VIII
Jeffray slept till after the sun was up, and was awakened by Bess tapping at his door. She came in blushing, looking very coy and winsome, with a bowl of hot milk on a pewter dish, milk that her own brown hands had drawn from the cow that morning. It was quite an uncommon mood in Bess, this shy and half stately air of aloofness, with its smooth tones and its half-abashed tenderness in the eyes. She gave Jeffray a very quiet good-morning, asked how he had slept, blushing still as she remembered their parting on the preceding night.
To Richard, he knew not why, there was a peculiar fascination in the girl’s presence, in the very nearness of her body to his. Their hands had touched as she held out the bowl of milk to him, and the silky coldness of her skin had discharged a species of subtle magnetism at the contact. He looked up into her face, saw the subdued light of the room intensify the richness of her coloring and enhance the lustrous shadows in her eyes. In truth, Bess’s eyes and Mr. Richard’s were always meeting that morning, so that one or the other would redden and look away. Jeffray, where he lay, could watch the girl through the open door as she glided to and fro in the kitchen. How tall and strong she was, how full of the delicious ardor of life, supple, swift, perfect in every outline. Big of body though she was, her long legs carried her with the swinging grace of an athletic male. She kept her mouth tightly shut in repose, her intense blue eyes shining out from her ruddy face.
Jeffray, finding himself little the worse for Dan’s cudgelling, had hardly risen, dressed, and shaved himself with one of Isaac’s razors, when Peter Gladden appeared with the patriarch before Ursula’s cottage, inquiring for the person of his master. The Lady Letitia herself was waiting for Richard in her coach below the Beacon Rock. Jeffray tied his cravat, buckled on his sword, and went out to speak with Peter Gladden in the kitchen. Isaac Grimshaw was there also, humble, benignant and subservient. Bess, seated on a settle by the fire, was mending the gown that had been torn in the scuffle with Dan yesterday.
Richard shook Isaac Grimshaw’s hand, bowed to old Ursula, and laid three guineas surreptitiously upon the table.
“I thank you for all your kindness,” he said, with a glance that was meant for Bess.
Isaac, bowing, and rubbing his hands together, declared that they were proud to have been able to serve such a gentleman.
“As for the money, your honor,” he said, “we cannot take the gold. What we have given—we have given gladly. Eh, dame, ain’t that so?”
Old Ursula, whose eyes had twinkled at the sight of gold, courtesied and confessed a little sourly that “Squire Jeffray was very welcome.”
Richard blushed, looked from one to the other, and repocketed his money.
“I shall not forget your kindness,” he said, simply. “If I can ever serve you, Grimshaw, remember what I said to you last night.”
Peter Gladden had gone to saddle and bridle Richard’s mare in the cow-house, and Jeffray proceeded to shake hands again very graciously with Isaac and old Ursula. His heart had been touched by what appeared to him to be simple and unsophisticated kindness; he had not learned to look below the surface of life as yet. He hesitated before Bess, who had risen and was standing looking at her hood that hung upon the key of the linen-press.
“Will you show us the path through the woods?” he asked her.
Isaac was for offering his services, but a gesture from old Ursula restrained him.
“The lass will be proud,” quoth the dame, amiably. “I would go with ye myself, sir, but for the rheumatics. Bess, get your cloak, lass, and go with the gentleman.” And in a whisper into the girl’s ear: “If he is for giving you the guineas, girl, take ’em, and don’t forget it.”
Now, Richard Jeffray sent Peter Gladden on ahead with the mare that morning, thus casting doubt on his sincerity in asking for guidance through the woods. He walked with Bess, who had thrown her red cloak over her shoulders and thrust her feet into her best buckled shoes. The woods were full of dancing sunlight and of dew. A brisk breeze played through the branches, chanting desirously, and sweeping the white clouds over the forest in the blue sky above. The promise of spring seemed in the air; already the green gorse was budding gold, and the cry of the world’s youth was on the wind.
Richard noticed for the first time that Bess was taller than he was as they walked together under the trees. Her eyes looked down on him a little from under her glorious wreath of sable hair. In truth, she seemed Richard’s master in the matter of mere physical strength; her arms were of greater girth than his by two inches or more, and her supple body would have turned the scale by a stone against Jeffray’s slim but wiry frame. They had little to say to each other for the first furlong or so. The girl appeared farouche and silent, looking at Richard as though half in awe of him. And yet some subtle net of sympathy seemed to have been cast about them both in the course of a single night.
“Bess,” said the man, suddenly plunging towards the thoughts that lay close about his heart.
Being slightly ahead, she hung back and waited, with her eyes at gaze on the deeps of the woods.
“I spoke to Isaac Grimshaw about you last night,” he continued, watching the play of the sunlight upon her face.
“About me?”
“Yes, and Dan, your cousin.”
Bess’s eyes darkened and she pouted out her lips. Her walk seemed more spirited, the carriage of her head more rebellious at the mention of Dan’s name.
“I told your uncle that Barbara Gladden, my butler’s wife, could give you a home at Rodenham—”
“At Rodenham!”
“Yes. If—”
“If?”
“You found your cousin’s company too rough for you.”
Bess flashed a look at Richard, and walked on in silence for some moments, with a fine color upon her face. There was no suggestion of patronage in Jeffray’s manner.
“I am not afraid of Dan,” she answered, “though I am grateful to you—for this.”
A sudden realization of the gulf between them had taken hold of the girl’s heart. This Richard Jeffray was one of the gentry, and she, a poor forest wench not fit to stand before women, less handsome and less honest than herself. At Rodenham she would take her meals in the servants’ hall, and sleep in an attic under the roof. It would even be considered a favor if the young squire spoke to her. No. She loved Pevensel and her forest liberty better than that.
“I am not afraid of Dan,” she said again, with a fine lifting of her head.
Jeffray felt something of the pride that played in her, and respected her the more for it.
“I am not dropping a favor for you, Bess,” he said.
“Thank you,” she answered.
“You see—you saved me from Dan’s cudgelling. And you—and Ursula have been very kind to me.”
They looked at each other half questioningly, a long and steady look that bore more meaning than many words. Richard blushed under the girl’s gaze. He suspected the spirit in her, and was loath to think that he had hurt her pride.
