XLI
Dan and old Isaac had been lying hid all day like a couple of leopards in one of the sloping shrubberies that closed in the garden on the west. Their patience had been rewarded, for they had seen Bess appear for that fatal moment upon the terrace when she had taken leave of Jeffray when he rode to Rookhurst. They had watched her return into the house, pass the windows of the dining-room and seat herself at the window of the blue parlor. Her own dreamy and passionate sense of security had delivered her into her husband’s hands. Dan and Isaac had crept round to the eastern end of the terrace, entered with masterly boldness at the porch door, and caught Bess alone in the blue parlor. The girl had fought like a wild thing, only to be stunned by Dan in savage impatience with a blow from the hilt of his hanger. In the hall he had come face to face with Dick Wilson rushing, pistols in fists, from the library. The painter, nothing of a marksman, had fired at Isaac and missed, and taken a cut across the pate from Dan’s hanger for his pains. Peter Gladden, discreetly deaf to all this pother, had only run to Mr. Wilson’s help when he was assured that such dangerous ruffians as the Grimshaws had departed. Officious to the point of fanaticism when the peril was past, he had scuttled away to rouse the grooms in the stable, and had stormed and hectored when the fellows displayed no overmastering desire to give chase to the Grimshaws over Rodenham heath.
During Peter Gladden’s explanations and Mr. Wilson’s condemnation of his own carelessness, the thunder-storm had burst over the old house. Great lightning cracks streamed across the sky; the wind labored and gathered itself into spasmodic and mournful gusts; the tall trees battled one with another; rain rattled on the broad-leaved laurels and hollies. The very deeps of the old house seemed to quiver beneath the mighty reverberations of the heavens. Gray sheets of rain dimmed the landscape, and shrouded the struggling and wind-tossed trees.
Gladden, querulous and uneasy, moved to the library window and closed it against the rain. Jeffray was standing motionless in the centre of the room, looking at the bands of blood-blotched linen about Dick Wilson’s head. He turned to the table abruptly, picked up the pistols the painter had used so clumsily, and glanced at the flints and the priming-pans. Going to an old armoire that stood in the far corner, he opened it and took out a leather belt that carried a powder-flask, a bag of bullets, and a hunting-knife. He loaded and primed the empty pistol, buckled the belt about his body, and then spoke to Gladden in a quiet and determined voice.
“Order the mare to be saddled,” he said; “she will stand the thunder better than Brown Will.”
Gladden stared at his master incredulously.
“Do you hear me, Gladden?”
“I do, sir.”
“Then obey my orders. Quick with you, and see that the brandy flask is filled and strapped to the saddle with the holsters.”
The butler slouched away, unbuttoning and buttoning his coat in agitation. Wilson, who was weak from loss of blood, and had been listening to Jeffray’s orders, staggered up from his chair, and faced his friend.
“Where are you going, sir?” he asked, almost roughly.
“To Pevensel, Dick.”
“To Pevensel?”
“Where else—after what has happened?”
The painter stretched out his hands as though to plant them appealingly on Jeffray’s shoulders. Richard drew two steps back from him with a slight frown.
“Are you mad, sir?—are you mad?”
“No, I am not mad, Dick.”
“They will murder you, sir. I tell you they are desperate men.”
“So am I, Dick,” said the other, simply.
Wilson beat his left fist into his right palm.
“You can’t ride out in such weather. Wait and get help; take your servants with you if you must meddle in this mad business.”
Jeffray appeared unmoved by the suggestion.
“I am taking my own life in my hands, Dick,” he said. “There is nothing else for me to do. They are desperate men, you say; I grant it you. They will murder this woman, Dick, and I, too—am desperate. The law will not help me. I tell you I am going to Pevensel to try and save her, though she be another man’s wife.”
Wilson, with a helpless gesture, sank back into his chair.
“I see that I waste my words,” he said.
“Good-bye, Dick; give me your hand.”
“God keep you, sir, from getting your brains scattered for the sake of a green petticoat.”
The sky was breaking in the west when Jeffray mounted his black mare, rode down through the park, and passed the gibbet on Rodenham heath. A splendor of rain-drenched gold streamed from under the lifting edge of the clouds. The whole landscape grew bathed in a flood of slanting light. The moorland and the green woods flashed and glittered; masses of wild tawny vapor crowned the heights of Pevensel. Rain was still falling lightly from the black clouds above, but the mutterings of the thunder and the streaks of fire were passing southward towards the sea.
