V
The great drawing-room at Rodenham was full of candles, powdered heads and waving feathers, gentlemen in purple, red, or blue, dames in gorgeous gowns and swelling hoops. The room had been the prior’s parlor of old, and still retained its slender pillars capped with foliage, its deeply moulded groins, its many vaults, now painted azure and crusted with silver stars. Candles were ranged around the walls in sconces between the long, gilded mirrors that made the room look like a magician’s maze. The panelling was painted after the French fashion with Cupids, garlands, and festoons of flowers. The furniture was also French, Louis Quinze; fauteuils, canopies carved and gilt and covered with tapestry; handsome commodes; here a fantastic buhl-table, or a chased and inlaid escritoire. There were two fireplaces in the long and curious room, both with oak logs stacked upon their burnished irons.
Richard Jeffray was entertaining some of his Sussex neighbors under the especial patronage of the Lady Letitia. The Hardacre coach had rolled over the priory bridge before dusk to deposit Sir Peter, Mr. Lancelot and the fair Jilian at Richard’s porch. The Perkabys, of Rookhurst, were present with their three sleepily handsome daughters, dark odalisques who spoke slowly and looked love. Dr. Sugg bustled to and fro in his best gown, beaming upon every one, and shaking the powder out of his full-bottomed wig. Squire Bilson had driven over with his wife and son from Marling to take snuff with Squire Rokeley of Marvelscombe, whose harriers were the boast of all the Sussex Nimrods. Some half a score lesser folk completed the assemblage—a lawyer, a few young gentlemen of sporting tastes, Mary Sugg, Dr. Sugg’s daughter, and several elderly ladies whose plumes nearly swept the star-dusted ceiling.
Richard in black, with white silk stockings and silver buckled shoes, his hair powdered and caught up at the back with a black velvet bow, stood behind his aunt’s chair as the guests came to pay their respects to the venerable dowager. The Lady Letitia might have stood for the high priestess of fashion with her immense toupé, her gorgeous damasks, her rouge and patches, her diamonds and her portentous fan. It was the Lady Letitia herself who had devised the “rout,” her nephew having consented in the innocence of his heart. He had never seen the Lady Letitia campaigning before, and had no notion of the strategies and ambuscades she had planned that night. From the moment that the first guest had been announced by Peter Gladden, the dowager had taken the function to herself, and ousted her nephew from all premiership or authority.
The elder men had gathered about one of the fires, and were discussing the past hunting season, Squire Rokeley posing as chief mentor and critic. The ladies were bobbing their plumes, smirking and chattering together, while Miss Julia Perkaby, who had been besought by the Lady Letitia with much graciousness to seat herself at the harpsichord, thrilled the assemblage with her rich contralto. Miss Jilian Hardacre had established herself on a causeuse by the wall, with Mr. Richard standing by her, looking aristocratic and even distinguished in his black coat, frilled shirt, knee-breeches and silk stockings.
Miss Jilian was a plump and comely woman, with masses of auburn hair decked out with artificial flowers and ribbons, a pair of experienced gray eyes, a full bosom and a simpering red mouth. She wore a white gown flowered with violets, a green hoop, white satin slippers, an abundance of lace, and a chain of garnets about her throat. There were three patches upon her face, one above the delightful dimple on her left cheek, one to the right of the round chin, another above her right eyebrow. But for a slight thinness of the neck, the sternomastoid muscles showing too patently, and some faint wrinkles about the eyes, Miss Jilian contradicted the Lady Letitia’s insinuations very charmingly.
Richard, bending over this delightful morsel of old-world perfume and affectation, was unbosoming himself of delicate inquiries as to her health.
“I hope you have been afflicted with no more headaches,” he was asking with true lover-like solicitude. “Sir Peter appeared uncommonly distressed about you a week ago.”
Miss Jilian’s gray eyes searched Richard’s face suspiciously for the moment. Had that wretch Lot told him the truth about that horrible cosmetic? No. The lad was as ingenuous and sincere as any Galahad.
“La, Richard,” she said, fluttering her ivory fan painted with Cupids and peacocks, “it is strange that you should remember the days when I keep my bed.”
“Are they not sunless days?” quoth Mr. Richard, with a fine bow.
“Oh, Richard, I am sure you are poking fun at me.”
“Are you not the Sussex sun, Jilian?”
“Oh, cousin, how can you say such things? La, Miss Perkaby is singing; we must cease our chatter.”
Miss Hardacre spread her fan and screened the bold mortal from the glow of her luminous countenance. Richard could see a round white chin and a mass of auburn hair.
“I would rather hear you talk, Jilian. I cannot think why Aunt Letitia asked the girl to sing. She has a fine voice, though, but—not half so fine as yours.”
A gray eye peeped demurely over the ivory screen.
“Do you think so, cousin?”
“Of course I think so, Jilian.”
A loud burst of laughter came from the farther end of the room, marring the melody like an ass braying. It was Lot’s laugh, a blatant and self-assertive expression of merriment that seemed to stand in need of being passed through some refining sieve. Richard glanced at the gay coated gentlemen about the fire, a cordon of purple, red, and blue, and noticed that his cousin’s protuberant blue eyes appeared fixed upon Jilian and himself. Richard blushed as though all the ladies in the room were studying him. He stood up and drew a little apart from Miss Jilian as the Lady Letitia came sailing down upon them like a gorgeous galleon freighted with all the spices of India and the silks of China.
