught her cousin by the arm, and drew back.

“What is the matter?” asked the young man.

“There is something there’moving’in the hedge.”

They were in a true Devonshire lane, with the hedges high on each side, planted with trees that extended their branches overhead, almost interlocking. Through the boughs and leaves the grey sky glimmered, and the soil in the lane here and there showed in the light from above, but all was indistinct and dark. A turn in the lane, and a fork beyond the turn, lay before them, and through one of the lanes the light of the estuary reflecting the sky made a partial gleam, as though that lane were a tube with ground glass at the end.

Both remained motionless and listened.

“Hark!” whispered Rose; “did you hear something?”

“I heard you speaking.”

“Before I spoke’a clitter, as of a foot on stones.”

“Well, what of that? This is a road, and people may go along it, I reckon.”

“Look’look!” gasped Rose, pointing down the funnel-like lane, at the end of which was the light of the steely water.

Rose maintained her grasp of Noah.

The young man looked in the direction indicated, and both saw a figure in the vista, lurching as it went along, as though lame; a thickset figure, as far as they could make out in the uncertain light. In another moment it had disappeared.

“Go after it!” said Rose, relaxing her hold.

“It? What do you mean?”

“That’s just like Jason Quarm.”

“But he’s dead. You said so.”

“I know he is, but that’s his ghost. Run, Noah, and force it to speak. It’s walking, because it can’t rest wi’out burial.”

“I won’t!” said Noah. “Go yourself.”

“You are a man. It’s vanished now. That’s the way to the cottage he had, which Kitty gave up to the Redmores. Oh, Noah, do run!”

“I’ll do nothing o’ the sort. Come on, Rose’we are going along t’other lane, thanks be. Lord, that we should ha’ seen a ghost! I shan’t be able to propose. I shall be so terrible took aback.”

“Nonsense, Noah!”

“But consider’it’s terrible frightening to propose right on end to a ghost’s daughter.”