AN APPEAL TO SUSIE.

There was a hush in the house--not unlike that breathless pause between the going out of a life and the committal of dust to dust--which the naturally strident voices of Molly and Piers, subdued by distance, as they ranged the nursery regions, did little to break. The servant Roger, a steady, dull man of mature years, chosen for his imposing height and some talent in waiting at table, spoke in a whisper, and had a crushed, sat-upon air, as if recent events and police investigations had been too much for him. The housemaid whom Bennet passed on the landing first cast down a pair of somewhat sly eyes, as if it were impolite and unfeeling under present circumstances to look at any stranger coming to the house; but on second thoughts the girl looked up and stared boldly. It was only the handsome governess at Redcot, who was no more than a better sort of servant herself, with whom no great ceremony need be practised, who might even exchange meaning glances with Sarah.

Lambert Crabtree was not with his wife, for which Bennet was thankful; neither was Jack, for which the new-comer felt inclined to think she was thankful also. She had made up her mind beforehand that if it had been otherwise she would have borne the brunt of whatever feelings Susie might have thought fit to express, and begged to speak with the young man apart.

Susie was alone, and had seemingly been doing nothing, though as a rule she was full of small occupations. She sat in the pretty, cosy room opening from her bedroom, and had been wrapped in a shawl. She must have been feeling, in spite of the warm weather, the same fitful, spurious cold of which Bennet had been half conscious. As Susie rose, letting the shawl fall from her shoulders, it was seen that she was as carefully dressed as usual, but for the second time in her life, she gave the impression that she had not displayed her wonted nice judgment in the selection of colour and material. These were not becoming to her, though her dress in itself was as well thought out and finished in detail as her dresses always were. The colour was a dull blue, which did not harmonise with Susie’s brunette complexion; the stuff was soft and clinging, exposing any failure in youthful plumpness, any growing tendency to prominence in elbow and neck-bones and shoulder-blades.

Bennet received the same momentary shock which had struck Jack on the night of his return to England--that of a sudden meagreness, even meanness of outline and feature, a battered, broken, furtive look about the brilliant little beauty. It somehow struck Bennet Gray, for the first time, with a sense of the unutterable pity and wretchedness of the affair where Susie Crabtree herself was concerned. It was as if one of the butterflies outside, flitting lightly and gaily across the gazer’s path, had suddenly dropped at her feet with disabled wings--their delicate dust brushed off, themselves smirched by the soil with which they had come in contact, the entire butterfly a helpless, worthless creature, spoilt beyond mending in the grace and beauty which had been its sole claim to regard.

Before the notion could do more than flash across Bennet’s mind, the idea was effaced by the rush of suavity and graciousness with which Susie received the intruder. A crushed butterfly, indeed! This was rather a small queen winningly affable to a remote satellite. For it was not Mrs. Lambert Crabtree’s cue to acknowledge the engagement to her brother--of which she was quite well aware. She had also been told deliberately and advisedly by Mat Crabtree of the true state of matters in reference to Bennet’s money and to the assistance she was rendering Mr. Prior, on the ground of her engagement to his son, which she had confessed to him, and by which she stood. But Susie preferred, for various reasons, to see in Bennet only the little Woods’ governess. So long as Bennet herself did not communicate certain facts to Susie, the latter was not obliged to admit an acquaintance with a reversal of position, which, in spite of Mrs. Lambert Crabtree’s well-known amiability, was decidedly distasteful to her. She chose to ignore the truth as long as possible.

There was only a slight breach in Mrs. Crabtree’s graciousness, when she stopped in the middle of her profuse declarations of pleasure at seeing Miss Gray, to ask sharply why her sister had not come. Susie went on to protest petulantly that Jane or mam-ma ought to be there to look after her, for she was in danger of dying of laughter since the tragedy of the bank robbery had merged into the comedy of her and Jack being accused as the burglars. It was ‘rich,’ to quote Lamb, too good for anything out of Mark Twain. Susie said this with glittering eyes fastened on Bennet’s face, so that not a shade of meaning there had a chance of escaping her.