His aunt’s air of extreme amiability towards Miss Hardacre puzzled Jeffray not a little. She darted a look at him, seated herself beside the fair Jilian, and desired her nephew to go and talk to Mrs. Perkaby and her daughters. Richard departed in all innocence, leaving these instinctive and inveterate enemies together on the causeuse. They were soon chatting and smiling, sparring and feinting at each other with that admirable and hypocritical amiability that makes men marvel. The dowager’s keen eyes were subjecting Miss Hardacre’s person and toilet to a minute and insolent examination. She talked effusively the while to that young lady, a malicious innuendo or half-veiled snub in every sentence.
“I hope to take Richard to The Wells with me,” said the Lady Letitia, staring steadily in Miss Hardacre’s face. “My nephew is a generous lad, but very gauche and inexperienced. It is my wish that Richard should see what elegant and modish people are like. He is wasted—stifled—you must perceive, Miss Hardacre, in this quagmire of a county.”
Miss Jilian’s gray eyes glittered. She was no novice in the fine art of polite insolence, and knew enough of the world to recognize the string that worked the Lady Letitia’s tongue.
“I wish Cousin Richard joy of so experienced a school-mistress,” she said, tartly; “he himself has confessed to me, madam, that he does not love the fashionable world.”
Aunt Letitia tilted her Roman nose.
“Truth, Miss Hardacre, I think you misread the lad’s meaning. He referred to country fashions; and who can blame him? La, dear Miss Perkaby is about to sing again; a divine voice, and such grace and breeding,” and the Lady Letitia sat in stately silence through the song with a beatific appreciative smirk upon her bedizened face.
“Delicious,” she chattered at the end, bowing and beaming at Miss Julia Perkaby; “the lass has such soul. My dear nephew dotes on Miss Perkaby’s singing, and he is forever humming her songs over to himself. And do you sing, my dear?”
Miss Hardacre, flushed and angry, answered that she did.
“And Richard never told me. What a memory the lad has! Upon my soul, Miss Hardacre, the simpleton informed me that your hair was nut brown, when I can see with my own eyes how much gold there is in it. My poor nephew’s pate is always stuffed full of poetry. I expect that you have found him very absent-minded at times, my dear.”
Miss Hardacre’s cheeks were covered with a rare bloom, and she looked as though it would have afforded her exquisite pleasure to slap the Lady Letitia’s face.
“I find Cousin Richard very intelligent,” she retorted; “he has read some of his poetry to me. I can admire his genius, madam, though I do not pretend to be clever.”
The dowager elevated her eyebrows and nodded.
“Indeed!” she said, with a chuckle, “why, the lad must read his poetry to half the girls in the county. Mary Sugg, I have heard the doctor say, compares his verse to Spenser’s. Of course, my dear Miss Hardacre, Richard must find a woman of your mature years a most discerning critic.”
“Then, madam,” said the younger lady, with a toss of the head, “you must hear a great deal of Mr. Richard’s poetry?”
“I, my dear? I cannot abide the stuff. The dear lad showed me a little poem he had written on a certain young lady,” and the dowager beamed; “a young lady—well, I must not give away the boy’s secrets. It was all about dark eyes and raven locks, hearts and darts, love and dove. Terrible! All boys scribble this species of stuff, my dear. They discover a new goddess every month, and write poems about her cherry lips till a cherrier-lipped wench appears. By-the-way, who is that very over-dressed person—that young farmer fellow with his back to the fire?”
The Lady Letitia was indicating Mr. Lancelot with her fan. Again Miss Jilian’s gray eyes glistened; she bit her red lip, and looked at the dowager with extreme disdain.
“That gentleman, madam, is my brother.”
“Nonsense, my dear—”
“I assure you, madam, I know my own brother when I see him.”
The Lady Letitia did not appear in the least disturbed.
“Ah, now I recognize a certain family likeness,” she said. “Bless me, there is that wicked boy Richard making love to Miss Julia Perkaby. Hey! Is it not amusing to watch these young things coquetting? We women, Miss Hardacre, who have had our day, can afford to smile at the delightful follies of youth. Hem! What, supper-time already? I declare, there is Peter Gladden ready to announce it to us. I must find you a gentleman, my dear, to give you an arm. The young things will sort themselves as they think fit.”
There appeared to be a conspiracy afoot that night to render Jeffray’s hospitality obnoxious in every detail to the Hardacre folk. How was it that etiquette was so flagrantly outraged, that Mrs. Perkaby flaunted into the supper-room before a baronet’s daughter, and that Richard found himself shackled to Miss Julia Perkaby by his aunt’s machinations? How was it that Sir Peter was desired to give his arm to Mrs. Bilson, a lady who had slandered him outrageously on a certain occasion, and whom the baronet had detested ever since? How was it that Mr. Lot, whose astonished eyes beheld Richard in possession of his own especial flame, Miss Perkaby, was sent down with Miss Sugg, poor Mary, whose yellow face was as plain as a millstone, and whose conversation consisted of prim and monosyllabic nothings? And how was it that Miss Jilian was abandoned to Dr. Sugg, the elderly spinster’s refuge, and plumped down in an obscure corner? Never had so ill-assorted and tactless an affair been planned.
There was some wanton spirit whispering malicious suggestions about the board. Sir Peter gulped down his food, swore in serious silence, while Mrs. Bilson favored him with an occasional glare over her bony shoulder. Mr. Lot, surly and morose, watched Richard and Miss Julia Perkaby with jealous attention, while Mary Sugg shivered and twisted her fingers into knots at his elbow. Dr. Sugg attempted in vain to bring the sparkle of a smile to Miss Hardacre’s outraged eyes. The Lady Letitia alone appeared amiable and garrulous and wholly at her ease. For the rest, a sulky and distraught silence possessed the majority of the guests.
