johnson made no further attempt to leave. he sat down again. he was too much taken aback to speak. yet mechanically he repeated the words of miss arnott, as if the more clearly to convey their meaning to his mind.
"you paid my debts? for what reason, may i ask?"
"because i love you!"
"how did you know that i owed money?" inquired the minister, ignoring the confession, which, in truth, confused him beyond measure.
miss arnott smiled. "your indebtedness is everybody's secret," she replied quietly. "your servant found some accounts which you carelessly left lying about, and, as servants will, she talked about them freely. i could not but hear something of this gossip. in fact, i heard you were in difficulties. i wondered how best i could help you. i decided that the first thing to do was to obtain a list of your liabilities--without your knowledge, of course."
"why so? had you spoken openly to me----"
"you would not have accepted my help. oh! believe me, i know your proud nature. not even your devotional life has had any effect upon that. at least you would have wanted to know my reason for wishing to help you, and that i could not have given you at that time, for you stood well with the world then. i can tell it to you now--in one word. love! my love for you!"
"the love of one christian for another, i hope."
"no! it is not." miss arnott struck her breast theatrically. her whole attitude now was reminiscent of her early profession. "it is the love of a woman for a man--the passion which, once in her lifetime, is born in the breast of every mortal woman--ay, and of every man. it is no artificial creation of christianity."
"you speak wickedly," said the minister, agitated and shocked.
"i speak humanly--as a woman whose life's happiness is at stake. do not misunderstand me, mr. johnson. i joined your denomination knowing full well that it was for the salvation of my immortal soul. i was called to grace, and i left my life of amusement and worldly vanities. but the old leaven is here--here," and she struck her breast again. "for ten years have i laboured to erase the evil of my past life. but i have laboured in vain. when i saw you, i--i loved you. even my faith seemed as nothing then, beside the hope of becoming your wife: your wife--your wife; let me say it. you came between me and my creator, try as i would to banish you from my thoughts. in vain, in vain; all in vain were my prayers. nature was, nature is, too strong for me. i love you. i love you--let all else go!"
"miss arnott, i really cannot listen to this," said johnson. her absolute abandonment scandalized and pained him. he rose to go.
"sit down!" she said, imperiously. "we must understand each other. first, then, let us discuss your position, and see how best you can escape the danger which threatens you. i may be able to help you."
"i don't think so." johnson shook his head despondently. nevertheless, he resumed his seat.
"we shall see. a woman's wit can oftentimes achieve more than a man's logic. that order for women to be silent was a mistake on the part of st. paul. nine men out of ten owe what is best in their lives to the advice of their wives or their mothers. tell me how matters stand with you."
"believe me, i am glad to make you my confidante, miss arnott. god knows i need a friend."
"i am your friend--more than your friend. have i not proved at least my desire for your welfare? trivial, perhaps, of itself, my action in paying your bills shows that. it was i who placed the receipts on your study table."
johnson looked up quickly. "then it was you who took away the bills?"
"it was i," rejoined miss arnott, composedly; "what else could i do? it was necessary that i should have a list of your creditors. so i watched at your window to see where you left your accounts. i came through the fence which divides your house from mine; you know it is broken in several parts."
"then it was your footsteps i heard?"
"it was, mr. johnson. i saw you looking at the pearls and your accounts. i feared lest in your great stress you might be tempted to sell that girl's treasure. i determined to have those bills. on hearing my step you came out, and left them on the table."
"yes, i did. but i could not see you."
"of course not. the moment i saw you move i stepped back into my own grounds. you replaced the pearls in the bag. when you looked round i was behind the fence watching you. then when i saw you go out and into the street, i seized my opportunity. i ran in quickly and took the bills. i copied the names and addresses of your creditors, with the amounts owing to each, and a day or so later i restored the accounts during your absence. then i went to london and paid every one of them. your creditors one and all promised me absolute silence. and one day i watched my opportunity and placed the receipts on your desk."
he looked gloomily at the woman. she seemed to attach but little importance to what she had done. there was nothing theatrical about her now. she told it quite simply. he kept looking at her.
"you have done me a kindness," he said, "and i thank you for it. but by doing it you have unconsciously added to the difficulties of my position. it is known that my debts have been paid. i am suspected of having stolen bithiah's pearls in order to pay them. how am i to repudiate this?"
"easily enough. i can tell the congregation of bethgamul what i have told you."
"that may exonerate me in part, miss arnott. but i shall be severely censured by the congregation for having accepted monetary aid from a woman--a stranger, so to speak."