Jeffray left the road below Beacon Rock and crossed the heath towards the forest. His eyes, dark and alert in his sallow face, searched the waste for signs of life. A solitary plover flapped and wailed against the sun, but for all else the wilderness and the welkin seemed deserted. Soon Jeffray was riding down the long slope that fell away towards the purlieus of the forest. He found the path that Bess had shown him of old, and passed in under the trees.
Pevensel was a magic wilderness that evening, with the sunlight flooding through from the wet west, and every bough glistening with dew. Under the pines the damp mast shone a deep rich bronze. The scent of the rain-drenched bracken and the pines steamed up into the slanting sunlight. Jeffray had no eye for the mere beauty of it at that moment. All tangible things were without significance save when they prompted the vigilance of the senses. The trees were a dumb and unmeaning multitude, the sunlight a curse when it blurred and obscured the distance. Jeffray had no vision before him save the vision of Bess lying senseless and broken in Dan’s great arms.
A confused sound of voices came suddenly to Jeffray through the forest, as he neared the broad ride known as White Hind walk. He reined in to listen, heard the gruff and angry growling of men’s voices rising from the deeps below him. Pushing on cautiously he came to where the ride clove a great pathway through the forest, and, putting spurs to his mare, dashed across it at a canter. As he flashed across the open he caught a glimpse of a line of pack-horses being driven at a trot along the ride some two hundred paces towards the south. Men were cursing and belaboring the beasts with sticks, the fierce and strenuous figures looming dim and blurred under the light through the trees. The significance of the thing flashed through Jeffray’s mind, as he held the mare well in hand and swung along the winding path, dodging the swooping boughs as they trailed above his head. He had seen a smuggling cavalcade threading through the forest, in some peril of capture, to judge by the way the men were beating the pack-horses. Jeffray remembered, at the same moment, the cornet and the light-horse at Rodenham village. There might be fighting afoot, and what if the Grimshaws were entangled in the scrimmage?
It was not long before the trees began to thin before him, the open west shining a wall of amber pilastered by the dark boles of the pines. Jeffray, growing cautious, dismounted and led his mare aside from the path, and tethered her in a slight hollow of the ground where she was hidden from the path by undergrowth and bracken. He took the pistols out of the holsters, reprimed them, and pushed on towards the hamlet. Looking down from the converging aisles of the forest, he saw the green break in the woods lying calm and quiet under the western sun. The place appeared deserted and silent, save for a few cows with swelling udders that were waiting at a byre-gate to be milked.
Jeffray’s eyes fixed themselves upon the cottage farthest from him. The gray walls were half hidden by the apple-trees of old Isaac’s orchard. The cottage was Dan Grimshaw’s cottage; Bess had spoken of it to Jeffray, and he recognized it from her words. But what was more significant to him for the moment was that a man stood leaning against the rough fencing of the garden with a musket lying in the crook of his left arm. The sunlight flashed on the long barrel, and the faint sound of the man’s whistling came up to Jeffray in the woods. He felt convinced, as he scanned the hamlet, that the Grimshaws were entangled in the smuggling enterprise, that Bess was in the cottage, and that they had left one of their men on guard.
There was no time to be wasted, and Jeffray, casting a half circle round the clearing, came to the thickets to the north of the cottage. The trees grew close to the garden on the north and west. Crouching behind the bracken, Jeffray won a clear view of the man leaning against the fence. He was Enoch, Solomon Grimshaw’s eldest son, a raw-boned lout, with a red beard fringing his chin. He was whistling a country song, dandling his musket lazily on his left arm, and taking his duty very stolidly.
Jeffray’s wit served him at the crisis. He slipped back from the bracken, and skirted round under the trees till he came to the back of the cottage. There was no second door to it, and the narrow lattices were closed. He gained the back of the cottage, moved step by step to the angle of the wall, and peered round it with his pistols ready. An apple-tree half hid from him the man leaning against the fence. The fellow was still whistling stolidly, and seemed in no fear of a surprise.
The grass path gave Jeffray the advantage that he needed. He crept on till he reached the farther edge of the cottage, and had the broad back of Solomon’s son in full view. Covering the man with one of his pistols, he stamped his foot, and kept his finger tight upon the trigger.
The man by the fence whipped round as though he had been touched on the shoulder. The levelled pistol, with the black circle of the muzzle covering him, appeared to astonish him considerably.
“Put down your musket, or I fire.”
The clear, tense tones rang out like a pistol-shot. Solomon’s son hesitated and obeyed.
“Hold up your hands.”
A pair of dirty paws went up.
“March off ten paces.”
