If anything had been needed to clinch in Pasco Pepperill the sense of his conduct being irreproachable, the ovation on his return to Coombe-in-Teignhead would have served this purpose; but nothing was necessary after that the insurance office had thrown up the ball. The retirement of the Company from the contest, and the payment of the money for which his stores were insured, acted on his conscience as much as would a plenary papal absolution on that of a Roman Catholic.

Previous to this his conscience had given occasional twitches, now it glowed with conscious sense of righteousness. It was vexed with neither qualm nor scruple. He held his head higher, boasted louder, strutted with more consequence, and became impatient and offended at his wife’s maintaining her distance. He might deceive himself, deceive the world, but he could not blind her, and this made him angry. He was slighted in his home, where he had best claims for recognition.

He was, moreover, disappointed that there was so little real enthusiasm for himself at the back of the demonstration, which was organised rather in honour of the parish than of himself. The same suspicion attended him, the same reluctance to deal with him, and the same indifference to his society.

The demonstration was destined not to pass without leaving some unpleasant consequences.

At the urgency of Farmer Pooke, Miller Ash, the second churchwarden, had forced the belfry door and admitted the ringers, and authorised them to give a peal of welcome to the returning conqueror.

Mr. Fielding was of a mild and kindly disposition, but he was a stickler in matters of discipline, and he could not suffer this high-handed conduct to pass unquestioned. Ash was cited before the archdeacon, and legal proceedings were instituted to establish the sole right of the incumbent to order when and by whom the bells should be rung. Ash was dismayed at the prospect of a suit. He attempted to fall back on Pooke, but found that Pooke was by no means inclined to find money for the defence.

Mr. Fielding was reluctant to proceed against a parishioner and a churchwarden, and a man eminently worthy, but he considered that it would be a neglect of duty not to do so. Twice had he been defied, and twice had the bells been rung on improper occasions. He was aware that his action must produce ill-feeling against himself, but he was too conscientious a man to allow this consideration to weigh with him. Nothing is easier than for a man in authority to court popularity by giving way at every point. Mr. Fielding did not desire popularity, and he did not believe that in discharging a duty he would interfere with his ministerial influence in the place.

And, in fact, Ash did not so much resent the action of the rector as the unreliability of Pooke’a man who had urged him to act, and had promised to take the responsibility on himself for such action; a man whose son was about to marry his own daughter. Ash was bitter at heart, in the first line with Pooke, and the second with Pepperill, for having occasioned this affair. If Pepperill had never insured, never had allowed his warehouse to be burnt, never had confronted the Company, this unpleasantness would not have arisen; and only in the third line did his resentment touch the rector. Moreover, Pooke was discontented and uncomfortable. He was well aware that he was morally responsible for the infraction of the belfry, but he would not admit it, lest it should cost him money. Pooke was a man ready to admit a moral obligation up to ten-and-six; not a penny beyond. He allowed that the parson was in the right to stick out for his authority, and if the law gave him command of the bell-ropes’well, he was justified in trying to obtain it. But it was Pasco Pepperill who was really to blame. He ought not to have delayed his return from Exeter. Why did he stick at that city for seven whole days after he had got what he wanted? Had he come flying home by the Atmospheric the day he received payment, there would have been no demonstration. By dawdling in Exeter, he allowed time for the organisation of a demonstration, and he did not deserve one, Heaven knew! So Pooke’s self-reproach converted itself into anger against Pepperill. In the physical world all forces are correlated, and it is so in the world of feeling. Love becomes hate, and joy turns into grief, and, as we have seen, compunction glances away from self and converts itself into a sting aimed at another.

Kitty’s position in the place became one full of discomfort. Not only was she regarded as guilty of the fire by one body of the inhabitants, but she had given offence to others by her engagement to the schoolmaster.

Walter Bramber was not merely a pleasant-looking man, but a good-looking one as well, and several young and middle-aged women in the place had set their caps at him.