‘So pleasant for you to come, dear,’ Mrs. Lambert Crabtree murmured in honeyed accents, after she had established her visitor in a lounge opposite her, ‘when I happen, oddly enough, to be all by myself, idle and able to entertain you. Lamb has gone off to the opening of the new town hall at Malling. His brother was decidedly grumpy about it, and wished him to stay away. Such nonsense!--as if a man could not show himself in public because an unfortunate bank had failed, with the additional farce of the banker’s wife being charged with breaking into it beforehand--for her private pleasure, I presume,’ remarked Susie, with supreme scorn. ‘Oh, dear; it is too absurd. Lamb will see all the neighbours as well as witness the ceremony, and afford our friends some amusement with the tale of our grotesque dilemma.’

Bennet had her own opinion of the delicate propriety of Mr. Lambert Crabtree’s appearance at the opening of the Malling town-hall, and also of the reception he was likely to meet with from his former friends if he attempted to rehearse for their benefit a haw-haw burlesque of his misfortunes.

But Susie did not wait to elicit an opinion. She wished to speak on her own account. ‘I should have liked to have gone with Lamb, and seen all the world, and made them laugh,’ she added with audacious coolness, ‘at having to shake hands with a burglar or burglaress--which is it, dear Miss Gray? You know you are an authority as good as a dictionary.’

In speaking Susie had made mocking gesture of shaking hands, when two of the many rings she was in the habit of wearing dropped from the slender, waxen-like fingers, and rolled across the floor. Their owner anticipated Bennet in quickly stooping and picking them up, protesting impatiently, as she replaced them, that jewellers were so stupid in making rings too large, as if everybody had hands like cooks.

‘But even Lamb would not hear of me accompanying him,’ Susie took up the dropped thread of her conversation in a plaintive, ill-used tone, ‘in case any of these tiresome lawyers should call and wish to see me in my absence. I’m sure I’ve told them all I have to tell a hundred times,’ she exclaimed wearily.

‘Has your brother--has Mr. John Prior gone with Mr. Lambert Crabtree?’ asked Bennet, forcing herself to a hesitating effort, in agitation that seemed in danger of suffocating her.

‘What do you say? Whom do you mean? Is it Jack?’ counter-questioned Susie, with a pretty puzzled air. ‘I can’t quite tell,’ she answered carelessly. ‘Anyhow, he is out;’ Bennet’s heart fell with the weight of lead. ‘He is a good deal out in this fine weather. He goes fishing in the trout stream down in the meadows where the lawyers, if they like, can find him, and tackle him too. What do they wish to get out of us?’ She returned to her former grievance, her plaintiveness passing into peevishness. ‘If there is nothing kept back, how can there be anything for them to discover? Unless they mean to work upon us by mental torture, as the Inquisitors--no doubt you can recall all about them, for you know everything, you happy woman--tortured the bodies of the victims, till we are driven to contradict ourselves and tell lies in sheer desperation. It is so silly, such a piece of red-tapism, to make so great a fuss about a wretched trifle,’ she ended, with a quick, restless sigh.

‘They cannot help themselves,’ said Bennet gravely.

‘But the money was not taken, after all,’ insisted Susie. ‘At least, I am told it was found secreted in odd places about the house, as a jackdaw might have secreted it. Do you think there had been any jackdaw or magpie in the Bank House, and that it could have broken into the safe?’ with a nervous, half-hysterical laugh. Then she began again more composedly--‘The bank has failed, certainly, and it seems the assets do not produce much. I mention it in confidence; indeed, I believe you will have heard it already, since you are a person in trust at Redcot--I understand a great comfort to my family,’ and Susie bent as gracefully and gratefully to Bennet as if the speaker were herself a pattern of filial virtue, and did not know a syllable more than she implied. ‘It is doubtful if the bank is ever opened again, which is a pity, to be sure. But if a great many people are ruined, why, they are ruined, and it cannot be helped. The thing is done and cannot be undone. It will not bring the bank’s credit or the people’s money back, for them to persist in persecuting me and Jack.’

‘It is not the people,’ said Bennet, but Susie did not appear to hear or heed her.

‘It was a good joke to begin with, but everybody must see it becomes tiresome when it is prolonged. It is horribly inconvenient after a time to be kept at home and teased by useless questions. It is not as if we--Lamb and I--have not suffered. We are ruined, I tell you, like the rest of the world, by that wretched bank for which Lamb was always working like a slave. We are positive paupers, dependent with our children on pap-pa and Mat Crabtree,’ explained Susie in a tone of injured innocence, as if the impecuniousness she thus flaunted were an order of merit under the circumstances, a sign of integrity, and a claim to forbearance which could not be denied.

