JACK PLAYS THE SPY.

Jane Prior and Miss Gray were dressing in their several rooms for the volunteer ball at Newton. Jane had put off the necessary duty to the last moment, but, while she went about it reluctantly, she accomplished it with characteristic despatch. However, she had not acted on Susie’s accommodating suggestion that any old-fashioned soiled evening dress might do for the occasion. Jane had too much self-respect to be a sloven, though she had a fancy for being severely plain in her attire. She was plain to-night, in a quite simple white gown, with no ornament except the crimson flowers in her hair and bosom. But the plainness suited her wonderfully. Had the red flowers been absent she would have looked like a vestal virgin, or Norma ere she was wooed and won and undone. Even the red flowers in Jane’s breast and hair had something earnest in their depth of colour--something of the solemnity of a sunset. The hue recalled the words, ‘angry and brave,’ which George Herbert applied to it. Jane was not angry, but she was brave with a good and true woman’s courage not to fail in what was required of her--to be just, generous, magnanimous in whatever trial she had to encounter and overcome.

Jane’s toilet was so soon made that her mother--with no tremor shaking her from a presentiment of who was at Newton--coming to help to dress her daughter, and bringing her jewel-cases with her in order to ask Jane to choose what she liked best among their contents, was disappointed to find herself too late. ‘I am all ready, mother, thank you; but I think I am better without ornaments. They don’t suit this dress; you see I have these flowers, and jewels would not harmonise with the flowers, as Susie would tell you if she were here. We may safely leave jewels to her; we may be sure she will have enough.’

Mrs. Prior hesitated. Then she went on, with Tommy waddling at her heels as if he, too, had an interest in the toilets. In spite of his canine sagacity Tommy, as well as his mistress, remained profoundly unconscious of whose footsteps were sounding fitfully in the near distance. The mistress of the house, with her velvet-lined morocco cases still in her hand, knocked at Miss Gray’s door, and was admitted gladly and gratefully. Bennet had committed the extravagance of having a dress from town. The gown was not sufficiently fine to attract attention; it was not so choice as the delicate plush at which she had gazed ruefully on the evening of her arrival at Redcot. Still the creation did its artiste credit. It was a charming lacy, feathery, peachy-coloured composition, in which the fresh youthful bloom of the wearer was set off to perfection.

The moment Mrs. Prior entered, she cried out with delight, ‘What a pretty dress, my dear! I suppose I must not say how pretty you look in it, but it is true, nevertheless,’ while Tommy sniffed his approbation.

‘I am so happy you like it,’ said Bennet, looking happy indeed. ‘It is so nice to have you look at it and praise it. It is so kind of you to come up. I was just wondering whether I might go down and show myself, though I am afraid I am not worth looking at, and we shall all be terribly outshone to-night by Mrs. Crabtree. Ah! here is Tommy come to pay me a visit and see what I am like in a ball-dress. He has no nursie to carry him off to bed like poor Ally; as for Tom and Sam they have been sleeping like tops for a couple of hours. What, begging, sir! Is it water? No, I am afraid it is chocolate. I must give him one, just one, Mrs. Prior, when he has mounted the stairs to call on me.’

‘You are too good to him. I am afraid he is a little greedy, poor old fellow--he has so few pleasures now; but you will spoil your pretty dress if you kneel down on it,’ said Mrs. Prior, shaking her head, but very open by force of contrast to the delicate attention to Tommy. She hesitated a little, struggling with her constitutional shyness; which always became conspicuous when she proposed to confer a favour. She opened a little nervously the jewel cases, exposing their not very extensive contents. ‘I have been wondering whether I have anything which you are without that you would care to wear,’ she said. ‘Jane has refused the loan, but you may like something here, though I am afraid the sets are all old-fashioned.’

Bennet did not so much draw back as shrink back.

‘Oh, no,’ she cried, with a gasp and flush of shame and distress. ‘I cannot take anything of yours--I could not bear to wear it.’

‘Of course there is no occasion for it, if you do not like it,’ Mrs. Prior acquiesced hastily, evidently hurt by the refusal and the manner in which the refusal was given. ‘I know some people do not care to appear in borrowed plumes,’ the elder woman went on, with a forced laugh to get rid of the awkwardness; ‘but I had already offered these to my daughter,’ Mrs. Prior added the next instant, feeling compelled to defend herself, ‘so that there need not have been any thought of offence.’