One of these was the distorted milliner, designed for him by his landlady, and encouraged by her in hopes of exchanging her condition of maid without a home for wife in the schoolhouse. This person went about to all the farmhouses making garments for the farmers’ wives and daughters, and was able, without allowing it to transpire that she had aspired to Bramber, to stir up a good deal of ill-feeling against Kitty, who had been lucky where she had failed.

Another was a good-looking wench with a flaw in her reputation, who had hoped that the new-comer would be ignorant of her past history, and would succumb to her charms, and enable her to repair her faulty character out of the respectability of the position she would acquire.

Another, a damsel of erratic ecclesiasticism, who became a Particular Baptist or an Anglican Churchwoman, according as desirable young men attended chapel or church.

The last was a widow on a nice income of her own, some twenty years Bramber’s senior, who had made up her mind to marry again, and marry a young man.

Pasco was subjected to passive suspicions, Kate to active hostility. The art of ingeniously tormenting is one that men are too dull to acquire, and too clumsy to exercise. It is an art easily exercised and rapidly perfected by women. In a hundred ways Kate was annoyed by those of her own sex in Coombe; and these were ways skilfully contrived to excite the maximum of pain. She endeavoured to keep entirely to herself, but this was beyond her power. No mosquito curtains have been contrived which a person can draw about himself as a protection against malignant and poisonous tongues.

Without malicious interest’on the contrary, with the kindest desire for Kate’s welfare’Rose Ash interfered and caused her the greatest distress.

Rose had set her mind on matching Kate with Noah; she by no means approved of the engagement to Walter Bramber. A girl like Kate, enjoying her friendship, might look higher, do better than throw herself away on a two-penny-ha’penny schoolmaster, of whose origin nobody knew anything; and when Rose took an idea into her head, she left no stone unturned till she had carried it out.

She visited Kate, she assured her that a union with Bramber was out of the question. There was so strong a feeling against her in the place that, were she to marry the schoolmaster, it would damage his prospects. The farmers would withdraw their subscriptions from the school, and the parents refuse to send their children to be educated there.

“Of course,” said Rose, “I don’t believe you burnt the warehouse, but a lot of people in the place do. Some say you did it out of spite, because your uncle wouldn’t let you have the schoolmaster; others say he sent you back to set the wares alight, being too much of a coward to do it himself. I know better’but folks won’t listen to me. I don’t see how you can put the notion out of them but by marrying Noah. He’s related to nearly everyone in the place, and if you became his wife, you see, all the relations of Noah would take your part; they’d be bound to do it. Noah is a good fellow, and he’s terribly in love’got a pain under his ribs, and walks bent’all along of love. You’d best chuck over the schoolmaster and stop their mouths with Noah. There’s no other way of doin’ it.”

“You really think that my engagement to Walter Bramber will injure him?”

“If it goes on, he may as well leave the place. It would be made too hot to hold him. You see, Kitty, the Coombites ha’ never taken much to him’he bain’t like Mr. Puddicombe in nothing. But they might get used to him and put up wi’ him. If you go on holding him to his engagement, then’what everyone says is’he must go.”

Zerah, moreover, sought to influence her niece. She was a selfish woman, and now that she had opened her heart to Kitty, she was jealous of anyone else claiming a share in the girl. Moreover, she could not endure to live at the Cellars if left there alone with Pasco, of that she was convinced. She therefore extorted a promise from Kate not to leave her.

Kitty had become more than ever thoughtful, and was nervous and depressed in spirits. She could not clear herself of this suspicion that attached to her without incriminating her uncle, and she greatly doubted whether her word would avail against his. She could not hear anything of her father, the same mystery enveloped his fate unrelieved. She would have liked to pour her troubles into the ear of Walter, but her uncle had forbidden his coming to the house, and she would not go and seek him, observed, watched by all, and everything she did subject to misconstruction. Kate’s time was more at her disposal than formerly, as Jane Redmore came in charing. This was a disadvantage to her, so far that it allowed her time to brood over her troubles and annoyances.

