THE MEETING AND PARTING AT THE RATS’ DITCH.

It is difficult to believe, nevertheless it is true, that the fiery trial to which John Prior was subjected had lasted till within a week of this time. With hardly an exception he had gone every lawful day, no longer unobserved, it is true, for the secret could not be kept so long--but, however speculated upon, unmolested, and with his privacy uninvaded, to Redcot Quarry, under Redcot Spinny--now all bursting into tender green and alive with feathered choristers. He had stood for stated intervals settled upon between the man and himself, at his post, watching for his ruin or his deliverance. On the surface he did not look much gaunter and greyer than he had looked in the beginning, though under the skin the ordeal had done its work.

When, after sundry signs of abating energy and dying out hope, about a week before a certain day in the beginning of April, the boring implements and tackle which had been in persistent use for seven or eight months were carted away from Ladslove finally, John Prior stood and gazed at their departure as he had gazed at their arrival. He was not taken by surprise. He had been reduced into entering on debateable dealings with one of the borers formerly in his employment. This worthy man had eventually, like the illustrious John Churchill Duke of Marlborough, and many other famous magnates, consented to sell himself to both sides. He was paid by Lambert Crabtree for giving him the double benefit of the collier’s skill as a borer at Ladslove, and of his old acquaintance with the dip of the minerals at Redcot. The enterprising miner was also, it has to be owned, paid privately by John Prior for bringing to him the practical result of the boring in such abstracted specimens of rocky soil as the operation produced, and as the operator could carry away hidden in his blue cotton handkerchief. It was further understood that this obliging and unscrupulous gentleman should act in his acknowledged master’s employment--rather as a decoy-duck than as a faithful guide--while all the time John Prior comprehended perfectly that Mr. Jacob Evans was, for his part, closely watching, as far as his obtuseness would allow, the run of what he called luck, and that it rested on the turning of a straw whether he would ultimately betray his new master or his old. Alas, alas! Mr. Jacob Evans was not a unique specimen of humanity. There have been great captains, great statesmen, ay, and great so-called Christians seeking to make the best of both worlds, who have not been beyond playing the same lucrative but not very noble game.

John Prior had gone through his last interview under cloud of night, behind the disused mill, with the spy whom he had consented to keep. Once more Mr. Jacob Evans had by the light of a candle, that was found among other conveniences in his jacket pocket, drawn forth a moist, irregular calico ball. It had unrolled itself, as before, into a small pudding of clay, with morsels of stone stuck in it by way of raisins. The manipulator of the pudding had kneaded it into fresh proportions, as if it were a dish to set before a king, and had been guilty of slowly closing one bloodshot eye while he repeated his formula.

‘This here stuff ain’t no go, māāster, and I’ll be blowed if it ever do be a go. Not a crumb of coal as would sile a babby’s fingers, or of the black slaty layers as might be lying aboon the coal has come to light; no, nor never will in any of them shifts.’

The prophecy had been uttered in loud, boastful defiance.

‘The chances are it will not,’ Mr. Prior had been wont to say coldly and evasively.

When the busy man who had so many irons in the fire was forced reluctantly to contemplate the withdrawal of one iron in the admission that the gang of borers at Ladslove had received their dismissal, his employer had awakened to something like animation. ‘Then you need not come again, Evans. There is your pay, and I’m obliged to you.’ ‘Oh, yes, I’ll write a line to Mr. Willet,’ naming the manager of the Redcot collieries at Kershaw, ‘and he will take you on again.’ John Prior was in a hurry to get rid of the unattractive instrument of his will, and to forget the dirty piece of work he had engaged in the moment the need for it was at an end; at the same time the promise he felt bound to keep was sufficient in its fulfilment to expose the nature of the recent connection between the two men.

After all, the world held that stratagems were allowable in love and war, and the squire of Redcot was only treating his son-in-law as his son-in-law had treated him. If only John Prior could have forgotten that there had been a time in his life when he would have scorned such stratagems and declined to deal in such debateable ware.

How does a man feel when he is reprieved from an impending doom? Dazed, incredulous, giddy, mentally-intoxicated for days and days. John Prior was well aware that he was only reprieved, not finally delivered. Lambert Crabtree might bore again on Ladslove next year, or he might let the farm with its minerals to a better-informed, more fortunate speculator. He might sell the land out and out, and its sale might involve new perils, as well as put the Rats’ Ditch farther beyond John Prior’s reach. But it was always something to have the evil day indefinitely deferred.