The plot developed still further when the gentlemen left their wine to join the ladies in the drawing-room. Card-tables with candles, ivory markers, and packs of cards had been set out by Peter Gladden and the footmen. The Lady Letitia was astir on the instant, bustling about like some gorgeous bumble-bee, setting every one in order, taking the whole function to herself.
“Sir Peter would play whist; yes, and Mrs. Bilson was dying for a game. Dr. Sugg, will you partner me, please? We will challenge Mrs. Bilson and Sir Peter. Squire Rokeley, and you, Mr. Perkaby, will you two gentlemen arrange the other tables? No doubt the young folk would like to dance at the other end of the room. Mary will play for you on the harpsichord. Richard, dear, will you walk a minuet with Miss Julia Perkaby? Mrs. Perkaby, madam, I remember seeing your sweet daughter dance last season at The Wells. All the men were watching her—upon my soul, they were, madam. Miss Jilian, my dear, will you join the young folk, or take a hand at cards?”
Richard, helplessly obedient to his august relative’s commands, walked a minuet with Miss Julia Perkaby, while Mr. Lot glared at him from a corner, and Miss Hardacre chatted to young Bilson, a spotty youth who was about to take up a commission in the Foot Guards. Miss Sugg’s bony fingers tinkled rapidly over the notes, while Richard, hot and ill at ease, performed with the black-eyed and stately Julia, catching every now and again his cousin Lot’s sulky stare and a glimpse of Miss Jilian’s haughty face. More minuets and country-dances followed. Youth tripped it under the painted roof, curls jigged, fans flickered. The evening was well advanced before Richard found himself seated once again beside Miss Jilian on the causeuse by the wall.
He did not find Miss Hardacre in the most angelic of tempers. In truth, she tilted her chin at Mr. Richard, played restlessly with her fan, and appeared most relentlessly chilling. Jeffray, though he was ignorant of the Lady Letitia’s treachery, yet felt that the evening had been miserably mismanaged. There stood Cousin Lot looking as surly and as savage as an unpaid creditor, while fat Sir Peter glowered over his cards at Mrs. Bilson’s funereal face. Miss Hardacre herself appeared clouded by the prevailing sulkiness, though there was an unpleasant glint in her sweet, gray eyes.
“La, Richard,” she yawned, “you are not coming to sit by your cousin, surely? How hot the room is! I am sure it must be nearly time for us to go.”
Miss Hardacre was plying her fan with rapid jerks, and staring contemptuously the while at the dark-eyed Miss Perkaby, who was smiling at Richard across the room.
“I hope you are not tired, Jilian?”
“Tired! I suppose I look a poor washed-out thing! I have nerves, sir, and a delicate body. It is those heavy women who can foot it till cock-crow. Miss Perkaby dances well, eh, cousin?”
Richard blushed.
“Does she?” he asked, helplessly, beginning to suspect what had angered this angel of a woman.
“Your dear aunt, sir, hinted that I am getting too old to dance.”
“You—too old—to dance?”
“Yes. And did you notice, Richard, that I was sent down to supper with Dr. Sugg? So you read your poetry to Mary Sugg, cousin, eh? And write verses about Miss Julia Perkaby? Heavens, how hot the room is! I wish the butler would announce our coach.”
Richard, pitifully bewildered, stared at Miss Jilian, and felt that the room was certainly overheated.
“I have never read my poems to Mary Sugg,” he began.
Miss Jilian’s lip curled.
“She thinks them equal to Spenser’s, cousin.”
“What! Did she tell you so?”
“Oh, dear, no; she is not so innocent.”
Richard, very flushed and unhappy, began to suspect the Lady Letitia of mendacity. Mary Sugg had never seen his verses. And the dowager had talked for some time to Jilian, perhaps poisoning the girl’s mind.
“My dear cousin—” he began.
“Won’t you go and talk to Miss Perkaby, Richard? I am such a dull creature. Heavens! what is the matter with Sir Peter, yonder?”
A sudden hubbub had arisen at the Lady Letitia’s table. The baronet, a look of overheated indignation on his face, had thrown down his cards and was taking snuff with great vigor. The Lady Letitia was turning over the tricks with a wicked smile in her eyes. Parson Sugg appeared flushed and uncomfortable, while Mrs. Bilson sat bolt upright in her chair. The players at the other tables were glancing curiously at one another.
“Pardon me, Sir Peter.”
“Pardon you, madam!”
“See. You did revoke. See, sir, you played a club here.”
“Damn the club, madam!”
Mrs. Bilson uttered a little squeak of indignation, tilted her nose, and stared at the baronet with shocked pity.
“It is evident that my partner has made a mistake, Lady Letitia,” she said, with unpleasant emphasis upon the error.
“Such mistakes will occur,” said Dr. Sugg, mildly.
“I am afraid the wine was rather heavy, Sir Peter. I told Gladden to be chary of the port—”
The baronet flared up at last with righteous and disgusted wrath.
“What, madam! You hint that I am fuddled? I can see the pips as clear as you can.”
“Sir Peter!”
“I think it is time that we laid down our cards,” said Mrs. Bilson, rising.
“Exactly, madam. I heartily agree with you, madam,” retorted the baronet, savagely, “whist is only fit for old women.”
“Oh, Sir Peter!”
“Sir Peter!”
