CHAPTER XXXVIII

WANTED AT LAST

Pasco thrust his wife within and shut the door behind. Zerah had returned early in the morning, and had found that her husband and Kate were away, and the house locked, whilst the stores were in conflagration. Half the parish was present. The fire had broken out some time after nightfall’at least, it had been observed about nine o’clock by a boy connected with the mill, who ran to the alehouse and roused the village orchestra, which was practising there, and in ten minutes nearly everyone in the little place was at the Cellars. The fire was pouring in dense sheets of flame out of the windows. It had apparently begun below, the wool above dropped into it as the rafters and boards gave way. Nothing could be done to arrest it, but precautions were adopted to prevent the fire communicating with a little rick of straw that Pepperill had for litter near the stables. The flames and smoke were carried inland, and no apprehensions were entertained of the house becoming ignited.

Much comment was made on the absence of Pasco, his wife, and niece. But that which excited most uneasiness was the presence of Jason Quarm’s cart and donkey in the yard. If they were at the Cellars, then Jason could not be far distant. Was it possible that, finding the house locked up, and his relatives absent, he had made his way into the store-shed and perished there? This was the question hotly debated.

When Mrs. Pepperill arrived from the other side of the river, and saw the conflagration, and heard that there was a probability that her brother had fallen a victim, she was driven frantic with terror and grief. In her mind connecting her husband with the occurrence, she charged him with the firing of the stores and with the death of her brother.

Pepperill endeavoured to pacify her. He protested his innocence; he declared that he had left the house soon after herself, and by entreaty, remonstrance, and threat urged Zerah to hold her tongue and not recklessly put him in peril by rousing against him suspicion which was without grounds.

As to Jason, he knew nothing about him. He had probably left his trap at the Cellars and crossed the water on some business of his own. He would return shortly. The fact of his cart and ass being there was not sufficient to cause alarm for his safety. If anything transpired more grave, Pasco would be the first to take the necessary steps to investigate what had become of him. Meanwhile, let Zerah moderate her transports and listen to the news he had to tell. He must leave her, and that immediately, to go with the lawyer to Tavistock, and make provision for his uncle’s interment and for securing his property.

Pepperill was unable to get away as soon as he wished. He was forced to show himself among the crowd, to give expression to consternation, to answer questions as to his surmises about the origin of the fire, to explain how he had left the place before it broke out, and to offer suggestions as to the whereabouts of Quarm. He scouted the idea of his brother-in-law having been burnt in the stores; he said he suspected the fellow Redmore of having set fire to his buildings. Redmore was at large still; he, Pasco, had given him occasion of resentment by sending the workmen at Brimpts in pursuit of him. The man was a bitter hater and revengeful, as was proved by his having burned the stack of Farmer Pooke. What more likely than that he had paid off his grudge against himself’Pepperill’in like manner?

As soon as ever Pasco was able to disengage himself from the crowd, he re-entered the chaise and departed with the lawyer, glad to escape the scene. When the chaise had got outside Coombe, he leaned back with a puff of relief and said, “That is now well over.”

“I should hardly say _that_,” observed the lawyer, “till you have the insurance money clinking in your pocket. Now look here, Mr. Pepperill; it may be you will have a hitch about the same. If so, apply to me.”

Among those looking on upon the mass of glowing, spluttering combustible material was the rector, with his hands behind him, and his hat at the back of his head. He was touched on the arm, and, turning, saw the pretty face of Rose Ash looking entreatingly towards him.

“What is it, my child?”

“Please, sir, do you think anything dreadful has happened to Kitty’s father?”

The rector paused before he answered. Then he said leisurely, “I do not know what reply to make. I saw him last night about seven. I was at my garden-gate when he drove by, and we exchanged salutations.”

“The neddy is in the stable here, and there is his cart,” said Rose.

“He may have crossed the water.”

“But, sir, Mrs. Pepperill had the boat.”

“True’is there no other?”

“Yes; the old boat. I did not think of that. I’ll run and see if her be in place.”

Rose left, and returned shortly, discouraged, and said’

“The old boat be moored to the landing-stage as well as the new boat. And, sir, I do not think he could have got across the water after seven by any boat. The tide was out. By nine, when it was flowing, the people were running about here because of the fire.”

“I will go and see Mrs. Pepperill.”

“May I come with you, sir? Kitty is my very dear friend.”

“Kitty?’I thought she had no friends?”

“It is only quite lately we have become friends. I would do anything for her. I am not happy. I think she ought to know what has taken place, and yet I wouldn’t frighten and make her miserable without reason. That is why I so much wish to know what is really thought about poor Mr. Quarm. It would be too dreadful if he had come by his end here, and it will break Kitty’s heart.”

