THE NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH WHICH CARRIES MAT CRABTREE AND JACK PRIOR SIMULTANEOUSLY TO ST. GILES’S.

Mat Crabtree slept that night at the Mitre, and Jack Prior at the Clarendon. Both men--though the one was so unreasonably happy that the old Norse superstition about being ‘fey’ might have occurred to his well-stored memory, and the other was profoundly miserable--did precisely the same thing. Each man called for the newspaper reflecting his particular shade of political opinions, and read it over his breakfast. In each case the reader’s eye was caught by a prominent paragraph, the heading of which had a strangely familiar yet utterly unexpected look. It struck each man like a bullet fired at himself. Both stared ‘as if they had been shot,’ devoured the paragraph, got up, and, leaving the rest of their meal untasted, set off, after the fashion of spiritual twins whose moods corresponded exactly, and who had established a ghostly telegraphic communication between them, straight for St. Giles’s.

The paragraph was not the announcement that within the last twenty-four hours the country house of Redcot, in ----shire, had been burned to the ground, and that its master had, unhappily, perished in the flames. Neither was it a ‘scandal in high life,’ with the name of Mrs. Prior figuring in association with that of a certain ‘gallant Lovelace,’ young enough to be her son. Still the news was sufficiently astounding and alarming.

‘BANK ROBBERY AT NEWTON.--On the night before last, or early yesterday morning, Crabtree’s Bank was broken into, and Bank of England notes to the value of seven thousand pounds, together with a parcel containing Mexican 3 per Cent. bonds taken from the safe. Mr. Lambert Crabtree, the head of the bank, was from home on the night of the robbery. He has been sent for, and is hourly expected. The affair, which was promptly put into the hands of the police by the wife of the banker, is creating a great sensation in the town and neighbourhood. The only suggestion which has been offered as to the perpetrators of the robbery, which was discovered when the clerks opened the bank, is that the Bank House, communicating with the bank, was recently in the hands of house-painters, who may thus have become acquainted with the premises. On the other hand, as the men employed to repaint the house are workmen in the service of a respectable tradesman in the town, it is invidious, without further ground for suspicion, to connect the burglary with them at this stage of the proceedings. A more allowable remark is that the time of the commission of the crime was well chosen. The night of the robbery was the night of a volunteer ball given by Mr. Lambert Crabtree, as Colonel of the Newton troop of volunteers, in which he took so much interest that, though he had been absent on important business in London for some days previously, he came down expressly to be present at the supper, returning, as it unfortunately happened, by the last train. The stir and general confusion of the night of a ball, with which the whole town, and particularly the occupants of the Bank House had to do, may be safely judged to have afforded special facilities for carrying out so daring a crime.’

‘Good Lord! How does this affect Lambert?’ groaned Mat Crabtree, in his inmost soul, as he instinctively buttoned up his coat and snatched at his hat and gloves.

‘Crabtree’s Bank robbed the night before last when I was in the house!’ Jack Prior said to himself incredulously ‘Impossible! It must be a _canard_. But didn’t I hear something and dream that Susie came into my room?’ Suddenly his lips closed. He had no conception of the truth, but some impulse which he could not define checked his very thoughts and tinged his incredulity with a monstrous intangible dread, so absurd that, if he had allowed it to take form, he must have laughed aloud. A restless, uncomfortable excitement and uncertainty took possession of him, overshadowing his pressing personal concerns, throwing his half shaped plans into disorder, and forcing him to take an immediate resolution. ‘The others will get this piece of news,’ he told himself vaguely. ‘They may leave Oxford and return home without delay. Crabtree will, I have no question. I must see Jane at once when I have too good an excuse, if I am to intercept her.’

Mat Crabtree went through the Turl with its colleges, looking cool and grey in the summer morning. Jack Prior walked up the High Street. The two men came upon each other at the corner of Broad Street. Jack, who was looking straight before him, was the first to recognise the other and hesitated. Mat Crabtree had his eyes cast down, and was only roused from anxious thought by the half pause of the man in the act of passing him.