“You said I might have your pistols,” quoth Bess, suddenly.
“I will give you them.”
“I was not made to serve. We are wild folk in the forest. I can take care of myself.”
Then, catching the look in Jeffray’s eyes, she smiled at him very dearly, and touched his hand.
“But—I shall remember,” she added.
“And I, Bess, also.”
“I will have the pistols—”
“A strange present!”
“No, no, they will make me feel somehow that you are near. For I dreamed of you on St. Agnes’s Eve.”
She blushed and hung her head as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Jeffray had started, and reddened also. He looked at Bess and then at the heath showing gold beyond the trees.
“I will ride over—sometimes, Bess,” he said, slowly.
Her eyes flashed down at him, and then wavered away towards the woods.
“I knew you,” she said, simply, “when you lay on the grass—after I had put back Dan’s stick.”
“Knew me?”
“Yes.”
Richard said nothing, but there was a strange sense of hurrying at his heart.
They overtook Peter Gladden on the heath, and Richard taking the mare from him bade him go forward and warn the Lady Letitia of his coming. When the man had gone, Jeffray drew the pistols from the holsters, shook out the priming, and handed them to Bess. They were light weapons of delicate make, the butts set in Damascened silver. The girl took them and put them in her gown above her girdle.
“Be careful, Bess,” he said.
She laughed, and her eyes grew very bright of a sudden.
“You did not give me these in the dream,” she said.
In another moment Richard was in the saddle cantering over the heath towards the Beacon Rock.
The Lady Letitia had spent the whole of the previous day in meditation, suspecting shrewdly enough that her nephew had ridden over to Hardacre to make peace with the sweet Jilian. Of course Miss Hardacre would be kind to Richard, and in that arch young lady’s kindness, Aunt Letitia had foreseen her own discomfort. Now the dowager was not in the least inclined to abandon Rodenham, for her financial affairs were still in an embarrassed state. She had shut up her house in town for the winter, and was keeping her coach-horses and her three servants at Jeffray’s expense. Till late in the spring she had intended foraging for herself amid the Sussex woods, and it would be wickedly inconvenient for her to leave Rodenham at present.
Hence the news of Richard’s accident had provided the astute old lady with an admirable opportunity for a reconciliation. She worked herself into quite a delirium of distress over the tidings, questioned Solomon Grimshaw in person, and soon wormed the truth from him as to how Richard had come by a broken head. The romance pleased Aunt Letitia prodigiously. She gave Solomon a guinea, one of poor Sugg’s ewe lambs, and bade him carry back her affectionate greetings to Squire Jeffray. She would have flown to him that very moment, only it was pitch dark, and the roads in such a state. “Gladden, Peter Gladden, have my coach—my own coach, Gladden—round at the door by nine. I must drive over and bring the poor boy home. God grant, Gladden, that he is not dangerously hurt. You must send one of the men over to Rookhurst to order Surgeon Stott to call at the priory to-morrow.”
Aunt Letitia had dismounted from the coach that morning, and was hobbling up and down under the shadow of the Beacon Rock, while her fat horses steamed in the road. It was indeed an affecting sight to behold this goddess of powder and patches strutting with all the admirable anxiety of a “stage grandmother” on nature’s unartificial grass. The Lady Letitia was an evening, rather than a morning, star, for her physical frailties were unmasked by the sun. When Richard appeared riding over the heath, the dowager’s holy outburst of joy was an impressive sight to Peter Gladden and the lackey behind the coach. The old lady actually toddled forward to meet Richard, a ridiculous little straw hat perched on her powdered head, her ebony stick in one hand, a lace handkerchief in the other.
“My dear Richard—my dear Richard—I am overcome with thankfulness at seeing you so hearty.”
Jeffray, dismounting, kissed the Lady Letitia’s hand. He was touched by his aunt’s display of feeling, and it was not in him to remember a wrong.
“I am not much the worse, aunt,” he said, smiling, “but for a bandaged head.”
“It was such a shock to me last night, Richard,” quoth the lady, dabbing her eyes with her lace handkerchief, “for I said to myself, Richard: ‘perhaps the poor lad is dangerously hurt, and I cannot get to him before the morning.’ And I remembered that we had quarrelled the night before. Oh, my dear nephew, what a solemn thing is life; death is always near to us, and how inscrutable are the ways of the Almighty.”
Richard, much moved by the old lady’s emotion, kissed her hand a second time with much unction.
“I am sure, Aunt Letitia,” he said, simply, “I regret the rude words I spoke to you that night. I lost my temper, madam, and I ask your pardon. Dear Jilian and I were reconciled yesterday. I am sure you were mistaken in her, aunt. She has a noble nature, and bears no malice.”
The Lady Letitia sniffed, suppressed her inclination towards cynicism, and answered her nephew with gracious resignation.
“Let us say no more about it, dear Richard,” she said, “we are all mistaken at times, and not even the oldest among us are infallible. I can forget the past in thankfulness for your safe return; you must try and forgive your old aunt her whims.”
Richard bowed and offered the Lady Letitia his arm.
“God forbid, Richard,” she said, impressively, as they walked back towards the coach, Jeffray’s mare following like a dog at his heels, “God forbid that an old woman should trifle with the happiness of two young hearts. I wish you all joy, my dear nephew. You must try and persuade Miss Hardacre to love me.”
Richard was quite conquered by the old lady’s tone of tender resignation. Perhaps Jilian had exaggerated his aunt’s asperities in the heat of her youthful self-pity. Richard was a peace-loving being, and he was glad that the quarrel promised to end in sunshine.
“I am sure Miss Hardacre bears no malice,” he said.
The Lady Letitia’s eyes flashed a curious look into Richard’s face. So the girl had chosen the saintly and heroic part. Well, she had wit, and her dear nephew was a delightful and amusing simpleton. Did he really think that women ever forgave such insinuations as she, the Lady Letitia, had flung at Miss Hardacre’s head? At all events it would be possible for her to remain another month or two in comfort at Rodenham, and it would be an interesting recreation to study the lad’s domestic ideals in the future.
“Miss Hardacre must be a very magnanimous young lady,” she said, with inward irony.
“Jilian has a generous heart, madam.”