Jeffray advanced on the fellow from the cottage. His last command was obeyed with such exaggerated nimbleness that Jeffray saw the sentinel take to his heels and scud towards the woods. He held his fire, and, reaching over the fence, possessed himself of the abandoned musket. He had hardly turned back towards the cottage when he heard the sound of shouting coming from the forest. He ran up the path and put his shoulders to the door of the cottage. It was locked and the key was gone. Clinching his teeth, he levelled the musket and blew in the lock. The door yielded to him, and he crossed the threshold.
One rapid glance showed Bess lying full length upon the oak table, bound wrist and ankle, the cords passing also about her body. The voices increased in volume rapidly. Jeffray ran to the door, and looked out. Pack-horses were being driven from the clearing into the woods; men were rushing to and fro in the sunlight, cursing, and cutting the bales from the beasts’ backs. Jeffray saw Solomon’s son shouting and waving his arm in the direction of Dan’s cottage. Several figures broke away from the mob of pack-horses and gathered round the man. Jeffray slammed the door to, shot the heavy bolts, snatched the wooden bar from the corner and ran it through the staples. He turned back into the room, took the knife from the sheath at his belt, and cut the cords that bound Bess.
She struggled up, flung her arms round Jeffray, and kissed him on the lips.
“They are coming,” she said, hoarsely.
“Yes, yes.”
“Give me the musket. I can fight.”
Jeffray gave the musket into her hands, looked at his pistols, laid his sword upon the table and the belt that carried the powder-flask and bullets.
“Load it,” he said, quietly; “ram home several slugs. Kneel down behind the chair.”
Bess, giving him a fierce love glance, did as he commanded her.
“Watch the window; I will hold the door. Reload for me if you can. We shall have the whole smuggling crew on us in a moment.”
Even as he spoke they heard the sound of men running. Heavy footsteps came up the path towards the cottage. They heard Dan’s voice roaring at them, bidding them open to him, or they would break down the door.
XLII
Jeffray stood gripping his pistols in the cottage room, driven by strange stress of circumstances to fight for a peasant girl against a crowd of cursing and sweating smugglers. He had never stood forward as a hero among his peers, those blue-eyed, plump-bellied worthies who preached or swore in the pulpit and at the dining-table. Slim, sensitive, yet strong now as a band of steel, he waited, watching the door heave and creak beneath the weight of Dan’s great body. Bess, kneeling behind her chair, was plying the ramrod. Her eyes met Jeffray’s for a moment, the gleam in them speaking for her woman’s heart.
Men were massing outside the cottage, brown handed, brown faced, redolent of liquor and of the sweat of action. Bess heard old Isaac’s treble, warning the fellows to keep clear of the window, and calling for a beam to break down the door. Jeffray saw the hole that he had blown in the lock with the musket darkened by the shadow of a man’s head. The glittering white of an eyeball showed through the rent. He stepped aside from the stretch of floor that the hole commanded, knowing that a pistol’s snout might take the place of a man’s eye. Nor was he too swift in the conclusion. There was a brisk report, a belching of smoke into the room, and a ball flattened itself against the opposite wall. Bess’s eyes flashed round to see whether Jeffray were hurt or no. He shook his head at her, smiled, and pointed to the window.
A lull followed. Then there was much shouting and a stamping of feet along the pathway to the cottage. They were bringing up a wagon-pole to beat in the door, and the oaken barrier shook and quivered at the first charge. A second shout like the shout of sailors heaving at a rope, a second swing of the pole, and the door split in the centre. Jeffray levelled a pistol and fired. He saw a contorted face sink back out of sight, heard a cry of pain, and a volley of curses. Turning quietly to the table he began recharging the empty pistol. Bess was crouching behind her chair, the musket resting on the rail, its muzzle covering the window.
She gave a sudden sharp cry, and pressed her cheek close to the stock. Jeffray, who was watching her, saw her eyes gleam out, the white crook of her forefinger tightening on the trigger. An echoing roar filled the room. Smoke swirled about the beams, wreathed and drifted into the corners. Jeffray, looking towards the window, saw nothing but a shattered lattice and blue vapor curling out into the sunlight. He gazed hard at Bess as he rammed home the bullet and sprinkled the powder on the pan. She seemed unconscious for the moment of his presence, a strange smile playing about her mouth.
“Who was it?” he asked her.
She did not move or look at Jeffray.
“A man. He was pointing a pistol at you through the window.”
“Is he down?”
“I saw him fall.”