Mat looked up. ‘Hallo, Jack Prior. How have you come here? Have you fallen from the skies?’ he cried in genuine amazement, which overcame every other feeling. ‘When did you return? Did you come on from Newton last night? I say, what is this about the bank robbery?’ And he eagerly button-holed Jack, who, taken aback in his recent hostility to the person addressing him, out of which he had been, as it were, driven by the extraordinary tidings of the morning, stammered out, ‘I know nothing about it. I slept at Susie’s the night before last, and left early next morning, when there was no word of a robbery. I missed the train at the junction. I was on my way to Jane.’ He ended stiffly, with a suspicion of sullenness coming into his voice. What had Mat Crabtree not done to him, though it might have been unadvisedly, that he should be thus stopped and cross-questioned in the public street?

‘Ah!’ said Crabtree, with a gulp, half of disappointment, half of relief, ‘then you are in the dark also. But I cannot make it out,’ he added, in perplexity. ‘You say you were at Newton the night before last, yet you did not appear at the ball, while your mother will take it ill that you should make a halt so near home. I’ll engage Jane does not know of your arrival--Susie must have said nothing of it. Perhaps you came too late, when Susie was gone and the fun half over. Well,’ he added, knitting his brows sharply, ‘it seems it has been followed fast enough by a calamity. Come along, Jack,’ Mat resumed, as if he were recalled to the exigencies of the moment, ‘I have no time to lose. I, too, was going to your sister to tell her what has happened. She may not have seen the papers, and she might be startled and put out if she heard the thing spoken of without warning. Besides, I can’t go without bidding the girls good-bye. Of course, I must leave by the next train.’

Jack did not appear to have any choice. He did not see how he could avoid accompanying Mat Crabtree, incongruous as the action was, after what had been in Jack’s mind, unless he were prepared to come to an awkward explanation then and there.

In the midst of his steady tramp past Balliol there flashed upon Mat Crabtree through the cloud of family trouble which had fallen upon him a recollection that had a great deal to do with two people in whom he took a natural interest. His step involuntarily slowed, a half smile broke across the gravity of his comely middle-aged face. ‘You know who is in Oxford besides Jane?’ he inquired tentatively, ‘and now that you have turned up so opportunely, wonders will never cease,’ he said, with a shrug and a forced laugh, which would not have been forced yesterday. ‘My boy,’ he went on kindly, ‘you are the luckiest beggar in every respect that I know--luckier than you guess; though I don’t mean that you are not acquainted with your greatest piece of luck. But I have not time to expatiate on all your good fortune and the marvels that have come to pass on your behalf--I must leave that to a more fitting occasion. I’ll just ask if you have written home. There will be no difficulty there; but you ought to make the explanation easier for her.’

Jack stared blankly. What could Mat Crabtree mean? Was he mocking him? Had the man taken leave of his senses?

But there was no further opportunity for enlightenment. The couple were at the well-known house in St. Giles’s, at which both men looked up with strangely mingled feelings. There were no faces at the windows, out of which Jack and his comrades had been guilty of leaning smoking, and, when they were on their worst behaviour, chaffing their acquaintances among the passers-by.

A young maid-servant answered Mr. Crabtree’s knock. ‘Yes, the young ladies were at home.’ Somebody behind corrected the statement, and the girl made a corresponding amendment. One of the young ladies was at home, but the other--Miss Prior--had gone out for a book which she said she wanted, while the other young lady was getting ready.

‘I know,’ said Mat Crabtree, ‘Jane must have gone to Acock’s for one of Price’s books which we looked at yesterday. She must have been in the shop when I passed. I’ll go back and meet her, and leave the field free for you, Jack. There is your good fortune again, my lad;’ and Mat Crabtree faced about actively, and was retracing his steps before Jack had recovered himself.

