CHAPTER XLV

DAYLIGHT

The musicians looked at each other. They could hardly continue to practise Puddicombe in F till the little awkwardness of the passage _largo molto con affettuoso caprizio_ was set to rights. It would be half an hour before this was done. Meanwhile, the orchestra might as well work their tongues as well as their arms and fingers, and blow questions and puff opinions in place of musical notes. They had assembled that evening with a double intent: the excuse for their meeting was the rehearsal; the real object, the airing of their views on the fire at the Cellars, its probable origin, and what had become of Jason Quarm.

For the gathering of information on such matters, what was more fortunate than the presence in their midst of Pasco Pepperill, the man of all others best qualified to give information relative to the matters troubling all hearts? It was true that a good many’the bassoon and the ophicleide among the orchestra’entertained grave views relative to the conduct of Pepperill. Well! there the man was. They might prove him with keen questions, catch him off his guard with sly hits, entangle him in a net of incautious admissions into which they had lured him, and then sit in judgment on him and the whole case, after he had withdrawn.

“Gents and neighbours, and friends all,” said Pasco, seating himself, “as churchwarden, my place is among you, and allow me to stand treat of rum and water all round’no, better than that, a grand bowl of punch, and we’ll spoon it out with our good host’s whalebone ladle, and the Queen Anne shilling in the bottom. Landlord, don’t spare the rum; thanks to my uncle, I’m a man of means, and can pay my way.”

Marvellous as a solvent is punch. The mere mention of a bowl began to melt and break up prejudice and fixed opinions. The bassoon had been persistent in insisting on the criminality of Pepperill; he had urged every point against him, he had turned aside every argument that tended to exonerate him. As a man of strict integrity, he was now placed in a difficult position. Either he must hold to his opinion, rise, bow stiffly, and decline to drink out of the bowl, to wet his lips with the generous liquor the churchwarden provided, or else his judgment must undergo modifications, then a complete _volte face_.

The popping of a cork was heard. At once the bassoon acknowledged that he had been precipitate in forming his conclusions. A waft of rum and lemons entered the room. He began to see that there were weighty considerations which had escaped him hitherto, and which undermined his convictions. Then came the clink of the ladle in the bowl, as the bowl was being brought in. The bassoon’s preconceptions went down like a pack of cards. The whole room was redolent with a fragrant steam, as the great iron-stoneware bowl was planted on the table. The bassoon was converted into an ardent, enthusiastic believer in the churchwarden.

Wondrous is the power of conscience. It may lie asleep, it may remain for long inert, but a little something comes, unexpectedly touches it, and it springs up to full energy, and resolves amidst much self-reproach to make amends for the past. So was it in the interior of the bassoon. The sniff of punch was to his conscience what “Hey, rats!” is to the dozing dog. It was alive, it was stinging him, it had brought him metaphorically in penitence to his knees before Pasco Pepperill. He could not think, say, show himself, sufficiently convinced that that man who provided and paid for the punch was the embodiment of all virtues, with a character unstained as is the lily. He trampled on his own base self, he spurned at it, for having for a while thought evil of so admirable a man.

“Peter Squance bain’t here. ’Tis a pity’our first fiddle,” said the second violin. “He’ll be mazed when he comes back with the _molto largo_, and finds the punch all gone.”

“Gone?” exclaimed Pepperill. “Not a bit of it. When this bowl is done, we will have another.”

Mr. Pepperill stood up and stirred the steaming sea before him, in which floated yellow islets of lemon. All eyes were on the bowl, all nostrils were dilated and sniffing, all mouths watering.

Pasco filled each glass, and then ensued a nodding all round; eyes were turned up, lips smacked, and the precious liquor allowed to trickle down the throats in thin rills over the tongue.

Presently the clarionet put down his glass and said, “It was a lucky job, Pasco, that your rick o’ straw escaped t’other night.”

“Ay, ’twas a first-rate chance,” said the landlord, who had come and remained to taste his own brew and hear encomiums on it.

“You see the wind was t’other way,” said the ’cello.

“And ’twasn’t insured,” added the clarionet.

All the rest looked round, and frowned, and reared their chins. The clarionet shrank together. What had he said? Something stupid or uncivil? He was too dull to see where his error lay.

“That had nothing to do with it. ’Twas water chucked over it as saved it,” threw in the bassoon, flying to the rescue.

“My straw rick suffered more from well-intentioned assistants than from anything else,” said Pepperill. “The wind was direct away from it, and so it couldn’t hurt.”

“It was coorious, though, the fire taking place when everyone was away from home,” said the clarionet.

Again all looked indignantly at him. That instrument had a way of always sounding out of key.

“There was nothing coorious at all in it,” answered the churchwarden, with promptitude. “It was just because everyone was away that the fire got the upper hand.”

“There’s something in that,” said the hautboy.

“There is everything,” answered Pasco. “If I or my wife had been at the Cellars, we would have speedily called help and had the fire extinguished before it could take hold. No one was there, so it was allowed freedom to get the mastery, and then, no one could do nothing.”

“That’s true,” said the second violin.

“It’s true,” said the rest of the instruments in unison, looking into each other’s faces; “it couldn’t be truer.”

“You don’t happen to know how the fire came about?” asked the clarionet.

“I don’t _know_,” answered the churchwarden.

“You don’t know,” repeated the violoncello, “but you guess.”