The shots from the cottage seemed to have sobered the gentry for the moment. Jeffray heard old Isaac screaming and cursing, urging on the men to break in the door. Gathering together in a bunch, they lunged at it again with the wagon-pole, the door splitting from floor to lintel and the pole starting fully three feet into the room. Jeffray had a confused vision of tanned throats and fierce faces, a brandished cutlass, an upraised arm. He fired once, saw a red blotch show on one sun-tanned cheek, and the men hesitate and edge back from the broken door. The pole sank and wedged itself between the rent planking; the shifting figures melted away towards the garden-gate.
Loud cries had risen on the outskirts of the forest.
“Look out, lads, the redcoats; gather, gather!”
There was a scattering of pistol-shots, a confused trampling of feet, the clear-ringing voice of a man shouting orders. A bullet came crashing through the cottage window to bury itself in one of the great beams of the ceiling. Frightened horses were screaming and cantering about the clearing.
Bess was standing by the table reloading the musket. Jeffray, with the empty pistol still smoking in his hand, went to the window and looked out. He saw a man crawling down the path on his hands and knees, coughing and spitting blood, his head lolling from side to side. The open space between the trees seemed a-swirl for the moment with swords and plunging horses, a tangle of redcoats and of blurred and dusky figures. The smuggling folk and the troopers were stabbing and cutting at one another amid the plunging pack-horses. From the southern end of the clearing Jeffray saw a mounted excise-officer cantering up with some twenty revenue men at his heels. They had tracked the smuggling folk up from Thorney Chapel, while the cornet of Light-Horse, led by a spy, had brought his troopers through the woods from Rodenham. Soon the struggling knot of fustian and scarlet broke and spread into scattering eddies. Figures went scudding from the woods, some dropping and grovelling before they reached the cover. The fight was over. The foresters and the smuggling folk, such as were left of them, scattered and fled for the sanctuary of the forest.
Jeffray felt that Bess was near him, and turning sharply he found her standing at his elbow.
“The revenue men,” she said, in her husky voice, putting her hands upon the sill and looking out through the broken lattice.
Jeffray, conscious of the white and desirable face that dreamed up at him out of a cloud of hair, thrilled to the wild charm of it all, the uprushing of romance into his brain.
“Bess,” he said, smiling, “what are we to do?”
She looked at him half puzzled, smiling a little for the sheer sweetness of having her head resting upon his arm.
“We are free now, are we not, Richard?”
Jeffray pursed up his mouth grimly, and pointed to the broken door.
“I have spilled blood,” he said, “and kept a man from the charge of his own wife. The law takes knowledge of these things. Tell me, Bess, who was the man you fired at through the window?”
She drew closer to Jeffray as though afraid.
“I do not know,” she answered.
“Was it Dan?”
“I don’t know—I don’t know. Take me away,” and she clung to Jeffray like a frightened child.
Jeffray wrenched the two halves of the broken door apart and thrust back the wagon-pole, so that there was room for them to pass. He sheathed his sword, buckled on the belt with the powder-flask and hunting-knife, and, picking up the pistols, looked round for Bess. She had climbed the stairs, and Jeffray could hear her moving to and fro in the room above, while the clock on the kitchen mantle-shelf ticked on as though death and desire were of no account.
The redcoats were securing such prisoners as they had taken, while the revenue men gathered the pack-horses together and broke into the cottages and out-houses to ransack them to the very rafters. Jeffray watched them at work through the broken door. Soon he heard Bess descending the stairs. She had tidied her clothes and bound up her hair, and thrown an old cloak over her shoulders. He held the broken halves of the door apart from Bess, and followed her down the garden path. The dusk was fast falling, but there was enough light to show the blood-stains on the bricks. Bess shivered a little, drew up her petticoats and picked her way towards the gate. Jeffray swung it back for her, and they passed out into the open land that was still lit by the slanting sunlight.
Bess came to a dead halt suddenly some ten paces from the palings. She seized Jeffray’s wrist, and stood pointing to the body of a man lying in the long grass. Her eyes had dilated, the pupils swimming black, and awed under the long lashes.
“Look!”
Jeffray went a step nearer and gazed down at the man lying in the grass. His head was twisted to one side, the upper lip drawn up over the teeth in a snarling grin. There was blood on the black beard, blood on the hairy chest and on the shirt that flapped open from the massive throat. It was Dan who lay dead with a musket-bullet through his chest.
Bess and Jeffray stood and looked into each other’s eyes. Her hand still gripped his wrist spasmodically. He saw her lips move, saw the unuttered question in her eyes.
“He is dead,” he said, solemnly.
“Who, who?”
“Dan, your husband.”