Yes, however oddly it might be brought about, and by Mat Crabtree of all people, it was a lucky chance, it was better to see her first alone, and have it out with her, as he had said. He let the girl show him up, though he could have found his way blindfold. As he entered his former sitting-room, where a scarf and a parasol lying on a side-table, a bit of embroidery, not Jane’s, on the broad window sill, a different arrangement and a greater profusion of flowers on the chimney-piece, made the place look as it had been wont to look in Commemoration Week, Bennet Gray came in from an adjoining bedroom, wearing her hat and jacket, and in the act of buttoning her long gloves. The eyes of the two met and spoke volumes. Bennet’s lighted up instantaneously as by a lightning flash--danced--ran over with unspeakable joy and thankfulness, while Jack’s sought to read her soul.

She came forward with one step and took hold of his two hands, surprised out of herself. She was nearly as tall as he was, and she could look straight into his brown face, more _bizarre_ than ever when it was working with emotion, as if she distrusted her eyes, as, indeed, she distrusted them for the moment. ‘Jack, you have come back safe!’ she cried in exultation that was so vibrating with gratitude, it was more pathetic than any lamentation. ‘The sea is crossed--it is all over--there will be no more parting.’ If one can imagine a human being standing on the eternal shore and hailing a friend after all the waves and billows of time are past, the greeting will be like that which Bennet Gray gave Jack Prior when he returned to her, safe and sound, from the Antipodes. Mortal love cannot say more--nay, the love is immortal which expresses itself in such simple, universal language.

Jack, who had been so easily touched by Susie’s welcome, was moved to his heart’s core when truth itself, and love stronger than death, thus met him. He could have humbled himself in the dust for his doubts--his disbelief in this woman who had honoured him with her pure, tender, deep affection, restrained and scarcely shown hitherto, only leaping up and bursting its bounds at the sudden shock of his presence. He kept her two hands in his, and kissed them before he kissed her lips, and said again awkwardly in his agitation, ‘Then you’re happy to have me back, Bennet, little worth as I am?’

‘Happy!’ she too exclaimed reproachfully, with her head against his breast; ‘if this is happiness, I have never known what it is to be happy before. It is not a question of being little or much worth, Jack, it is of being all the world to one joyful woman.’

Then her generous heart flew straight to another whose share in her joy Bennet was more inclined to hug than to spurn. ‘How glad Mrs. Prior must have been at your arrival. Do you know, I am a little sorry that I did not see the meeting with your mother? but, perhaps, she would prefer it unseen. And did Tommy know you again? Did the dear old beast leap up to your head?’

‘I have not seen my mother yet,’ he said, more gravely than he had before spoken; for he had done her wrong, and he had wronged his mother also, while he was aware of difficulties at home which would not be improved by the disaster to Lambert Crabtree. Bennet, though she had by an incomprehensible arrangement been living in the house for the last six months, could not clearly understand these difficulties. He tried to shake off his gravity. ‘The dear old beast, as you call him--to think Tommy should be a personal acquaintance of yours, Bennet--has had no opportunity of so much as licking my feet, which he abased himself to do the last time I saw him.’

A throb of pride which was half a pang of pain swelled her bosom. She was the one woman, supplanting all others--even his oldest and best friend--to whom he had come first to announce his arrival, by a right and natural impulse, as a man leaves father and mother and cleaves to his wife. Yet she had a sense as if she had defrauded, as well as deceived, the woman who had known and loved him so much longer, to whom he was so much, who had been so good to her--Bennet. She looked up wistfully in his face, prepared to urge him to quit her and go at once to Redcot, while he was pursuing a totally different line of thought. ‘What made you go and be a governess at Redcot, of all places, Bennet?’ he asked. ‘Was it for my sake? How did it come about?’

‘Why, I told you the whole story in my letter,’ she answered quickly.

‘What letter?’ he inquired as quickly. ‘I did not get a letter from you except the one on landing. I accounted for it by your not having any settled address to which you could write until I got to Tumut, where I did not wait for the arrival of the mail. I left because of that splendid “run” I wrote to you about. There was a fear that it would be taken up soon, and I thought I had better not let the grass grow beneath my feet before I returned, and persuaded you, darling, to keep your promise and come out with me.’