“Ah, Richard, the heart is everything in a woman.”
“True, aunt, true.”
“And you must tell me all about this romantic adventure of yours in the woods. You are quite the knight-errant, sir.”
Richard blushed, and laughed good-humoredly.
“I will tell you about it to-night,” he said.
Jeffray excused himself from joining the Lady Letitia in her coach, asserting that he had a headache, and that a brisk ride would clear his brain. He mounted his mare, and followed the coach at a trot as it took the southward road through Pevensel.
How strange and mobile are the moods of youth, April-hued, covered with the gold and purple of sunlight or of shadow! Richard Jeffray was almost wroth with his own heart that day as he rode through the woods and saw the great green downs cleave the distant blue. How was it that Miss Jilian’s face seemed less fair to him than it had yesterday? How was it that eyes of passionate blue outstarred those of simpering gray? How was it that a glowing face and a fleece of coal-black hair rose more brilliantly before him than did the cream and rose bloom of Miss Jilian’s countenance and her head of shimmering gold? What grievous flaw was there in the clear contour of his soul, that sentiments, fragrant yesterday, should leak forth in a night and melt into the air? Was he not the same Richard Jeffray, and Jilian the same artless and forgiving cousin? What had this forest child’s face to do with the romance? Surely it was Black Dan’s stick that had knocked the sanity out of Richard’s skull that he should be possessed by such fickle and yet haunting thoughts.
A sturdy traveller was resting on the parapet of Rodenham bridge as the Lady Letitia’s coach swung over towards the gates of the park. The stranger, whose round red face topped a robust and somewhat corpulent body, was dressed in a suit of rusty brown. He wore a three-cocked-hat, rough shoes with dirty buckles, and the tail of his wig plaited into a club. What appeared to be a peddler’s pack was strapped over his broad shoulders, and on the parapet lay a thick oak stick and a red cloth bundle. The man’s keen and humorous eyes had watched the Lady Letitia’s coach swing by with a cynical twinkle.
Richard had no sooner set his eyes on the man than he reined in on the bridge, and was out of the saddle with a flush on his boyish face.
“Wilson—Dick Wilson, by all the gods!”
The traveller had started up from the parapet, and had held out a pair of red and sinewy hands to Richard.
“It is Dick Wilson, despite the gods,” he said.
“You have honored Rodenham—at last.”
“I tramped down from town with my pack on my shoulders.”
“To see the youngster whom you nursed through a fever at Rome.”
They shook hands with great good-will, a sly smile playing about the painter’s rugged face.
“And do you mean to tell me, sir,” he laughed, “that you are not ashamed of such a vagabond? Why, I have been twice in peril of the stocks as I came through from town.”
“Ashamed, Dick!”
The painter indulged in a ludicrous grimace, turned up his brown coat to show the frayed lining thereof, remarked that he had a hole in his breeches, and at the same time brandished his scarlet bundle.
“If your polite pride can stand this, Richard Jeffray,” he said, “then, sir, I will come inside.”
Richard laughed, and put his hand on the painter’s shoulder.
“Wilson,” he said, “I think we have seen enough of the world to know what polite trifles are worth.”
“Egad, sir, then we must have outstripped humanity in our philosophies.”
There was no doubt as to Richard’s sincerity. He and Dick Wilson had spent months together in Italy, and the lad had learned to admire the robust but often cross-grained artist.
“How long can you stay, eh? Why not spend the spring and summer with me? I am alone save for an aunt who goes to Tunbridge before long. We can find you splendor enough in our Sussex woods and downs, even to satisfy your mighty tastes.”
Wilson appeared touched by the enthusiastic sincerity of the lad’s welcome. His round face beamed, his eyes twinkled.
“I was half in doubt, Jeffray,” he confessed, “whether you would be pleased to see such a scarecrow. I have already tasted something of the world’s favor, sweet for a week, sour for ten months. Deuce take me, sir, I am glad of your welcome. It is bravely given, and I thank you for it, Richard Jeffray.”
IX
The two Richards walked through the park towards the priory, Jeffray laughingly explaining how he had come by a broken head, and pointing out the many beauties of the place as they went. There were the cedars his father had planted, already lusty and handsome trees. Pine and beech woods spread romantic and mysterious gloom upon the slopes. Here were gnarled and dying oaks that still lived on, torn and shattered, after the storms of centuries. There on a green knoll stood the holy thorn that was said to have sprung from the bones of some old saint, and had flowered in popish days at Christmas. A myriad rushes streaked the grass-land where mole-hills studded the dew-silvered grass with brown. When they came in sight of the old house lying in the hollow, lapped in the purple gloom of the woods, its chimneys towering to the blue, its fish-ponds glimmering in the sun, Wilson stopped and laid a hand on Jeffray’s shoulder.
“By Heaven, this is splendid!” he said. “See the purple, the green, the blue, the brave bronze! See the silver showers of light on the old trees! The toning of the moss and lichen on those walls is enough to make an impotent mortal weep!”
Jeffray’s face kindled. He loved the old place, and was glad to hear so blunt a critic as Richard Wilson wax eloquent over the home of his fathers.
“You must stay with me, Dick,” he said, warmly. “Can you leave your portrait-painting in town?”
“I have given up the flattering of fools,” quoth the painter, almost with a snarl; “and in turn the fools are giving me up. See here, Richard, this is how the gay world treats its servant.”
He turned up the tails of his shabby coat, and smiled with a species of rueful bitterness.
“English gentlemen like to behold their own smug faces, sir,” he added, “better than waving woods and smiling plains.”
Before introducing Wilson to the Lady Letitia in the afternoon, Richard delicately assisted the painter in making his toilet, lending him a frilled shirt, and a green waistcoat that was much too tight for him, and providing him with a pair of Peter Gladden’s buckled shoes.
“My aunt is something of a great lady, Dick,” he said, with an apologetic twinkle; “she loves to see a man’s buttons and cravat in order. I am always being scolded for slovenliness and lack of distinction, so to appease her taste I take more trouble with my dress.”
The painter, who was worming his huge feet into the butler’s shoes, grimaced at Jeffray, and ran the professional eye over the black-coated figure.