“Will you be so good as to ring for my coach, Richard Jeffray? Lot, Jilian, it is time we were moving. Lady Letitia, I kiss your hand. Gentlemen, good-night.”
Jeffray had hurried forward with an expression of pain upon his face. He glanced angrily at the Lady Letitia, and followed Sir Peter, who had marched pompously out of the room. The baronet frowned at him and ignored the hand that Richard had extended.
“Order my coach, lad,” was all he said.
“But, Sir Peter—”
They had reached the hall, and Richard, who had given his orders to Peter Gladden, turned to appease the angry baronet. Sir Peter, who had been bubbling with a seething sense of wrong, exploded his wrath in Richard’s face.
“Don’t ask me to any more of your infernal drums or routs,” he said. “Those old women were for hinting that I cheated—cheated, sir, to pocket their damned miserly sixpences!”
“I am sure, Sir Peter—”
“Deuce take your sureness, sir. I tell you that painted old image of an aunt of yours tricked us here, sir, to make fun of us before that old she-dog of a Bilson and the rest. Damme, sir, are we Hardacres to be set down to supper after all the Bilsons and Perkabys and nobodies in the county? Come, Jill, my lass, they sent you down with the snuffler, did they! Deuce take you, sir, my daughter ain’t one to be treated as though she were born on a dung-heap and dragged up in a hovel!”
Richard, bewildered, shamed and very miserable, turned to Miss Hardacre with a piteous and boyish appeal in his dark eyes.
“I wish I had never given the party,” he said.
“Thank you, cousin!”
“It was my aunt’s doing.”
“To be sure, little ’un,” quoth Mr. Lot, with a glum grin, “and you didn’t enjoy yourself at all, eh? Julia Perkaby’s a fine wench, Richard. What! Don’t know when a woman’s got a pair of deuced fine eyes in her head?”
Mr. Lot laughed loudly and slapped Jeffray on the shoulder with a vigor that was not wholly inspired by cousinly regard. Peter Gladden was standing at the hall door with a lantern in his hand; the Hardacre coach-horses were pawing the gravel without.
“Come, Sir Peter, I don’t think we are prime-beef here.”
Richard was still gazing ruefully at Jilian, watching her enfold her auburn head in a light-blue wrapper.
“I am very sorry,” he said, in a humble aside.
Miss Hardacre made him a fine courtesy.
“La, cousin, don’t apologize,” she said, “we have had a delicious evening. I am sure Miss Julia’s dancing was superb.”
VI
Asharp skirmish occurred in the great drawing-room that night after that stately chamber had been emptied of its guests. Richard, chafing under Sir Peter’s honest outburst of wrath and Miss Jilian’s ironical reproaches, charged the Lady Letitia with deliberately insulting these good people whom he had summoned to Rodenham in all the innocence of his heart. The Lady Letitia, throned on a brocaded fauteuil before the dying fire, regarded her nephew with amused contempt, and proceeded to convince him of the disinterested wisdom of her plot.
“You are a young greenhorn, my dear Richard,” she said, playing with her great red fan, “and you may regard me, sir, as a fairy godmother sent by Heaven to draw you out of the toils. Come, perceive, sir, I have routed the Amalekites and thrown poison into that sweet spinster’s rouge-pot. I wager, nephew, that Miss Hardacre will be for hating you cordially in a few days if you will only follow my advice.”
But Richard was in no mood to listen to this arch-diplomat’s ingenious proposals. Shorn of his natural passivity, he kindled commendably over the crisis, and paced the floor with all the authority of an admiral stalking his quarter-deck.
“May I suggest to you, madam, that I will permit no further meddling in my affairs?”
“Richard—!”
“What poisonous insinuations you have been pouring into Miss Hardacre’s ears I cannot imagine. You have trifled with my honor, madam, disgraced my hospitality, and shamed me in my own house.”
“Richard Jeffray!”
“Permit me to add, madam, that I will not have my friends slighted and insulted in Rodenham.”
“Heavens, Richard!”
“This is my house, madam. If you do not approve of my tastes and habits you can mend your displeasure by departing.”
The old lady sat and stared at her nephew, nodding her huge “head,” her little eyes twinkling under their bushy brows. She would not have believed that the lad had so much spirit in him. His eyes sparkled, his face had flushed, and he carried himself with an angry stateliness that was worthy of Mr. Garrick.
“My dear Richard,” she said, rising, puffing herself out like an old hen, “I think we had better dismiss the subject till your temper has cooled in the morning. May I request you to ring for my maid?”
Jeffray stalked to the bell rope, jerked it savagely, and bowed grandly to his aunt.
“May I wish your ladyship a very good-night?”
The dowager extended her hand, and suffered the lad to touch her gouty fingers crowded thick with rings.
“My dear nephew,” she said, not unkindly, “you have a good heart, but—”
“Well, madam?”
“You will confess some day that your old aunt was a woman of sense and discretion. Marry the sweet Jilian, my dear. After all, it is no business of mine. But, my dear Richard, if you discover that you have embraced a bag of bones, a bundle of affectations, blame yourself and not me. Why, that Perkaby girl would make a better match; she has a body, an uncommon fine and handsome body, and old Perkaby can lay down guineas. But I see I weary your delicate sense of honor. Bon soir, mon cher Richard.”