‘You are the pink of politeness and consideration,’ said Bennet merrily, ‘to send me an address and not wait for your letters. You have not heard from me!’ she repeated, in fresh wonder and confusion of mind. ‘Then all my trouble went for nothing, and my news has yet to be told.’

He had no fear of that news now, and no devouring curiosity to hear it; but he felt it would be a satisfaction to him to pour out to this sympathetic listener some part of his story, what he had suffered since he set foot in England again. ‘I went to Miss Burton, from whom you said I could always hear tidings of you in case of any difficulty,’ he said, a little reproachfully, ‘and the deuce was in it, Bennet dear, I cannot think what came over your friend. She owned you had left Berkshire; but not another word could I get out of her, till she waited and took counsel with some other schoolmistress, I suppose,’ complained Jack resentfully.

‘You rude boy, you forget that I am a schoolmistress,’ cried Bennet, bubbling over with laughter.

But Jack was too full of his grievance to apologise. ‘What business had she to keep back the knowledge from me, when she was aware that I had a right to hear? She would not even say where you were gone or what you were doing. She put me out horribly; any fellow would have been nonplussed; I cannot tell what she did not tempt me to think.’

‘Oh, dear old foolish Jack,’ cried Bennet again, rather relishing the dilemma in which she had not been involved, that, like the voyage to Australia, was over and done with; ‘and oh, poor dear Mary, how you must have taken her by surprise, and frightened and bewildered her. I hope you did not stay long, Jack, or argue loudly in the schoolmistress’s parlour--Mary is so prudent and particular.’

‘Very prudent and particular,’ grumbled Jack; ‘but the qualities strike me as slightly overstrained and morbid.’

‘For one thing, she knew that I was at Redcot--where, by the way, she did not approve of my going, unless the family knew everything--she could not tell how you would receive the information.’

‘She might have tried to find out. She might have guessed that I should ascertain it for myself the moment I went home. She had better have prepared me,’ retorted Jack.

‘Perhaps,’ admitted Bennet, ‘but I dare say you did not tell her you were going home.’

‘I told her nothing I could help,’ acknowledged Jack. ‘I was too much taken aback. I was completely knocked on the head, and in too great a rage.’

‘There, you see, you were as bad as poor Mary, and she had other things weighing upon her mind which I know she did not like to mention without getting liberty. No doubt she believed she ought to leave it to the person principally concerned to tell her secrets at her own time and in her own way.’ Bennet was smiling all over like a child. There was little question she would break to Jack in the pleasantest fashion a certain matter Mary Burton had declined to impart which would work a revolution in the lovers’ affairs.

Not a word had been said of Mat Crabtree; not a syllable of his attendance on Bennet the night of the ball. Indeed, she had as yet a confused idea of the precise date of Jack’s arrival, the length of his stay at the Bank House, and the manner in which he had employed his time there. Susie’s malicious gossip, and what had appeared confirmation strong at the time, faded into a trifle light as air before Bennet’s welcome, in Jack’s mind. He was not only quite content without further explanation; he had a wholesome dislike to enter on the subject in detail. Since he was restored to his right mind he had a tolerably correct realisation of the light in which a right-minded, high-spirited woman like Bennet Gray would view his doubts and suspicions. She would regard them as small honour to him and no compliment to her.

The moment Bennet was about to introduce a different element into the conversation, the steps and voices of Mat Crabtree and Jane Prior were heard approaching, and the pair in the little sitting-room were conscious of nothing save a shy inclination to draw apart from each other.

Mat Crabtree had told Jane of the robbery of his brother’s bank, and of her brother’s return. He had even found time to say some words which, if his mind and Jane’s had been sufficiently disengaged, might have sounded equally significant and astonishing, though they had not been breathed till that day--that there was a previous acquaintance between Jack Prior and Miss Gray, who were awaiting the others in the old lodging. But Jane, who was matter-of-fact and straightforward to excess, was too overwhelmed by the first communication to pay much attention to what followed. She knew enough of the reckless extravagance of the Lambert Crabtrees; she had too plainly before her mind’s eye Susie as she had appeared at the ball two nights before, in glaring contrast to what might be just coming on her and her husband, not to have a tolerably clear conviction that the misfortune of the robbery meant subsequent ruin and disgrace to Jane’s sister and brother-in-law.