“You shall come with me, certainly, Rose.”

On entering the house, they found Mrs. Pepperill moving restlessly about the kitchen. Her mood had gone through a change since the visit of her husband. The wildness of her first terror and grief had passed away, and given place to great nervous unrest. She had smoothed her hair as well as she could with her trembling fingers; her lips quivered, her eye was unsteady, and she could not remain in one posture or in one place for more than half a minute.

She had hitherto appeared a hard, iron-natured woman without sympathy, but now the shock had completely broken her down. She had rushed to the conclusion that her husband had deliberately set fire to his warehouse, and without scruple had sacrificed her brother. The horror of the death Jason had undergone, and the greater horror to her of the thought that this was the callous act of her own husband, had shaken the woman out of all her self-restraint and rigidity of nerve. She was morally as well as physically broken down. A woman stern, uncompromising, strictly honest and upright, harsh and unpitying in her severity, she found herself involved in a terrible crime that touched her in the most sensitive part. It was the conceit mingled with stupidity in Pasco, his recklessness in speculation, and his obstinacy in refusing to listen to her voice, which had hardened and embittered the woman.

Something he had said, something in his manner, had led her to fear he contemplated an escape from his difficulties by dishonest means, and it was to avert the necessity of his having recourse to these that she had produced her little store, the savings of many years. When she returned from Teignmouth to find that her husband, notwithstanding, had carried out his purpose, and in doing so had swept her own brother out of his path’then all her fortitude gave way.

After the first paroxysm of resentment and despair had passed, she felt the need of using self-control, and of concealing what she thought, of endeavouring to avert suspicion from falling on Pasco. Now also, for the first time in her life, did this stern woman crave for sympathy, and her heart turned at once instinctively to the girl she had disregarded and despised. Dimly she had perceived, though she had never allowed it to herself, that there was a something in her niece of a strong, noble, and superior nature to her own. And in this moment of terrible prostration of her self-respect and weakness of nerve, her heart cried out with almost ravenous impatience for Kate. To Kitty alone could she speak her mind, in Kitty’s breast alone find sympathy.

When, therefore, the door opened and the rector entered with a girl at his side, her eyes, dazzled by the sunlight behind them, unable to distinguish at the moment through the haze of tears that formed and dried in her eyes, she cried out hoarsely’

“It is Kitty! I want you, Kitty!”

“I am not Kitty,” said Rose. “I am only her dear friend. If you want Kitty, I will fetch her.”

“I do want her. I must have her,” said Zerah vehemently. “I have no one. My brother is dead, my husband is gone. My Kitty’where is she? I do not know if it is true that she is on the moor. She may be burning yonder, along wi’ her father.”

The woman threw herself into the settle, and burst into a convulsion of tears.

Mr. Fielding spoke words intended to console her. She must not rush to a conclusion so dreadful without sufficient cause; it was possible enough that in the course of the day something might transpire which would give them reason to believe that Mr. Quarm was safe. Then, to divert her mind from this point to one less distressing, as he thought, he inquired whether she had any idea as to how the fire had originated.

He could hardly have asked a question more calculated to agitate her. Zerah sprang from the settle, walked hurriedly about the room, hiding her eyes with her hand, and crying’

“I know nothing. I cannot think. I want Kitty.”

Then Mr. Fielding put forth his arm, stayed her, and said’

“Mrs. Pepperill, remember, however dear to you your brother may be, he must be dearer to Kitty, as he is her father. You are advanced in life, have had your losses and sorrows, and have acquired a certain power to sustain a loss and command sorrow, but Kitty’s is a fresh young heart, that has never known the cutting blows to which yours has been subjected. Spare her what may be unnecessary. Let us wait over to-day, and if nothing happens to relieve our minds of the terrible fear that clouds them, we will send to Dart-meet for the child. Indeed, she must be brought here’if our fears receive confirmation. All I ask is, spare her what, please God, is an unnecessary agony.”

Then Rose Ash came up close to the bewildered woman.

“Mrs. Pepperill, I will go after Kitty, I promise you, if you will wait over to-day. I am Kitty’s friend, as I was once the friend of your Wilmot, and if you will suffer me, I will remain in the house with you, to relieve you, all day, and do what work you desire.”

“No, no!” gasped Zerah; “I must be alone. I will have no one here but Kitty.”

“You consent to the delay?”

The woman did not refuse; she shook herself free from Rose and the rector, retreated to the window, and cast herself on the bench in it, and cried and moaned in her hands held over her face.