“You have not grown fatter, Richard,” he said. “I could still make an Apollo of you in the nude, as I did that day when you bathed at Baiæ. What a graceful trunk, sir!—what a hand and foot! Don’t blush, lad, your lines are splendid, so far as they go, though, on my honor, you are reading too much, to judge by your shoulders. I’ll wager you have set the country nymphs a-simpering, the dear Phœbes. Deuce take these shoes! Is my wig on straight?”
“Perfectly,” said Jeffray, with a smile.
Wilson expanded his chest, turned out his right foot and knee, put his hand over his heart, and bowed.
“How’s that, Richard?” he asked, gravely.
“Worthy of St. James’s.”
“My professional bow, Richard. I detest it, sir—detest it! The money-getting tricks are not part of my art. I leave them to Mr. Joshua, who could flatter the moon into a trance, as his namesake did in Canaan, and talk the sun into believing that his complexion was not fiery. Now, sir, lead on.”
Meanwhile, the Lady Letitia had heard strange and distorted accounts of the person and profession of her nephew’s visitor. Peter Gladden had unpacked Mr. Wilson’s knapsack and red bundle, and had discovered besides canvas, brushes, and paints, a tooth-brush, a few handkerchiefs, a razor, a soiled shirt, two night-caps, a piece of flannel, and a prayer-book. It was all over the house and into Aunt Letitia’s ears in half an hour that this eccentric person had borrowed Mr. Jeffray’s waistcoat and a pair of Peter Gladden’s shoes. The dowager’s pride bristled, despite the saintly emotions of the morning. A common painter fellow, a mere vulgar artist, whose name she did not even know, received as a guest at Rodenham Priory! What could Richard be thinking of, by associating with such a low and uncultured creature! Why, he would be for entertaining next that awful author fellow, Mr. Johnson, a man who spilled soup down his waistcoat, sneezed over the table, and was so bold as to contradict a lady flatly.
Hence, the Lady Letitia’s reception of Mr. Richard Wilson in the parlor that afternoon, was not calculated to put that gentleman at his ease. The dowager was polite, portentously and oppressively polite, “to please poor Richard,” as she would have phrased it. Her eyes searched Mr. Wilson from wig to buckles, started at his wrinkled and complaining waistcoat, and recognized Peter Gladden’s shoes. She deigned to listen to the painter’s stumbling platitudes about the weather, and then discovered suddenly that she was afflicted with deafness and a sick headache, and declared that she would go and rest in her bedroom until dinner.
When the Lady Letitia had sailed out of the room, Wilson stood and stared pathetically at Jeffray.
“There, sir,” he exclaimed, with tragic emphasis, “you see, my poor face always frightens them away, and I fall over my own tongue as well as over my feet. Nature did not breed me for a courtier, Jeffray. Damn it, I can’t flatter the fools in the gallant style. Beg pardon, Richard, I was not referring to your august and noble relative.”
“Come and see the garden, Dick.”
“Do you keep peacocks there, sir?”
“Peacocks, Dick! Why, peacocks?”
“A mere whim, sir—a mere whim,” quoth the painter, with a queer twist of the mouth.
A mysterious change had fallen upon the Lady Letitia’s temper by dinner-time, a change that betrayed itself in her attitude towards Richard Wilson. She was peculiarly gracious and urbane, and no one could be more gracious than the Lady Letitia when she so chose. The painter, astonished at his sudden acceptance into favor, found himself talking to the dowager with an ease and a fervor that made him fancy for the moment that Jeffray’s wine had got into his noddle. Aunt Letitia beamed and sparkled, crowed and chuckled at Dick’s jokes, and seemed wholly to have abandoned the air of hauteur that had repulsed Wilson in the afternoon. Jeffray himself was thoroughly mystified as to the miracle. He could only conclude that the dear old lady had spoken the truth when she had complained of a headache, and that it was not the painter’s shabby clothes or his rough and unfashionable face that had shocked her aristocratic susceptibilities.
Aunt Letitia had been spending the afternoon gossiping with her maid, and that trusted servant had let fall Mr. Richard Wilson’s name into her mistress’s pensive ear. The four syllables had suddenly struck some rusty note of by-gone scandal in the dowager’s brain. “Wilson! Wilson! Yes, to be sure, there used to be a painter fellow in town of that name. She had not heard him spoken of lately, though some of the gentry had sat to him for their portraits years ago. Wait! Could this be the Mr. Richard Wilson concerning whom a merry tale had been spun one season in the fashionable seats? Sir Peter Hardacre had had a house in town seven years or so ago, before economy had been forced like a bolus down the poor baronet’s throat.” The Lady Letitia had knitted her brows over these curious and interesting reminiscences. She had determined to discover more about Mr. Richard Wilson and his past that evening. Hence her amazing and gracious affability to that honest but slovenly individual, an affability that made Mr. Wilson expand his chest, set his shabby wig straight, and imagine that there was yet hope for him in the world of Mammon.
“You have been long abroad, sir, I believe?” said the dowager, sweetly, after drawing the painter into a discussion on Italian art.
“Years, madam, years.”
“You painted many clever portraits in town some seasons ago.”
Mr. Wilson bowed in his chair, and was flattered to hear my lady had so kindly a memory.
“I was honored at one time, madam,” he said, stroking his broad chin, “by the presence of certain of the beauties of the fashionable world in my studio. Yes, madam, I painted Sir Toby Gilhooly and his lovely daughters; Mr. Walsh, the poet; Admiral Timberbuck, and many others, madam.”
The Lady Letitia twinkled, and exhaled perfumes. Her nephew was engaged at the other end of the table in a scholarly debate on Roman architecture with Dr. Sugg. The lad had desisted from fathering Richard Wilson, and was delighted to see that his aunt showed the poor fellow so much favor.
“Did you ever paint Sir Peter Hardacre, Mr. Wilson?” asked the old lady, innocent as a paschal lamb.
The painter darted a look at her, flushed, and began to fidget in his chair.
“Sir Peter Hardacre, madam?”
“Yes, sir. I thought I remembered seeing the picture—”
Richard Wilson adjusted his wig, and drank down a glass of wine.
“I believe I did, madam—I believe I did,” he said.
