A REMONSTRANCE WITH JACK.

As Bennet Gray descended the stairs at the Bank House, she felt too foiled and miserable to be exasperated. She was able, however, to turn over in her mind the distance to the meadows by the trout stream, and the possibility of overtaking a solitary fisher who might have started hours before. Then she suddenly caught through a lobby window a glimpse of Jack Prior walking in the garden, and her spirits rose like quicksilver.

Bennet had taken her resolution before she was at the foot of the stairs. She had a cunning enemy to do battle with for Jack and his father, for truth and right. Bennet must engage Susie with her own weapons, and condescend to stratagem, to which Miss Gray had vowed never to demean herself again, but it was in order to vanquish the common foe.

Bennet Gray was sufficiently familiar with the Bank House to know that there was a garden-door kept unlocked during the day, which, as in the case of several other garden-doors in the vicinity, opened into the suburban end of the High Street leading to the church, bank, etc. She relied on entering the garden by this door without letting any member of the family, unless, perhaps, the gardener, know that she was going to take a stroll among the beds and borders. She also recollected with her natural nimbleness of mind that there was a screen of tall osiers which divided the upper and kitchen garden from the lower, which was the flower garden. The osiers were purposely intended to shut out the view of prosaic forcing frames and vulgar turnips and onions from the windows of the house. Bennet could only trust that she might be able from the farther side of the screen to attract Jack’s attention and summon him to join her. If she did not gain a hearing from him in this way, she felt assured that Susie would not permit any meeting between them which would not be brought to a speedy conclusion by her intervention.

But as luck, or, as Bennet liked better to think, Providence ruled, Jack in his aimless loitering to get rid of his time and his wretchedness had sauntered to the upper part of the garden, and was actually standing alone there, idly contemplating a sprawling cucumber. Bennet walked in, and the occupant of the path looked up, manifestly startled, and took a step forward, then remembering all, lifted his hat, made a bow--formal for Jack--and positively said--‘Good morning, Miss Gray. Has Susie asked you to call the gardener? Shall I find him for you?’

Bennet would not have been astonished though the raising of Jack’s hat had shown him as white-headed as his father, for, though the brown locks which belonged to his five-and-twenty years had been spared, the haggardness which brought into prominent relief the heavy forehead, the deep-set eyes from which the sparkle had fled, the full drooping mouth, rendered the likeness otherwise doubly striking. But she was not to be put off with such a salutation from the young lover, who had found her in what many people would have called her obscurity, poverty, and drudgery, and been willing to throw up his prospects in order to go away and work with and for her. Bennet did what she could never have imagined herself doing, in her maidenly modesty, to mortal man--were he fortune’s first favourite. She went up to the trapped and betrayed lad, straight and swift as an arrow, and in response to his bow, his ‘Miss Gray,’ his ceremonious questions, she put her arms round his neck, before he knew what she was going to do, kissed him on the lips, and cried for explanation--‘Dear, dear Jack, I have found you!’

Inevitably Jack lost his head--the wisest son of Adam would have done it in the circumstances--forgot his solemn resolutions, clasped the woman whom he loved, and who loved him, to his heart, as if nothing on earth could ever come between them, and kissed her back again with interest.

At last he let her go, and drew away with a groan. ‘Ah! Bennet, it is like you to come like this, but it cannot be, my dear little woman.’ (Be it remembered that Bennet was as tall as Jack, but the male creature will assert his superiority in some fashion.) ‘It must not be, so that your kindness is harder to bear than coldness, though that is not your fault.’

‘No, no, Jack; never!’ she protested, coming close to him again, passing her arm through his and causing him, with a faint resistance on his part, to walk with her, ‘That would be doing away with all the good of Cousin Josh’s money. To think that I have never told you of my fortune!--that we, who are most concerned in it, have never had a single talk over it, though you have heard about it from others! Wasn’t it wonderful that it should come to the proper person just at the proper time? Why don’t you smile and agree with me? Don’t you know it is all to be plain sailing now in our affairs, after you have got out of this little mess?’

She talked eagerly for fully ten minutes, of what great things he and she would do with her money--what help they might render to Mr. Prior at Kershaw; what benefits they might confer on the miners; how much per cent. the two should give back of the rents to the farmers till their better days came; what cottages must be built; what pleasure found for Mrs. Prior and Jane; what treats for the children and Tommy.

It was as if she sought to dazzle him with a glimpse of all he was renouncing, to bribe him not to sacrifice it and her and himself.

Jack listened with his head bent down and his eyes on the ground, and said sorrowfully, ‘Good little woman!’ and ‘Kind, tender soul!’ by way of answer.

