Pepperill went to the door, saw the back of Mr. Pooke as he walked away, and the faces of a number of workmen with pick and crowbar and shovel, backed by a crowd of all descriptions of persons from the village and neighbourhood.
He hesitated for some moments. He stood irresolute, holding the door-posts and working his nails at the paint, picking it off in flakes. His heart turned sick within him. If the heaps of cinders were thrown back, then surely the remains of Jason Quarm would be discovered, and with the discovery there would ensue an inquest, and much unpleasantness if not danger to himself. With low cunning he resolved to make the best of the inevitable. He shouted to his wife’
“Zerah! bring out cider for the good fellows. They are working for us, as you know. If you have saffron cake, out with that too. I daresay I shall find a shilling apiece as well.”
He went behind Pooke, slapped him on the back, and said boisterously’
“Well done, old man! That is what I wanted. If a thing has to be executed, let all be above-board and legal. That’s my doctrine. I don’t like no hole-and-corner proceedings. Meddlin’ wi’out authority makes the end a botch. If you hadn’t begun, I would have done it myself.”
In the house Zerah restrained Kitty with one hand and closed the door with the other. The woman was labouring for breath, so great was her excitement. Her face was now flushed, then became wan as death.
“Kitty, my darling,” she said, “I reckon I’ve been hard and exactin’ in the past. The old pass’n were right, though I wouldn’t believe him, and said he was insultin’ of me to say it. ’Twas love, he told, as you wanted, and I didn’t give it you. Love, the very air of heaven, wi’out which the little maid couldn’t thrive. I wi’held it from you’so he told’and I shut my ears and hardened my heart. But in the end he were right. When I found out what had been done, then it broke me down. I cannot respect and love him no longer. I tried my best when he was foolish and unfortunate. But now he’s guilty, I cannot’I cannot, and then all my love turns to you.”
Kitty threw herself into her aunt’s arms and sobbed.
“There’s no time now for tears,” said Zerah, with a gulp in her throat. “We cannot tell what is coming on us. It may be that the remains of your poor father will be found. If so, then’” Zerah shivered as if frost-smitten. “God bless us! It will be too horrible’to live under the same roof, to eat at the same table, to see the face, hear the voice of the man’” She was unable to conclude her sentence. After a long pause and a hug of Kitty, she continued: “I cannot say how it all came about. Bad as he may be, I hardly think he did it of purpose. ’Twas some accident. I don’t mean the burning the stores’but of your father. No; he was not so bad as that, please God! I hope, I trust not! Now, Kitty, you and I must make up our minds to whatever happens. And I reckon there is but one thing us can do.”
“What is that, dear auntie?”