‘I am not offended; if you will believe me, I never was further from being offended. Don’t misunderstand me, dear Mrs. Prior,’ implored Bennet, in her agitation. ‘It is not that. Do you suppose I should not be proud to wear anything of yours--your old slippers, if they would go on my feet. It was only because I thought you might regret--you might accuse me of having taken advantage----’

Miss Gray stopped, unable to say any more.

Mrs. Prior’s brow cleared at once. She imagined Miss Gray hinted at Mr. Crabtree’s attentions and at the probability that the Priors might not approve of them.

‘No, indeed,’ she said with kind emphasis, ‘you may depend upon it I shall never regret lending you anything of mine or accuse you of taking advantage of that or of any other small mark of my regard I have ever given you. I wish you to make the best of everything. I desire your happiness above all things--almost as if you belonged to me, and I am not without the hope of being permitted to witness it.’

Bennet was mystified now, and stood staring with lips apart and breast heaving. Could Mrs. Prior have learnt the truth? Had Jack written to his mother? Was this her way--modest and tender it was sure to be--of granting her forgiveness and bestowing her blessing?

For a moment it hung in the balance whether Bennet would not act on the strong impulse which had laid hold on her; whether she would not steal her arms round Mrs. Prior’s neck, and with hidden face appeal to her as ‘mother’--Jack’s mother, who was already in her good motherliness replacing the mother whom Bennet had lost when a child?

But too much was at stake to be risked on an impulse, and before it was fully entertained the sudden flash of hope had faded. Mrs. Prior, in place of waiting as might have been expected for such a movement, was already turning away from Bennet, and placidly examining the cases she held.

‘Now, which shall it be?’ she proceeded calmly, as she lifted up article after article. ‘This cross or one of the necklets or a bracelet? The whole set might be conspicuous, but do you fancy any of these? Young ladies don’t wear brooches nowadays, but I used to be fond of this heart,’ holding up a little gold heart transfixed by an arrow, ‘and it might fasten one of these knots of riband or sprays of white blossom.’

‘Yes, if you will be so good--the little brooch,’ murmured Bennet, not recovered from her burst of feeling.

‘It was John Prior’s first gift to me,’ said Mrs. Prior, looking at the trinket with pensive interest as she prepared to fasten the pin in Bennet’s dress.

‘Then please don’t put it in,’ objected Bennet in renewed trouble. ‘It is far too precious. I would rather not have the responsibility.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs. Prior, shaking off her pensiveness as she persisted in fastening the brooch. ‘There, it is quite secure. I do not remember its coming loose once. It is not a bad omen--we must all expect failures and shortcomings--but the sign of the true love of an honest man can never be a bad omen.’

Bennet only looked the sweeter because of that perplexing passage of arms between her and Mrs. Prior before the girls started. Bennet’s fluttering heart lent a softness to her whole aspect. The charm which old-fashioned writers were fond of descanting on under the term ‘sensibility’ was in her varying colour, her eyes, more frequently cast down than usual, the tender curves of her lips. Her heart felt very warm beneath the quaint little brooch which had been John Prior’s first gift to his love, and under the locket which had been another John Prior’s first gift to his love. Surely the two gifts were well met on that kindly bosom. Nobody looking at Bennet Gray that night could fail to see that she was a very happy, very lovely girl, and that there was a meaning in her happiness and loveliness--the meaning which constitutes a woman’s earthly bliss.

But Bennet was not the queen of the Newton Volunteer Ball. What she had said proved true. Susie far outshone all rivals. Any person in search of mere beauty would not look twice at another woman when Mrs. Lambert Crabtree was by. Nay, there was more than beauty in Susie on this occasion. There was an indefinable fascination as she stood near the door of the room receiving her guests unsupported by a foil in the shape of her big red-faced husband, but eagerly backed by every man in his troop, to which she was doing honour. She outshone herself to-night. It was not in her dainty, exquisite Titania size, or in her glowing beauty, beside which every other woman appeared colourless and insipid. It was not in her cooing, caressing ways, alternating with the summer lightning of her playful wit and malice. It was not in her magnificent dress, which everybody who did not pronounce it glorious, called utterly absurd for a volunteer ball. To be particular, Susie wore a gown which had some of the burning glory of fire in its rich nasturtium colour, toned down, as in the flower, by depths of brown. Instead of short sleeves, the white arms were only encircled below the shoulders by long trailing wreaths of orange and brown nasturtium flowers, with their cool, round green leaves. In opposition to Jane’s theory, Susie’s neck and wrists were glittering with jewels, before which Mrs. Prior’s modest sets would have sunk into utter insignificance. Susie’s very hair was powdered with diamond dust, so that every time she turned her shapely head a thousand tiny sparkles came into play. But it was not in her dress any more than in her grace and beauty. It was more in the bearing--a certain imperious challenge and triumph of defiance--a faint reflection of what dazzled and blinded old corrupt civilisations and barbarous tribes in the beautiful, sleek traitresses and human tigresses of history and myth. The unholy spell arrested and held fast the spectators, who did not pause to analyse the secret, from which they would most of them have recoiled if they had suspected its nature. But they contented themselves with saying there never was such a wonderful little woman as Mrs. Lambert Crabtree.

