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.