“Dear Sir Peter; he must have made such an aristocratic study! I think I must really ask you to honor me with a sitting, Mr. Wilson.”
The painter blinked, and then bowed low across the table. He appeared glad in measure to escape the subject, nor was his discomfort lost upon the Lady Letitia.
“I shall be proud, madam, proud,” he said; “the honor is on my side, madam. I shall be proud to paint Richard Jeffray’s grandmother—pardon me, madam—aunt, I mean. Upon my word, madam, you look extraordinarily young to have so old a nephew.”
Aunt Letitia, not in the least disturbed by the painter’s slip, received his clumsy apologies and awkward apings of flattery with infinite good humor.
“La, Mr. Wilson,” she said, frankly, “I am an old woman, and, thank God, I know it. I think it is a pitiful sight, sir, to see an old woman frittering away the solemn and awful years of age in folly, when she should be preparing herself to meet her Maker.”
“Upon my soul, madam,” said the painter, much relieved, “your wisdom is as admirable as—ahem—as—as your distinguished and aristocratic person. Ahem. I shall be proud, madam, to put my poor powers at your service.”
“What a blundering and honest fool it is,” thought the Lady Letitia. “Yes, it is the very fellow who painted old Sir Peter, and made love to the daughter. Or was it Miss Jilian who made love to him? Egad, dear nephew, there is no need for your old aunt to play the scandal-monger, if this good ass can be got to bray. Mr. Wilson must be made welcome here, and the secret coaxed out of his ugly mouth.” And thus the Lady Letitia continued to beam upon the painter with all the waning sunshine of her November years. She made him draw droll sketches for her in the parlor after dinner, laughed at his whimsies, promised to send her dear friends Lady Boodle and Miss FitzNoodle to be painted by Wilson when he returned to town. When Peter Gladden set the card-table in order, the dowager insisted that Richard Wilson should be her partner, and that Richard should challenge them with Dr. Sugg. And though poor Dick managed his cards disgracefully, trumped the Lady Letitia’s tricks, bungled the returns and lost her money, she continued to beam on him with undiminished brightness, and to encourage the good oaf with all the sweetness she could compel.
“Yes, Richard, mon cher,” she said to her nephew, as she bade him good-night, “my headache has left me; I felt quite vaporish this afternoon. Your friend is a dear creature, so droll and refreshing; not polished, of course, but quite charming. I have fallen in love with the dear bear, Richard. It is so delightful to talk to a man of sense and humor, even though he may smell—faintly, of the soil.”
Bess had wandered back from Beacon Rock through her well-loved woods that morning, thinking more of Richard Jeffray than was good for a woman’s heart. There was a charm about Bess that no mortal could gainsay. She looked fit for carrying a milking-pail over meadows golden with cowslips, for playing the Miss Prue gathering rosemary and thyme in some red-walled garden, or walking in brocade and lace amid the close-clipped yews, statues, and terrace ways of some stately manor. Despite her strength and her brilliant vitality she was no hoyden, and even in her wild beauty seemed to suggest the subtle delicacy of high birth. Richard himself had been puzzled by her quaint stateliness, such stateliness as a child might have inherited from a noble mother and treasured unconsciously as she grew to womanhood.
The thoughts uppermost in Bess’s mind that morning dealt with the worldly gulf between Jeffray and herself. The girl had been content hitherto with the forest life, content to accept old Ursula as her foster-mother and the rest of them as her kinsfolk. She had grown up with Dan and David, and the forest children, ignorant as they were of the great world beyond the shadows of Pevensel. Yet beyond the forest life a dim and forgotten past seemed to rise up in the blue distance of the mind. A few strange incidents, which she had never been able to explain, still lived on like relics of a vanished age. She had prattled of them to old Ursula as a child, and had been laughed at and chided for her pains. The old woman had always told her that Rachel, her mother, Ursula’s younger sister, had run away from the hamlet before Bess was born, and that when her mother had died—“down in the west”—a peddler man had brought Bess back to the Grimshaws of Pevensel. Ursula had always shed a species of reticent mystery over the past, and had waxed dour if Bess had pressed her questions too boldly or too far.
The girl had been content these years to let these vague memories glide away into oblivion. Now and again they would rise up to haunt her with strange vividness, frail ghostly images of other days. How was it that she often saw a negro man with black, woolly hair in her dreams, she who had never seen such a man in Pevensel? Then there was that memory of her falling and cutting her bare knee upon a stone, and of a tall lady with bright eyes and a brooch with green stones at her throat running to catch her in her arms. Vaguely, too, she believed that she had once been in a great ship at sea. There were incidents that lived more vividly than the rest in her mind; one, the memory of her standing at night on the deck of a ship with the dark sails flapping above and rough men swearing and quarrelling about her; she had seen blows given, heard a wild cry and the plash of a body thrown over the bulwarks into the sea. Then again she remembered being taken in a boat by night to land; the same rough men were with her; she could still recall one who wore a great pig-tail and had a black patch over one eye and a cloven lip. They had come with her to the shore and taken her into the woods, carrying bales that had seemed wondrous heavy. Thence they had disappeared, and the life in Pevensel had begun, its very beginnings dim as the mysterious past.
These memories came back with strange vividness to her mind that morning after her parting with Jeffray on the heath. For the first time in her life she found herself wondering whether old Ursula had told her the truth. Could she have dreamed these mind pictures that still clung to her? Were these memories but the dim and fantastic fancies of childhood, mere myths begotten of a child’s brain. She puzzled over them earnestly as she walked through the woods that morning, and promised herself that she would tell them to Richard Jeffray when they should meet again.
Old Ursula sat up after Bess had gone to bed that night, huddled snugly in the ingle-nook with her black cat at her side. The pewter glistened on the shelves as the handful of sticks that the dame had thrown on the sulky fire kindled and broke into busy flame. Bess had been in bed half an hour or more, and was lying with her black hair loose upon the pillow, thinking of Richard Jeffray and her adventure with him. She had primed the pistols from the powder-horn kept in the kitchen-press, and had hidden them away in the cupboard in her bedroom, meaning to carry one whenever she went abroad in the woods. Bess had fallen asleep, when old Ursula, dozing in the ingle-nook, was awakened by a knocking at the cottage door. She started up, hobbled across the kitchen, and let Isaac Grimshaw in.