Gradually the squire of Redcot yielded to the comfort, the positive exhilaration of the relief. Under its influence he allowed himself to do what he had not dared do during the months of suspense when the borers had been engaged at Ladslove. He turned his feet, as he had turned them on many a previous occasion farther back in his history, to the field known as the Dutch clover field. He had to leave the road and climb over a stile to get to the spot, but he had taken out with him a young fox terrier, and for the first time for many a day his master had whistled on old Tommy to join company with his young foxy brother. As it was easy to imagine beforehand, the dogs had shown an inclination to stray and to wallow in the shallower part of the rat-haunted ditch in a manner which threatened Tommy with hopeless rheumatism for the rest of his life. John Prior whistled in an abstracted fashion at intervals, and stood with his hands in his pockets staring fixedly at the ground wherein his treasure--no, his it had never been, might never be--somebody’s treasure lay hid. This man had known of it and dreamt of it for the better part of his whole existence, till it had gained a desperate fascination for him, and changed him from a person naturally careless in money matters to a covetous craver of the inheritance of another. But he had no more title to the strip of land on which he was gloating with greedy eyes, than the poorest pauper in the parish could claim. It was another Naboth’s vineyard.

The hour of the afternoon was that at which the master of Redcot had accustomed himself to go to the quarry and watch what was going on in the meadows below, where the borers had sometimes advanced and sometimes retreated. And they had once been within so small a number of yards of this ditch that, in looking back, the fact that the men had missed its secret struck John Prior anew as if Providence had interposed and worked a miracle on his behalf.

It was a blustering, windy day, with bursts of sunshine and shade. The effect was increased by the gusts bending and lashing the boughs of the trees, ruffling the leaflets on the hedges, and twisting the blades of grass and spring wheat, until it seemed as if every five minutes or so all the world was seen on its wrong side--that paler reverse side on which everything is dimmed and loses its individual character, much as distant slanting rain washes out the landscape. The time was far distant as yet from the midsummer and autumn wealth of rank reeds and rushes, meadow-sweet and brook-lime, iris and horehound, the indisputable property of the ditch. But the primroses were beginning to blossom thickly at the hedge-roots, and the duck-weed was showing patches of vivid green. Though the water ranunculus remained snugly ensconced in its muddy lair, and Crazy Betty, the Bride-of-the-Sun, would wait till Lent and Easter were past before she ‘shone like fire;’ impulsive, tall kingcups were already shooting their way through the withered tangle of the last year’s growth of weeds. The water ousel, as well as the rat, frequented the ditch, and the lark hovered over the field beyond, pouring forth his spring song.

But it was not to look at early wild flowers or listen to ‘dicky birds’ that John Prior was there. He did not even notice his four-footed companions, that had ostensibly led him across the fields, whisking round, whining, scraping, and indulging in sudden plunge-baths that would have filled Tommy’s mistress with well-founded apprehension. After staring down at his feet in a brooding way for a little space, John Prior advanced as close as he could to the ditch without missing his footing. The season had not been a wet one, and the water was comparatively low--several inches beneath the ordinary level. He stooped and stretched forward, pressing back all he could gather in his arms of the straggling fringe of sedges, and keenly scanned the discoloured side of the ditch, down to the stagnant water, as if he vainly sought to penetrate its sullen depths. The dogs, mistaking his action, turned and tore to his side, under the innocent impression that he was summoning them to a raid on the denizens of the place, with whom it was their natural duty and delight to wage war.

‘Get away, Fly! Down, Tommy, you old idiot,’ Mr. Prior cried impatiently, driving his satellites back.

As he did so he was hailed by a loud voice from behind. ‘Hallo, Prior, what are you doing there?’

John Prior started back with the tremor of a guilty man, and saw the burly figure of Lambert Crabtree in his white cords and hunting-coat on a tall bay horse in the grassy field a few paces off.

The appearance of the man happened in broad day in the open field--moreover, it was his own field, where he had every right to be, yet the apparition was as appalling as could well be imagined. John Prior was ashy white as he staggered up to his feet from between the dogs.

