and Mr. Cattle, and the two Misses Cattle, sat talking over them in Mr.
Tacchi"s parlour after supper. The Cattles were small farmers who lived about a mile out of Cowfold, on the way to Shott, but within Cowfold parish, and came to Cowfold Church.
"If," said Cattle, "they can prove as the fire broke out in three places at once, the office has got him."
"His stock," continued his wife, "to my certain knowledge, warn"t worth fifty pound, for I was in the shop a fortnight ago, and says I to myself, "What can the man have let it down like this for--who"d come here for anything; and it _did_ cross my mind as it was very odd, and I went home a thinking and a thinking, but of course I never dreamed as he was so awful wicked as this."
"He was always very peculiar, mother," said the elder Miss Cattle. "Do you remember, Carry," turning to her younger sister, "how he jumped out of the hedge that Sunday evening, just as we turned down our lane. Oh my, I never had such a fright--you might have knocked me down with a straw; and he never spoke, but walked straight on."
"He might have been nutting," said Giacomo--"he was always going out nutting; and perhaps he didn"t notice he had frightened you."
"Not notice! I am sure he might have done; and then, why did he come out just then, I should like to know. If he had come out just after we"d got by, I shouldn"t have thought so much of it."
"If the poor man was in the hedge, he must come out at some time, and it happened to be just then," observed Giacomo reflectively.
"Ah!" continued Carry, incapable of replying to Giacomo"s philosophy, and judiciously changing her attack, "whenever you went to buy anything he never spoke up to you like--there was always an underhand look about him; and then his living alone as he did with n.o.body but that old woman with him."
"He always sold good leather," continued Mr. Cattle, who planted both his elbows on the table, and placed his head in his hands in a fit of abstraction, much perplexed by this apparent contradiction in Cutts"s character.
"Sold good leather," retorted his wife with great sharpness, as if in contempt of her husband"s stupidity; "sold good leather--of course he did. That was part of his plan to make people believe he was an honest man. Besides, if he hadn"t, how could he have got rid of his stock as he did. Do you recollect," she proceeded with increasing asperity, as became a Cowfold matron, "as it was him as got up that pet.i.tion for that Catchpool gal as was going to be hanged for putting her baby in the pond?"
"His father," quoth Mr. Cattle, inclining again to his wife"s side, "had a gla.s.s eye, and I"ve heerd his mother was a Papist."
"Well," interrupted Miriam at last, "what if he did set fire to his house?"
They all looked amazed. "What if he did! what if he did!" repeated Mr.
Cattle; "why, it"s arson, that"s all."
"Oh, that"s saying the same thing over again."
"He"ll be transported, that"s "what if he did,"" interposed Mrs. Cattle.
"I suppose," said Miriam, "he wanted to get money out of the Insurance Office. It was wrong, but he hasn"t done much harm except to the office, and they can afford it."
They were all still more amazed, and justly, for Miriam, amongst her other peculiarities, did not comprehend how society necessarily readjusts the natural scale of reward and punishment.
""Pon--my--word," exclaimed Mrs. Cattle, after a long pause, slowly dwelling on each syllable, "hasn"t--done--much--harm; and for aught we know, in a month, or at most six weeks, he"ll be tried, and then after that, in a fortnight, he may be on his way to Botany Bay. What do you think, Mr. Tacchi?"
Giacomo did not occupy the same position as his daughter. His eyes were screwed very nearly, although not quite, to the conventional angle; but he loved her, and had too much sense not to see that she was often right and Cowfold was wrong. Moreover, he enjoyed her antagonism to the Cattles, of whose intellect he had not, as a clock and barometer maker, a very high opinion. He evaded the difficulty.
"He hasn"t been convicted yet."
"That"s true," said Mr. Cattle, to whom, as an Englishman, the principle of not pa.s.sing sentence till both sides are heard was happily familiar. It was a great thought with him, and he re-expressed it with earnestness--"That"s true enough."
But Miriam did not let them off. "I want to know if he is as bad as those contractors that father was reading about in the newspaper last week, who filled up the soldiers" boots between the soles with clay.
If they hadn"t been found out, the poor soldiers would have gone marching with those boots, and might have been out in the wet, and might have died."
"Ah!" retorted Miss Cattle, "that"s all very well; but that isn"t arson."
Miss Cattle was not quite so absurd as she seemed. The contractors"
crime was not catalogued with an ugly name. It was fraud or breach of contract, and that of course made all the difference.
Miriam did not notice her antagonist"s argument, but proceeded musingly--"He was never unkind. He was very good to that old woman, his aunt."
"Unkind!" Mrs. Cattle almost screamed, her harsh grating voice contrasting most unpleasantly with the low, indistinct, mellow tones in which Miriam had uttered the last two or three words. "Unkind! What"s that in a man as is a going to be brought up before the "sizes. I can see the judge a sentencing of him now."