Jane’s honest, honourable nature shrank from the pictures thus placed side by side. She looked in Mat Crabtree’s face, and saw how the lines about the eyes and the mouth had deepened, as if by a miracle of the Great Graver’s chisel, since her friend had parted from her in high glee last evening. She saw further, for she held a talisman which rendered her eyes keen here; she recognised what others might have overlooked--a deadly sickness of apprehension, a haggard horror of the shame that another day or hour might bring forth, which ought not to have lurked on a good man’s face and voice behind a veil of decent composure and ordinary comment and surmise. Her own heart was ready to faint at that under-current of expression which she detected coming and going on Mat Crabtree’s countenance and in his tones. Before the misery of it she had little notice to spare to the facts of the sudden turning up of Jack as a roving brother, who, like a rolling stone, gathered no moss, with the additional abrupt intimation that he had known Miss Gray ‘all the time.’ Yet oddly, Miss Gray had not chosen to mention the acquaintance, which had been made somewhere at some time before she came to Redcot; it might have been in a previous state of existence for anything that Jane knew or cared to know for the moment, when all the world seemed turning upside down, and nobody could tell what might happen next. Jane only heard the vague announcement in a faint, far-away manner, like a truth communicated in a dream. It aroused no other feeling than a dull, sore sense that Miss Gray had a superfluity of mysterious acquaintanceships, and unadmitted, unaccounted for incidents in her past. But that was her affair, and possibly Mr. Crabtree’s; it was certainly not Jane’s.

A more definite impression was produced on Jane by the circumstance that when she came hurrying in with Mat Crabtree, went up to Jack, and hastily bestowed on him a sisterly kiss, as a necessary accompaniment to the half-mechanical questions, ‘When did you come, Jack? Why have you followed us?’ then sat down, looked round with her blanched face, and demanded generally, ‘Isn’t it dreadful? A bank robbery at Newton! What will Susie have done?’ Miss Gray uttered an exclamation, as if the word had all the rousing freshness of novelty to her. ‘A robbery!’ she cried. ‘What robbery? When and where did it happen? You don’t mean to say it had to do with Mr. Lambert Crabtree’s bank?’

Explanations ensued, everybody speaking at once, but through the hubbub the thought crossed Jane’s pre-occupied mind, ‘Mr. Crabtree said he left Jack at the door here. He must have had ten minutes in which to renew his acquaintance with Miss Gray, yet he never told her of the robbery at Newton, of which the greater part of England must be talking this morning. What could they have found to speak about which occupied them so completely that a bank robbery only a day old, happening to Jack’s brother-in-law’s bank, and when, as it transpired, Jack himself was sleeping in the Bank House on the very night in question, should be passed over like the most common trivial occurrence?’

After a brief consultation with Bennet, Jane made known their determination not to go on with their examination, but to return with Mr. Crabtree and Jack.

Mat Crabtree, with a pained recollection--almost fatherly in its tender consideration of the enthusiastic preparation for the examination, of the high hopes with which the candidates had come up, and of yesterday’s proud parade of Oxford, tried languidly to combat the resolution. But he could not avoid the perception that the women’s minds were upset. He had to grant that it was better to withdraw than fail. He had even to yield to the secret, unpalatable conviction that Jane recoiled from further publicity to her family at this crisis. For she had a quick sense that it would hardly be seemly for her name to appear, even in an honour-list, with what might be brought to light in reference to her sister’s husband in a different part of the newspapers. As for Miss Gray, the same argument applied to her to a greater extent than people guessed as yet. Mat Crabtree admitted also with a sigh that it would be a comfort for them all to go back together, ascertain exactly what had occurred, and, though he did not say the last clause of the sentence aloud, face the worst, whatever it might be, at once.