His challenger was moved to call, ‘Good Lord, man, what is the matter? You look funky all over.’ Then he added, with his peculiar delicacy, ‘You ain’t going to take a fit, eh? Remember though there’s water handy, I’m on the back of my beast, and Proossian is a tearer in a fix. I saw you from the road, and spotted you by the dogs. I came over because I want a word with you; but if you want a lift from me I’m afraid there’s, not to say two, but three at a bargain making--the third being Proossian, whose hash I’ll not undertake to settle.’

‘There will be no occasion,’ said John Prior, who had recovered himself. He was on the man’s ground, and though when he thought what ground it was, every nerve in his body tingled, still there was no longer even the apology for a quarrel; and a quarrel here--while the idea of it flashed across John Prior’s mind as an ominous coincidence--would be the most ill-judged, reckless proceeding which angry passions could bring about. ‘I suppose stooping and struggling with the dogs made me dizzy,’ muttered Mr. Prior; then he added with grim, abrupt ceremony, ‘I ought to ask your pardon for trespassing, Crabtree.’

‘Oh, you’re welcome to come here or on any of my fields; they ain’t very many. It is you and Mat who are the landowners,’ answered Lambert, carelessly, shrugging his brawny shoulders and flourishing his riding whip. ‘We are near relations when it comes to that; and at this season in these meadows, where there is no game to be disturbed, I should be a curmudgeon if I refused you an exercise-ground for poor old Tommy. I thought you had given up taking him out--left him to toddle after his missus. Mange ain’t showing, really?’

The man could not help being bragging, bullying, insolent, though he was on the point of soliciting a favour--nay, of pleading for mercy. There was one thing to be said for Lambert Crabtree, that he was not naturally a hypocrite.

‘I told you I wished to speak with you, sir,’ he said, with a greater effort of courtesy the next moment, ‘and there is no time or place like the present. We shan’t be disturbed here. No listeners or interlopers save the dogs and Proossian. Plague take the beast, how am I to dispose of him? I must take the chance of getting off and tying his bridle to that stump,’ pointing with his whip to a pollard willow near. ‘If I keep the bridle over my arm, the devil will paw and prance in a circle round us in a fashion an elderly gentleman with ticklish nerves might not stand. No offence, Prior, I’ve seen you ride well to hounds before you gave up hunting.’

Lambert Crabtree had sat till this moment, coolly looking down from the vantage ground of his elevation upon his companion, but as he prepared to leap off John Prior hastily interposed. He had said he would never receive his son-in-law at Redcot again; but the elder man would break his word, he would do anything to get the younger away from that spot of earth. Every second that passed rendered the necessity the more urgent. Wherever the interview was to take place, whatever was to be its nature, it could not be on the haunted ground where the men had met. The dogs were restlessly scrambling down the bank again. Was it possible the dumb animals could tear down the screen of weeds and nozzle out a black morsel of more moment than any yellow nugget in Australia or California?

‘Come up to the house with me, stable your horse, and say what you have to say in peace.’ John Prior tried to speak calmly and civilly, even with a show of friendliness contradicting a certain stern, tragic tone in his voice.

‘Then it is to be peace, Prior, since I’ve given up my diggings for the present?’ questioned Lambert Crabtree sharply. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it; but don’t you think it would have come more handsomely, if it had come earlier--on your side, I mean? For I was always ready to shake hands across the holes.’ Then the brutal doggedness of the man came into play. ‘No, I am not going up to your house,’ he said, as he sprang from his horse and strode off towards the pollard. ‘I don’t want any witnesses--any women at hand, to pry and carry tales. I don’t mean your women in particular, so you need not look blood and thunder. We can settle our differences here as well as elsewhere.’

‘As you like,’ yielded John Prior, steadying the slight quiver of his lips, while the clouds came over the sun, which was ‘wading’ like the moon on a stormy night, and the wind in wild gusts swung the bushes and swayed the grasses.

‘Well, Prior,’ began Lambert Crabtree, coming back with an inevitable swagger from fastening his prancing, evil-eyed horse, his own big red face looking swollen and slightly bloated, either from the effects of the wind or of the agitation under which it began to be plain he was labouring. ‘I have been sold as regards this cursed farm. The search for coal has been fruitless, though, according to every recognised sign, it ought to have been in these meadows. Where the foul fiend is it?’ he cried passionately. ‘I have made up my mind to ask you what you know; you must have an idea. You cannot have been all these years the owner of the Redcot mines without speculating on what might blow you up any day.’

