CHAPTER XLIX

FLAGRANTE DELICTO

Noah and Rose reached the Cellars just as Pasco and his family were about to seat themselves to supper. Pepperill somewhat boisterously welcomed them, and insisted on their sharing the evening meal.

“You see,” said he, “it is dull here. Zerah ain’t much in the way of entertainment, and Kitty be just as heavy. Stupid place this, and stupid people; I shall get away as soon as possible.”

“Going to leave the Cellars, Mr. Pepperill?” asked Rose.

“I don’t find this place lively enough for me, now I’m a man of independent means. I want amusement, and can get none here; society, and here no one can talk of anything but bullocks.”

“I don’t know that,” said Noah; “there is the fire, everyone is talking of that.”

Rose cast a reproachful glance at her cousin. His remark made Pasco wince, and Zerah look down into her plate.

“You see,” pursued Pepperill, “having come in for a little property”’

“The insurance money?” asked the blundering Noah.

“My uncle’s little fortune,” answered Pasco hastily. “There’s no occasion for me to toil and drudge like a slave selling coals, and wool, and hides, and the like; so I think I’ll take a little box somewhere near Exeter, somewhere where I can amuse myself, and have agreeable neighbours.”

As soon as opportunity offered, Rose drew Kate aside and said to her cheerily, “I have brought you Noah.”

“Noah! Why?”

“I heard you were off with the schoolmaster.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Then it is high time you were on with another.”

“I want no one.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense! You must have Noah. He’s a nice fellow and has a good property; besides, he is cruel sweet on you.”

“Indeed, indeed, Rose, I wish to be left alone.”

“It won’t do, Kate. When the circus girl goes round driving two horses, she skips off one back and on to another. You can’t skip off one saddle wi’out another saddle to skip into, that ain’t reason.”

“I am not a circus girl.”

“We all are going round and round in one ring, and then comes a fool and holds up the hoop for us to go through. Jack has been my clown, and Noah shall be yours.”

“I do not wish it,” said Kate hastily. “I desire only to be let alone.”

“My dear, I know what is best for you. I’ll call Noah.”

Kate sprang up. “I have to wash up after supper with Mrs. Redmore,” she said, and hastened into the kitchen.

Rose was vexed. She returned to the others, and gave Noah a sign to follow the girl; and he obeyed with his usual docility. Then Rose began to propound her scheme to the uncle and aunt, to explain Noah’s prospects and dilate on his attachment for Kate. The aunt alone raised objections, which Rose combated in the most airy manner. Zerah doubted whether Kate felt any regard for Noah; Rose was positive that this would come as a matter of course, now that she was free from entanglement with Bramber.

Pepperill said he would be glad, after what had happened, to have Kate married and out of his house. Whereupon Zerah caught him up and asked his meaning.

Before he could answer, Kitty came in trembling, and, standing before Rose, asked, “What does he mean? Noah says he has seen my father.”

Rose tossed her head, and cast an angry glance over Kate’s shoulder at the stupid young man who was following.

“Noah is a blundering fellow,” she said, “and does not know what he says. Your father! Do you think that if we had seen him we would not at once have made him come on here with us?”

“You told me”’began Noah apologetically.

“Whatever I may have said, you are too dull to understand, and you turn everything cat-in-the-pan.”

Apparently satisfied, Kate prepared to go back into the kitchen, and Noah would have followed her; but she stood in the doorway and said firmly, “No, I do not wish to have you in the kitchen. If you persist in following, I shall pin a dish-clout to your back. Jane Redmore wants to get home to her little ones, the night is dark as pitch. I must help her to clean up, and we can have no one to interfere with us; you nearly made me break a dish with what you said just now.”

“Come here,” said Rose. “You are a duffer, and don’t know how to manage”; and Noah obeyed, and seated himself in the settle. Kate shut the kitchen door.

“What was that you said about my brother Jason?” asked Zerah.

“It was nonsense,” answered Rose sharply.

“But Noah meant something, when he said he had seen him.”

“Noah is a fool: are you not, Noah?”

“I suppose you know,” answered the young man meekly.

“Tell me what it was that made Kate nigh on drop the dish,” persisted Zerah, always a resolute woman to have her way.

“It was nought but a parcel of nonsense,” said Rose evasively.

“There must have been something,” persisted Zerah.

“Well, I don’t mind saying,” Rose replied,’“that is, if you will hear’but it was fancy, I reckon.”

“What was fancy?”

“Thinking we saw him. I had told Noah to propose to Kate, and to get her into proper humour for accepting, first by making her cry, and then I told him he could make her cry by speaking in a sort of sympathising way about her father; and like an old buffle-head he went and said he had seen his ghost.”

“His ghost?” exclaimed Zerah, and Pasco drew back in the settle with a scared expression on his face.

“We were coming down the road from Noah’s, and before us was the fork of the lane,” said Rose. “Well, then, if you will hear all, Noah and me, us thought us see’d someone in the lane as went towards Jane Redmore’s cottage. The night was dark, but there was light at the end of the lane because of the Teign, which was full of the tide; and there was, sure enough, someone walking down that road. Us see’d him, whoever he was. He walked like a lapwing.”

“’Twas Jones Maker, the roadman,” said Pasco in a voice that was not firm. “He’s lame.”

“He goes on a crutch,” answered Rose. “What we saw was different, was it not so, Noah?”

“Yes,” assented the young man. “He walked lop o’ this side like, just the same as Jason Quarm.”

“’Twas Jonas Maker,” persisted Pasco.

“It can’t ha’ been Jonas,” answered Rose; “Jonas is tall, and this we saw was stout and thickset.”