The old man sat himself down on the settle before the fire, drew out a short pipe and a tobacco-box, and began to smoke. He looked at Ursula with his shrewd, calculating eyes, jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and smiled.
“The wench is above, eh?”
“This hour or more.”
“Dame, I have much to gossip over with ye about our Bess. She is a dangerous wench and needs a master. There’ll be no peace with us, dame, till the girl is stalled.”
Isaac, kindling to his subject, began to talk to the old woman, significantly, about betrothing the girl to Dan without delay. He had much to put forward in justification of the measure. Bess’s beauty had become an apple of discord in the hamlet; all the young men wanted her, and Black Dan would put up with no rival. Isaac spoke mysteriously of the need for good-fellowship among the forest-folk; there must be no mating of Bess to a bachelor outside the hamlet; she was one of them and with them she must remain. Old Ursula looked surly and displeased during the patriarch’s harangue. The match was little to her liking, and she distrusted Dan’s ability to make marriage bearable to such a woman as Bess.
“I may as well tell ye, Isaac,” she said, sourly, “that the wench does not care a brass button for your Dan.”
“Who does she fancy then, dame, eh?”
“I thought once she was for liking young David. She is a powerful-tempered wench is Bess, and she don’t like being driven.”
Isaac puffed at his pipe and frowned.
“Odd’s my life,” he said, “the wench must be taught her place. My Dan’s the first man in the forest, eh? What better lad does the wench look for? I’ll wager that we will soon persuade her.”
“You be careful of Bess,” quoth the old woman, solemnly.
“Careful, dame! That’s the very text I’m preaching on. How much does the wench remember, eh? Deuce take me, sister, we have reared her here, and here she must remain. And Dan will be breaking all the youths’ heads unless he has her, and have her he shall.”
Isaac laid down his pipe and, leaning forward with his hands spread to the fire, began to speak further to the old woman in his grim and didactic way. There was an expression of almost ferocious earnestness on his thin and clever face, and it was difficult to believe that an old man could be possessed of so much fire and vigor. Isaac had ruled the hamlet these forty years; his will had been law unto them all. Old Ursula’s one feeling was known to the patriarch well enough. He played upon it that night as she sat in the ingle-nook and listened. The dame kept a stockingful of guineas hid under the floor in one of the upper rooms. She would often go up secretly and play with the pretty golden pieces, counting and recounting them, letting them fall and jingle in her lap.
“A hundred gold guineas, dame,” said Isaac at the end of his persuading. “I’ll bring them to you on the betrothal day. Why, look you, the wench will be spry and gay enough when she is mated. Unbroken fillies are always wild.”
Ursula nodded over the fire, stroked the black cat reflectively, and watched Isaac’s face with her greedy eyes.
“You take your oath on it?” she asked.
The patriarch grinned, and drew a leather pouch from the tail-pocket of his coat. He jingled it and tossed it into his sister’s lap.
“There are twenty,” he said, curtly; “keep them, dame, as a proof of the bargain. I’ll give you the rest when the gold piece is broken.”
X
Richard Jeffray could not break from the thoughts of Bess that had followed him from out the green glooms of Pevensel. Why, because she had a comely body and a comely face, should he be forever recalling the flash of her red-stockinged ankles under her short gown of green, the fine lifting of her handsome head, the way she had of putting her right hand up to her throat and of letting her eyes dwell with strange intentness upon his face? Jeffray was honestly troubled by these haunting thoughts, these visions of passion that flashed on him out of his own heart. Despite his romanticism he did not lack for character and discretion, and pedagogic reason told him that such dreams were neither obedient to philosophy nor to his loyalty to Miss Hardacre.
The news of Jeffray’s misadventure in the woods had been duly carried to Hardacre house; nor was it long before Mr. Lancelot and Miss Jilian rode over to inquire after their dear cousin. Richard was idling in the garden, planning color schemes for the summer, when he heard the clatter of hoofs coming down the road through the park. Richard recognized Mr. Lot in scarlet mounted on a great, rawboned roan, and Miss Jilian beside him in a green riding-habit, a black beaver on her auburn hair. Richard crossed the terrace and went down the steps to meet them. His head was still bandaged, a fact that Mr. Lancelot remarked upon with his usual blunt brevity.
“Egad, cousin,” he said, with a laugh, “so the forester broke your pate for you, deuce take his insolence! Ha, Jill, how do you like our Richard in bandages? You should wear a mob-cap, cousin. How’s the dowager? Got over the mumps yet?”
Mr. Lot roared over his own facetiousness, while Richard stood beside Miss Jilian’s gray mare and pressed the young lady’s hand.
“I should have been at Hardacre before this,” he said, blushing, “but Surgeon Stott ordered me to bide quiet.”
There was a look of delicious anxiety in Miss Hardacre’s eyes.
“Are you sure you ought to be up and about, Richard?” she asked.
“There is nothing much amiss with me,” he answered, looking up at her shyly. “Won’t you dismount and come into the house? I will call Gladden and have your horses taken.”
Mr. Lot winked and inclined his head knowingly in the direction of the house.
“Has she got her war-paint on, Richard?”
“Who?”
“Your revered relative. I am ready to make peace though she did send me down to supper with the ugliest girl this side of Lewes. It’s uncommon hot to-day. What do you say, Jill? Shall we tumble in and have a glass of wine and a chat with the old lady?”
Miss Hardacre simpered, blushed prettily, and glanced at Richard. The lad read her inclination on the instant, and helped her to dismount. She pressed his hand kindly, her gray eyes holding his a moment with a look that did not lack for eloquence.
“Hold there; what a deuced ass I am,” quoth Mr. Lot, who had rolled out of the saddle and was thumping his manly chest. “Here’s a certain precious document buttoned up in my breast-pocket. We are giving a masked ball next week at Hardacre. Quite a gorgeous affair, and Sir Peter thought he’d send the dowager a state summons, just to show there is no ill-feeling. Of course you’ll come, cousin.”
Mr. Lot drew a sealed letter from his pocket, and handed it to Richard with a mock bow.
“Let old Gladden give it to her in state,” he said, with a wink; “it will make a better show on a silver salver.”