The clock in the turret had told ten next morning when Richard mounted his black mare and cantered off through the park to take the sandy road that wound through Pevensel. He was still feverishly ashamed of the unfortunate incidents of the previous night, and was as much disgusted with the Lady Letitia’s logic as with his own pusillanimous stupidity. Miss Hardacre had been slighted, insulted in his own house. Sir Peter, that kind but peppery old gentleman, had been driven to retreat in justifiable indignation. Richard Jeffray, sensitive and generous-hearted youth, still chafed and fumed under the indignity of it all. His duty lay clear before him as he rode through the waving wilds of Pevensel, and saw the sunlight chase the shadows over the dusky woods.
Sir Peter and Mr. Lancelot were out with the hounds that morning, and had ridden to draw Squire Rokeley’s covers at Marvelscombe. Miss Hardacre was at home, however, so said the fat major-domo, grinning benignly over the apparent coincidence. Jeffray left his mare in the hands of a stable-boy, and, throwing his whip, gloves, and hat on a table in the hall, prepared to confront the sweet angel whom his aunt had tortured on the preceding night. Miss Jilian was sitting before her embroidery frame in the red parlor when the major-domo announced Richard Jeffray. Curious to relate, Miss Hardacre did not start up in amazement on catching the name from old Roger’s lips. So the dear lad had ridden over to protest his innocence and to make peace? Miss Jilian had expected it.
“La, cousin,” she said, rising up with much stately rustlings of silk as the door closed on the major-domo, “I never thought to see you here.”
Richard came forward blushing, and was even permitted to kiss Miss Hardacre’s hand. Certainly Miss Jilian drew her fingers away somewhat hastily, and carried her auburn head with proper coldness and dignity.
“I have ridden over to ask your pardon, Jilian.”
“Pardon, cousin?”
“For the miserable affair last night. Aunt Letitia and I quarrelled after every one had gone, and I am afraid I lost my temper. I lay awake all night wondering what I should say to you in the morning.”
The lad looked very generous and very handsome as he stood there blushing, his dark eyes full of ardent light and all the sincerity of his heart quivering upon his words. Miss Hardacre still held her head in the air, tapped on the floor with one red-slippered foot, and was ready to pretend that she was not in the least eager for a reconciliation.
“I am sure this is very good of you, cousin,” she said, tartly; “I did not expect you here to-day. In fact, Sir Peter ordered me—”
She hesitated of a sudden, blushed very charmingly, and gave Mr. Richard an eloquent glimpse of her gray eyes.
“Sir Peter ordered you, Jilian?”
“Not to receive Mr. Richard Jeffray unless—”
“Unless?”
“He could explain away the insults that were heaped upon our family last night.”
Miss Hardacre had sunk gracefully into the window-seat, her melting eyes downcast towards her knees. There was infinite pensiveness in the pose of her fair head. Richard, thinking her adorable for the moment, made so bold as to seat himself beside her. How proud and yet how sensitive she was! Poor child, how was it that the Lady Letitia could abuse her so?
“Upon my honor, Jilian, I was utterly miserable when you went away last night.”
Miss Hardacre’s fingers were plucking at her gown. She did not so much as look at the lad, but hung her head like a statue of grieved and injured innocence.
“Won’t you believe me, Jilian?”
“Oh, Richard—”
“Cousin, dear cousin, how can I express my own shame and distress?”
“Then, Richard, you did not want to dance with Julia Perkaby?”
“Confound the girl. It was Aunt Letitia who forced me into it.”
“And you did not write poetry about her, and adore her singing?”
Richard burst forth into manly indignation.
“Jilian, who told you all these lies?”
Miss Hardacre sighed and began to finger her handkerchief.
“I don’t think I ought to say, Richard.”
“It was Aunt Letitia. I’ll swear it was Aunt Letitia. Damn the old woman, Jilian, I absolutely hate her!”
“Richard! Richard!”
“Then it was Aunt Letitia?”
“She was very cruel to me, Richard.”
“On my honor, cousin, I’ll go back and turn her out of my house.”
Here came Miss Hardacre’s supreme opportunity. What more affecting and delightful a virtue than that sweet spirit of forgiveness that juggles divinely with the proverbial coals of fire. Miss Jilian bear malice? No, the gods forbid! She would plead with her dear cousin, soothe his angry passions, stem the torrent of his wrath that threatened to descend upon the devoted dowager’s head. The Lady Letitia was a very old woman, and alas! my dear cousin, very worldly. She had her whims and her prejudices, and her temper had been rasped by the tooth of time. Naturally the Lady Letitia was ambitious for her dear nephew; who would not be ambitious for such a nephew as Richard Jeffray? The Lady Letitia had prejudices in favor of money. Could Richard blame her if she strove to save him from the “designs” of a poor baronet’s daughter, a country mouse who had no adornments save those simple virtues with which nature had endowed her unaffected soul?
What wonder that Richard, chivalrous lad, pressed Miss Hardacre’s hand to his lips, and vowed that no more beautiful and forgiving spirit had ever chastened mortal flesh. What wonder that the reconciliation was complete between them, and that Miss Jilian consented to sing her songs. How much more finely she sang than that stupid giantess, Julia Perkaby! “La, cousin Dick, you must not call young ladies names.” Might he not read his epic poem to her? “Oh, Richard, I am such an ignorant little thing. Listen? I could listen all day. I am sure you are a genius, Richard. Mr. Pope and Mr. Dryden never wrote half such fine verses as yours.” What wonder that Richard Jeffray departed from Hardacre that day, convinced in his heart that he was in love with his adorable cousin. Why, she was an angel. How could Aunt Letitia fabricate such monstrous and malignant lies?