“Did he speak?” asked Zerah breathlessly. Pasco fidgeted in his seat.

“No, he did not; us weren’t very near, and I axed Noah to run on and catch him up, and ax him questions why he walked, but he wouldn’t.”

“I reckon Mr. Pepperill would ha’ been shy to do that,” growled Noah.

Then a dead silence fell on all; and in that dead silence a sound like the tread of a man with a limp was audible, coming up the steps to the door. Next as if a hand were laid on the door-hasp, and all saw that the latch was raised, and cautiously lowered, without the door being opened. Then ensued the halting hobble down the steps again.

No one stirred. Every face was blank. Possibly one of those present would have started up and gone to the door to look forth into the black night, but at this moment Kate entered, and, going up to a crook, took down a lantern.

“Jane Redmore is going home,” she said, “and she’s axed me just to show her off the premises and into the lane, with a light; it’s too dark to find the way at once, when one has been in the room with plenty of light.”

Kate opened the lantern and looked in.

“There is a candle,” she said, and proceeded to ignite it.

Rose looked at Noah, and Noah at Rose.

“I think,” said the girl, “we will ask you, Kate, to show us a light on our way presently, after you have put Jane Redmore into hers.”

“I will do so cheerfully,” answered Kitty, and went back with the lighted lantern into the kitchen to fetch Jane. Then the two passed through the room where the rest sat, and Mrs. Redmore wished them all a good-night.

Silence ensued after the door was shut. The glitter of the lantern was visible through the window for a moment, and then disappeared.

Pasco looked uneasily at the door. He was the first to break silence. “I wish you to know,” said he, “that if you marry Kitty, Noah, you do not take a beggar. On the contrary, you take an heiress.”

“How do you make that out?” asked Zerah.

“Kitty is not of my blood,” said Pasco, gaining firmness, “but I have no relations of my own, and I intend to treat Kitty as my child. Noah, you marry an heiress.”

“What will you give her?” asked Zerah.

“Great expectations,” answered Pasco pompously.

“I don’t count much on expectations,” said his wife contemptuously. “Give her something down.”

“I’ll do better than that,” said Pasco. “I’ll make my will and constitute her my heir.”

“That’s moonshine and tall talk,” scoffed Zerah.

“It is nothing of the sort,” said Pasco. “Here you are, Rose and Noah, and I’ll make my will before you, and you shall witness it. Then Noah will know what he takes, when he takes Kitty.”

Zerah looked at her husband with surprise. This was the first intimation she had received that he intended to do anything for his niece. She did not see deep enough into his heart to read his reasons. At that moment he was alarmed and uneasy at the story of the apparition of Jason Quarm, whom he knew to be dead, and then at the mysterious tread and the raising of the hasp of the door. He was not a superstitious man, but the guilt on his soul made him subject to terrors. He thought that the spirit of the man he had brought to his death might be walking, and would trouble him, not only on account of the wrong done to him, but also to his daughter. In his mean mind Pasco hoped that by constituting Kitty heir to all he possessed, he might lay the troubled spirit of her father.

“I will do it at once,” said Pepperill, opening his desk and drawing forth ink and pen and paper, and laying them on the table.

“I will show you that I understand legal forms,’I keep a solicitor of my own,’and that I am the man who can deal generously and with a free hand. I, Pasco Pepperill of Coombe Cellars, being in sound condition of mind and body”’

He wrote the words, then looked round complacently and added, “I bequeath to my niece, Kate Quarm, the sum of three thousand pounds. Three thousand pounds,” repeated Pasco, looking round. “Also to my wife Zerah, two thousand pounds and my house at Coombe Cellars, and my house property at Tavistock, inherited from my uncle,”’he turned his head consequentially to look at Noah, then at Rose,’“during the term of her natural life.”

“What do you mean by natural life?” asked Zerah.

“It is an expression always used,” answered Pasco.

“It is nonsense,” said Zerah, “If there be a natural life, there must be one which is unnatural.”

“It means, plain as Scripture,” replied Pasco, “that you may have my house as long as your nat’ral life lasts, and after that lie quiet in your grave, and not walk and bother people. Your right to the house is tied up to your nat’ral life. That’s the meaning o’ that there legal term. It stops and prevents all after unpleasantness.”

“Now I understand,” said Zerah. “But you need not get hot over it.”

“I’m not hot, but some folk be stupid and understand nothing. Now I will proceed. After my wife’s decease,’that’s the legal term for death,’then all goes to my niece, or reputed niece, the aforesaid Kate Quarm. This is my last will and testament, and true act and deed. Here you see me sign it. Now then, Rose Ash, and you, Noah Flood, witness my signature. You, Zerah, cannot, because you are beneficially affected.”

Mr. Pepperill had completely recovered his self-consequence and his courage. He had shown Noah that he was a man of means, a man with house property, a man of capital as well, and he had eased his conscience by making satisfaction for the wrong he had done to Kate.

As soon as Pasco had seen the young people witness his signature, he handed the will to Zerah. “There, wife, keep it.”

At that moment the door was thrown open, and Kate entered, and stood by the table, with changes of expression flying over her countenance, like flaws of wind on the face of a pool.

She put down the lantern on the board.

“Why, Kitty, the light is out!” said Zerah, and opened the horn door. “Why, Kitty, where be the candle to? She’s gone.”

At that moment, a flare that illumined the entire room, a sheet of light, entering by door and window.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Pasco, springing up. “My rick.” Then with a scream of triumph, as he pointed with one hand to Kate, with the other to the lantern, “I told you so, now you will believe me. Caught in the act.”