Richard was looking at Miss Jilian’s pink face and at her pretty figure sheathed in green.
“It is very magnanimous of Sir Peter,” he said, warmly, “to let by-gones be by-gones. I am sure Aunt Letitia is sorry for what happened that evening. She asked me, Jilian, to try and persuade you to forgive her.”
Lancelot Hardacre chuckled.
“Dear old Mohawk,” he said.
“Of course I will forgive her,” quoth Miss Hardacre, sweetly.
“That’s the game, Jill. These women, Richard, are moral prodigies. Deuce take me, Jill, you have the temper of an angel. Don’t I know it.”
Miss Hardacre’s gray eyes flashed a curious look at her brother.
“Heavens, Lot,” she said, “how you do chatter.”
Jeffray had rung the stable-bell, and Peter Gladden and a groom came out to take the horses. Richard ordered the butler to bring cake and wine into the dining-room, and to send the Lady Letitia’s maid to inform her mistress, who was taking her afternoon nap, that Miss Hardacre was in the house. They went into the porch together and through the hall into the wainscoted dining-room, Miss Jilian holding her riding-skirt daintily in either hand, Mr. Lot swinging his velvet cap and whip and grinning affectionately at Richard.
The Lady Letitia appeared in due course, as gracious as could be, decked out in a handsome sack, her hair freshly powdered, her mittens on, and her fan swinging at her wrist. She kissed Miss Hardacre on either cheek, squeezed the young lady’s hand, beamed at her nephew, and was very affable to Mr. Lancelot. She had received the invitation to Sir Peter’s ball from Mr. Gladden’s salver, and expressed herself charmed at Sir Peter’s courtesy. After wine had been drunk and cake crumbled, Richard proposed that they should walk out into the garden. The dowager rang for her black mantilla, requested Mr. Lancelot to honor her with his arm, and led the way through the opening upon the terrace. Jilian and Richard lingered behind the Lady Letitia, Miss Hardacre very coy and ready to blush, Richard feeling with some shame that pretty speeches came less glibly from his tongue than they had done of yore.
The sky was a rare blue above the green lawns, the old red walls, and the silvery grass-land of the park. As they walked the box-edged paths betwixt the stately yews and hollies Miss Jilian began to rally Richard on his adventure in the woods. “How gallant and romantic it was, to be sure! Do you think, Richard, that you would have rescued me from some wicked ruffian had your poor cousin been at his mercy?”
Jeffray was convincing in his chivalrous protestations.
“Why, Jilian, can you doubt it?”
“And you would have fought for me, Richard?” queried the young lady, with charming wonder.
“Fight for you, Jilian? Why I would defend you with my life.”
“La, Richard,” she exclaimed, blushing, “how brave you are! Tell me, was the girl pretty?”
“Pretty, Jilian?”
“Now, Richard, I am sure she was pretty.”
“Perhaps she was,” said Richard, with studied carelessness. “Were she ugly or otherwise, I only did my duty as a gentleman and a man.”
“You dear lad,” quoth Miss Hardacre, tenderly.
“Jilian!”
“Now don’t pretend you don’t know how brave and noble you are. Ah, Heavens, only to think of it; the wretch might have killed you! It makes me shudder, Richard; it does indeed.”
Jeffray, much touched, looked at the young lady with affectionate and chivalrous candor.
“And should you have cared, dear cousin?” he asked her.
Miss Hardacre flushed crimson and hung her head. How pretty her downcast lashes looked as they swept her fair cheeks; what a sweet, sad smile hovered about her lips.
“Oh, Richard,” she said, “can you not believe—?”
“I believe all that is good and pure and kind of you, dear cousin.”
“There, sir, there; you are making me blush so that I shall hardly be able to face your aunt. You must not flatter a simple girl so. Ah, Richard,”—and she sighed—“thank Heaven that you are safe and well.”
How could Mr. Jeffray bear himself under such delicate flattery but declare Miss Hardacre to be the kindest and best of women, and to abuse his own foolish heart for dreaming dreams about young ladies with red petticoats and coal-black hair? What a weak creature he was, and what a noble being this cousin of his appeared! He was very tender and attentive to Miss Jilian that day, nor did the lady fail to encourage such an admirable display of affection. She flashed shy and melting glances into Mr. Richard’s face, blushed dearly when he spoke to her, and was as gentle and as sweet as any convent saint. Jeffray strove to forget poor Bess of the Woods, whose fierce blue eyes blazed out at him continually.
Meanwhile, Aunt Letitia appeared determined to erase from the minds of the Hardacres the unpleasant memories that her own strategies had created. Her amiability puzzled Mr. Lancelot that afternoon as he walked the terrace with her, and looked down upon the lawns and prim paths beneath, the statuary shining white amid the yews and cedars. The old lady’s eyes dwelt often on Richard and Miss Jilian who were drifting to and fro absorbed in their mutual confidences. From time to time she would scan the park as though watching for some person to appear. Dick Wilson had gone forth sketching to study the effects of light and shade upon the distant summits of the “downs.” The Lady Letitia was eagerly expecting the painter’s return. It would be so interesting to watch his introduction to Miss Hardacre.
“Look at those dear innocents,” she said, with a twinkle, to Mr. Lot. “To be frank with you, sir, I was not eager to see my nephew married; early marriages are such lotteries, Mr. Hardacre. But now that I am beginning to see more of your sweet sister, I must confess that I am becoming converted.”
Lot Hardacre gave the old lady a queer look. He was no fool was Mr. Lot, and he did not trust the dowager with all the manly innocence of his fox-hunting heart.
“I observe, madam,” he said, bluntly, “that you are a sportswoman. You don’t mind confessing when you’re off the scent.”
“The truth, sir, is always easily understood,” quoth the dowager, cheerfully.
“Egad, you’re right, madam.”
“And I shall have much pleasure in attending your father’s ‘rout,’ Mr. Hardacre. Sir Peter has shown a magnanimous spirit; and I trust that a woman of my birth knows how to receive so graceful a pardon.”
