"I know'd--I know'd it all along," said Old Gemp to his friends, for the
excitement of his loss seemed now to have acted in an opposite direction
and to be giving him strength. "I know'd he couldn't be living at that
rate unless things was going wrong. What did the magistrates say?"
"Said it was a black case, and committed him for trial," replied
Gorringe the tailor. "Ah, I don't say that clothes is everything, Mr
Gemp; but a well-made suit makes a gentleman of a man, and you never
heard of Mr Thickens doing aught amiss."
"Nor me neither, eh, Gorringe? and you've made my clothes ever since
you've been in business."
The tailor looked with disgust at his neighbour's shabby, well-worn
garments, and remained silent.
"I'd have been in the court mysen, Gorringe, on'y old Luttrell said he
wouldn't be answerable for my life if I got excited again, and I don't
want to die yet, neighbour; there's a deal for me to see to in this
world."
"Got your money, haven't you?"
"Ye-es, I've got my money, and it's put away safe; but I wanted my
deeds--my writings. I've lost by that scoundrel, horribly."
"Ah, well, it might have been worse," said Gorringe, giving a snip with
his scissors that made Gemp start as if it were his own well-frayed
thread of life being cut through.
"Oh, of course it might have been worse; but a lot of us have lost, eh,
neighbour?"
"Dixons' and Sir Gordon have come down very handsome over it," said
Gorringe, who was designing a garment, as he called it, with a piece of
French chalk.
"And the parson," said Gemp; "only to think of it--a parson, a curate,
with one-and-twenty thousand pound in his pocket."
"Ay, it come in handy," said Gorringe.
"Now, where did he get that money, eh? It's a wonderful sight for a man
like him," said Gemp, with a suspicious look.
"London. I heerd tell that he said he had been to London to get it."
"Ay, he said so," cried Gemp, shaking his head, "but it looks
suspicious, mun. Here was he hand and glove with the Hallams, always at
their house and mixed up like. I want to know where he got that money.
I say, sir, that a curate with twenty thousand pound of his own is a
sort o' monster as ought to be levelled down."
The tailor pushed up his glasses to the roots of his hair, and left off
his work to hold up his shears menacingly at his crony.
"Gemp, old man," he said, "I would not be such a cantankerous,
suspicious old magpie as you for a hundred pounds; and look here, if
you're going to pull buttons off the back o' parson's coat, go and do it
somewhere else, and not in my shop."
"Oh! you needn't be so up," said Gemp. "Look here," he cried, pointing
straight at his friend, "what did Thickens say about the writings?"
"Spoke fair as a man could speak," said Gorringe, resuming his
architectural designs in chalk and cloth, "said he felt uncomfortable
about the matter first when he saw Hallam give a package to a man named
Crellock--chap who often come down to see him; that he was suspicious
like that for two years, but never had an opportunity of doing more than
be doubtful till just lately."
"Why didn't he speak out to a friend--say to a man like me?"
"Because, I'm telling you, it was only suspicion. Hallam managed the
thing very artfully, and threw dust in Thickens's eyes; but last of all
he see his way clear, and went and told parson. And just then Sir
Gordon were suspicious, too, and had got something to go upon, and they
nabbed my gentleman just as he was going away."
"And do you believe all this?" cried Gemp.
"To be sure I do. Don't you?"
"Tchah! I'm afraid they're all in it."
"Ah! well, I'm not; and, as we've nothing to lose, I don't care."
"How did Hallam look?"
"Very white; and, my word! he did give parson a look when he was called
up to give his evidence. He looked black at Thickens and at Sir Gordon,
but he seemed regularly savage with parson."
"Ah, to be sure!" cried Gemp. "What did I say about being thick with
parson? It's my belief that if all had their deserts parson would be
standing in the dock alongside o' Hallam."
"And it's my belief, Gemp, that you're about the silliest owd maulkin
that ever stepped! There, I won't quarrel with thee. Parson? Pshaw!"
"Well, thou'lt see, mun, thou'lt see! Committed for trial, eh? And how
about the other fellow!"
"What, Crellock? Oh, they've got him too. He came smelling after
Hallam, who was like a decoy bird to him. Wanted to see him in the
cage; and they let him see Hallam, and--"
"Ah, I heard that Hallam told the constable Crellock was worse than he,
and they took him too. Yes, I heard that. Hallo! here comes Hallam's
maid--doctor's owd lass, Thisbe. Let's get a word wi' her."
Gemp shuffled out of the tailor's shop, and made for Thisbe, who was
coming down the street, with her head up and her nose in the air.
"Mornin', good mornin'," he said, with one of his most amiable grins.