She tottered and clung to him, struggling for her breath, yet still staring at the dead man in the grass. Jeffray had one arm about her body. He was as white as Bess, yet the master of his own manhood. A shout came to him across the clearing. Several red-coats were approaching the cottage, led by an officer with his sword drawn.
XLIII
Jeffray, rising above the entanglements of the moment, took Bess by the arm, and led her back through the gate towards the cottage. He spoke a few words to her, warning her to keep the manner of Dan’s death secret, and to leave the unravelling of the coil to him. Bess, looking like one in pain, sank down on the rough bench beside the door. The shock of seeing her dead husband’s face had unnerved her utterly for the moment.
Jeffray, turning from her with his mouth set, found that the officer and his troopers were already at the gate, their red coats shining out against the dark background of the trees. Jeffray acted on the inspiration of the moment. He walked coolly down the garden path, took off his hat to the officer, to be surprised by hearing his own name coming glibly from the soldier’s lips.
“Mr. Richard Jeffray, I believe?”
The civilian bowed. He recognized the officer as the cornet of Light-Horse, whom he had seen lounging in the doorway of the Wheat Sheaf Inn at Rodenham.
“I see, sir, that I am known to you.”
The cornet showed his regular white teeth in a good-humored smile, and ordered his men to stand back some paces.
“A mounted servant of yours,” he said, “fell in with us as we were crossing Rodenham heath. The fellow appeared much concerned about your safety.”
The cornet was studying Jeffray curiously with his large and melancholy eyes. He had the dreamy and sensuous look of a young man whose amiability made him popular with women. It was evident that he had been enlightened in some measure as to the nature of Jeffray’s romantic quest, and that being something of a sensualist, he regarded the civilian with an erotic interest. Jeffray knew not for the moment whether to bless or curse Wilson and the butler for meddling in his adventures. He looked hard at the soldier as though to discover what species of man he had to deal with.
“Of one thing, sir, I am assured,” he said, assuming an air of candor, “that I have to thank you for rescuing me from a very hot and dangerous corner.”
The soldier bowed slightly, and smiled in his tired and melancholy fashion.
“We were ordered to assist these revenue fellows,” he explained, “in rounding up one of the most savage smuggling gangs in Sussex. I can only express my satisfaction at having been able to assist a gentleman whose courage had carried him into the enemy’s lines.”
Such stately civility appeared to promise well for the adaptability of the cornet’s sentiments. Jeffray felt by instinct that it would be expedient for him to trust the man, pretend to make a friend of him, and thus get Bess safely out of Pevensel.
“I suspect that we can understand each other, sir,” he said, with a boyish laugh, “and I hold myself fortunate in having been thrown in contact with a gentleman. If you will walk aside with me—I can explain.”
The cornet stood aside from the gate, and confessed himself at Jeffray’s service. He was one of those men who never quarrel by inclination, and was indeed the very creature Jeffray needed, lazy, good-tempered, eager for popularity, a man tinged with a sentimental devotion towards women, a devotion that bowed down before a dimpled chin, and capitulated smilingly to a pair of mischievous eyes.
“I am at your service, sir,” he said, bowing.
Jeffray took the soldier at his word, and, with an air of unpremeditated abstraction, marched him straight for Dan Grimshaw’s body. The exquisite son of Mars started at the sight of the contorted face shining a dead white from the grass. He touched the body a little contemptuously with his foot, sniffed, and shrugged his padded shoulders.
“Another poor devil shot,” he said.
Jeffray bent over the body as though it were new and strange to him.
“Hit in the chest,” he said, reflectively. “Your men were firing pretty briskly into the mob.”
“They fired on us first, sir,” quoth the cornet, as though moved to justify his orders.
“I don’t doubt it. Some of your shots came into the cottage where I was cornered with the girl whose life I was trying to save.”
With much parade of mystery Jeffray unfolded to the sentimental youth as much of the past as suited the occasion. He told how he had come to be blockaded in the cottage, and confessed that he had been compelled to fire on the smuggling folk in self-defence. Concerning Dan’s death he was discreetly silent, nor did he divulge the fact that Bess had helped him to hold the cottage. The cornet listened with the most serious and sympathetic attention, stroking the silver facings of his coat, and never so much as dreaming to wink at Jeffray.
“I am not astonished, sir,” he said, at the end thereof, “that the lady should be a little shaken after such adventures.”
“Your sympathy does you credit,” returned Jeffray, with a bow.
“May I ask what is to be done with the lady?”
“I desire to disentangle her from such painful surroundings, and place her under my housekeeper’s care at Rodenham.”