‘I am afraid you don’t understand,’ said Bennet, gently enough, but with a quiver of indignation in her voice. The miserable little woman was, as Bennet had feared, impregnable in her selfishness, wilfully blind, nearly incapable of recognising any rights or needs save her own, and therefore hopelessly disingenuous and radically dishonest. ‘The bank robbery, though it was baffled, is not in itself a trifle. The situation of anybody implicated in it, even by suspicion, is serious. The police, with their experience, say the crime must have been attempted by some person well acquainted with the house, probably by some inmate of it.’

‘The police will say anything,’ said Susie, turning away her head. ‘I have always heard the Bobbies are ninnies the instant they are taken off their ordinary beat.’

‘I think that statement ought to be taken with some reserve,’ answered Bennet drily: ‘and we have to do with several highly-trained men from Scotland Yard as well as with the local police. Have you no suspicion, Mrs. Crabtree, of any member of your household who could have been misled and--and tempted into the commission of such an act?’

‘No, unless that starling--starling was it, or jackdaw?’ demanded Susie, with uneasy levity. ‘No,’ she repeated shortly and with a shade of sullenness, turning round the rings which had grown too loose for her fingers; ‘no one can say I have accused anybody--not even Jack.’

‘Jack!’ exclaimed Bennet, in utter horror, ‘your own brother, to whom you offered hospitality; you even pressed him to stay that he might be a support to you in your husband’s absence.’ This amount of information had been wrung from Jack with regard to his remaining at the Bank House in Newton in place of going out to Redcot on the evening of his arrival from Australia.

Susie winced, but recovered herself in a second. ‘Well, I must say, Miss Gray,’ she declared coldly, and with a little drawl, ‘the interest which you are so good as to take in our family affairs carries you rather too far. If you will forgive me for mentioning it, it causes you to forget yourself, until you speak as if you were one of those martinets of lawyers of whom I was complaining. I am reduced to being unpleasant in my turn.’

‘Mrs. Crabtree, you are proud of your family,’ Bennet tried the appeal. ‘Is it not dreadful for a Prior of Redcot, perhaps the last representative of his name, to be in such a position? Would it not be worth any sacrifice to save him?’

‘I have sufficient confidence in my family,’ said Susie, sinking back with half-closed eyes, ‘to be satisfied that they are perfectly able to take care of themselves without your troubling yourself, Miss Gray.’

‘I have come from your father,’ said Bennet, desperately. ‘Do you know he is in terrible distress? His son, his only son, is under a criminal charge, which everybody who knows Jack, and you especially, are well aware, is totally without foundation. But, unfortunately, everybody does not know your brother, and if by any miserable misadventure there is a conviction, your father will never hold up his head again, and it will kill your mother.’

Susie moved restlessly. The red spots which had risen on her cheeks grew more burning, her lips parted, and showed the little white teeth within, as if her beautiful mouth was set in a ghastly grin, until Bennet feared to look at her. ‘Really, Miss Gray, your interest in us transcends everything--discretion, good-breeding, what shall I say? But I suppose I must excuse the liberty because of the excellence of the motive. I was not aware pap-pa was so fondly attached to Jack. Indeed, I was led to think that the old gentleman had come to regard his heir in the light in which many old gentlemen regard their heirs--as a ne’er-do-well from whom nothing good was to be expected.’

‘You know it was very different,’ cried Bennet, indignantly; ‘you know your father would have rejoiced to acknowledge his mistake, and would have been the first to relinquish it if time had been given him. You know that these unhappy misunderstandings only make matters harder to bear now.’

‘Upon my word, you give me credit for more knowledge than I possess,’ said Susie, with a slight supercilious gape. ‘You know,’ with an insolent imitation of Bennet’s manner, ‘that I never pretended to be anything save a simple woman, not a learned lady and female Solomon like you and Jane. I really don’t know the meaning of this tirade--forgive me once more; you see the bad effects of listening to objectionable language. Pap-pa and mam-ma are very thin-skinned if they take to heart all the foolish scrapes in which their children find themselves. Ain’t they concerned for me as well as for Jack?’ with a shrillness of jealous emphasis that rose into an imperious cry, setting at nought all Susie’s pretences of treating the whole business as a trifle. ‘I am their child as much as he is, and I have not brought discredit on them.’

