Old Mrs.Hutchinson's letter had supplied much detail, but when her son and grand-daughter arrived in the village of Temple Barholm they heard much more, the greater part of it not in the least to be relied upon.
"The most of it's lies, as folks enjoys theirsels pretendin' to believe," the grand- mother commented."It's servants'-hall talk and cottage gossip, and plenty made itself up out o' beer drunk in th'
tap-room at th' Wool Park.In a place where naught much happens, people get into th' way 'o springin' on a bit o' news, and shakin' and worryin' it like a terrier does a rat.It's nature.That lad's given 'em lots to talk about ever since he coom.He's been a blessin' to 'em.If he'd been gentry, he'd not ha' been nigh as lively.Th'
village lads tries to talk through their noses like him.Little Tummas Hibblethwaite does it i' broad Lancashire."The only facts fairly authenticated were that the mysterious stranger had been taken away very late one night, some time before the interview between Mr.Temple Barholm and Captain Palliser, of which Burrill knew so much because he had "happened to be about." When a domestic magnate of Burrill's type "happens to be about" at a crisis, he is not unlikely to hear a great deal.Burrill, it was believed, knew much more than he deigned to make public.The entire truth was that Captain Palliser himself, in one of his hasty appearances in the neighborhood of Temple Barholm, had bestowed a few words of cold caution on him.
"Don't talk too much," he had said."Proof is required before talk is safe.The American was sharp enough to say that to me himself.He was sharp enough, too, to keep his man hidden.I was the only person that saw him who could have recognized him, and I saw him by chance.
Palford & Grimby require proof.We are in search of it.Servants will talk; but if you don't want to run the risk of getting yourself into trouble, don't make absolute statements."This had been a disappointment to Burrill, who had seen himself developing in magnitude; but he was a timid man, and therefore felt it wise to convey his knowledge merely through the conviction carried by a dignified silence after his first indiscreet revelation of having "happened to be about" had been made.It would have been some solace to him to intimate to Miss Alicia by his bearing and the manner of his services that she had been discovered, so to speak, in the character of a sort of accomplice; that her position was a perilously uncertain one, which would probably end in utter downfall, leaving her in her old and proper place as an elderly, insignificant, and unattractive poor relation, without a feature to recommend her.But being, as before remarked, a timid man, and recalling the interview between himself and his employer held outside the dining-room door, and having also a disturbing memory of the sharp, cool, boyish eye and the tone of the casual remark that he had "a head on his shoulders" and that it was "up to him to make the others understand," it seemed as well to restrain his inclinations until the proof Palford & Grimby required was forthcoming.
It was perhaps the moderate and precautionary attitude of Palford &Grimby, during their first somewhat startled though reserved interview with Captain Palliser, which had prevented the vaguely wild rumors from being regarded as more than villagers' exaggerated talk among themselves.The "gentry," indeed, knew much less of the cottagers than the cottagers knew of the gentry; consequently events furnishing much excitement among the village people not infrequently remained unheard-of by those in the class above them.A story less incredible might have been more considered; but the highly colored reasons given for the absence of the owner of Temple Barholm would, if heard of, have been more than likely to be received and passed over with a smile.
The manner of Mr.Palford and also of Mr.Grimby during the deliberately unmelodramatic and carefully connected relation of Captain Palliser's singular story, was that of professional gentlemen who for reasons of good breeding were engaged in restraining outward expression of conviction that they were listening to utter nonsense.
Palliser himself was aware of this, and upon the whole did not wonder at it in entirely unimaginative persons of extremely sober lives.In fact, he had begun by giving them some warning as to what they might expect in the way of unusualness.
"You will, no doubt, think what I am about to tell you absurd and incredible," he had prefaced his statements."I thought the same myself when my first suspicions were aroused.I was, in fact, inclined to laugh at my own idea until one link connected itself with another."Neither Mr.Grimby nor Mr.Palford was inclined to laugh.On the contrary, they were extremely grave, and continued to find it necessary to restrain their united tendency to indicate facially that the thing must be nonsense.It transcended all bounds, as it were.The delicacy with which they managed to convey this did them much credit.
This delicacy was equaled by the moderation with which Captain Palliser drew their attention to the fact that it was not the thing likely-to-happen on which were founded the celebrated criminal cases of legal history; it was the incredible and almost impossible events, the ordinarily unbelievable duplicities, moral obliquities and coincidences, which made them what they were and attracted the attention of the world.This, Mr.Palford and his partner were obviously obliged to admit.What they did not admit was that such things never having occurred in one's own world, they had been mentally relegated to the world of newspaper and criminal record as things that could not happen to oneself.Mr.Palford cleared his throat in a seriously cautionary way.
"This is, of course, a matter suggesting too serious an accusation not to be approached in the most conservative manner," he remarked.