‘How should I know,’ stammered John Prior, ‘and why on earth should I tell you if I did know?’ he added, recovering from a crazy fancy that the ground on which they were standing ought to find a voice and speak the truth.

‘Because I’m the very man you should tell if you have anything to say on the subject,’ announced the other boldly. ‘Look here, Prior,’ he went on, with his half assumption of bluff frankness along with something in his voice which was at once slyly coaxing and savagely threatening, and of the two inflections of the voice, his hearer liked the first the worse. It filled him with sick disgust. ‘I’ll show you why you should join forces and go halves with me. I’ll make it as good as that if you’ll come to the scratch. You’re all but used up at Redcot. If you have any knowledge to sell it won’t pay you to keep it up. You can’t buy Ladslove--for that matter it ain’t in the market again--not yet. That son of yours--Jack, Johnnie, whatever you like to call him--will do no good with any information you may choose to hand on to him. He may be a good enough sort at cricket or billiards, in a smoking-room or a drawing-room, but that’s about it. He will neither make a spoon nor spoil a horn, you are aware of that? Susie is as near you as Jack is, faith! with her children she has the greater claim of the two. If you’ll put me up to a wrinkle or two I’ll come round and make an arrangement, so that you, and Mrs. Prior, and Jack and Jill after you may have an equal share in the benefits of my purchase and the profits of any minerals that may be worked on Ladslove. Come, I cannot promise fairer than that, and you’ll be a dashed fool if you refuse my offer.’

‘I may be permitted to judge for myself, I suppose, on the worth of the proposal,’ said John Prior, with dry lips, stung to madness, and restraining himself by a tremendous effort. ‘You have my answer. I can only repeat what I have already said. You have no reason to suppose that I have anything to tell you, and you take still more upon you, for which you have still less right, when you imagine that if I had I should tell it to you, of all people. My opinion of my son is my own affair. I have yet to be informed that he has been guilty of anything which merits your contempt. When it comes to that I do not know what I myself have done that you should propose to buy me up.’

Lambert Crabtree had exchanged his grin for a scowl.

‘Take care, John Prior, you had better think twice what you are about. I don’t mind letting you into a secret which will be public property very soon, if you don’t think better of it. I’m on my last legs. That infernal bank for which I’ve done my best--drudged--and lied, and cheated, I suppose you would say--is coming to grief as sure as fate. Do you wish to see Susie and her children beggars?’

‘Susie must drink as she has brewed,’ said her father bitterly. ‘She took her lot into her own hands, and she must abide by it. Your ruin, if you are going to be ruined, is your and her business. At the same time, it is a fine story for you to come and tell me, or any other listener, at this time of the day, considering the gross extravagance of which you have been guilty.’

‘It is as true as gospel--rather truer, I daresay,’ said Crabtree, with shameless bravado. ‘Seems to me, however, Susie had learnt the taste for spending money before she came to me, though she was reared in your virtuous and frugal household. Are you prepared to take the consequences, John Prior, if you drive me to extremity?’ he ended fiercely.

‘I have no choice, as I happen to be an honest man--I will not add with some small claims to be a gentleman,’ answered Mr. Prior with a sneer.

‘An honest man!’ echoed Lambert Crabtree, with a peculiar intonation in the middle of his fury. ‘Come, we may see what is the extent of the family honesty before long. It seems Susie is not likely to fare the better for her father’s consideration; that will be a sweet morsel for you to roll under your tongue some day. If you are destitute of natural feeling where she is concerned, if you do not care a curse for her because she bears my name, other names than the one she has acquired may not come off without loss. Even her precious brother, your heir and representative, Prior, your Oxonian athlete and swell without a degree, with only scrapes and debts to show for his college career, who has, nevertheless, the making of a capital man of business, a stunningly energetic and successful future squire and coal-owner in him--oh! never doubt it, even he may have to smart for it, were it only to have his glory tarnished by his sister’s downfall.’

It was the frantic raving of a man blind with rage, and it might be, as he said, under the black shadow of despair. Rude and regardless as he was at all times, largely destitute of kindlier feeling and of any capacity for sympathy, he spoke as if he were lashing round him with a whip--careless where the lashes fell, so that they raised a long red weal which would inflict cruel pain.