Even Lambert Crabtree, though he must have been tolerably used to his wife’s fascinations by this time, showed himself anew impressed by them, as he came in close upon supper for his brief stay. He loomed immense in his volunteer’s uniform, in spite of the fact that uniforms have long been at a discount in a ball-room. His large, light goggle eyes were lit up with admiration when they fell upon the entrancing vision. He went up to his wife’s side, and spoke for her ear alone. ‘You are in high feather to-night; that’s right. You are a beauty and no mistake, Sue, and, what is better, you are a brick.’

‘Do you think so?’ she asked, sharply, as if the lateness of his arrival or something in his speech provoked her. She turned a white shoulder to him, and spoke over it--‘What I am I owe to you, Lamb.’ But there was no gratitude in her voice; for the second time it was hard and cold, and cutting like a knife.

To Bennet’s surprise Jane Prior danced a great deal in a somewhat stately, steady, grave way, as if she were going through with a duty she was bound to perform. Her popularity was not entirely personal; she was the hostess’s sister--she was a Prior of Redcot, the last unmarried daughter; but there was no doubt that Jane also made an impression as a fine-looking girl, when it came to that, with a repose about her which Susie, in her brilliance, lacked. And Jane did not seem to desire to shirk her obligations. She was very often on the floor, the consequence being that she could not interfere with the arrangements of the sitters.

Bennet did not dance nearly so often, though she might have had plenty of introductions. Her remaining seated frequently was not due to her being a stranger, but to her being commonly attended by Mat Crabtree. He did not dance with her, or with anybody else for that matter, thus showing a due sense of his weight of years. But he betrayed a considerable inclination to drop into the seat next to Miss Gray and talk to her. If his sister-in-law had found leisure to think over the matter, it might have struck her as fully more compromising than dancing once or twice with the young lady, nay, or even than taking her in to supper--which, in fact, he summed up the impropriety of his behaviour by doing.

What might have been looked for under the circumstances happened. Many comments were made on the conspicuous association of the couple, and on the rumour of a marriage on the _tapis_ between Mr. Crabtree of Haybridge and the beautiful governess at Redcot who had been so injudiciously brought forward by Jane Prior.

‘A stick to break her own head,’ some cynical tongues quoted.

The notice which Mr. Crabtree and Miss Gray drew down upon them culminated at the moment when the two were standing together apart from others, but certainly not aware that they were the observed of all observers, looking at some conservatory flowers which had been brought to do duty among the evergreens at the head of the room. The pair lingered as if they were counting the petals of the camellias and the leaves of the pelargoniums. The proposal which Mrs. Lambert Crabtree had relegated to the dignified shades of academic groves might have been made and accepted in the presence of hundreds, amidst the convenient blare of the volunteer band. So eagerly did the gentleman talk, so animated, yet so moved did the lady show herself--now speaking a few necessary words, now looking up in the still handsome, mature face bending over her, now glancing away among the ranks of the dancers, with shining, softened eyes.

If any lady had been near enough to have heard the conversation between Mat Crabtree and Bennet Gray, the reality and the supposition did not quite correspond. Mat was saying emphatically, ‘In what request Jane Prior is to-night! That is right.’

‘She is looking very well,’ Bennet had answered, with hearty satisfaction.

‘Yes,’ he had resumed with fervour, ‘and it is good for her to meet her kind, and have her play. Why not? She is as handsome a girl as any of them--handsomer, to my mind, since she does not care about it. But her looks are not the best of her. I have known her since she was not much older than her niece Molly, and a more sterling soul never breathed--the daylight is not more transparent. But too much work is good for no man or woman either; Jane takes everything _au grand sérieux_, which makes me fear for her chances in this examination--for her chances in everything. But we must think for her, take care of her, and see that she does herself justice. Eh, Miss Gray?’

‘Yes, indeed, Mr. Crabtree,’ acquiesced Bennet cordially, but still a little mechanically and absently. For a new light was dawning upon her as she saw and heard more of his interest in the subject than he had any idea that he was exhibiting, or than he perhaps acknowledged, even to himself.