"He may have been very poor, and may have lost all his money,"
continued Miriam; "anyhow, he wasn"t cruel. I would sooner have hung old Scrutton, who flogged little Jack Marshall for stealing apples till his back was all covered with b.l.o.o.d.y weals."
The clocks in the shop began at that moment to strike ten in a dozen different tones, as if they discerned the hopelessness of the discussion, and were determined to cut it short. The company consequently separated, and Miriam went to bed; but not to sleep, for before her eyes, half through the night, was sailing the ship in which she thought poor Cutts would be exiled. Let it not for a moment be supposed that Mr. Cutts was a young man, and that Miriam was in love with him. He was about fifty.
Next morning she was still more distressed. Sometimes the morning brings forgetfulness of the trouble of the day before, and at other times it revives with peculiar power just at the moment when we wake, especially if it be dark. Miriam was confused. The belief that she ought to do something if possible to help Cutts was just dawning upon her; but although she was singularly liable to be set fast to any purpose when once she had it clearly formed, it was always a long time before it became formed. She was not one of those happy persons whose thoughts are always beneath them, as the horses of a coach are beneath the driver, and can be directed this way or that way at his bidding.
She could not settle beforehand that she would think upon a given subject, and step by step disentangle its difficulties, and pursue it to the end. That is the result of continuous training, and of this she had had none. Ideas pa.s.sed through her mind with great rapidity, but they were spontaneous, and consequently disconnected, so that in difficulty the path was chosen without any balancing of the reasons on this and on the other side, which, forced the conclusion that it was the proper path to take.
A thousand things whirled through her brain. She had known all about Cutts before the conversation with the Cattles, or with the Cattle, as she generally called them; but the case had not struck her till they and she began to talk about it. She was in a great turmoil, and plans presented themselves to her, were discarded, and then presented themselves again as if they were quite new. The next night she slept well. More than ever was she impressed with horror at what seemed to be Cutts"s certain fate--more than ever was she resolved to help him if she could; and now at last she was a little clearer, and had determined to go over to the county town and see Messrs. Mortimer, Wake, Collins and Mortimer, the solicitors in whose hands the defence lay. She did not doubt it to be her duty to go, although Cutts was no more to her than to any other person in Cowfold, and she had no notion of what she was going to say to the lawyers when she saw them. On the following morning she started, under the pretence that she wanted something she could not obtain in Cowfold. Having no mother, and being manageress in a small way at home, these trips were not unusual. Courageous as she was, when she reached the office her heart sank, and she then first remembered that she had no very solid ground for her visit. She had brooded in her bedroom over Cutts, and had thought what a grand thing it would be to save him, but when she stepped inside Messrs. Mortimer"s door, and was face to face with a raised desk, protected by rails, behind which clerks were busy writing, or answering questions, her dreams disappeared; she saw what a fool she was, and she would have liked to retreat. However, it was too late, for one of the gentlemen, behind the rails asked what she wanted.
"I"ve come about Mr. Cutts."
"Oh yes; committed for arson at Cowfold. Sit down in that room for a few minutes. Mr. Mortimer will attend to you presently."
Miriam was shown into a little box-like den, in which there was a round, leather-covered table, with a couple of chairs, but no books, and no newspaper. She had to wait for twenty terrible minutes, in which her excitement increased to such a degree that once or twice she was on the point of rushing out past the clerks, and running back to Cowfold. But she did not do it, and after a while Mr. Mortimer entered.
"Well, Miss Tacchi, what can I do for you?" He was gentle in his behaviour, and he soothed by his first words poor Miriam"s flutter.
"Oh, if you please, sir, Mr. Cutts is not guilty."
"Why not?"
"It is a cruel thing that he should suffer. He is as kind a creature as ever lived. You don"t know how kind he has been to his old aunt.
He always sold honest things. There are scores of people in Cowfold who deserve to be transported more than he."
"That won"t help him much. Good people are a queer set sometimes. But why should _you_ interfere?"
"I cannot tell," replied Miriam, her voice beginning to shake; "but I thought and I thought over it, and it is so wrong, so unfair, so wicked, and I know the poor man so well. Why should they do anything to him?" She would have proceeded in the same strain, and would have compared the iniquity of arson with that of fraudulent contractors and the brutal Scrutton, but she checked herself. "He is not guilty," she added.
Mr. Mortimer was perplexed. He was accustomed in his profession to all kinds of concealment of motives, and he conjectured that there must be some secret of which he was unaware.
"Are you any relation?"
"No."
"Have you ever visited at his house, or has he been in the habit of calling at yours?"
"No."
He was still more perplexed. He could not comprehend, and might very well be excused for not comprehending, why the daughter of a respectable tradesman in Cowfold should walk six miles on behalf of a stranger, and be so anxious about him.
"One more question. You have had nothing whatever to do with Mr.
Cutts, except by going to his shop, and by talking to him now and then as a neighbour?"