The assizes were held, and passed. One hot day, when July was
nearing its meridian, word was brought to Miss Cockermuth--who was
charitable--that a poor sick woman whom she befriended, was worse than
usual, so she put on her bonnet and cloak to pay her a visit. The
bonnet was a huge Leghorn, which shaded her face well from the sun, its
trimming of straw colour; and the cloak was of thin black "taffeta,"
edged with narrow lace. It was a long walk on a hot afternoon, for the
sick woman lived but just on this side Henwick. Miss Betty had got as
far as the bridge, and was about to cross it when Sam Dene, coming over
it at a strapping pace, ran against her.
"Miss Betty!" he cried. "I beg your pardon."
Miss Betty brought her bonnet from under the shade of her large
grass-green parasol. "Dear me, is it you, Sam Dene?" she said. "Were you
walking for a wager?"
Sam laughed a little. "I was hastening back to my office, Miss Betty. I
have no clerk, you know, and a client _might_ come in."
Miss Betty gave her head a twist, something between a nod and a shake;
she noticed the doubtful tone in the "might." "Very hot, isn't it?" said
she. "I'm going up to see that poor Hester Knowles; she's uncommon bad,
I hear."
"You'll have a warm walk."
"Ay. Are you pretty well, Sam? You look thin."
"Do I? Oh, that's nothing but the heat of the weather. I am quite well,
thank you. Good-afternoon, Miss Betty."
She shook his hand heartily. One of Sam's worst enemies, who might have
run in a curricle with Charles Cockermuth, as to an out-and-out belief
in his guilt, was passing at the moment, and saw it.
Miss Betty crossed the bridge, turned off into Turkey, for it was
through those classical regions that her nearest and coolest way lay,
and so onwards to the sick woman's room. There she found the blazing
July sun streaming in at the wide window, which had no blind, no shelter
whatever from it. Miss Betty had had enough of the sun out-of-doors,
without having it in. Done up with the walk and the heat, she sat down
on the first chair, and felt ready to swoon right off.
"Dear me, Hester, this is bad for you!" she gasped.
"Did you mean the sun, ma'am?" asked the sick woman, who was sitting
full in it, wrapped in a blanket or two. "It is a little hot just now,
but I don't grumble at it; I'm so cold mostly. As soon as the sun goes
off the window, I shall begin to shiver."
"Well-a-day!" responded Miss Betty, wishing she could be cool enough to
shiver. "But if you feel it cold now, Hester, what will you do when the
autumn winds come on?"
"Ah, ma'am, please do not talk of it! I just can't tell what I shall do.
That window don't fit tight, and the way the wind pours in through it
upon me as I sit here at evening, or lie in my little bed there, passes
belief. I'm coughing always then."
"You should have some good thick curtains put up," said Miss Betty,
gazing at the bare window, which had a pot of musk on its sill. "Woollen
ones."
The sick woman smiled sadly. She was very poor now, though it had not
always been so; she might as well have hoped to buy the sun itself as
woollen curtains--or cotton curtains either. Miss Betty knew that.
"I'll think about it, Hester, and see if I've any old ones that I could
let you have. I'm not sure; but I'll look," repeated she--and began to
empty her capacious dimity pockets of a few items of good things she had
brought.
By-and-by, when she was a little cooler, and had talked with Hester,
Miss Betty set off home again, her mind running upon the half-promised
curtains. "They are properly shabby," thought she, as she went along,
"but they'll serve to keep the sun and the wind off her."
She was thinking of those warm green curtains that she had picked the
braid from that past disastrous morning--as the reader heard of, and all
the town as well. Nothing had been done with them since.
Getting home, Miss Betty turned into the parlour. Susan--who had not
yet found leisure to fix any time for her wedding--found her mistress
fanning her hot face, her bonnet untied and tilted back.
"I've been to see that poor Hester Knowles, Susan," began Miss Betty.
"Law, ma'am!" interposed Susan. "What a walk for you this scorching
afternoon! All up that wide New Road!"
"You may well say that, girl: but I went Turkey away. She's very ill,
poor thing; and that's a frightfully staring window of hers, the sun on
it like a blazing fire, and not as much as a rag for a blind; and the
window don't fit, she says, and in cold weather the biting wind comes in
and shivers her up. I think I might give her those shabby old curtains,
Susan--that were up in Mr. Philip's room, you know, before we got the
new chintz ones in."
"So you might, ma'am," said Susan, who was not a bad-hearted girl,
excepting to the baker's man. "They can't go up at any of our windows as
they be; and if you had 'em dyed, I don't know as they'd answer much,
being so shabby."
"I put them--let me see--into the spare ottoman, didn't I? Yes, that was
it. And there I suppose they must be lying still."