She was trying to read between the lines an open secret which was filling her with surprise, joy, and indignation at her own stupidity. Dear wise Jane, who had been so good to her! And he was worthy of her, and Jack and everybody at Redcot would be pleased. Bennet had great difficulty in restraining herself, and answering as if she suspected nothing. No wonder the lustre of her eyes was getting always brighter and brighter, and she became more and more conspicuously invested with an atmosphere of glad content, which was yet wistful in its fulness.

At the main door, mingling with the humbler, more bashful volunteers, was a small, rather motley crowd made up of townspeople, commercial travellers, and servants who could be spared from the neighbouring inn, standing lounging and looking in at the fine sight. There was a certain element of confusion and a shifting character about these outstanding groups, which rendered it possible that an intruder in the throng, a comparative stranger, and a secret spy, might pass muster and escape detection, if not absolutely, at least to a great extent. There was a young man in that unpleasant indefensible position, with a rough coat buttoned up to his ears and a travelling cap drawn down to his eyes, much as he had worn them the previous evening. He stood where he could see into the hall, while he kept himself as well back from observation as he could contrive. He watched a girl whom he had known intimately at a previous stage of her history, though he had not seen her for many months. He had never beheld her in this guise--this softly gay peach-blossom gown delicately flowing, daintily trimmed, implying to him something far costlier than the reality--with the white flowers in her hair. It formed a whole very different from the demure schoolroom costume, or even the quiet economic holiday clothes of the schoolmistress abroad. This was a change which, as it seemed to him, only one justification--the speedy termination of the days of bondage--could warrant. He had seen her face wear an expression akin to that it wore at this moment, for a false woman’s face can take the look it should bear only for one, and hold it up to every newcomer who plays the same part. But never had he beheld the open brow so unruffled, the eyes so clear, the mouth so peaceful--though the lips trembled a little with subdued feeling in the middle of the brightness of their smile. Before, when he had seen that face happy, it had still been clouded with a lurking doubt, a haunting trouble, a shade of fear--even of forced condemnation--together with a determined struggle to do right, at whatever cost, warring with the sweet, tumultuous happiness. The woman was certain of her happiness at this moment. She had acquired some later good, which caused her to cast care to the winds. Her mind, her conscience--strange as it seemed--were both at rest. Whoever broke in upon her recently won satisfaction, and startled her by an inopportune presence which she did not expect, would scatter her hopes, shatter her prospects, and do her a wrong which she would never forgive.

‘Do you see that pair that ain’t dancing, but have been looking at the flowers for the last ten minutes? It don’t want a prophet to tell what they’re talking about,’ said one observer, with a well-worked vein of jocularity, to another. ‘Everybody is crying out that will be a match, and they ain’t so ill-suited neither when one looks twice. They’re regular strappers, both of them. Crabtree of Haybridge is a bit up in years, to be sure, but, bless you! that ain’t nothink when he carries them as lightly as he do, and is a fine man to this day, and will be for a many to come--a deal finer than most lads half his age. Give me a man as is in his prime, says I, and then you sees the best and the worst of him till he begin to grow down instead of up. Many a comely youngster is as coarse as a cow-feeder before he’s a greybeard. Crabtree of Haybridge is a good sort too--all that has to do with him swears he ain’t a slippery customer--whoever else may be. It’s great promotion for her that is only the governess at Redcot; but she’s a bonnie lass as ever stepped. There ain’t a handsomer in the room, barring the banker’s little lady, and she’s beyond compare.’

Another person than the one intended to receive the gossip who had been wedged into a corner so that he could not, though he would, have avoided hearing every word which was not meant for his ear, now, by a considerable effort, shouldered his way out, and descended the stair to reach the street.

‘Hang it! Couldn’t he have stayed where he was?’ cried a third looker-on, whose equanimity was disturbed and his toes trampled on.

‘I’m blowed if it ain’t young Prior, of Redcot,’ protested a fourth, incredulously. ‘Him that was in disgrace with the squire, his father, and went to furrin’ parts a year agone. What the dickens is he seeking, back so soon, and standing out here glowering like a cat at his kind? Why, the Colonel and his lady--the givers of this here ball--are own brother and sister to young Prior.’

‘Which is thundering strong proof that you’re mistaken in your man, Charlie,’ the first speaker tried to put the last down.