Then she spoke more to the purpose and besought him with all her might, as she had besought Susie, ‘For your father and mother’s sake, and for mine, Jack, if you do not care for yourself, I implore you tell all that you know without reservation. Mr. Cobb’ (naming Jack’s counsel) ‘says you are keeping something back, and that the mere impression you are doing so will go against you. He says he believes you have some idea how these keys came in the place where they were found, and your refusing to tell anything about them is sheer madness. It will not save her, there is sufficient proof to condemn her without that, and she will be screened behind her husband, though he has managed to escape the clutches of the law. Oh! you may be sure she will be dealt with gently on your father’s account, on Mat Crabtree’s, and because she may have been--no doubt she was--simply the tool of Lambert Crabtree. He appears to have kept her in the dark with regard to the chief motive for the crime--those Mexican and Peruvian bonds of poor Major Coplestone’s, which are missing to this day. Even at the worst, is it reasonable, is it right, is it fair to your people and me, is it loyal to God, to give up all, even to your good name and your liberty, to dare--oh, my God! to dare--being a convict, an outcast, for Susie, who decoyed and dragged you into the peril to lessen the risk for herself, without a thought of the consequences to you?’

But Jack only shook his head in a despairing negative. It may be that he was not far enough removed from his schoolboy career to have risen above the iron obligation in a school-boy’s code of honour. He would let nothing--no breach of the laws, human or divine--force him to become an informer. He would die rather than tell tales.

Jack could not turn against his sister, proclaim what he now understood perfectly, cut away possibly the last solid ground from under her feet, and leave her cowering alone, hooted by her fellows, before a judgment seat. He could not--no, not even for Bennet Gray or his mother, or anything or anybody that Redcot and the future might hold for him.

‘If it come to the worst and things go against me,’ said poor Jack, with something like a sob in his voice, ‘you will stay on with them, dear, at Redcot. Perhaps it is selfish to you to think of it, but you are alone in the world, and I know you too well to believe you will mind the disgrace they have not deserved. You will still let the old house be your home, and fill a daughter’s place there after all. You will try and make up for what I have been and done in some of the ways you have been describing so nicely. You will do it far better than I ever should, and I fancy it will be a comfort both to you and to them--I tell you it will be a thundering comfort to me, Bennet. You will be better to the mother than ten sons, and it will be I who gave you to her.’

Bennet was crying as quietly as she could, not to distress him. ‘Your mother does not like me, Jack,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I thought I had won her regard when she only knew me as a schoolmistress and Jane’s friend. But she cannot forgive me, and I do not deserve it, for deceiving her, after I had come between you.’

‘Oh! all that will pass,’ said Jack, with the ghost of his old, cheery confidence. ‘The mother is not one to bear malice long. There is no fellow going half so generous, unless it be yourself. She will be very fond of you.’

‘If it were your father,’ said Bennet, smiling faintly through her tears, ‘I could have more faith in it.’

‘I hear you are great friends with the governor,’ said Jack, brightening again. ‘All right. Mat Crabtree--he is a good fellow, Mat--told me about it. Well, though my father made enough of me as a boy, to be admitted to his friendship as a man was an honour he never conferred on me.’

‘Oh! Jack, if you had only been patient and tried to understand and please him! He is generous, too, and he has suffered so much. I am sure he has a good heart and cares for you--your mother does not care more.’

Jack shrugged his shoulders slightly, but he said ‘All right’ again. ‘Poor old chap, I have been little help or credit to him; but I have brought you to him also, and I hope I am not such a heartless beast as to resent my loss being his gain. I am glad of it.’

There was a pause, and Jack’s eye fell on a half-withered red rose which Bennet was wearing. She had forgotten it was the time of roses, but she had mechanically accepted a rose from one of the children, and fastened it in the lace of her dress.

‘Will you give me that rose, Bennet?’ he asked, putting up his hand.

‘Not this half-withered thing,’ she objected, covering it with her own hand. ‘Sam picked it and gave it to me. It has only a quarter of an inch of stalk, and has lost half its leaves. If I had noticed, I should have taken it out and flung it away. It is not worth your having. I’ll give you a basket of roses, and pay the price of falling fathoms in the estimation of Robert, the gardener, if you will come out to Redcot, as Jane bade me make you come. No? Then I shall venture out from behind the screen and gather for you the very finest Bank House rose. It is not too good for you, Jack; if you are not entitled to it I don’t know who is,’ she said, with some bitterness.

‘A Bank House rose!’ he exclaimed, with a frown; ‘there would be a scorpion in the flower. What do I care for the Bank House roses? It would be well if I had never seen them. That is not saying too much. No, Bennet,’ covering her hand with his, ‘this one Redcot rose, which you have worn, from you,’ and he had it instantly.

Jack openly accompanied Miss Gray to the Redcot phaeton, and put her in before any portion of the public that chose to look on and say it was a shame of the Priors to throw a fine-looking, lady-like girl, such as the little Woods’ governess, in the way of the reprobate Jack Prior had proved himself--a fellow as good as convicted of felony. Abduction, or any kindred crime, would be nothing to him. Had the girl no friends to look after her and take her away from Redcot, since this was the manner in which the Priors made use of her?