While the men had been disputing, the younger dog had remained in the ditch actively occupied with his own business, but Tommy, already exhausted with his unusual efforts, had scrambled for his footing up the bank. He now presented himself as if to claim the attention to which he was entitled, whilst he was incapable of any sense of intrusion, draggled and panting, his tongue hanging out of his mouth--altogether a sorry object. He came among the feet of the disputants so that Lambert Crabtree, making a sudden movement, as he raged and fumed, nearly stumbled over the obstacle.

‘Get out of my way, you mangy cur, or I’ll kick your brains out,’ he shouted, accompanying the word by an appropriate action with his booted and spurred foot, that sent the yelling dog spinning across the grass.

A mist came over John Prior’s eyes, and a frenzy seized his brain. It seemed for a moment that it was not Tommy, but Tommy’s mistress, John Prior’s wife, the mother of his children, the love of his youth, whom Lambert Crabtree, in his ruffianly strength, had spurned. John Prior was an undersized man beside Crabtree, he was nearer twenty than ten years the elder of the two, and he was a man broken by disappointment and disaster, but he sprang straight at his son-in-law and caught him with such force by the neckerchief that Crabtree, totally unprepared for the attack, was wheeled half round, and reeled on his feet. ‘Stop that, you brute, waging war with women and dumb animals,’ cried John Prior hoarsely through his teeth, that kept clenching themselves, ‘or I’ll throttle you before I’m done.’

Lambert Crabtree wrenched himself free, and raised an arm that could have felled an ox, but thought better of it the next instant, let it drop by his side, and stepped back with a loud, derisive laugh. ‘We are a fine father and son-in-law, ain’t we?--an improving specimen of a happy family? But murder is not for my book. I have never counted myself a shining example. It is you, sir, who are a _gentleman_, as you suggested--though I don’t know that the Priors monopolise the stamp of gentility. There were such people as the Crabtrees, I believe, who settled in the shire, and furnished sheriffs to the county, quite as soon as the other race rendered the same service to their neighbours--which, I venture to say, the neighbours could have spared at their hand. But you have certain advantages over me which nobody can deny. You are the middle-aged father of grown-up sons and daughters, a magistrate, a church member who keeps regular hours and calls up his servants to prayers, and so forth--all that belongs to the essence of respectability and the odour of sanctity. Yet you propose to come to fisticuffs with your unworthy son-in-law, who declines the unseemly, ill-matched affray. Upon my soul, I’m astonished at you. I suppose I had better say good-day.’

Lambert Crabtree ended his taunt after he had ostentatiously re-arranged his neckerchief and coat. ‘But remember, Prior, you have to thank me for sparing your life, which you were prepared to throw away like an intemperate fool. You were in my power, and I had got jolly good provocation. I could have knocked you into the ditch there, and kept you down easy, and pled self-defence--the first law of nature--if the deed had ever been called in question, with as little trouble as I could despatch that disgusting beast you patronise. You owe me that good turn when the time comes.’

John Prior stood gasping with passion, and fighting to recover the mastery over himself. Tommy, who happily had been more frightened than hurt, crept whining to his protector’s heels.

Lambert Crabtree walked over to his bay horse, which, as he had predicted, had been making a circle, pawing, flinging up his heels, and tossing a vicious head. His master untied him, and managed to bolt upon his back. Then commenced a second and more equal struggle for supremacy. The animal reared and plunged without advancing a yard on his road. Lambert Crabtree’s great body, with not too secure a seat, though he was a practised rider, swayed and lurched as if he would lose his balance every instant and fall heavily among the quivering feet prepared to smash whatever they encountered. It was clear that the rider resented the opposition to his will, lost his temper, and behaved as he would have done in any human encounter. He struck his spurs into his foe without mercy; he tugged and tore at the bridle, galling the animal’s distorted mouth. The issue seemed to hang in the balance. It appeared as if murder must be done, and the sacrifice of a man’s life offered in the clover-field by the Rats’ Ditch, with its jealously-guarded secret.

At last Lambert Crabtree triumphed. With a great trembling bound of anger, torture, and terror the bay yielded and galloped off in the direction the man wished. As it did so, its master turned in the saddle, waved an arm, and gave a mocking view-halloo which mingled with the shrill whistle of the wind in John Prior’s ears.