"there are two answers to that," replied miss arnott, quietly. "in the first place, i aided you without your knowledge. in the second, you have only to tell the congregation that i am your promised wife, and no one of them can say a word!"
johnson became agitated. "i cannot say that you are my promised wife," he said. "i cannot lie to them."
"why need it be a lie? can you not marry me?"
"but--but i do not love you!"
"you must learn to love me. such a passion as mine surely deserves some return. you would not be the most ungrateful of men. have i not done my best to serve you?"
"i did not ask you to."
"you and i alone know that, mr. johnson. no one else does. if i choose to confess the truth to the congregation you will be exonerated; if i say you accepted my help wittingly and willingly, there is nothing for you to do but to amend your position by saying that i am to marry you."
"miss arnott, you place me in a most difficult position."
"be just. i also show you the way out of it."
"a way i cannot--i dare not take," said the minister, desperately.
then the woman's passion got the better of her. she rose, furious. "yet you dare to slight me--you reject my love which has saved you from disgrace! oh, i know well that you loved bithiah--that wretched heathen creature! but she is dead. and i am glad that she is dead, for now there can be no hope for your mad passion. you must forget her. you must marry me. you shall marry me!"
"i will not!" said johnson, rising in his turn, and speaking every word distinctly. "you overstep the bounds of modesty, miss arnott. i do not love you. i never could love you. my heart is buried in the grave of tera."
the woman turned pale, and sank back into her chair.
"then is all my wickedness in vain," she moaned.
"what do you mean?" asked the minister. he was struck by the peculiarity of the phrase.
"you know well what i mean. i have fought that woman for you, and she has beaten me. once she was out of the way, i thought i could win you for myself. it seems i was wrong. yet what can you do without me? your good name is gone; you are suspected of murdering the girl, of robbing her, and of paying your debts with the wages of your sin. do you think the congregation will keep you as preacher? no; you will be cast out of the fold. you will be disgraced and penniless. where will you go? what will you do--without a name, without money? i am rich; i can save you. but you refuse my help!"
"god will help me," said johnson, moving towards the door. "he knows i am innocent."
"will god help me?" cried miss arnott, wildly. "he knows that i am not innocent. go, go! leave me to reap the harvest of my folly. i have loved you too well; and this--this is my reward. leave me, i say. go!"
she looked so furious, yet so imperious in her wrath--the wrath of a woman scorned--that the minister left the room without a word. in her present state of mind it were idle to argue with her.
deep in thought, johnson returned to his home. he had expected this interview to end differently. most assuredly he had not anticipated that the element of love would so have dominated it. miss arnott's mad passion, her quarrel with the dead girl, her payment of his debts--all these things perplexed him sorely. he knew not what to think of them. the knowledge that he was so attractive to this woman gave him no pleasure. on the contrary, rather did it cause him to shudder, to wince as at the contact of evil.
"i must release myself from this snare," he murmured to himself, "and that can only be done by paying back this money. yet where am i to get five hundred pounds? i am hampered on all sides. if i do not bribe this shackel, he will accuse me of selling poor tera's pearls. already i am suspected of her murder. every one is working against me. it is best perhaps to follow brand's suggestion and fly. here i may be arrested at any moment."
the position was terrible. he did not see his way out of it at all. the more he thought, the more perplexed and confused he became. at length he seized his hat, and went out in the hope that fresh air and rapid motion would clear his brain. knowing how unpopular he was, he kept away from the town and climbed the hill by the lonely path. here in his meditation he jostled against a man coming the opposite way. the stranger was tall, slender, and as brown as tera had been. but those keen black eyes and that hawk-like nose could belong only to a romany. having seen him before, johnson had no difficulty in recognizing the man.
"pharaoh lee!" said the minister, stopping in his surprise. "i did not know you were here!"
"i'm with my people on the common yonder," replied pharaoh, gloomily; "we came back the other day, rye--and on no very pleasant errand, either."
"i am sorry to hear that, pharaoh! what is the matter?"
"a woman is the matter, as usual. d'ye remember zara lovell, rye?"
"yes. she was to marry you. are you now husband and wife?"
pharaoh's brow grew black, and he muttered a gipsy oath. "we'll never be husband and wife in this life, rye, whatever we may be in the next," he said bitterly. "zara fell in love with one of your gentile mashers here, and has gone back to him."
"who is he?"
"i wish i knew," cried lee, fiercely; "i'd knife him!"
"hush! hush!" rebuked johnson, shivering at the thought of another murder. "you must not speak like that. it is dangerous."
"not always, rye. why, some gorgio cove killed a girl here the other day, they tell me, and he has not been caught. i dare say she deceived him."