Jack could not be brought to say that he would come out to Redcot, and Bennet knew that he would not come. She knew almost as well as if he had told her that in his own mind he thought it was not unlikely he had seen the last of his father’s house, where he was born, of which he and Bennet should have been master and mistress in their turn; he was probably bound for very different quarters--all Susie’s doing. Yet he could not curse Susie any more than he could denounce her. He could only wonder at her, awe and horror struggling with an inexpressible pity in his heart. Susie, his lovely, mischievous, little sister, his kind, merry hostess many a time--a Delilah, a Jezebel! It was incredible, but, if it could be believed, the grief of it melted rather than hardened him.

Bennet was driving back full of care and sorrow. Yet the pleasure of having been with Jack had been great, the assurance of his love and that she was a comfort to him, though not in the way she wanted, very sweet. She half forgot the misery of the admission that her errand had been a double failure till she saw John Prior’s tall, gaunt figure plodding along the road in the hot afternoon sun to meet her. He had been so impatient for her news that he could not wait for the arrival of the phaeton, and sought to forestall it. She got out to walk with him and tell him everything from a full heart. Her story was not finished when they were nearing the house, and he made her turn aside till the two were at the entrance to Redcot Quarry. Everything was green and luxuriant still, though the songs of the birds were well-nigh over, and the brambles were shedding their blossoms. The dim outline of a footpath, a single track, meandered up among the rocks and bushes. Mr. Prior held out his hand to lead Bennet to the higher ground. She followed him, a little surprised, but still thinking most of finishing her tale.

He let her end it, then suddenly broke in, ‘Look there.’ She followed the direction of his eyes and hand, but saw nothing except the low-lying Ladslove meadows, with their cattle magnified in the sunny haze. She turned mystified, troubled eyes back upon him.

‘Miss Gray,’ he said--and she had a keen apprehension that his manner was a little wild--‘let me tell you before the burden drag me down to the nethermost pit. There is coal in these meadows. I am acquainted with the very spot beneath which the mineral lies. I could have pointed out the place--as it happened it was beneath our very feet when Lambert Crabtree begged and bullied me to tell him what I knew. He warned me what would be the result of my silence, and his words were not quite as idle tales to me, though I must say, in justice to myself, I paid little heed to the most savage of his insinuations. I played the dog in the manger, for I could not use the secret, which I withheld from him when it might have saved him--saved the bank--saved Susie and Jack.’

Bennet took it all in, words and meaning. A dimness came over her eyes, and a sick thrill to her heart, as she realised for a moment what might have been, which John Prior showed her. Jack, free and fearless, light-hearted as of old, without a cloud the size of a man’s hand on his horizon; even Susie’s fair fame untouched; the bank solvent, its clients uninjured; Bennet’s money making everything easy at Redcot, Mr. Prior her firm friend, Jane her sworn ally, Mrs. Prior reconciled--cordiality and satisfaction on every hand.

But she shook off the demoralising effect of dwelling on the dream, which had not been fulfilled. She looked piteously in the worn face, which was like Jack’s grown old--nay, Jack’s with such remorse and misery looking out of the hollow eyes, such suffering in the deep lines about the mouth, as Jack, in his regret and self-reproach and horrified appreciation of the situation, had never experienced. For Bennet comprehended at this moment, with a flash of intuition, that John Prior’s lot in the matter had been harder even than his son’s.

‘You did it for the best,’ she said slowly and softly; ‘all a man’s instincts must have risen up against yielding to such unmanly pressure as was put upon you. Perhaps, though you had given in, there would not have been time. The discovery of the coal might not have staved off the temptation and ruin. You could not foresee the course of events.’

‘You are a good woman,’ he said abruptly, turning to go home, ‘like her in the house there. She does not know this, but she was always of opinion that I bore hard upon the boy, yet she has not once referred to it, or blamed me by word or look, during these last wretched weeks. Poor Jack and I have been alike in this--that we have fared better than most men, infinitely better than we deserved, where women were concerned.’

‘Do not say that,’ she entreated, ‘though it is good of you. Jack knows now how much you have cared for him all the time. I believe he is more sorry for you than for himself. He says he was little help or credit to you--but he would have been in time. Oh! Mr. Prior, take heart, and he will yet be a good squire and master----’

‘Good Lord,’ muttered John Prior, ‘a squire who has been tried for a bank robbery! A coal owner who has been in the dock--not for manslaughter, not because his negligence has caused accidents with loss of life in his pits, but because he was privy to a burglary from which the most hardened poacher among the men would have held aloof!’

‘It is not true,’ said Bennet; ‘and a lie can always be lived down.’