After Rose had gone, she went on the water side of the house and seated herself on the parapet above the rippling inflowing tide, with her head sunk on her bosom.

Presently the tears began to course down her cheeks. She had not been seated there long before the timid, feeble Jane Redmore came fluttering out to her, looking over her shoulder as she came. The woman touched her: “I wouldn’t take on so,” she said. “You ain’t sure Jason Quarm’s dead, you know. He wasn’t found, and for why?”

Kate looked at the poor woman with tear-filled eyes.

“I can’t say nothin’,” said Mrs. Redmore hastily. “Only’there’it makes me bad to see you cry, it do, and I reckon there’s no reason.”

Then she slipped back in the same wavering, timid manner to the kitchen, without another word.

But Kate’s distress of mind was not due solely, as the woman believed, to her anxiety concerning the fate of her father. She had been debating in her heart whether she ought to continue her engagement with Bramber, and, perhaps, never had Kitty felt how truly she was “alone” as now, when she had satisfied herself that for his sake it were well for her to release him.

She stood up, when her purpose was formed, and walked quietly, firmly, to the Rectory. One friend she had there, ever faithful’the parson. He knew that she was innocent, he alone could appreciate her difficulties, and he would approve her determination.

She entered the study where he was at work on a sermon. He smiled, and his face brightened when he saw her, and he signed to a chair.

Kate, direct, clear, and firm in all she said and did, told the rector of her intention. She informed him of what he knew already, that a body of feeling was engaged against her, that she was incapable of establishing her innocence. That, under the circumstances, it was out of the question her holding Walter Bramber to his promise. She had, furthermore, passed her word to her aunt not to leave her. Mr. Fielding, though disappointed, saw that under the circumstances nothing could be done; and he felt that Kate was acting honourably and in accordance with her conscience. He knew, therefore, he must not dissuade her from obedience to that inner voice. He took a more hopeful view than did she, and this he expressed.

“If things change, then no harm has been done,” said Kate. “I have to say what is in my mind as made up on things as they are. Will you be so kind, sir, as to speak to Walter?”

“I see him coming in at the gate,” said Mr. Fielding. “He is with me about this time every day for a Greek lesson’a bit of New Testament in the original tongue.”

Kate stood up.

“Yes,” said he. “You go to meet him at the mulberry tree.”

The girl left quietly and composedly, as she had entered, and, crossing the lawn, came on the young man just as he reached the bench under the mulberry.

“Walter,” she said, “I want a word with you. Have you a knife?”

“Yes; why?”

“Will you cut this in the mulberry bark? Mr. Fielding will not object’

She hesitated, slightly coloured’

“What do you mean, Kitty?”

“Ask the rector’he will tell you all.”

Then hastily, unable further to control herself, she passed him, and left the garden.

CHAPTER XLVIII

A SHADOW-SHAPE

Kate walked at once to the house of Mr. Puddicombe, and, without giving any reasons, announced to him that the engagement to Walter Bramber was at an end. She calculated on his publishing the fact, but she had not calculated on his inventing and promulgating reasons of his own supposition for explaining the rupture. According to him, she had formed a preference for Noah Flood, and regarded an alliance with Noah more to her advantage than one with a person of whose origin nothing was known, and whose prospects were uncertain. One of the first to hear the news was Rose Ash, and she made an excursion immediately to the house of the Floods, where Noah lived with his mother, a widow. The Floods were a well-to-do yeoman family, with land of their own. The father of Noah had died three years previous to the events recorded in this tale. Noah was the only child, and had been the idol of his mother. That he should seek a wife, she admitted, was natural. She would greatly have preferred his taking someone of more position and means, and in greater favour than Kitty Alone, but she was accustomed to regard everything her son did as right, and she would not offer any opposition to what he determined on. As Rose Ash was not to be won, he might take Kitty; though she would have vastly preferred Rose. The old woman was, it is true, made uneasy by the reports relative to Kitty and the fire at the Cellars, but her son knew how to set her mind at rest, by ridiculing them as idle and baseless, bred of malice or stupidity.

