A COMPROMISE.

He yielded at last, but rather worn out by her importunity than sensibly touched by what he had called her mad generosity. He was too sore in spirit all over, too torn in different directions, to be capable of being gracious. Yet he was not without an underlying feeling of dull surprise and secret satisfaction--altogether passive to begin with, in the discovery that Jack, his son, with all his defects and faults, had made a woman like the one before John Prior--a woman rich in attractions and gifts--love the young man desperately, infatuatedly, so that she was ready to give up everything for his sake.

And it was with old-world politeness and fairness, however coldly and with a suspicion of irony still not stamped out of him, that John Prior chose to accompany his future daughter-in-law back to the family circle, and to take that, the first, opportunity of introducing her to its members in a new character. ‘I wish to let you know,’ he said, speaking to Mrs. Prior and Jane, ‘that Miss Gray has done me the honour to acquaint me with an earlier engagement between her and Jack, and with her determination to stand by it and him. In justice to myself, I cannot say that I approve of her resolution, though, in consideration for him, I am driven to acquiesce in it. I have also to tell you that it is not Miss Gray, the children’s teacher, but an unsuspected heiress whom we have been entertaining unawares, who has been masquerading among us, that I present to you. So much the worse for her. It may be the better for Jack, in a pecuniary sense, if he ever get out of the mess he has contrived to fall into, but I cannot suppose that it will raise the world’s estimate of his honour and disinterestedness, whatever he or she may have to say to it.’

The women who served as an audience to the extraordinary speech had been so thunder-struck and overwhelmed this morning already that they could not rise on the instant to fresh experiences of marvelling and strong feeling, whether of approval or disapproval. Their very intellects were stupefied, and the pair listened languidly, with a mystified, scared look, as if, on the one hand, they could not take in the tale, and, on the other, they feared for John Prior’s wits. At last a gleam of joy, like a passing sunbeam piercing dark clouds, shot across Jane Prior’s open face. She rose and went up to Bennet and clasped and kissed her in acceptance of her as a sister. ‘You are really to be one of us,’ she said, with little gasps after coherence; ‘you are not shrinking from us after what has happened to-day. You are cleaving to poor Jack, though I knew you were too good for him already, before we were aware you were rich, except in what is far better than money. I _am_ glad, for all our sakes.’

But Mrs. Prior did no more than agree with a chilling submission to her husband’s and her son’s will. ‘If you have given your consent, John,’ she said, with a glance at her husband, but without a look for poor trembling, shrinking Bennet, who appeared, in truth, as if she were the humble petitioner for mercy, and not the flattered, looked-up to dispenser of bounties, ‘of course, mine goes with it. That needs no commentary, and is of little consequence.’

Later, when Mrs. Prior seemed to awake to Bennet Gray’s unaccounted-for possession of worldly goods, the sole effect on an exceedingly unworldly woman was somehow to induce her to make a speech which struck the girl’s wounded ears like cruel mockery. She (Mrs. Prior) was afraid she had unwittingly failed in the consideration to which Miss Gray was probably accustomed--that she might think the family at Redcot ought to have shown her. She might have missed something in her accommodation which she had a right to regard as her due.

This to Bennet, who was if possible hardier and simpler than Jane in her habits, who would have been willing at no distant date to have kissed the ground that the elder woman trod, who would have accepted gratefully the poorest quarters that Mrs. Prior had awarded to her!

It was evident that Mrs. Prior resented the entrance of the new member into the family at this low ebb of their fortunes quite as much, possibly more, than if the Priors had been in the hey-day of their prosperity. No constancy or loyalty on Bennet’s part, no benefits she could confer, reconciled the mistress of the house to the promotion to a daughter’s place there of a woman who had dwelt beneath its roof for many months under false colours. It was by no means the fact of Bennet’s having been what Lambert Crabtree had defined as ‘a hired servant’ that stuck so fast in Mrs. Prior’s throat; she could have swallowed that objection faster than most squires’ wives would have swallowed it. It was, as Mrs. Prior believed honestly, the deceit with which she had been treated, the treachery which had been going on so long under her unsuspecting eyes, that she could not pardon. So the wife and mother revolted at the distinction which was thenceforth to be Bennet’s portion, that could not be entirely disguised. The very servants remarked on it, though they knew no more than that Miss Gray was the trusted and confidential governess and friend of the family which she had been for some time. But it puzzled them a little to find her come so much to the front in this disastrous crisis. It appeared as if nothing could be done without her. She strove to keep herself in the background; nobody could accuse her of self-assertion or arrogance. Nevertheless, it was not to be concealed that she took an active part in the measures which Mr. Prior was rousing himself to adopt in the circumstances. More than once Miss Gray was summoned to Mr. Prior’s study to join with him and Miss Jane in a consultation from which Mrs. Prior for some reason held herself aloof. But the mistress of the house had so slipped into the position of a spectator rather than an actor in the affairs of the family, not to say a controller of them, that her passiveness on this occasion was by comparison scarcely noticed. If one person perceived Mrs. Prior’s withdrawal with remorse and shame, she dared not call attention to the anomaly, or try to obviate it, any more than she could take it upon her to show her former friend the letters which Miss Gray was writing on John Prior’s behalf, and carrying to him for inspection. But it was hard for Mrs. Prior to brook Miss Gray’s coming forward as Jack’s chief help and stay in the day of his adversity, to feel that his mother was superseded even here in her most sacred privilege.