Bennet refrained by a strong force put upon herself from saying there might be two opinions on that head. She was still seeking to induce her companion to do justice while justice could yet be done, to prevent the wicked offering up of Jack, and to persuade Susie to redeem her wrong-doing by a frank confession which should exonerate her brother and restore him without a reflection on his honour to his home and friends. At the same time, Bennet was honestly convinced that the right course would be the best for the culprit in every way. Bennet argued with herself that men’s and women’s positions are not the same. A man must do and suffer on his own account. But when a woman--especially a wife and mother--is betrayed into an unlawful act, every extenuating circumstance is remembered in her favour. It is always understood that she might not have been her own mistress. Every allowance is made for the constraining, if not compelling, influence of another person, whose difficulties might have tempted him to exercise his power in an unwarrantable fashion. Bennet tried to say all this in general terms, and then sought to bring it home to her hearer.

‘It is no secret now that Mr. Lambert Crabtree was deeply embarrassed. He may have thought, and made others think, that if he could tide over a particular date he would be saved. He may have believed that he could use and restore the money in time to escape detection; many men fall into that snare. It is the commonest of delusions, though, of course, it is not true, and it is not right--not right!’ repeated Bennet, unable, in her integrity, to persist in the euphemism; ‘it is to cross the boundary which divides honesty from dishonesty, to overstep the bounds that make a man a keeper or a plunderer of his neighbours’ goods. But oh! Susie Crabtree, don’t you see that all mercy and consideration will be shown to you if you will return to your duty and right Jack, whom you have so cruelly wronged? You need not even throw the blame on your husband. A wife is not called on to do that, and I have reason to think in this case it will be taken for granted, though not acted upon. Mr. Lambert Crabtree will not be arrested or placed in danger--there is no charge against him. You have simply to say it was you who unlocked the safe and took out the notes and bonds, that your brother had nothing to do with the robbery, and knew nothing of it any more than your innocent children knew.’

Bennet stopped abruptly, for Susie rose up flaming with wrath. ‘I have stood a good deal from you, Miss Gray, but this is too much. I have never dreamt of asking your advice, and you volunteer an opinion that I should criminate myself in a matter with which it seems you are better acquainted than I. Bonds? What bonds? I never heard of them. I am unable to follow you.’

The bonds had been mentioned in Susie’s presence before, but she had been too excited to notice the allusion. Poor Major Coplestone’s missing property meant nothing to her. She made a struggle to keep down her passion, and seeking to substitute haughtiness for anger, lapsed in a trice into feminine puerility. ‘Among other things I have to complain of,’ protested Susie tearfully, in the strength of her emotion, ‘while I address you as Miss Gray I do not see that you have the smallest title to call me “Susie Crabtree;” me, a married woman, the daughter of your employer! I think you must have lost your senses.’

Bennet thought she had.

At that moment a tap at the door was heard, and the disputants were interrupted by the entrance of Roger, carrying gingerly the baskets of pears and mushrooms on a large silver salver. He announced, in a voice which had grown both hollow and wheezy of late, ‘If you please, ma’am, some summer fruit from Redcot.’

Susie was herself again before the salver could be put on the table, or Roger could quit the room; she clapped her hands and tripped across to take the gift. ‘Oh, how charming! I did think mam-ma and Martha had been selfish and set aside all the mushrooms for ketchup.’ She picked out the largest and began to nibble at it, but suddenly threw it down with a fresh exclamation--‘Goodness! I forgot, they are not cooked. I hope I have not poisoned myself, though I daresay some people would think that not a great loss--only, of course,’ with a malicious, defiant glance at Bennet, ‘I should carry away all my secrets with me, which ought to make my life safe from conspirators.’ She went on flippantly, ‘Such things happen nowadays, bank robberies and the rest, that murders do not sound so much out of the way--do they? Are the pears for the babies? No, for mammy’s boy. I feel as if I should remember that he had some infantile taste of the kind--so very green, that like drinking milk and pulling daisies, they ought to be a warrant for his innocence.’

‘Good-bye, Mrs. Crabtree,’ said Bennet, without offering the hand which might have been scornfully rejected or softly clasped and tenderly squeezed as the humour of the new or the old Susie prevailed.

‘Good-bye, Miss Gray. Won’t you suggest the magpie theory at Redcot and supply the lawyers with a “wrinkle”?’ was Susie’s parting shot, and she looked not unlike a magpie herself at the instant she fired it.