Rose was really energetic on behalf of Kitty. She did brave battle for her, and combated every adverse opinion. She was thoroughly resolved to forward the match between Noah and Kate, and now that the field was cleared of the schoolmaster, she hurried to the house of the Floods to spur on Noah to immediate action.

The evening was already closing in, and the house of the Floods was at some distance out of Coombe; but Rose was impulsive, and what she did was done in impulse. She was generous, so far as did not interfere with her own prospects and wishes and comforts. Mrs. Flood was her aunt, and with her she was ever welcome. Noah was happily at home when Rose arrived. She was not the girl to beat about the bush, and she rushed at once upon the topic uppermost in her mind.

“You must put on your hat at once, Noah, and come with me. I’m going to the Cellars, and going to make all right between you and Kitty. The time has arrived. The door is ajar, and you must thrust your shoulder in before it is shut. It’s off with the schoolmaster, and must be on with you at once.”

“Noah hasn’t been hisself of late,” said Mrs. Flood. “I don’t think he ought to be out with the dew falling heavy.”

“Nonsense, Aunt Sally! it’s love,” said Rose. “The dew won’t hurt. It’s his disappointment has upset him.”

“He’s been off his feed terrible,” said the mother; “there is a nice piece of boiled bacon I’ve had cold, but he don’t seem to relish it.”

“That’s love,” said Rose; “and I heard Mr. Pepperill say that Noah had a pain under his ribs.”

“It’s like a hot pertater lodged here,” said Noah; “I can’t get no rest at all from it.”

“That’s love also; I know it. I’ve had the same till Jan came to his senses.”

“And I don’t seem to take no interest in the farm; do I, mother?” asked Noah.

“Indeed you don’t, Noah.”

“That also is love,” said Rose; “we’ll soon put that to rights.”

“I thought it was liver,” observed the mother; “and that blue pill”’

“Oh, nothing of the sort,” interrupted Rose. “I know all the symptoms: hot potato, distaste for biled bacon, and indifference to farm affairs’it’s love; I had it all badly till Jan came round. Love turns heavy on the chest, if disappointed. That’s what Noah feels under his ribs. Come on, Noah, take your hat, and we will go to the Cellars together.”

Noah complied with as much alacrity as he was capable of displaying. He was a docile youth; he had fallen in love with Kitty, partly at Rose’s bidding, partly out of compunction at his conduct at the fair.

That evening had closed in rapidly. There were dense clouds overhead, so that the twilight was cut off, also all danger of dew, as Rose at once pointed out to Mrs. Flood. As, however, the mother feared her dear boy might get wet in the event of rain, Noah was induced to take a greatcoat.

The young man was shy and timid.

“You know, Rose, I treated her terrible bad at Ashburton, when I knocked away the workbox from under her arm.”

“She will like you all the better for it,” answered the girl. “Young maidens like a lad of spirit, and you may be sure it gave her pleasure to see you and Jan punching each other’s heads. That schoolmaster! he ain’t up to nothing but whacking childer with a cane. If you like, I’ll try and egg him on to fight you, and then you can knock him all to pieces; and there’s nothing surer for finding your way to Kitty’s heart. If she’s like me, she’ll like to see lads fighting about her.”

“You don’t think, Rose, she really had anything to do wi’ the fire?”

“The fire?” snapped the girl. “No more than you or I. Her uncle did it. He wanted the insurance money. That’s a fine tale’that she set fire to the warehouse, because her uncle wouldn’t hear of her marrying the schoolmaster’and now, of her own accord, she throws the fellow over. If she had been so set on him, she wouldn’t have done that. Can’t you see, Noah, or are you stupid, that her giving up Mr. Bramber is the best answer to that story? It shows it could not have been. And then, as to that other tale,’that Mr. Pepperill sent her back to set the place in a blaze,’no one who knows Kitty can believe that. She’s not the girl to do a wrong thing at anyone’s bidding. Besides, what good would it have been to her?”