When the purple shadow of the Beacon Rock fell athwart the crisp turf that afternoon, Richard remembered, even in his state of exaltation, the glowing face and fierce blue eyes of the fair savage of the woods. Old Peter Gladden had told his master all he knew concerning the forest-folk whose hamlet lurked in the midst of Pevensel. Richard remembered the place vaguely as a scattering of stone-roofed cottages sunk in the shadows of the woods. He had often explored the rides and wood-ways of Pevensel as a boy, and had even taken young owls from a ruined tower of the Abbey of Holy Cross. A sudden whim seized him that day to follow the bridle-track that branched off by the Beacon Rock, and led close, so old Gladden said, by the hamlet in the woods. It would lead him out by White Hind walk on the broad coaching-road to Lewes.
No sooner had the whim tickled Richard’s sensibilities for romance than he was off at a trot down the bridle-track, seeing the Queen’s Circle sink down on his left below the slope of the open moor. The sun came slanting through and through as Richard wound through the solemn thickets, where the dead bracken glowed under the purple shade, and whin, whortleberries, and heather tangled each knoll and dell. There was a beckoning awe about the place, a brooding mystery that lured on and on.
Now Bess had wandered out, while old Ursula was taking a nap in the ingle-nook, to search for certain herbs that the old lady needed. She had thrown her red cloak over her shoulders, taken a rush-basket and a stout thorn stick. Three weeks or more had passed since the scrimmage in the pine thicket, and young David, fearing Dan’s wrath, had fled the hamlet, tramped down to Portsmouth, and been “pressed” for the king’s navy. Isaac Grimshaw had had the news from a Jew peddler who had come through by Chichester, and had seen young David dragged out of a tavern by the press men, and hauled off with others to the harbor. The Jew peddler knew all the forest-folk by name and face, having sold his wares to them and obliged Isaac in many ways, year in, year out. There had been hot words between old Isaac and his son, and hot words between Isaac and Dame Ursula. Bess had called Black Dan a coward and a bully to his face. But since the mischief was done, and young David on the seas, Isaac calmed the contentions of his flock, and mollified the women as best he could.
Dan Grimshaw had followed Bess from the hamlet that day with sullen fire in his red-brown eyes. There had been words between them in the morning, and the girl had treated the giant to a picturesque display of scorn. Dan Grimshaw was ugly enough, but it did not please him to hear the truth from Miss Bess’s petulant lips. He had blundered home to his cottage in bovine wrath, inflamed by the girl’s comeliness, and by her passionate taunts. Sly and savage he had watched her take the path that led up through the woods to Beacon Rock, and had followed at a distance, clinching his great fists as he saw her red cloak flit amid the trees.
Jeffray, riding down White Hind walk where the hamlet path crossed the sleek grass that seemed to run like a river amid the trees, was edified by beholding a tall wench belaboring a forester with a stick. The man was dodging from side to side, cursing and taking the blows upon his forearms. A basket half filled with sprouting weeds lay tossed aside under a tree. So busy were these two Pevensel savages with their stick-wielding and their dodging that neither of them noticed Richard’s approach.
Of a sudden, however, the scene took on a more sinister expression. The man had caught the stick and twisted it out of the girl’s hand. Jeffray could distinguish his inflamed and passionate face even at a distance of fifty paces. In another instant the man’s arms were about the girl’s body, and she was writhing and struggling like a hound hugged to the hairy bosom of a bear.
Richard, who had recognized the elf of the Queen’s Circle, pricked in his spurs, and went cantering down the ride. He rolled out of the saddle when close upon the pair, left his mare loose, and, drawing his sword, ran towards Dan Grimshaw and Miss Bess. The girl had one hand on the man’s throat, and was beating the other in his face. He had picked her up bodily and was holding her in mid-air when Richard’s shout startled his hairy ears.
Black Dan dropped Bess upon the grass, and, being mad as any antlered stag baffled by a hunter, snatched up the girl’s stick and made at Richard with savage good-will. Jeffray’s pretty bodkin of a blade was smitten away out of his hand, and he himself was brought low with heavy cut across the crown. Black Dan, his face as like a flesh-eating ogre’s as any nursemaid might paint for the intimidation of the young, stood over Richard as though tempted to strike again. He was balked in his charitable purpose, however, by finding Bess fronting him with a pistol in either hand. She had caught Jeffray’s mare, and plucked the pistols from the holsters, their master having forgotten the good barkers in the full flux of chivalry.
“Touch him, Dan, and I’ll shoot you, you devil.”
In truth, a fine stage effect, Belphœbe rescuing Timias from the wrath of the savage of the woods!
VII
Dan’s fury cooled out of him as he looked at the white face half hidden by a grass tussock, and caught a glint of the polished barrels of Bess’s pistols. Jeffray’s beaver had fallen off, and he lay with the blood soaking from a scalp-wound into his hair. Dan drew back, swinging his stick, and staring sheepishly at the blood trickling across Jeffray’s forehead.
Bess, seeing that Dan had come to his senses, put back one of the pistols into the holster, but kept the other in her hand. She ordered Dan back, and kneeling down on the wet grass turned Jeffray’s head gently into her lap. A look of wonder flashed into her eyes as she considered his face, for this was the man St. Agnes had showed her in her dream. He even wore black, with white ruffles at his wrists, and his blood had been spilled for her in saving her from Dan’s savagery.
She looked wonderingly at Jeffray, remembering him at last as the gentleman who had ridden by when Dan and David were fighting in the mist by the Queen’s Circle. The sight of the blood trickling across his forehead roused her from such reveries to womanly pity. She flashed a glance at Dan, and bade him give her the scarf he wore about his neck. With this she bound up Jeffray’s head, smoothing back his hair with her strong brown hands.