The cornet looked sadly at Jeffray, as though taking him for a very eccentric person or a most human and devoted fool. Being an amiable and sentimental creature, and not given to legal methods of reflection, he showed himself very ready to assist Jeffray with the true courtesy of a cavalier.
“Shall I lend you two troopers and a guide,” he said, “to convey you to Rodenham? Is the lady fit to travel?”
Jeffray accepted the suggestion.
“I thank you for your courtesy,” he said; “the ride will take the girl away from her own thoughts. I shall be very grateful to you if you will make inquiries as to her husband—Daniel Grimshaw, and the old man, Isaac. If you discover any facts bearing upon the mystery of the girl’s past I shall be eager to receive them. My own mare is tethered in the woods. One of the pack-horses would carry the lady.”
The soldier proved himself the very perfection of a Pandar in scarlet and silver. He would as soon have assisted in so romantic an intrigue, for such he fully believed it to be, as have perused one of the most interesting passages in the life of one of Mr. Fielding’s heroes. Jeffray’s mare was discovered safely hidden in the woods where he had left her. One of the pack-horses was saddled and Bess mounted thereon. Two troopers and a guide were ordered to put themselves at Jeffray’s service.
“I wish you good speed, sir,” said the cornet, bowing and raising his hat to Bess.
Jeffray, charmed by the young man’s urbanity, shook him heartily by the hand.
“You will do me the honor of dining with me to-morrow?” he asked.
The cornet bowed, his brown eyes brightening with momentary relish.
“Certainly, if my duties permit the pleasure,” he said, smiling a tired smile.
Into the sweet dusk of the wet woods rode Jeffray with Bess beside him. The western sky was still streaked with gold beyond the trees, but the woods before them were tangled deeps of mysterious gloom. All the June perfumes of the earth streamed out from the brakes and thickets, mingling with the pungent breath of the pines. Bluish vapor filled the hollows, merging into the deep purple of the forest’s shadows. Here and there some rain-pool in the grass was touched with the faint light from the western sky. An infinite languor seemed to weigh upon the calm and misty trees. There was still the dull drip of the storm’s dew from ten thousand branches, the rhythmic plashing of water upon the bracken and the grass.
The two red-coats and the rough laborer who acted as guide moved some twenty paces ahead of Jeffray and the girl. There was still some peril of their falling in with the folk who had been scattered from the hamlet, and the troopers kept their carbines ready. Jeffray held the bridle of Bess’s horse, so that they were very close in the dusk. Bess had recovered from her faintness of an hour ago. Jeffray had given her brandy from his flask, though she had refused the bread and meat one of the soldiers had brought her from old Isaac’s cottage. The day’s burden of dread seemed to lift from her as they drew away from the hamlet and its memories, and sank deeper and deeper into the silence of the forest. She was near Jeffray; sometimes her knee touched his. They could almost hear each other breathing, while the sweet smell of the wet woods steamed up like incense into the night.
Jeffray appeared sunk in thought. He looked often at Bess with kindlings of tenderness in his eyes. The pleasurableness of life seemed to steal into either heart, chastened by a melancholy born of the troubled happenings of the day. They remembered, both of them, the dead man lying in the grass. It seemed that the blood-red flower of Bess’s dream had colored forth the shedding of Dan’s blood.
As they crossed White Hind walk, Jeffray drew in Bess’s horse very close to him, stretched out his hand and touched her arm.
“You are not unhappy, child?” he asked.
She hesitated a moment.
“No, no, not unhappy.”
“You are thinking of Dan?”
“Yes.”
“Why should you pity him?”
“Ah, he was pointing his pistol at you—”
“It was for my sake, Bess, I know, I know.”
He looked at her thoughtfully and half sadly as though realizing how much she had dared to save his life. It was a grim thing for a woman to have blood upon her conscience, and that too—the blood of her own husband. His tenderness deepened immeasurably towards Bess. The guilt, whatever guilt there was, was his—not hers.
“There may still be danger for us,” he said, gravely.
Bess looked at him as though all terror would melt away before the calm strength upon his face.
“Is Isaac alive?” she asked, putting her hair back from her forehead.
“I do not know,” he answered.
“If he should guess!”
“No one shall ever know that you fired the shot that killed your husband.”
Bess questioned him with her eyes.
“Should the law ever snatch at us,” he continued, “I shall swear that it was I who shot Dan Grimshaw.”
“You would swear that?” she asked, her whole face aglow.
“I would.”
“Ah—I should love you better than to suffer that.”
They rode on awhile in silence under the trees, the dark figures of the troopers moving vaguely before them, the stars above like silver bosses set in the vaultings of the forest. Often their eyes met; the girl’s white face seemed to shine with an inward light through the darkness of the woods.