Jack Prior, hard hit, dazed, and dumb-founded, kept telling himself that seeing was believing, that no sane man could or should distrust the evidence of his senses. He stumbled back to the Bank House, deserted by all but its compulsory keepers, wandered through its vacant rooms, and refused supper. He was worn out with wretchedness, and sensible only that in his present frame of mind he could not endure another encounter with Susie. She would return from the ball, and bring him confirmation of the fact he had ascertained for himself. He could not stand it--not just yet--so he retired to his room, and there brooded over the maddening enlightenment of this night and the night before, and sought to crack a nut which he found cruelly hard.

Bennet Gray, of all women--Bennet, in whom he had placed implicit faith, to whom he had looked up as to a guardian angel, who had sent him on the very voyage to Australia which was likely to cost him dear--had taken advantage of his absence to steal a march upon him, and throw him over for the first available suitor who presented himself. She had come to Redcot, of all places, to do it, and chosen a man who was an old friend connected with Jack by family ties, so that unless he abjured his former relations he could not escape constant association with the husband and wife. It was like seething a kid in its mother’s milk. It was being heartless far beyond the ordinary range of women’s heartlessness.

What had brought Bennet to Redcot in the first place--whether it was a mere accident--an answer to an application through an agency--a chance recommendation presenting a temptation that had proved irresistible (which was virtually the truth), he could not tell. But, after she was at Redcot, the opportunity of seeing the poverty of the land, and of becoming acquainted with Mat Crabtree, in conjunction with the hateful material provided by the innate fickleness of a nature for whose sincerity and loyalty Jack Prior would have stood up against the whole world, rendered the explanation comparatively easy. Such occurrences as preferring a rich suitor to a poor one happen, if not so brazenly every day, at least with sufficient frequency to entitle men to say that they have been since the world began, and will be to the end.

Jack was half distracted and entirely forlorn, but sleeplessness is not apt to be long the portion of the young and healthy, however sorely tested. He had tumbled about three-fourths of the time wide awake last night, he lost consciousness now until he awoke from one disturbed dream, to believe himself the victim of another, with its incidents happening there in the very room in which he lay. He imagined he opened his eyes and saw Susie in such a white dressing-gown as he had known her use, but with her hair still the same as she had worn it at the ball. Only in the clear, silvery light of early morning, when the sunbeams are not golden, but have something of the whiteness of moonbeams, the diamond dust had ceased to sparkle, and looked more as if it were a powdering of ashes over the dark hair. There were two burning red spots on her cheeks, her whole face was keen and sharp-set, and her eyes were opened wide and staring wildly, like a creature in desperation and terror. She walked quickly yet so noiselessly into the room that he at once guessed she had left her high-heeled slippers behind her. But he was not prepared for what he saw when he glanced down on the floor, that the little feet which moved so fleetly and lightly, gripping the ground with hardly a perception of noise, were bare. She went straight to the toilet table, and appeared to fumble at the stand of the mirror.

‘Susie!’ cried Jack in a voice half-subdued by surprise and by a nameless creeping fear, as if this presence of his sister were indeed a bodiless ghost. He sat bolt upright in bed, and asked himself with an effort of thought whether it was a waking dream on his part or a case of sleep-walking on hers. Waking or sleeping, she heard him in an instant, and her face showed an agony of consternation, though she did not give him an immediate answer. Instead, she instinctively held up her hands and made a warning gesture with them, as if she were pushing him away and imploring him to lie down again and keep silence. Then he thought he heard her murmur--‘Hush! hush! Jack. For mercy’s sake, be quiet.’ The next instant she was gone as she had come. Jack roused himself thoroughly, got up and opened the door, but there was nobody in the corridor, which had a western aspect, and looked shadowy and chill. He could hear a little sound in the house as of servants stirring, which presently died away. He came back and walked to the toilet-table, where the figure which had seemed Susie had stood. But everything was unchanged and as he had left it the night before.

Jack Prior told himself the untoward events of the last forty-eight hours had been too much for a fellow; they were going to his head and distempering his mind. He had been dreaming, and had been unable to separate his dream from the reality. He lay down again, and tried to compose himself afresh and take refuge in sleep. At last he succeeded, and awoke in full sunshine. It was still early, but he must start if he meant to reach the familiar junction on the line from which he would get a train that ought to reach Oxford in the middle of the day. He was feverishly restless; he must do something, and he was still bent, not on having a word with Jane, as he had said, but on seeing _her_ again--on confronting her, though it were for the last time, and giving her a taste of what her work was likely to be. Before he had dressed and gone downstairs, the servants were about, but he would not make himself late by waiting for breakfast, which he could have in the refreshment-room at the station. He contented himself with leaving a message for Mrs. Crabtree, and went.