"are you talking of bithiah?"
"i don't know what the name is; but her body was found in a cornfield."
"that was the body of my ward, bithiah," explained johnson, sadly; "you must remember her, pharaoh. a dark handsome girl."
"job!" cried the gipsy, smiting his thigh, "it comes to me now. she was like the gentle romany in looks. so it's her, rye, is it? and why did he kill her?"
"who?"
"the man as did it. she deceived him, i don't doubt; and he strangled her."
"you are wrong, pharaoh; it was no love tragedy. how bithiah came by her death no one knows. but i beg of you not to let this terrible crime form a precedent in your dealing with zara. where is she now?"
"i don't know," said lee, becoming sullen again. "i was up north, and asked her to marry me over the poker and tongs, as we'd been vowed for months to one another. then she told me of her marriage in the gentile way with a gorgio. i tried to get his name out of her; but she knew how ready my knife would be, and refused to tell me. in the night she ran away, and, as i guessed she'd come back here to her husband, i moved my people down as quick as i could. here i am, but where zara is i don't know. curses on her and him."
"hush! do not swear, lee. who is this man?"
"i don't know."
"have you any idea as to who he is?"
"yes; it's either a man called slade, or another, mayne by name. they were always hanging round our camp when we were here last, and zara was with them oftener than i liked. i believe it's one or the other."
"no, pharaoh, you must be wrong. slade, the policeman, has been married for quite a year; and although mr. mayne is still a bachelor, it is probable that he will make miss carwell his wife. so you see it can be neither of these."
"who can swear to that?" retorted lee. "you gorgios make nothing of deceiving our women-folk. we are not of your race, and your laws are not for us. if zara is not married to one of the two gentiles i speak of, they know who she is married to. they can tell me if they choose, and i shall force them to speak out," added the gipsy, fiercely. "when i know the truth i'll----"
"lee, i implore you to do nothing rash."
"i shall mend my honour in my own way, rye. it is an oath."
with this dramatic declaration on his lips, lee swung off down the hill to escape further reproof and entreaty. johnson, knowing the fierce nature of the wanderer, looked after him with an air of doubt. when pharaoh's evil passions were roused, he struck at once, swift and true as a wounded snake. it seemed as if tera's murder were to be followed by another, and johnson sighed as he thought of all that had happened so suddenly to trouble the hitherto smoothly-flowing current of his life. since he had fallen in love with tera there had been nothing but trouble, and he could not see how or where it was all to end.
anxious-minded and hopeless of aid, the minister resumed his upward way, and shortly reached the brow of the hill, where the corn-lands stretched towards poldew. unconsciously his feet had led him into the very path along which bithiah must have passed to her mysterious death. the omen chilled him for the moment, but shaking off the superstition, as incompatible with his calling as a teacher, he stepped resolutely along the grassy way which meandered through the stubble field. some power drew him, almost against his will, towards the fatal spot.
as he walked along he caught sight of a burly figure bending down in the field. as he approached he recognized jeremiah slade. knowing neither the man's ambitions nor the interest he took in the case, johnson wondered what he was doing so near the place where the body had been found. his curiosity being excited, he crossed the ridgy furrows, and walked up to the policeman.
"what are you looking for, slade?" jeremiah straightened himself, and a light came into his dull blue eye. "i ain't lookin' now," said he, cunningly, "as i've found something already--something as is worth the findin' too."
"what is it?"
"you seem mighty anxious to know, sir," was the constable's reply, with a suspicious glance.
"naturally, i wish to know anything bearing upon the fate of poor bithiah."
"ah," grunted slade, "there's more than you, sir, as wants information of that kind. but why are you so perticler, may i ask, if it ain't no offence?"
"for two reasons," rejoined johnson, quietly. "one is, that i wish the assassin of my poor ward to be secured and punished; the other is that i desire to clear my own character from the suspicion which has fallen upon it."
"you mean, sir, as folks suspect you of the murder?"
"i do; but i need hardly say that i am innocent."
"well," said the policeman, reflectively, "of course, sir, you're bound to say that to save your own neck. i thought as you did it yourself one time, for there ain't no denyin' as the evidence is dead against you. but what i've found now 'as altered me a bit."
"really! then you are good enough to exonerate me in your own mind? you don't believe me guilty?" said johnson, ironically.
"not as the principal, anyway; it's come to me as this poor girl was strangled by a woman."
"a woman? how do you know that?"
"'cos i found this on the very spot where the girl's body lay," and slade opened his hand. in the palm lay a golden ear-ring, which johnson recognized as miss arnott's!
