CHAPTER XLII

AN UGLY HINT

Talking loudly, laughing noisily, boisterously threatening proceedings against all trespassers, Pasco Pepperill came in at his door.

“For heaven’s sake, what are you doing?” was his first salutation from his wife. “How dare you behave as you do? You’you?”

He saw at once that she believed in his guilt, and designed to caution him against overacting his part.

A great transformation had taken place in Pepperill. Now that he had done the deed, all dread of the consequences seemed to have been swept away; he must assume an innocent part, look people full in the face, and resent suspicion as an insult. The fact that he had come in for a handsome legacy assisted him to shake off the consciousness of guilt. He was now a man worth three or four thousand pounds, and when the assurance was paid he would be worth an additional thousand.

What could be proved against him? Nothing. Suspicion might be entertained, but what was suspicion when it had nothing substantial as a basis?

“Give me a jug of cider,” he commanded, and Zerah hastened to obey. She put a tumbler on the table beside the jug.

Pasco leisurely poured out a glass, and held it up between himself and the light, and was pleased to observe how steady his hand was.

“Zerah! come and look here. There is rope in the liquor’it is turning sour.”

Kate looked fixedly at her uncle’s face. The child was in distress and doubt. Was her father alive, or had he died a death of the worst description? Was he away on his business, carrying out some risky speculation, or did his bones lie resolved to ash in the great cinder-heap that had smouldered on so long, and was but just extinct?

She had not met with anything in her uncle’s character which would justify her in attributing to him so deliberate and desperate a crime as firing his own warehouse, and sacrificing, intentionally or accidentally, the life of his brother-in-law; and yet his wife, who ought to know him best, had arrived at the worst conclusion, and though she said nothing, Kate saw by her manner that she was for ever estranged from her husband, and regarded him as guilty of the crime in its worst form.

Zerah had retained Kitty in her room, and had more than once said to her that after the return of Pasco she would make him occupy Kate’s old attic; she would no longer treat Pasco other than as a stranger. Her reception of him now showed repugnance and restraint; the shrinking of an upright nature from one tainted with dishonesty, and exhibiting restraint from saying all that was felt.

Kate looked on her uncle with his self-satisfied expression, holding the glass between him and the light with a steady hand, concerning his mind about the ropiness of the cider, and in her simple mind, ignorant of evil, direct, with no trickiness or dissimulation in it, she felt vast relief. She could not believe that Pasco had done wrong, nor that he had any misgivings as to the well-being of her father.

She drew a long sigh, and passed her hand across her brow, as though to brush away the cloud that had hung over it and darkened all her thoughts.

In the new confidence established between herself and her aunt, Kate had whispered to her that she was engaged to Walter Bramber, but the news seemed to make as little impression on Zerah as it had on Pasco, and for the same reason, that each mind was engrossed in other more immediately interesting matters. The girl submitted with that resignation which characterised her. She made little account of herself, and did not suppose that what concerned her could excite lively emotions in the hearts of her uncle and aunt. Even Mr. Puddicombe had shown more sympathy and pleasure. But then, Kate could make allowance for the preoccupation of her aunt’s mind consequent on the fire.

Kate now timidly approached her uncle, keeping her eyes riveted on his face, and, standing on the other side of the little round table on which was his jug, she asked’

“Are you quite sure my dear father is all right?”

Pasco looked sharply at her.

“Questions again?” he said hastily, and a flush came into his cheek.

“I have a right to ask this question,” said Kate firmly.

His eye fell under hers; he set down the glass unsteadily and upset the cider.

“Hang it! why have you a right?”

“I want to know that my father is alive.”

“I say he’s gone to Portsmouth.”

“But how did he go?”

“That was his affair, not mine; the Atmospheric, I suppose.”

“He could not cross during that night’at least, not till near dawn, and so must have been here when the warehouse was burnt.”

“I don’t see that; there are other ways of getting away. He went on to Shaldon.”

That was certainly possible. Quarm might have pursued the right bank of the river to where it could be crossed at any tide, but this was not probable.

An interruption was occasioned by the entry of the rector. After the usual salutations, he at once turned to the topic which had been engaging thoughts and tongues before he appeared.

“I have no desire to intrude,” said he, “but I have come to prevent a scandal, if possible, and perhaps a quarrel. Mr. Pooke is in a great heat, and vows he will have a search-warrant to turn over the heaps, as you have refused him to explore them. You are churchwarden, Mr. Pepperill, and I not only desire to prevent unpleasantness on your own account, but on that of the Church. You have, I believe, sent Mr. Pooke off?”

“I have.”

“But why so? He may have acted irregularly, but it was with good intentions, and you were absent.”

“He had no right to touch what was mine.”

“No doubt he erred, but you were absent, consider; and your wife, your niece, the whole village, were in excitement and alarm. He did what seemed fit to allay this unrest; to find out whether Mr. Quarm had been here or not.”

“It is no good. He’ll get no warrant, unless magistrates be fools. He has no case’not a ghost of a case. Jason went to Shaldon, and so over the water.”

“You are sure?”

“I fancy he did. I heard he wanted to reach Portsmouth, and the tide was out when he got here, so he could not cross in the ferry. He went on. At Teignmouth he would get into the Atmospheric.”

“That is readily ascertained. We have but to send to Shaldon and inquire. The boatman who took him across can be found. If he crossed the wooden bridge, then the man who takes toll will be able to say something.”

“He may have gone round the head of the estuary.”

“Not likely, if he left his cart and donkey here.”

Pepperill was unable to answer. He was a heavy-headed man, not quick at invention.

