Munder, replying to the housekeeper. "I do remember Mrs. Frankland's letter, ma'am; and what then?"
"Hush! not so loud," whispered Mrs. Pentreath. "I don't presume, Mr. Munder, to differ in opinion with you; but I want to ask one or two questions. Do you think we have any charge that a magistrate would listen to, to bring against these people?"
Mr. Munder looked puzzled, and seemed, for once in a way, to be at a loss for an answer.
"Does what you remember of Mrs. Frankland's letter," pursued the housekeeper, "incline you to think that she would be pleased at a public exposure of what has happened in the house? She tells us to take private notice of that woman's conduct, and to follow her unperceived when she goes away. I don't venture on the liberty of advising you, Mr. Munder, but, as far as regards myself, I wash my hands of all responsibility, if we do anything but follow Mrs. Frankland's instructions (as she herself tells us) to the letter."
Mr. Munder hesitated. Uncle Joseph, who had paused for a minute when Sarah directed his attention to the whispering at the upper end of the room, now drew her on slowly with him to the door. "Betzee, my dear," he said, addressing the maid, with perfect coolness and composure, "we are strangers here; will you be so kind to us as to show the way out?"
Betsey looked at the housekeeper, who motioned to her to appeal for orders to the steward. Mr. Munder was sorely tempted, for the sake of his own importance, to insist on instantly carrying out the violent measures to which he had threatened to have recourse; but Mrs. Pentreath's objections made him pause in spite of himself.
"Betzee, my dear," repeated Uncle Joseph, "has all this talking been too much for your ears? has it made you deaf?"
"Wait!" cried Mr. Munder, impatiently. "I insist on your waiting, Sir!"
"You insist? Well, well, because you are an uncivil man is no reason why I should be an uncivil man too. We will wait a little, Sir, if you have anything more to say" Making that concession to the claims of politeness, Uncle Joseph walked gently backward and forward with his niece in the passage outside the door. "Sarah, my child, I have frightened the man of the big words," he whispered. "Try not to tremble so much; we shall soon be out in the fresh air again."
In the mean time, Mr. Munder continued his whispered conversation with the housekeeper, making a desperate effort, in the midst of his perplexities, to maintain his customary air of patronage and his customary assumption of superiority. "There is a great deal of truth, ma'am," he softly began--"a great deal of truth, certainly, in what you say. But you are talking of the woman, while I am talking of the man. Do you mean to tell me that I am to let him go, after what has happened, without at least insisting on his giving me his name and address?"
"Do you put trust enough in the foreigner to believe that he would give you his right name and address if you asked him?" inquired Mrs. Pentreath. "With submission to your better judgment, I must confess that I don't. But supposing you were to detain him and charge him before the magistrate--and how you are to do that, the magistrate's house being, I suppose, about a couple of hours' walk from here, is more than I can tell--you must surely risk offending Mrs. Frankland by detaining the woman and charging the woman as well; for after all, Mr. Munder, though I believe the foreigner to be capable of anything, it was the woman that took the keys, was it not?"
"Quite so! quite so!" said Mr. Munder, whose sleepy eyes were now opened to this plain and straightforward view of the case for the first time. "I was, oddly enough, putting that point to myself, Mrs. Pentreath, just before you happened to speak of it. Just so! just so!"
"I can't help thinking," continued the housekeeper, in a mysterious whisper, "that the best plan, and the plan most in accordance with our instructions, is to let them both go, as if we did not care to demean ourselves by any more quarreling or arguing with them, and to have them followed to the next place they stop at. The gardener's boy, Jacob, is weeding the broad walk in the west garden this afternoon. These people have not seen him about the premises, and need not see him, if they are let out again by the south door. Jacob is a sharp lad, as you know; and, if he was properly instructed, I really don't see--"
"It is a most singular circumstance, Mrs. Pentreath," interposed Mr. Munder, with the gravity of consummate assurance; "but when I first sat down to this table, that idea about Jacob occurred to me. What with the effort of speaking, and the heat of argument, I got led away from it in the most unaccountable manner--"
Here Uncle Joseph, whose stock of patience and politeness was getting exhausted, put his head into the room again.
"I shall have one last word to address to you, Sir, in a moment," said Mr. Munder, before the old man could speak. "Don't you suppose that your blustering and your bullying has had any effect on me. It may do with foreigners, Sir; but it won't do with Englishmen, I can tell you."
Uncle Joseph shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and rejoined his niece in the passage outside. While the housekeeper and the steward had been conferring together, Sarah had been trying hard to persuade her uncle to profit by her knowledge of the passages that led to the south door, and to slip away unperceived. But the old man steadily refused to be guided by her advice. "I will not go out of a place guiltily," he said, "when I have done no harm. Nothing shall persuade me to put myself, or to put you, in the wrong. I am not a man of much wits; but let my conscience guide me, and so long I shall go right. They let us in here, Sarah, of their own accord; and they shall let us out of their own accord also."
"Mr. Munder! Mr. Munder!" whispered the housekeeper, to stop a fresh explosion of the steward's indignation, which threatened to break out at the contempt implied by the shrugging of Uncle Joseph's shoulders, "while you are speaking to that audacious man, shall I slip into the garden and give Jacob his instructions?"
Mr. Munder paused before answering--tried hard to see a more dignified way out of the dilemma in which he had placed himself than the way suggested by the housekeeper--failed entirely to discern anything of the sort--swallowed his indignation at one heroic gulp--and replied emphatically in two words: "Go, ma'am."
"What does that mean? what has she gone that way for?" said Sarah to her uncle, in a quick, suspicious whisper, as the housekeeper brushed hastily by them on her way to the west garden.
Before there was time to answer the question, it was followed by another, put by Mr. Munder.
"Now, Sit!" said the steward, standing in the doorway, with his hands under his coat-tails and his head very high in the air. "Now, Sir, and now, ma'am, for my last words. Am I to have a proper explanation of the abstracting and purloining of those keys, or am I not?"
"Certainly, Sir, you are to have the explanation," replied Uncle Joseph "It is, if you please, the same explanation that I had the honor of giving to you a little while ago. Do you wish to hear it again? It is all the explanation we have got about us."
"Oh! it is, is it?" said Mr. Munder "Then all I have to say to both of you is--leave the house directly! Directly!" he added, in his most coarsely offensive tones, taking refuge in the insolence of authority, from the dim consciousness of the absurdity of his own position, which would force itself on him even while he spoke. "Yes, Sir!" he continued, growing more and more angry at the composure with which Uncle Joseph listened to him-- "Yes, Sir! you may bow and scrape, and jabber your broken English somewhere else. I won't put up with you here. I have reflected with myself, and reasoned with myself, and asked myself calmly--as Englishmen always do--if it is any use making you of importance, and I have come to a conclusion, and that conclusion is--no, it isn't! Don't you go away with a notion that your blusterings and bullyings have had any effect on me.