Noah did not answer.

“You can’t do better than go right up to her and ask her to be yours’now. Everything is in your favour. Folk talk a pass’l of nonsense and spiteful lies about her. It makes her cruel unhappy. She’s been doing little else but cry for some days. You show her you don’t mind one snap what folks say, and you don’t believe a word o’ the lies against her, and I tell you she’d jump into your arms. It’s my belief that the schoolmaster turned nasty’that he began to show her he thought there might be something in it, that he knew people said they’d take away their subscription if he married her, and he made it so unpleasant for Kitty that she gave him up. And now you march in and conquer.”

“I’ll do so,” said Noah.

“And,” pursued Rose, “you must begin by making Kitty cry; that’s the preparing of the ground.”

“How am I to do that?”

“Talk about her father. Ask if she has heard any news of him.”

“Why? it don’t seem kind to make her cry.”

“What a noodle you are, Noah! Nothing is more profitable for what you intend than to get her into a crying mood, regular soft and tender, and then pity her about her father, and so out with it when she is in tears. That’s the way to win her!”

Noah mused awhile, walking by the side of Rose, in silence. After a minute he said, “What is your notion, Rose? I mean about Jason Quarm. Is he dead or not?”

“Of course he is. Burnt to ashes.”

“But the ashes were not found.”

“My dear Noah, you saw the fire as well as I; you know with what fury it burnt, and how it lasted three days. He was no Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego all pounded into one.”

“You really think he is dead?”

“Sure of it. Would he not have turned up and let folk know he was alive, if he had not perished?perished? Would he have allowed Kitty to go on’and not Kitty only, his sister Zerah as well’all this long time, suffering and miserable, because they believe he died a terrible death, if he could relieve their minds by a letter, or, better still, by appearing?”

Suddenly Rose started, caught her cousin by the arm, and drew back.

“What is the matter?” asked the young man.

“There is something there’moving’in the hedge.”

They were in a true Devonshire lane, with the hedges high on each side, planted with trees that extended their branches overhead, almost interlocking. Through the boughs and leaves the grey sky glimmered, and the soil in the lane here and there showed in the light from above, but all was indistinct and dark. A turn in the lane, and a fork beyond the turn, lay before them, and through one of the lanes the light of the estuary reflecting the sky made a partial gleam, as though that lane were a tube with ground glass at the end.

Both remained motionless and listened.

“Hark!” whispered Rose; “did you hear something?”

“I heard you speaking.”

“Before I spoke’a clitter, as of a foot on stones.”

“Well, what of that? This is a road, and people may go along it, I reckon.”

“Look’look!” gasped Rose, pointing down the funnel-like lane, at the end of which was the light of the steely water.

Rose maintained her grasp of Noah.

The young man looked in the direction indicated, and both saw a figure in the vista, lurching as it went along, as though lame; a thickset figure, as far as they could make out in the uncertain light. In another moment it had disappeared.

“Go after it!” said Rose, relaxing her hold.

“It? What do you mean?”

“That’s just like Jason Quarm.”

“But he’s dead. You said so.”

“I know he is, but that’s his ghost. Run, Noah, and force it to speak. It’s walking, because it can’t rest wi’out burial.”

“I won’t!” said Noah. “Go yourself.”

“You are a man. It’s vanished now. That’s the way to the cottage he had, which Kitty gave up to the Redmores. Oh, Noah, do run!”

“I’ll do nothing o’ the sort. Come on, Rose’we are going along t’other lane, thanks be. Lord, that we should ha’ seen a ghost! I shan’t be able to propose. I shall be so terrible took aback.”

“Nonsense, Noah!”

“But consider’it’s terrible frightening to propose right on end to a ghost’s daughter.”