“I have my ideas,” observed Pasco. “Gents! let me fill your glasses again.”

“And if I might make so bold to ask?” pursued the clarionet.

“My mouth is shut,” answered Pasco. “I don’t want to hurt nobody, least of all a relation. Just fancy, gents all! the insurance company have refused payment.”

“You don’t say so! Well! what is the world coming to? But it all stands in prophecy, in the Book o’ Dan’l,” said the hautboy.

“It is one of them beasts in Revelation!” said the second fiddle. “The question only is which.”

“But,” pursued Pepperill, “I’ve set my solicitor at ’em. He’ll make ’em dance a Halantow.”

“Very glad to hear it,” said the bassoon. “I drink to his and your success.”

“We’re going to institute proceedings,” continued Pasco.

“What is proceedings?” asked the clarionet under his hand of the hautboy.

“It’s a sort of blister o’ Spanish fly,” was the answer, also in confidence.

“Then it will make ’em dance, no mistake,” said the clarionet. “Do you think, churchwarden, it will draw?”

“Draw?” Pasco rubbed his hands and looked round. “It’ll draw getting on for fifteen hundred pound. If that bain’t drawin’, show me what is!”

This announcement produced a great effect.

“To go back to the p’int,” said the clarionet. “It would be a comfort to us all if you’d give us your ideas on the matter of the fire. You see, we’re all abroad.”

“I wouldn’t hurt nobody’not a fly. I was always tender-hearted,” said Pasco. “Besides, you’d talk.”

“We are all friends,” urged the bassoon. “You see, coals don’t as a rule set alight to themselves, nor wool, nor hides neither.”

“That’s what I’ve said all along,” observed the second fiddle. “Someone must ha’ done it. The question is’who?”

“I’ll have another thimbleful of punch,” said the bass viol. “It’s uncommon good, and does credit to all parties’

‘Come let’s drink, and drown all sorrow, For perchance we may not’ For perchance we may not meet here to-morrow.’”

Then the hautboy trolled out’

“‘He that goes to bed, goes to bed sober Falls as the leaves does’ Falls as the leaves does’in October.’”

“Someone must ha’ done it,” observed the clarionet.

“Of course some one did,” said Pepperill, “and when folk begin yarnin’ lies, you ain’t got to go far to find the evil-doer.”

“That’s true,” was the chorus.

“And no one was at the Cellars at the time but one or two persons,” said the clarionet.

“One was Jason Quarm,” said Pasco; “and burnt he was not, as was proved by the constable.”

“I don’t know,” said the second fiddle. “The fire was so tremendous hot, and lasted so tremendous long, it would ha’ burned a fatter man nor Jason Quarm.”

“Jason’s not burnt. He’s runned away.”

“Runned away?”

“Yes,” pursued Pasco; “’cos he didn’t want to have to give evidence as to what he knew.”

“What wor that?”

“He comed to the Cellars, and found someone there doin’ of the wickedness, and he runned away so as not to have to say what he didn’t want to be forced to say.”

“What was that?”

“It’s not for me to speak!”

“Someone did it! who could ha’ done it?” said the clarionet. “I thought it wor proved, if I may be so bould, that you, Mr. Churchwarden, comed back to the Cellars.”

“I?” exclaimed Pasco, becoming purple in the face. “It suited somebody’s convenience to say so, but I was in the linhay minding the hoss, and I put it to the company’no one can be in two places at once, can they?”

“There’s something in that.”

“I was minding the hoss, but I sent somebody back to lock up. I name no names, and she’s gone and put it on me to clear herself.”

The eyebrows of all the instrumentalists went up.

“Kitty? What! Kitty Alone?”

“I name no names,” said Pasco; “but I must say this to clear myself. I’ve borne hard words too long for the sake of sheltering she. The schoolmaster heard her father lecturing of her for what she’d done.”

“But she wouldn’t do it out of pure wickedness,” urged the clarionet; “and what reason had she?”

“There it is,” answered Pasco. “I see I’m among friends, and it won’t go no farther. I’d been speaking to her rather sharp for her goings-on with young men, drawin’ on Jan Pooke, then kicking him over, then Noah Flood, and same with he. Noah, poor fellow, was took cruel bad along of she’ever since Ashburton fair had a pain in the stomach; if that ain’t love, show me what love is. Then she took up with that schoolmaster chap, and when I said I wouldn’t have it, and I wasn’t going to have the family disgraced wi’ bringing schoolmasters into it, she cut rusty, and sulked, and I believe it were naught but spite.”

“But,” observed the clarionet, “the tale I was told of what the schoolmaster said wasn’t quite that.”

“You are right there,” said Pasco. “He’d alter his tale when he found what she’d been about. As is nat’ral. I put it to the company, if you was sweetheartin’, and you found your love had been up to wickedness, you wouldn’t tell tales of her, but would do all you could to screen her.”

“That’s true,” was the general opinion.

“And you think Jason see’d her, and made off?” said the bassoon.

“That explains everything,” observed the violoncello.

“I begin to see daylight,” remarked the hautboy.

At that moment, in rushed the first violin, waving the score above his head.

“I’ve got it!” he said. “Nothing easier. It wasn’t no fault o’ Puddicombe, he said it were our stoopidity. ‘What does _largo molto con affettuoso caprizio_ mean?’ he asked. ‘_Largo molto_, turn the score upside down, _con affettuoso caprizio_, and go ahead like blazes!’”