“Take him up,” she said to Dan; “we must carry him home to Mother Ursula.”
Dan was swinging his stick and watching Bess holding Jeffray’s head in her lap with a sullen jealousy that he could not dissemble. He obeyed the girl, however, and lifted Jeffray as though he had been a child. Bess picked up the fallen sword, and taking Jeffray’s mare by the bridle, pointed to the path that led towards the hamlet.
Old Ursula held up her hands when Dan appeared at her cottage door with Jeffray still unconscious in his arms. Bess told her foster-mother all that had happened, not deigning to spare Dan shame in the telling of it. They laid Jeffray on the settle before the fire, and sent in haste for Isaac, who knew all the gentry by sight who lived within ten miles of the Beacon Rock.
Isaac, sleek and authoritative, cursed Dan when he recognized the Squire of Rodenham.
“Dan ’ll swing for it,” quoth Ursula, with an unloving glance at her nephew.
“Bah, there’s no great harm done. Get him to bed, dame, and when he wakes see that you put the youngster in a good temper.”
Isaac beckoned his son away, Ursula hobbling off to drag clean sheets from the linen-press. Calling Bess, who was watching Jeffray, she bade her fetch a new blanket and the best quilt from the oak chest on the stairs. Isaac had taken Jeffray’s mare, and, still rating Dan, stabled her in the byre where Ursula kept her cows.
The old woman pattered into her bedroom on the ground floor, dragged the clothes from the four-poster, while Bess came in bearing a new blanket and a patch-work quilt of many colors. Between them they spread the clean sheets, stripped off Jeffray’s clothes, and put him to bed there in his shirt. Ursula made a stew of friar’s-balsam, and after tearing soft linen into strips, washed Jeffray’s wound and bound up his head. Then she went out to speak with Isaac in the kitchen, leaving Bess alone to watch by the bed.
It was growing dark when Jeffray recovered consciousness, and awoke to find great beams above his head, and the sunset reddening the narrow casement of a room. He fingered his bandaged head, looked round him curiously, and would have struggled up in the bed but for the swooping of Bess’s strong brown hand upon his shoulder. She had been sitting there silently in the twilight, thinking of the dream she had dreamed on St. Agnes’s Eve, and studying Jeffray’s pale and inanimate face.
At his wakening she had set her hand upon his shoulder, as though to hint that he was under fair protection. Old Ursula had whispered to the girl that she was to be polite, nay, servile, to the gentleman, since the Squire of Rodenham might prove a troublesome neighbor should he care to charge Dan with violence. Servility, however, was not part of Bess’s nature. She did not even call Mr. Richard “sir,” and though she abated her masterfulness, she spoke to him as to an equal.
“Bide still,” she said, leaning over him and looking in his eyes, “you are safe with us.”
Richard could see the girl’s face in the dusk, white beneath the dead black hair. There was the deliciousness of youth in the rare roundness of her cheek, the smooth low forehead, the strong chin and pouting mouth.
“Where am I?” he asked her, quietly, with his hands lying on the many-colored quilt.
“In our cottage—Ursula’s cottage. I made Dan carry you home from the woods.”
“Ah, I had the worst of it. What happened? Tell me.”
Bess was pleased with his voice.
“Dan hit you over the head,” she said.
“I can believe that,” quoth Richard, with a smile.
“I picked your pistols out of the holsters, and swore I would shoot him if he struck you again.”
Jeffray’s thoughts were not of himself for the moment. He lay silent, looking up at Bess, still feeling the pressure of her hand upon his shoulder. The room was growing very dark. He could see only her hair as a deep shadow above the white oval of her face.
“You are one of the forest-folk?” he asked.
“I am Bess—Bess Grimshaw.”
“And Ursula?”
“Is my mother. I live with her.”
“And Dan—?”
“Is my cousin.”
The tawny light had melted out of the sky. From the kitchen came the murmur of Isaac’s voice as he argued with old Ursula. They were speaking of Richard and of Dan. The same subjects were in Bess’s thought, and perhaps the man in the bed divined the same.
“Bess,” he said, suddenly, calling her by her Christian name as he would have called a child.
She started and bent over him, leaning more heavily upon his shoulder.
“What happened to David?”
She seemed puzzled for the moment, and then flushed up redly in the dusk.
“David ran away,” she said.
“Yes.”
“He was terrified of Dan. They pressed him at Portsmouth for the king’s navy. We heard it from a peddler who had seen the lad marched off.”
They were both silent for a while, Richard’s eyes turned towards the window, Bess’s hand still on Jeffray’s shoulder. The same thoughts were in either heart. By some strange flash of sympathy Jeffray and the girl seemed to understand each other.
“Are you afraid of your cousin?” he asked, suddenly.
“Of Dan?”
“Yes.”
She looked down into the man’s face.
“I shall carry a knife,” she said, with peculiar significance. “I am a match for Dan—”
“I will leave you my pistols.”
Then came the pattering of Dame Ursula’s slippers across the flagged floor of the kitchen. The door opened and Bess of the Woods was called away.
Isaac Grimshaw was something of a sylvan diplomat, a suave, sweet-voiced old sinner, who could bleat texts or snarl out fantastic oaths as the emergency required. He had sworn at Dan for laying his hands on one of the gentry and risking his bull neck for a wench’s lips, and had driven his giant of a son cowering from old Ursula’s cottage. Then he had entered in and preached to the dame in the ingle-nook, wagging a long forefinger and brushing his white hair back from his forehead. Squire Jeffray must be appeased, tickled into a good temper. That was the mark towards which Isaac winged his words.