Mat Crabtree was again able to send much needed consolation to Redcot. In the course of the afternoon he could write, if not that the case had been instantly dismissed, at least that bail had been accepted both for Susie and Jack. The sister and brother were at liberty, and had gone to the Bank House, where it was considered advisable that Jack should remain with the Crabtrees for the present. It would be more convenient if they had to go through the form of getting up a defence.

There was a good deal of reading between the lines of the note which Mat Crabtree had carefully refrained from putting down in black and white. He omitted any admission of the seriousness of the case. He suppressed the difficulties that had to be surmounted before bail was received. He did not record the points that were stretched in deference to the social position of the accused--above all to Susie’s delicate beauty and feminine charm. She had hurried in from Redcot with the children she could not bear to leave behind her; she was relying on her husband, who had returned just in time, and was lending her his support in her painful position. How was it possible for any magistrate with a heart in his bosom, to look unmoved at that confiding, clinging creature in her refined grace and innocent unconsciousness of the danger and disgrace of the situation? Whatever the burden of proof against her, he could not tear her from her home and family and send her to a common prison. It would be as much as her life was worth. It would be executing her sentence upon her before she was judged, and that long after capital punishment had been abolished for robbery without manslaughter.

Neither did Mat Crabtree see it necessary to state that, apart from any convenience in Jack Prior’s staying on at the Bank House, he had himself elected to remain there. He had gone so far as absolutely to refuse to return to his father’s house under the present circumstances.

There was yet another detail of the morning’s work which the writer neglected to supply, though it had struck him forcibly at the time. When he had driven into Newton in such humiliation as his worst nightmare had never suggested, in the middle of his dismay and confusion, while he had hardly dared to raise his honest eyes and confront his numerous acquaintances, he had been impressed by finding them nowhere. All Newton was palpitating and quaking with the news, but it looked like a town deserted by its inhabitants. In the first blush of the catastrophe there was a natural recoil from witnessing its result. The same people who might to-morrow run to crowd and stare at the ugly spectacle of human collapse and degradation drew back and kept out of sight to-day. Not a face was visible at a window, not a head was thrust out of a shop door. A few foot-passengers and drivers of carts and carriages in the streets made as if they did not see anything unusual going on. The lamentable downfall of the Priors and Crabtrees was not beheld, to begin with, by a triumphant populace.

‘Call no man happy till he die,’ said the wise man. In a like spirit, ‘call no day wretched till the day close.’ The night before, Bennet had bemoaned an ignominious ending to a marked day in her life, which she had rashly chronicled beforehand with a white stone. In her ignorance she had railed at the past evening, and counted it the most intolerable she should ever have to know. Yet, matched with the woful day which had followed, she was inclined to look back on the moment of Jack’s betrayal of their engagement, and call its vexation--poignant as it was at the time, sweet and not bitter, full of compensations--lit up with hope in the future, having no real appalling burden of misfortune on the point of falling and crushing every bright prospect.

Bennet believed she only got through the long summer day of Jack’s arrest by the excitement of her appeal to his father, and the bustle of work into which she plunged for his deliverance.

Night came at last bringing the merciful shrouding darkness and oblivion which is at once so welcome and so terrible to the wretched, because with light consciousness must return.

John Prior had been in the habit of reading family prayers from the date of his marriage and of his becoming the responsible head of a household. As ten o’clock struck he came mechanically into the drawing-room and sat down in his customary chair, but, when the bell was about to be rung to summon the servants, he put out his hand to arrest the summons. ‘I cannot, Susan,’ he said hoarsely to his wife, ‘I cannot to-night or to-morrow either, after what happened this morning. It is not fit. I would not face the very maids if I could help it, and this must seem mockery to them.’

But Mrs. Prior rose up, all herself again for the moment, came round from her corner to his side, and pled with him.

‘If we have asked God’s protection and forgiveness all these years, John, shall we fail to seek them now, when we want them more than ever? Shall we fling back His past mercies and present pity in the face of our Maker? We have done nothing that we need fear to look in the faces of our fellow-creatures. They know that as well as we do, and will not misjudge us or forget that we have led honest, friendly lives among them. Let them see you be the man you’ve always been; show that you trust them, and that you trust God still, with your unhappy children as well as with yourself. I ask it as a favour of you, John Prior, and I have not asked any personal favour for a long time. Jane will bring the books before the servants come and look up the places, so that the ordeal may be short. If you like I’ll read the chapter and psalms, as I did when your eyes were ailing--don’t you remember?’

He remembered what an effort it had cost the shy woman to control herself and summon courage to assume, even so far, the office of the family priest to the household in days gone by. But now her tongue did not falter, and her thin cheek was neither dyed with a blush nor robbed of every vestige of colour, as she sat by his side in the midst of those who had seen the manner in which her son and daughter had been taken from her that morning. Thus some drops of the dew of Heaven were distilled and dropped in soothing balm to quiet the strife of tongues and soothe the fever of anguish in these poor tortured hearts.