When Rose proposed to Mrs. Pepperill that she should go to Brimpts to fetch Kate, a scheme had formed itself in her brain. She would ask Jan Pooke to drive her. At the time of our story two-wheeled conveyances, gigs, buggies, tax-carts, were kept only by the well-to-do, and there were but three in all Coombe’the parson’s trap, and those of Pasco Pepperill and yeoman Pooke. Her own father, the miller, though a man of substance, had not taken the step of providing himself with a trap; to have done so would have been esteemed in the parish an assertion of wealth and importance that would have provoked animadversion, and might have hurt his trade. The miller is ever regarded with mistrust. His fist is said to be too much in the meal-sack, and had he dared to start a two-wheeled conveyance, it would at once have been declared that it was maintained, as well as purchased, at the expense of those who sent their corn to be ground at his mill.

But now that Rose considered her scheme at leisure, it did not smile on her as at first. At the moment she proposed it, the prospect of a long drive by Jan’s side, of union in sympathy for Kitty, had promised something. Now that she reviewed her plan, she foresaw that it might be disastrous. Kate, when she heard the tidings of the fire and the news of the disappearance of her father, would be thrown into great distress, and a distressed damsel is proverbially irresistible to a swain. It might undo all that Kate had done, make Jan more enamoured than ever, and he as a comforter might gain what he had failed to win when he approached as a lover. Rose was a good-hearted, if a somewhat wayward girl. She desired to do a kind thing to Kitty, but not at such a cost to herself.

She turned the matter over in her head, and finally reached a compromise. She would ask Jan to drive her to Brimpts so as to fetch Kate, but lay the injunction on him, for Kitty’s sake, not to say a word relative to the loss of her father. Grieved Kate would be to hear of the burning of the storehouse, but not heart-broken. The consumption of so much coal would not extort tears. A sorrowful girl is only interesting’a heart-broken one is irresistible.

XXXIX ONE FOR THEE AND TWO FOR ME

Rose and Ja by side in the trap that belonged to the Pookes. In his good-nature and readiness to do whatever was kind, Jan had promptly acceded to Rose’s request that he should help her to bring Kitty home. It was not right, she said, that the child should be left on the moor, when her father was dead, and her aunt in despair.

“You know, Jan,” she said, pressing against the driver’s side, and speaking low and confidentially, “I am dear Kitty’s very, very best friend,’I may say, her only real friend,’and have to fight her battles like a Turk.”

“I did not know that,” observed Jan in surprise, ill-disguised, for his mind ran to the incidents of the Ashburton fair.

“You boys don’t know everything. I love Kitty dearly, and I believe she loves me. We have no secrets from each other, and now that she is in trouble, my heart flies out to she, and I want to be with her, and break the news to her very, very gently.”

“I thought”’began Jan, then paused.

Rose looked up in his dull, kindly face, and said roguishly, “Oh, Jan, a penny for your thoughts. No, really; I will give half a crown’a thought with you must be _so_ precious, because so rare.”

A little nettled, Jan said, “I thought this, Rose: from your treatment of Kate the other day at the fair, that you were her enemy rather than her friend.”

“That is because you are an old buffle-head. Of course we are bosom friends, but I’m full of fun, and we tease one another’we girls’just as kids gambol. You are so heavy and solemn and dull, you don’t understand our gambols. You are like a great ox looking on at kids and lambs, and wondering what it all means when they frisk, and you take it for solemn earnest.”

“But about the quarrel at the stall’the kerchief?”

“That was play.”

“And the workbox that Noah knocked from under her arm? Was that play?”

“Purely. Jan, I had a much better workbox which I wanted to give Kate, and you went and spoiled my purpose by giving her that trumpery affair. I am not ashamed to own it. I told Noah to strike it from under her arm, that I might give her the box I had put aside for her.”

“And she has it?”

“Yes; oh dear, yes!’of course she has it.”

Jan shook his head; he was puzzled, but supposed all was right’supposed, because he was too straightforward and good-hearted to mistrust the girl who spoke so frankly, with great eyes looking him full in the face, and smiling. Impudence is more convincing than innocence.

Then Rose said, “How good you are, Jan’how tremendously good! Really, it is a privilege to live in the same parish, and drive in the same buggy beside so excellent a Christian.”

“What are you at now?” was Jan’s outspoken response.

“I mean what I say, Jan. Considering how you’ve been treated, I declare that by your conduct you do a lot more good to me than any number of sermons.”

“How so? You are making game of me.”