In due course he took the two candles in the brass sticks from the mantle-shelf, and lighting them with a fagot from the fire, bade Ursula open the bedroom door and call Bess out. The patriarch went in mincingly, set one candle on a table by the bed, and the other on an oaken press. He stood very humbly before Richard Jeffray, his white hair waving over his forehead, his clean-shaven mouth sweet and benignant as the mouth of some tender-souled old priest.
“I trust your honor is feeling comfortable.”
“Not much the worse, Grimshaw, for your son’s stick.”
Isaac rubbed his palms together and beamed.
“I have come to ask your honor’s pardon, sir.”
The patriarch sniffed pathetically, and fidgeted as he stood with limp humbleness beside the bed. How could Jeffray appear angry with such an old fellow whose soul was overwhelmed in contrition for his son’s misdeeds.
“Do not vex yourself, Grimshaw, on my account,” said the master of Rodenham, frankly, “your son’s blood was up, and I drew my sword on him. He is a dangerous fellow, Grimshaw, and beyond your handling, I imagine.”
Isaac bowed his head into his hands.
“The Lord help me, sir,” he said, sobbing, “he’s a wild lad, your honor, but not bad at heart.”
“This may be a lesson to him, Grimshaw.”
“Please God, sir, it will. Bess, sir, Bess is a good wench, but she has a tongue that would drive a young man crazy.”
“I don’t blame her, Grimshaw, so far as your son is concerned.”
“Dear Heaven, no, your honor. I will see to it, sir; I will speak to Dan like a father. He shall not pester the wench, and she shall be taught to bridle her tongue.”
“If she has a temper, Grimshaw, you can best mend it by teaching your son to mind his business.”
“True, your honor, true; it is good to hear you speak so kindly.”
Jeffray lay quiet a moment, while Isaac still sniffed and fidgeted beside the bed, watching the master of Rodenham with his shrewd, gray eyes. Old Ursula was clattering her pans in the kitchen, humming some old ditty, while Bess, her brown hands white with flour, was making pastry for Squire Jeffray’s supper.
“Grimshaw,” said the younger man, at last.
“Sir?”
“I shall not set the law against your son.”
“God bless your honor’s noble heart.”
“If there is more trouble betwixt him and the girl—”
Isaac Grimshaw was all reverent attention.
“You may like to find a good home for her—”
“Ah—your honor—”
“Well?”
“We should sorely miss her pretty face.”
“Better lose her than have her ruined, Grimshaw.”
“The words of a prophet, sir.”
“We could take her at Rodenham. Old Mrs. Barbara, my butler’s wife, could give her a good home.”
Had Richard Jeffray seemed less innocent a youth, Isaac might have winked at him, and grown gay over so disinterested a proposal. Old Grimshaw was a fair connoisseur of rogues, and his instincts told him that Jeffray was not of the intriguing order. Therefore he made Richard a very humble and grateful speech, and declared he would keep such a benefactor’s advice in mind. “Deuce take me,” he thought, “here is an honest simpleton. Why, the lad needs no more bribing to be generous than a drunken Paddy. He’ll grow fat on sentiment, without a morsel of real kissing to put him into a good temper.”
Jeffray discovered himself served royally in Ursula Grimshaw’s cottage that night. Isaac had sent a chicken, his best cutlery, and silver forks and a flask of wine, bidding his sister serve up a supper fit for a city alderman. There was red wine, white meat, nutty bread, savory herbs, custard and sugared fruits. Bess tricked out in her best green gown, with a white lawn apron, red stockings and shoes, and a silver chain set with amethysts about her throat, waited on the master of Rodenham as though to serve him were her whole heart’s desire. She drank wine with Richard, showed her white teeth, courtesied and blushed when he thanked her and old Ursula for their courtesies. She smoothed his pillow, talked to him in her quaint, bold way, and altogether reconciled Richard to his lodging for the night. Solomon Grimshaw, Isaac’s brother, had ridden over on his pony to Rodenham to ease the Lady Letitia of any anxiety on her nephew’s account. Bess had brought Jeffray a quill, inkhorn, and paper, and stood by the bed watching the man’s clever hand at work. He was a being full of strangeness and mystery to this forest elf, who had learned to look on men of coarser fibre. There was a frank yet courtly simplicity about Jeffray that charmed all women and made them trust him. The world-wise among them might think him a fool, and such folly women easily forgive.
Thus it befell that Bess of the Woods and Richard Jeffray stepped for the first time into that subtle maze of circumstance whose weavings spell out the passionate strangeness of tragedy. Had not Isaac counselled Dame Ursula to bewitch Squire Jeffray into as noble a temper as statecraft would permit? And what more pleasant to the eyes of youth than the unfolding beauty of a buxom girl?
About bedtime old Ursula clattered in the kitchen, coughed, and stamped up the wooden stairs. She would sleep with Bess that night, since the young squire had her bed. Bess, unaffected as could be, bent over Richard to smooth his pillow. She looked at him a moment with a queer light in her eyes, and then—stooping, kissed his lips.
“That’s for my sake,” she said, with a half-frightened laugh. “Dan would have had it but for you.”
She fled away, red as fire, and closed the door very gently after her. Richard heard her climb the stairs. He lay awake for many hours, listening to the wind in the trees without, as the candles burned down towards their sockets.