"I didn't say it wasn't," said Thisbe sharply; and she went straight on
to Miss Heathery's, knocked sharply, and waited, gazing defiantly about
the place the while.
"Well, she's a stinger, she is!" muttered Gemp, standing scraping away
at his face with his forefinger. "Do her good to be married, and hev
some one with the rule over her. Humph! she's gone. Now what does she
want there?"
The answer was very simple, though it was full of mystery to Gemp.
Thisbe wanted her mistress and the child, who had gone to Miss
Heathery's after dark, Millicent's soul revolting against the idea of
staying at the old home now that it was in the possession of Christie
Bayle, her husband's bitterest foe.
The gossips were quite correct. Hallam had been examined thrice before
the county magistrates, and enough had been traced to prove that for a
long time he had been speculating largely, losing, and making up his
losses by pledging, at one particular bank, the valuable securities with
which Dixons' strong-room was charged. When one of these was wanted he
pledged another and redeemed it, while altogether the losses were so
heavy that, had not the old bank proprietors been very wealthy men,
Dixons' must have gone.
"Now, where's she a-going, neighbour?" said Gemp, scraping away at his
stubbly face. "I don't feel up to it like I did, but I shall have to
see."
Gorringe peered through his glasses and the window at the figure in
black that had just left Miss Heathery's, leaning on Thisbe's arm for a
few moments, and then, as if by an effort, drawing herself up and
walking alone.
The day was lovely, the sky of the deepest blue; the sun seemed to be
brightening every corner of the whole town, and making the flowers blink
and brighten, and the sparrows that haunted the eaves to be in a state
of the greatest excitement. King's Castor had never looked more
quaintly picturesque and homelike, more the beau-ideal of an old English
country town, from the coaching inn with yellow post-chaise outside, and
the blue-jacketed postboy with his unnecessarily knotted whip, down to
the vegetable stall at the corner of the market, where old Mrs Dims sat
on an ancient rush-bottomed chair, with her feet in a brown earthenware
bread-pancheon to keep them dry.
Mrs Pinet's flower-pots were so red that they seemed like the blossoms
of her plants growing unnaturally beneath the leaves, and her window,
and every one else's panes, shone and glittered with the true country
brilliancy in the morning sun. Even the grass looked green growing
between the cobble-stones--those pebbles that gave the town the aspect
that, being essentially pastoral, the inhabitants had decided, out of
compliment to their farm neighbours, to pave it with sheep's kidneys.
But there was one blot upon it--one ugly scar, where the yellow deal
boards had been newly nailed up, and the walls and window-frames were
blackened with smoke; and it was when passing these ruins of her home
that Millicent Hallam first shuddered, and then drew herself up to walk
firmly by.
"Ah!" said Gorringe, making his shears click, "you wouldn't feel happy
if you didn't know what was going on, would you, neighbour?"
"Eh? Know? Of course not. If it hadn't been for me looking after the
bank, where would you have all been, eh?"
Gemp spoke savagely, and pointed at the tailor as if he were going to
bore a hole in his chest.
"Well, p'r'aps you did some good there, Master Gemp; but if you'd take
my advice, you'd go home and keep yoursen quiet. I wouldn't get excited
about nothing, if I was you."
"Humph! No, you wouldn't, Master Gorringe; but some folk is different
to others," said Gemp, talking away from the doorway, with his head
outside, as he peered down the street.
"Hey! look at 'em now!--the curiosity of these women folk! Here's owd
Mother Pinet with her neck stretched out o' window, and Barton at the
shop, and Cross at the `Chequers,' and Dawson the carrier, all got their
heads out, staring after that woman. Now, where's she going, I wonder?"
Old Gemp stumped back into the shop, shaving away at his cheek.
"She can't be going over to Lindum to see Hallam, because she went
yesterday."
The tailor's shears clicked as a corner was taken out of a piece of
cloth.
"She ain't going up to the doctor's, because he drove by half-an-hour
ago with the owd lady."
Another click.
"Can't be going for a walk. Wouldn't go for a walk at a time like this.
I've often wondered why folk do go for walks, Master Gorringe. I never
did."
_Click_!
"Nay, Master Gemp, you could always find enough to see and do in the
town, eh?"
"Plenty! plenty, mun, plenty!--I've got it!"
"Eh?"
"She's going--Hallam's wife, yonder--to see owd Sir Gordon, and beg
Hallam off; and, look here, I wean't hev it!"
Gemp banged his stick down upon the counter in a way that made the cloth
spread thereon rise in waves, and became very broad of speech here,
though it was a matter of pride amongst the Castor people that they
spoke the purest English in the county, and were not broad of utterance,
like the people on the wolds, and "down in the marsh."