“Not a bit; I’m serious. How is it you show your goodness? Why, by driving me to Brimpts.”

“Oh, I have nothing else to do, and I like a drive.”

“With me?’or perhaps I just spoil the pleasure,” Rose asked, with a roguish look out of the corners of her eyes.

The young yeoman was unaccustomed to making gallant speeches, and he let slip the opportunity thus adroitly offered him. Rose curled her lip, as he replied’

“It is always pleasanter to have someone to talk to than to be alone, especially for a long drive.”

“But it is so good, so _very_ good of you to fetch _her_.”

“Why should I be such a churl as not to go when asked?”

“After what has occurred, you know. What a fellow you are! In the orchard, you know.”

Pooke turned blood-red. A fly was tickling him; he raised the butt-end of his whip and rubbed his nose with it.

“Get along, Tucker!” he shouted. Tucker was the horse.

“I hope I shall profit better from your example than I have from all the parson’s sermons,” pursued Rose.

“What are you at?” asked Pooke uneasily, conscious that some ulterior end was in his companion’s view, as she thus lavished encomiums on him, and then dug into his nerves a needlepoint of sharp remark.

“What am I at? Oh, Jan! nothing at all, but sitting here with my hands in my lap, so happy to have a drive’and in such excellent company’company so good.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“It is not every man would lend his cart, nay, drive himself, to do a favour to a girl who had treated him outrageously.”

“When did you treat me so?”

“I’oh, Jan’not I! I could not have done that. A thousand times no”’ Rose spoke in pretty agitation, and fluttered at his side. “I mean Kitty.”

“Kitty? Get along, Tucker!’it’s no use your trying to scratch yourself with your hind hoof, and run at the same time.” He addressed the horse, which was executing awkward gymnastics. “Excuse me, Rose; I must dismount. There is a briar stinging Tucker.”

Jan drew up, descended, and slapped with his open hand where a horse-fly was engaged sucking blood. The fly was too wide awake to be killed; it rose, and sailed away. Then young Pooke mounted again.

“Get along, Tucker!” he said, and applied the whip.

“I mean,” pursued Rose, as if there had ensued no interruption. “I mean, after you had been treated so shamefully.”

“I didn’t know it.”

“Really, Jan! Everyone knows that Kitty refused you. It is the village talk, and everyone says it was scandalous.”

“Drat it! there is that fly again at Tucker.”

“Oh, if you can think of nothing but Tucker, I’ll be silent.”

“Don’t be cross, Rose, I must consider Tucker, as I am driver. There might be accidents.”

“Not for the world. Of course you must consider Tucker, and poor little I must be content to come into your mind in the loops and gaps not took up by the horse and the gadfly.”

“What do you suppose Tucker cost father?” asked Pooke, clumsily endeavouring to change the topic.

“I really don’t know.”

“Eight pounds, and he is worth twenty. That was a piece of luck for father.”

“Luck comes to those who desarve it,” said Rose. “I am not surprised at you and your family being prosperous in all you undertake. There’s no knowing, Jan,”’she spoke solemnly,’“you may feel low and discouraged at being, so to speak, kicked over the orchard hedge by Kate, but it may be a blessing in disguise, who can tell? but Providence may have in view someone for you much better suited’_much_ in every way, than Kitty.”

“Drat it! there is that fly again.”

“Mr. Puddicombe’what a good soul he is!’has been about the place spreading the news.”

“What news?”

“About Kitty and the schoolmaster.”

“Kitty and the schoolmaster?” echoed Pooke. His brows went up, his jaw dropped, and his cheek became mottled.

“Haven’t you heard? Why, poor dear Jan, she went helter-skelter away from the orchard where she had trampled on you to fling herself into the arms of Mr. Thingamy-jig. I cannot tell his name’I mean the new schoolmaster.”

“How do you know?”

“Of course I know. Mr. Puddicombe is brimming with the news. They went like a pair of turtle-doves cooing and billing to Mr. Puddicombe, and he has nearly run his legs down to stumps since. The schoolmaster”’

“But I don’t mean about the schoolmaster.” Pooke spoke with a tremble in his voice.

“Oh! about that affair, that comical affair in the orchard? Half the village, I reckon, was out behind the hedges looking and listening. There was Betsy Baker, and there was Jenny Jones, and that sprig of a chap, Tommy Croft’I won’t be sure they heard, but I fancy so’anyhow, everyone has been talking of it, and pitying you that you were made ridiculous; and then to go off, right on end, and accept a schoolmaster.” In a tone of infinite contempt, Rose added, “A schoolmaster! It takes ten tailors to make a man, and ten schoolmasters to make a tailor; Puddicombe excepted’that was a man, and was so highly respected, he knew how to make himself looked up to, and folk forgave him his profession for his own sake. But this new whipper-snapper! And to be rejected for _him_!”