“Bess,” said the man, at last.
She watched him—and waited.
“Let us leave this riddle to rot in Pevensel. What do I care whether you are of the Grimshaw blood or no!”
She held out her hands to him with a great sigh.
“Take me away from it all,” she said. “I want you—and nothing more.”
A young moon was showing its silver crescent above the trees when Bess and Jeffray came out upon the heath. The two troopers and the guide were waiting for them, their figures showing dimly against the sky-line. Jeffray hailed the men, assured them that he had no further need of an escort, and, giving them a couple of guineas apiece, advised them to ride back and rejoin their troop. The fellows pocketed the money, and wished Jeffray a very good-evening. There might be spoil to be had at the hamlet in Pevensel, rooms to be rifled, hidden money to be unearthed. They turned back with the guide into the woods, leaving Bess and her man to ride on to Rodenham alone.
XLIV
Thus Bess and Jeffray rode into Rodenham together, while the scent of the wet grass floated on the warm air, and the great cedars smelled of Lebanon. The storm shower had beaten down the grass in places, so that in the dim light it seemed like the swirling eddies of a restless sea. A night-jar whirred in the beechwoods above the road. Rabbits scurried hither and thither. Jeffray could faintly see the heads of his deer rising above the bracken on the edge of the wood.
Soon the old house, black-chimneyed, a pile of shadows, with here and there a window gleaming, rose up before them out of the east. Bess drew her breath in deeply, seeing that his eyes were fixed upon the place. She was wondering whether he was sad at leaving such a home to go alone with her into strange lands.
“Of what are you thinking?” he asked her, suddenly.
“I was thinking of that,” she said, pointing to the house.
“Yes.”
“Can you leave it all for me?”
“Why not?” he asked, with no wavering of his words.
“It is your home.”
“And will be yours.”
“Ah—”
“Some day, when the clouds are gone. We are young yet; we can take our home with us in our hearts.”
She looked at him very dearly, yet with some sadness in her eyes.
“I am wondering,” she said.
“Yes, what are you wondering, Bess?”
“Whether I can make you happy, I who am so poor and ignorant.”
“I have no doubts,” he said, “no doubts whatsoever.”
As they rode up to the terrace with the gardens and shrubberies dim and full of perfume under the night sky, Dick Wilson and Gladden came out from the porch. Wilson gave Jeffray a hearty hail, running forward with out-stretched hand, his eyes twinkling below the bandages that swathed his head.
“Egad, sir,” he said, “I am glad to see you alive. The wilful man has won his way.”
Jeffray had dismounted, but Bess was still on her horse looking down half shyly, half haughtily at the painter, as though mistrusting the good-will of her lover’s friend. Wilson, who had the instinct of chivalry quick and warm under his ugly exterior, went to her with a twinkle in his eyes, and, bowing in the most impressive fashion, took her hand and kissed it.
“May I ask your pardon, madam,” he said, quaintly, “for having proved such a dunderhead of a fellow this afternoon?”
Bess eyed him questioningly.
“You have been wounded?” she asked.
“A slight cut, a slight cut across the pate with a hanger. I am a clumsy fool at my weapons. May I have the honor of helping you to dismount?”
Bess was down beside him before the words were half passed his lips. She stood at her full height before the painter, the light from one of the windows falling on her face. Wilson understood of a sudden how this tall, proud-faced forest child had set Jeffray’s manhood in a blaze.
Jeffray, who had been speaking to Gladden, came back and laid his hand on Wilson’s shoulder.
“This is Mrs. Elizabeth Grimshaw, Dick,” he said, with the pride of a lover; “you have been paying your respects to her.”
“I have, sir, I have,” quoth the painter with a bow.
Bess, who had taken a liking to this ugly but honest-eyed man, smiled at him, and held out a hand.
“I thank you for having helped us,” she said.
“Don’t thank me, madam,” retorted the painter, bluntly. “Mr. Richard here is quite capable of fighting his own battles.”
They laughed—the three of them, Bess and Jeffray looking into each other’s eyes. Wilson still studying with inevitable admiration the face and figure of the woman who had changed a dreamer into a man of fire and action. Peter Gladden was waiting at the hall-door, smirking, and rubbing his smooth chin with his fingers. Jeffray, giving his hand to Bess, led her with an Old-World courtliness up the steps and into the house. The butler stood aside, bowing and fixing his eyes deferentially upon his master’s shoes. He cast a peering, birdlike glance at Bess after she had passed, grinned as he caught Mr. Wilson’s eye, and smothered the smirk instantly as the painter’s stare snubbed him. Jeffray led Bess to the dining-room where supper had been spread hastily upon the table. He drew back a chair for her, dismissed Gladden, who came in with a mincing shuffle, and prepared to wait on Bess in person.