"Sure enough, Miss Betty," said Susan. "I've not touched 'em."
"Nor I," said Miss Betty. "With all the trouble that got into our house
at that time, I couldn't give my mind to seeing after the old things,
and I've not thought about them since. Come upstairs with me now, Susan;
we'll see what sort of a state they are in."
They went up; and Miss Betty took off her bonnet and cloak and put
her cap on. The spare ottoman, soft, and red, and ancient, used as a
receptacle for odds and ends that were not wanted, stood in a spacious
linen-closet on the first-floor landing. It was built out over the
back-door, and had a skylight above. Susan threw back the lid of the
ottoman, and Miss Betty stood by. The faded old brown curtains, green
once, lay in a heap at one end, just as Miss Betty had hastily flung
them in that past day in March, when on her way to look at the chintzes.
"They're in a fine rabble, seemingly," observed Susan, pausing to regard
the curtains.
"Dear me!" cried Miss Betty, conscience-stricken, for she was a careful
housewife, "I let them drop in any way, I remember. I did mean to have
them well shaken out-of-doors and properly folded, but that bother drove
it all out of my head. Take them out, girl."
Susan put her strong arms underneath the heap and lifted it out with
a fling. Something heavy flew out of the curtains, and dropped on the
boarded floor with a crash. Letting fall the curtains, Susan gave a
wild shriek of terror and Miss Betty gave a wilder, for the floor was
suddenly covered with shining gold coins. Mr. Cockermuth, passing across
the passage below at the moment, heard the cries, wondered whether the
house was on fire, and came hastening up.
"Oh," said he coolly, taking in the aspect of affairs. "So the thief was
you, Betty, after all!"
He picked up the ebony box, and bent his head to look at the guineas.
Miss Betty sank down on a three-legged stool--brought in for Philip's
children--and grew as white as death.
Yes, it was the missing box of guineas, come to light in the same
extraordinary and unexpected manner that it had come before, without
having been (as may be said) truly lost. When Miss Betty gathered her
curtains off the dining-room table that March morning, a cumbersome and
weighty heap, she had unwittingly gathered up the box with them. No
wonder Sam Dene had not seen the box on the table after Miss Betty's
departure! It was a grievous misfortune, though, that he failed to take
notice it was not there.
She had no idea she was not speaking truth in saying she saw the box
on the table as she left the room. Having seen the box there all the
morning she thought it was there still, and that she saw it, being quite
unconscious that it was in her arms. Susan, too, had noticed the box on
the table when she opened the door to call her mistress, and believed
she was correct in saying she saw it there to the last: the real fact
being that she had not observed it was gone. So there the box with
its golden freight had lain undisturbed, hidden in the folds of the
curtains. But for Hester Knowles's defective window, it might have
stayed there still, who can say how long?
Susan, no less scared than her mistress, stood back against the closet
wall for safety, out of reach of those diabolical coins; Miss Betty,
groaning and half-fainting on the three-legged stool, sat pushing back
her cap and her front. The lawyer picked up the guineas and counted them
as he laid them flat in the box. Sixty of them: not one missing. So
Sam's guinea _was_ his own! He had not, as Worcester whispered, trumped
up the story with Maria Parslet.
"John," gasped poor Miss Betty, beside herself with remorse and terror,
"John, what will become of me now? Will anything be done?"
"How 'done'?" asked he.
"Will they bring me to trial--or anything of that--in poor Sam's place?"
"Well, I don't know," answered her brother grimly; "perhaps not this
time. But I'd have you take more care in future, Betty, than to hide
away gold in old curtains."
Locking the box securely within his iron safe, Mr. Cockermuth put on
his hat and went down to the town hall, where the magistrates, after
dispensing their wisdom, were about to disperse for the day. He told
them of the wonderful recovery of the box of guineas, of how it had been
lost, and that Sam Dene was wholly innocent. Their worships were of
course charmed to hear it, Mr. Whitewicker observing that they had only
judged Sam by appearances, and that appearances had been sufficient (in
theory) to hang him.
From the town hall, Mr. Cockermuth turned off to Sam's office. Sam was
making a great show of business, surrounded by a tableful of imposing
parchments, but with never a client to the fore. His old master grasped
his hand.
"Well, Sam, my boy," he said, "the tables have turned for you. That box
of guineas is found."
Sam never spoke an answering word. His lips parted with expectation: his
breath seemed to be a little short.
"Betty had got it all the time. She managed somehow to pick it up
off the table with those wretched old curtains she had there, all
unconsciously, of course, and it has lain hidden with the curtains
upstairs in a lumber-box ever since. Betty will never forgive herself.
She'll have a fit of the jaundice over this."