Jan Pooke writhed. He had not heard the news of Kate’s engagement. Somehow it had been kept from, or had not reached, him. The fire had distracted men’s and women’s thoughts from the affairs of Kate, Bramber, and himself. His colour changed, and he flushed purple. He shared the prejudice entertained by farmers and labourers’by all who were semi-educated and wholly uneducated’for the man of culture that was striving to enlighten dull minds and wake torpid intelligences. Parsons and schoolmasters are in the same category. The heavy soul resents being raised to spiritual life, and the heavy mind resents being wakened to intellectual life. It ever will be so, and it ever has been so. A man going along a road found a sodden toper lying in a ditch. He tried to pull him out. “Leave alone!” roared the drunken man. “I likes it, I enjoys it. I’ll knock you down if you don’t let me lie in my ditch. There are effets there, and slugs there, and frogs and toads; get along your own way and leave me where I am.”

Pooke and Rose Ash had imbibed the views of their parents and companions, and the prevailing atmosphere in a country parish. They had not risen above it, and their ideas took colour from it.

“It was scandalous conduct, was it not, Jan?” asked Rose. “If I were you, I wouldn’t stand it, not half an hour.”

“But what can I do?”

“What’? do’? Oh, lots!”

“I can do lots. I do not see it. If Kitty chooses”’His lips quivered, and he gulped down something.

“If Kitty chooses a beggarly schoolmaster instead of you, you must not let the neighbours see you are crestfallen. It will never do in coming out of church for everyone to point at you and say, ‘Poor chap! There he goes, Jan Pooke, whom Kitty Alone would not have; and here comes Mr. Thingamy-jig, whom she prefers so highly, looking like the cock of the walk.’ It would be very shaming, Jan, and I don’t think your dear father would like it terrible much.”

“I can do nothing,” said Jan, looking wistfully at the horse’s ears: “if Kitty likes Mr. Bramber, and don’t care for me.”

“And if the story of the silver peninks gets about?”

“Don’t, Rose!” His face expressed pain.

“I don’t wish to hurt you, I wish you well, Jan, you know. I was anxious that you should not be the laughing-stock of Coombe and the neighbourhood. That would be too dreadful. I have such a regard for you. Mind you, I love dear Kitty, but I cannot blind my eyes that her has made a mistake’a happy mistake for you, because, dear, good girl as she is, I do not think that she could ha’ made you happy.”

“Why not?”

“She would have been eternally axin’ questions which you could never answer.”

“There is something in that.”

“She’d have been wanting to take you to the bottoms of wells, you know, so as to see the stars by day. You would not like that, Jan?”

“No’there is something in that.”

“And to make you read that stupid book’Wordsworth, her calls it’in the evening, whilst she knitted. You couldn’t have stood that, Jan?”

“Horrible!’I should ha’ died.”

“Then you may rejoice that Providence has ordained that she should go after the schoolmaster. Now you must look out and see what step you can take to recover the respect of the parish.”

“How can I do that?”

“Oh, there be more fishes in the sea than come out of it, I reckon.”

Jan remained in meditation, speechless. Rose pressed close to his side.

“Have you no room?” he asked.

“Oh, ’tisn’t that altogether; my feelings overcame me. I do so, so pity you, you dear, poor Jan.”

Presently, as he continued silent, she said, “If I were you, when shortly you meet Kitty, and when she will be in my place at your side, and I ride behind, I would not look like an apple that has gone under the rollers, nor hang my ears like a whipped dog, but laugh and joke and whistle and be jolly, you know.”

“That don’t seem right, with her father burned to death.”

“She knows nothing of that, and is to know nothing of it from us. The proper person to tell her is Mrs. Pepperill. So mind, Jan, not a word about Mr. Quarm. Understand, not a word. So look cheerful and whistle.”

“What shall I whistle? Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum’?”

“Of course not, something lively. The ‘Green Bushes.’”

“Why the ‘Green Bushes’?”

“Oh, silly Jan!” Then she began to sing’

“’The old lover arrived, the maiden was gone; He sighed very deeply, he stood all alone, “She is on with another, before off with me, So adieu ye green bushes for ever!” said he.‘

“Green bushes’that is the orchard, Jan, where grow the silver peninks.”

“Drat that fly!” exclaimed Jan, flicking with his whip. “Her’s at it again.”