"Not to anybody," answered Lee. "I thought I"d better bring it up here, sir, to begin with."
"And you"d better let it stop here to end with," retorted the Squire.
"That"s my best advice to you, Lee. My goodness! Accuse a respectable man"s son of what might transport him, on the authority of a drunken fellow who runs away from an inn without paying his bill! The likeliest thing is that this Cotton did it himself. How else should he know about it? Don"t you let your tongue carry this further, Lee, or you may find yourself in the wrong box."
Lee looked just a little staggered. A faint flush appeared in his withered face. The Squire"s colour was at its fiercest. He was hard at the best of times to take in extraordinary tales, and utterly scouted this one. There was no man he had a greater respect for than Thomas Rymer.
"I hoped you might be for prosecuting, sir. It would set me right with the world."
"You are a fool, Lee. The world has not thought you wrong yet.
Prosecute! I! Upon this c.o.c.k-and-bull story! Mr. Rymer would prosecute me in turn, I expect, if I did. You"d better not let this get to his ears: you might lose your post."
"Mr. Rymer, sir, must know how wild his son has been."
"Wild! Most of the young men of the present day are that, as it seems to me," cried the Squire, in his heat. "Mine had better not let me catch _them_ at it, though. I"d warm their ears well beforehand if I thought they ever would---- Do you hear, Mr. Johnny?"
I had been leaning on the back of a chair in the quietest corner for fear of being sent away. When the Squire put himself up like this, he would say anything.
"To be a bit wild is one thing, Lee; to commit felony quite another: Rymer"s son would be no more guilty of it than you would. It"s out of all reason. And do you take care of your tongue. Look here, man: suppose I took this up, as you want me, and it was found to have been Cotton or some other gaol-bird who did it, instead of young Rymer: where would you be? In prison for defamation of character, if the Rymers chose to put you there. Be wise in time, Lee, and say no more."
"It might have been as you say, sir--Cotton himself; though I"m sure that never struck me," returned Lee, veering round to the argument. "One thing that made me believe it, was knowing that Ben Rymer might easily get access to the letters."
"And that"s just the reason why you should have doubted it,"
contradicted the Squire. "He would be afraid to touch them because of the ease with which he could do it. Forgive you for coming up, you say?"
added the Squire, as Lee rose with some humble words of excuse. "Of course I will. But don"t forget that a word of this, dropped abroad, might put your place, as postman, in jeopardy."
"And that would never do," said Lee, shaking his head.
"_I_ should think not. It"s cold to-day, isn"t it?"
"Frightful cold, sir."
"And you could come through it with this improbable story! Use your sense another time, Lee. Here, Johnny, take Lee into the kitchen, and tell them to give him some cold beef and beer."
I handed him over, with the order, to Molly; who went into one of her tantrums at it, for she was in the midst of pastry-making. The Squire was sitting with his head bent, looking as perplexed as an owl, when I got back to the room.
"Johnny--shut the door. Something has come into my mind. Do you recollect Thomas Rymer"s coming up one evening, and wanting to give me a five-pound note?"
"Quite well, sir."
"Well; I--I am not so sure now that there"s nothing in this fresh tale."
I sat down; and in a low voice told him all. Of the fit of sobbing in which I had found Rymer that same night in the Ravine; and that I had known all along it _was_ the son who had done it.
"Bless my heart!" cried the Squire, softly, very much taken aback. "It"s that, perhaps, that has been making Rymer so ill."
"He said it was slowly killing him, sir."
"Mercy on him!--poor fellow! An ill-doing scapegrace of a rascal!
Johnny, how thankful we ought to be when our sons turn out well, and not ill! But I think a good many turn out ill nowadays. If you should live to have sons, sir, take care how you bring them up."
"I think Mr. Rymer must have tried to bring Ben up well," was my answer.
"Yes; but did the mother?" retorted the Squire. "More responsibility lies with them than with the father, Johnny; and she spoilt him. Take care, sir, how you choose a wife when the time comes. And there was that miserable lot the lad fell in with at Tewkesbury! Johnny, that Cotton must be an awful blackguard."
"I hope he"ll live to feel it."
"Look here, we must hush this up," cried the Squire, sinking his voice and glancing round the room. "I wouldn"t bring fresh pain on poor Rymer for the world. You must forget that you"ve told me, Johnny."
"Yes, that I will."
"It"s only a five-pound note, after all. And if it were fifty pounds, I wouldn"t stir in it. No, nor for five hundred; be hanged if I would!
It"s not I that would bring the world about Thomas Rymer"s ears. I knew his father and respected him, Johnny; though his sermons were three-quarters of an hour long, sometimes; and I respect Thomas Rymer.
You and I must keep this close. And I"ll make a journey to Timberdale when this snow-storm"s gone, Johnny, and frighten Jelf out of his life for propagating libellous tales."
That"s where it ought to have ended. The worst is, "oughts" don"t go for much in the world; as perhaps every reader of this paper has learned to know.
When Lee appeared the next morning with the letters as usual, I went out to him. He dropped his voice to speak, as he put them in my hand.
"They say Benjamin Rymer is off, sir."
"Off where?"
"Somewhere out of Timberdale."
"Off for what?"
"I don"t know, sir. Jelf accused me of having carried tales there, and called me a jacka.s.s for my pains. He said that what he had told me wasn"t meant to be repeated again, and I ought not to have gone telling it about, especially to the Rymers themselves; that it might not be true----"
"As the Squire said yesterday, you know, Lee."
"Yes, sir. I answered Jelf that it couldn"t have been me that had gone talking to the Rymers, for I had not as much as seen them. Any way, he said, somebody had, for they knew of it, and Benjamin had gone off in consequence. Jelf"s as cross over it as two sticks. It"s his own fault; why did he tell me what wasn"t true?"
Lee went off--looking cross also. After breakfast I related this to the Squire. He didn"t seem to like it, and walked about thinking.
"Johnny, I can"t stir in it, you see," he said presently. "If it got abroad, people might talk about compromising a felony, and all that sort of rubbish: and I am a magistrate. You must go. See Rymer: and make him understand--without telling him in so many words, you know--that there"s nothing to fear from me, and he may call Ben back again. If the young man has begun to lead a new life, Heaven forbid that I, having sons myself, should be a stumbling-block in the way of it."
It was striking twelve when I reached Timberdale. Margaret said her father was poorly, having gone out in the storm of the previous day and caught a chill. He was in the parlour alone, cowering over the fire. In the last few hours he seemed to have aged years. I shut the door.
"What has happened?" I whispered. "I have come on purpose to ask you."
"That which I have been dreading all along," he said in a quiet, hopeless tone. "Benjamin has run away. He got some information, it seems, from the landlord of the Plough and Harrow, and was off the next hour."
"Well, now, the Squire sent me to you privately, Mr. Rymer, to say that Ben might come back again. He has nothing to fear."
"The Squire knows it, then?"
"Yes. Lee came up about it yesterday: Jelf had talked to him. Mr.
Todhetley did not believe a word of it: he blew up Lee like anything for listening to such a tale; he means to blow up Jelf for repeating anything said by a vagabond like Cotton. Lee came round to his way of thinking. Indeed there"s nothing to be afraid of. Jelf is eating his words. The Squire would not harm your son for the world."