“Then,” continued the rector, “the warehouse did not catch fire of itself; someone must have fired it.”

“Of course,” said Pepperill.

“I may as well tell you,” continued Mr. Fielding, “that Mr. Bramber, the schoolmaster, came to the Cellars the evening of the fire”’

“The deuce he did!”

“Just after dusk.”

“And what brought him here, the puppy?”

“He came,” answered Mr. Fielding, “because he wished to see Kitty and you.”

“Pray what did he want with Kitty?”

“Surely, Mr. Pepperill, you know that the two young people have come to an understanding.”

Pasco shrugged his shoulders. “I may have heard something of the sort, but I have other things more important to interest and occupy my mind. I gave it no heed.”

“Well, he desired to speak with you, as her father was away, and you stood in a semi-parental relation to her, living as she did in your house.”

“Well, he found no one here,” observed Pasco, with some uneasiness of manner.

“As he approached the Cellars he heard an altercation, and then the house door violently slammed. Then, thinking the occasion unpropitious, he turned back.”

“It was fancy. No one was here. My wife was over the water, and I on my way to Brimpts. If you doubt my word, ask Mr. Ash, he receipted my bill, and I had a talk as well with the landlord.”

“That is true, Mr. Pepperill, but Jason Quarm was here. I saw him drive past my gate, and I cast a good-even to him. If an altercation took place here, he was probably one of those engaged in it. I took it for granted that you were the other.”

“I’I’I?” stuttered Pasco.

“Yes, because you returned to the Cellars after you had got to the head of the hill.”

“Who said that? It is a lie!”

“Kitty, I understand, said as much to John Pooke.”

“Kitty said it?”

“Kitty told Jan and Rose as she was being driven home from the moor’so I have been informed.”

“It’s a lie!” roared Pasco, glaring round at the girl with a curl up of his thick lips, showing his teeth like a dog about to bite. “It’s a ’–– lie!”

“Mr. Pepperill!” said the rector, rising in dignified anger from the seat that had been accorded him, “I will not suffer you to use such an expression in my presence, even in your own house. You do not add one jot to the force of your repudiation’to your charge against Kate’by burdening it with an oath.”

“It’s like that beggarly schoolmaster’s impudence to come poking his snout here, where he’s not wanted, where”’with some energy’“I won’t have him! I’ll have the law of him for trespass!”

“He did not trespass. It is free to anyone to approach a house door.”

“I don’t care; I’ll shoot him if he shows his face here again.”

“You are branching away from the matter in immediate consideration. There seems to be a conflict of testimony. Kitty, whom I have always found true and direct as a needle, has made one statement,’not indeed to me, but to others,’and this you contradict.”

“I’m churchwarden’I’m a man of means and in a good business. I should think my word was worth more than that of a sly, chattering, idle minx.”

“Sly, chattering, that my little Kitty is not; I have ever found her straightforward and reserved. As to her work in the house, her aunt is better qualified to express an opinion than you, Mr. Pepperill.”

“I don’t see that you’ve any call to come here, poking into matters and axin’ questions like another Kitty, if I may make so bold as to say so,” said Pasco, defiant and then qualifying his defiance.

“As I told you at the outset, Mr. Pepperill, I have come here not to make an official inquiry, but to prevent one. There is a mistake somewhere. My wish was to clear it up before matters grew to a head. You and Mr. Pooke are both stubborn men, and may knock heads and crack skulls over nothing. A word will probably lighten what is now dark, and dissipate a growing mistrust. I cannot, and I will not, believe half of what is being said relative to you. I have come to your house as a peacemaker, to entreat you to so account for little matters which puzzle the good people here, before what is now whispered may be brayed, what is now a conjecture may be crystallised into a conviction. As far as is known, the matter stands thus: Mr. Quarm came here, and here have been found his donkey and cart and his little bundle of clothes. If he had crossed the water, he would have taken the latter with him. Two persons were heard in altercation here shortly after his having passed through Coombe, and the door was shut violently. Next morning the door was locked, and Mrs. Pepperill when she came found the key in a hiding-place known, as she then said, only to herself and you.”

“Don’t you suppose Kitty knew it also?”

“I daresay she did. Your wife’s words, when she arrived, found the stores burnt, and the house locked, and the key in a certain place’her words were, ‘Pasco has put the key where I have found it.’ It was of course surmised that before you left you had locked the door, but Kitty told young Pooke that when you reached the top of the hill you returned to the Cellars, saying that you had forgotten to lock the house. It, therefore, seemed to me probable that on your return, you and Quarm came to high words about something.”

“Nothing of the sort I never came back.”

“Oh, uncle!” escaped Kate’s lips.

He turned his menacing eyes on her, with the same snarl on his mouth.

“I’ll tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” said he. “That is, if you will insist on having it, and you can make of it what you like, pass’n. When I got to the top o’ the hill, where is Ash’s linhay, it is true that I remembered I’d not locked up the dwelling-house. Then I sent Kitty back and told her to lock and put the key where her aunt would find it, and I’d stay and mind the hoss.”

“Uncle!” Kitty turned white and rigid.

“And, dash it! if someone must ha’ set fire to the old place,’and I reckon there was someone, them things don’t do themselves,’it must ha’ been either she or Jason, or both together. And I reckon he’s run away to escape the consequences.”

The rector stood up. He had reseated himself after his protest. His face was very grave.

“I see,” said he, taking his hat, and moving to the door. “This affair wears a different colour from what I supposed. It must be elucidated irrespective of me. My part is done. It must be taken up and investigated by the proper authorities.”