“Then why not go to Mr Dixon?”
Thickens shook his head.
“Mr Trampleasure? or Sir Gordon Bourne?”
“They’ll know soon enough,” said Thickens grimly. A curious feeling of horror came over Bayle, as he heard these words, the cold, damp dew gathered on his brow, his hands felt moist, and his heart began to beat heavily.
He could not have told why this was, only that a vague sense of some terrible horror oppressed him. He felt that he was about to receive some blow, and that he was weak, unnerved, and unprepared for the shock, just when he required all his faculties to be at their strongest and best.
And yet the clerk had said so little—nothing that could be considered as leading up to the horror the hearer foresaw. All the same though, Bayle’s imagination seized upon the few scant words—those few dry bones of utterance, clothed them with flesh, and made of them giants of terror before whose presence he shook and felt cowed.
“Tell me,” he said at last, and his voice sounded strange to him, “tell me all.”
There was another pause, and then Thickens, who looked singularly troubled and grey, sat up.
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll tell you all. I can trust you, Mr Bayle. I don’t come to you because you are a priest, but because you are a man—a gentleman who will help me, and I want to do what’s right.”
“I know—I believe you do, Thickens,” said the curate huskily, and he looked at him almost reproachfully, as if blaming him for the pain that he was about to give.