Mr. Lot grinned. He recalled to mind how his sister had been compelled to weep and threaten hysterics before the baronet could be prevailed upon to include the Rodenham folk among his guests. “Richard was a decent lad, to be sure, but that damned old cat, no, egad, he’d see her hanged before he had her at Hardacre.” It was only after much persuasion that Sir Peter had been brought to see that it would be wiser to appease the old lady than to tempt her malice.
“I trust that we have buried the hatchet, madam,” said Mr. Lot, with a bow.
“The hatchet, sir!”
“You and Sir Peter, madam, had better leave whist alone.”
The old lady chuckled as though Mr. Hardacre had delivered himself of an excellent jest. She wagged her head at him, and gave him an arch smile that carried no malice.
“You are a wicked fellow, sir,” she said, with a pat of the hand. “I can see that you have been laughing all the time at your father and myself. La, Mr. Hardacre, I can take a joke, to be sure. You are a wicked, sly fellow, sir, and you are no fool, I see that clearly enough.”
Much to Aunt Letitia’s chagrin, Dick Wilson did not return in time that day to be introduced to Miss Jilian Hardacre. She confessed to the young lady that her nephew had a painter friend staying at the priory, a droll and charming creature, but the Lady Letitia did not divulge the gentleman’s name. Might they bring him to the masked ball at Hardacre? Of course Miss Jilian declared that any friend of her cousin’s would be welcome. And thus Mr. Lot and his sister departed from Rodenham, on the best of terms with Richard Jeffray, and apparently reconciled to the Lady Letitia, his aunt. Richard walked with them across the park, and took leave of his sweet cousin with an ardent look and a significant pressure of the hand.
As they climbed the road up the long hill towards Pevensel, Miss Jilian looked at her brother with a questioning smile, and remarked on the Lady Letitia’s change of temper.
“Richard must have terrified the poor old woman,” she said. “I should never have thought that the lad had so much spirit in him.”
Mr. Lot thrust out his lower lip and swore.
“Devil take the old cat,” he said; “she is too deuced polite and purry to make me fancy her. Do you think she loves us, Jill? Damme, I’ll wager she’d like to slap your face.”
“And yours too, Lot, eh?”
They laughed and whipped up their horses to a trot as they topped the hill.
“Cousin Richard’s a little gentleman,” quoth Mr. Hardacre, “though he is a bit of a fool.”
“No, no, Lot, he is too honest, that is all. I like the lad. He has a sweet nature.”
“What I should like to know is,” returned the brother, “what sort of mischief that old catamaran is plotting. She’s a regular Jezebel, Jill. Deuce take it, she would cheat Old Nick into believing her an angel, but she won’t cheat me.”
Meanwhile poor Bess, in Pevensel, had already been confronted with Isaac Grimshaw’s authority. She had told old Ursula of the pistols Jeffray had given her, and while the girl was away milking just before sunset, the old lady had crept up the stairs, filched away the pistols from the cupboard, and hidden them in the hole under the floor where she kept her guineas. The same evening, as Bess was sitting on the settle before the fire, thinking of Jeffray, her work lying idle in her lap, there came a sudden knocking at the cottage door. Old Ursula jumped up, shot back the bolt, and let in Isaac and his son. She locked the door after them and pocketed the key. Bess, starting up from the settle, became aware instinctively that there was some conspiracy afoot against herself.
Isaac, glib and smiling, thrust Dan forward—Dan, upon whose hairy face there was a suggestive and sheepish grin.
“I be come to claim you, Bess,” he said, shifting his fur cap from hand to hand.
“Claim me!”
“Mr. Isaac has ordered it. You and me are to break a coin together. Come, lass, I’ll be kind and easy with you. Give me a kiss, and let’s call it a bargain.”
Bess, flashing fierce scorn out of her eyes at Dan, turned on Isaac with rebellious and glowing face.
“I’ll not wed Dan,” she said. “No, I’ll have none of him. Press me if you dare.”
Grimshaw smiled at her, rubbed his hands together, and nudged Dan with his elbow. The giant made a step towards Bess, grinning through his beard. In an instant the girl had turned and darted towards the stairs, only to find the door closed and old Ursula leaning against it. Trapped, Bess drew herself up and looked at the old woman with wistful anger.
“Are you against me, too, mother?”
Ursula smiled painfully.
“Isaac’s word is law, girl,” she said.
“I’ll not marry Dan, no—I hate him. I’ll not be married against my will.”
She turned and faced old Grimshaw and his son, her eyes fierce as the eyes of some wild thing caught in a snare.
“Dan,” she cried, “will you marry me? Ha, I hate you; I hate your great, ugly face. Will you marry me, I say? You oaf, you great, black, hairy fool, I hate you. Be careful, all of you. I am not to be bought and sold.”
The three were silent a moment while Bess stood in the centre of the room, passionately defiant, her fists clinched, her strong chin up. Old Isaac watched her, and still rubbed his hands together. Dan, looking sullen and foolish, fidgeted with his cap, and glanced first at Bess and then at his father. Old Ursula had the corner of her apron between her teeth. She was wavering betwixt greed and love for Bess, her foster-child.
Isaac gave his son a sudden, fierce glance and a whispered command. Dan edged across the room towards Bess. In a flash she had picked up a heavy stool, and stood at bay behind the table.
“Come at me, Dan,” she cried, “and I’ll kill ye.”
There was a sudden squeak from old Ursula. She had flung open the door that closed the stairs, the love in her overmastering the greed for gold.
“Bess,” she squealed, “quick, lass, the door’s open. Dan, you great coward, back, keep your hands off her. I’ll have no bullying in my cottage.”
Bess had flung the stool at Dan, turned and darted towards Ursula. She kissed the beldam, and fled up the stairs, while the old woman closed the door on her and covered it with her body.
“Brother Isaac,” she said, with a certain dignity that became her gray hairs well, “I’ll have no bullying in my cottage. Let Dan win the girl like a man, and not like a coward. You shall not have Bess to-night save over my body.”
Dan slunk back behind his father, who was looking at his sister with a peculiar smile. He rubbed his hands together, his white hair falling benignantly about his face.
“There, there, dame,” he said, mildly, “don’t put yourself out about the wench. We mean no harm by her, and she shall not be browbeaten. Come, son, you must wait and try what patience will do. Good-night, old lady. Bess can go to sleep in peace.”