“You must eat,” he said, bending slightly over her chair.
She lay back and looked at him, her eyes shining through her half-closed lashes.
“I am not hungry.”
“No, but you must keep up your strength. I will carve you some venison, and here is good red wine. I shall stand behind your chair till I am satisfied with you. And then—”
“And then?” she said, smiling with her eyes.
“I shall send you above to bed. The coach will be ready for us at seven. Come now, you must humor me; I have the guarding of your health.”
An hour later Bess was lying under the crimson canopy in the great bed above, her limbs between the white sheets, her black hair in a love tangle on the pillow. Jeffray had called Gladden to him in the dining-room, and given him his orders. Poor Gladden imagined that the family dignity must be sinking very deep into the mire. He met the amazing foolhardiness of it all with melancholy stoicism, finished the contents of a half-emptied wine-bottle when his master had gone, and confessed to himself that time and women can wreck empires.
Jeffray found Dick Wilson in the library, lighting his pipe at one of the candles, sucking in his cheeks, and looking as solemn over the ceremony as though the truth of immortality hung upon the proper kindling of the weed. He cocked one eye at Jeffray, smiled, and set himself with his back to the mantle-shelf, one white cotton stocking in wrinkles half way down his leg, his waistcoat fastened by two solitary buttons, the folds of the bandage slipping over his left eyebrow. He puffed away at his pipe, while Jeffray turned to the bureau, unlocked it, and took out the letters he had written the previous morning.
“You will see these delivered, Dick,” he said, “after I am gone?”
Wilson looked at his friend keenly.
“So you are going, sir?” he said.
“Yes, I have ordered the coach at seven. We have no time to be married in England.”
Wilson screwed up his lips and blew forth an expressive stream of smoke.
“What, you are going to be married!”
“Yes. The girl’s husband is dead.”
“The devil he is!”
“There has been a tussle between Garston’s smugglers and the King’s men; the fellow Grimshaw was shot in the scrimmage.”
A look of most unchristian satisfaction spread itself over the painter’s face. He stepped forward and held out his hand.
“I congratulate you, sir—I congratulate you.”
“Thanks, Dick.”
“The stumbling-block is removed out of the path of propriety. And why, if I may ask you, must you be in such an infatuated hurry to be gone?”
“There are reasons, Dick, that I cannot divulge to you.”
“Snub me, sir, snub me if I seem too forward. You can come by a license in a few days; there must be some obliging surrogate in the neighborhood. At the worst you can travel up to London, march to Doctors’ Commons, and secure a proper passport to the seventh heaven.”
Jeffray, pacing to and fro with his shoulders squared and the heels of his shoes coming down squarely on the polished floor, shook his head, and refused the suggestion.
“I have my reasons, Dick,” he said, “and I have thought the whole thing through for myself. Some years ago old Sugg could have married us here in my own house, and for my sake I should like to see Lord Hardwicke and his grandmotherly legislation damned. I want to get the girl away from all the pother that will be brewing, to save her from the tongues of our most Christian friends. To-morrow we drive to Lewes; the next day to the sea.”
Wilson rammed down the tobacco in his pipe with the end of his little finger, relit it at the candle, and puffed on reflectively.
“Well, sir,” he said, “I should like to know how you rescued the lady.”
And Jeffray told him, all save the way in which Dan Grimshaw met his death.
It was well after midnight when Peter Gladden lighted Jeffray to his room. Portmanteaus and valises were scattered about, some half filled, others yawning for the white linen, breeches, silk stockings, and clothes that covered the floor in confusion. Jeffray insisted on Gladden completing the packing before he went to bed. He had already discovered a polite and voiceless antagonism in the old man’s manner, as though Gladden persisted in believing that the romance was but the madness of an hour. He helped the butler to fill and strap the valises, and then dismissed him, ordering him to wake him at five.
The candles were still burning in the library when the dawn came creeping into the east. Wilson, rubbing his eyes as he woke from a short sleep, heard the rumbling of wheels as the great coach was drawn out of the coach-house into the stable-yard. There was the jingling of harness being cleaned, the sound of rough voices gossiping together, an occasional coarse laugh bursting out upon the misty air. The grooms were discussing their master’s love affair. Wilson yawned and stretched his limbs, climbed up out of his chair, snuffed the candles, and went out into the hall.
He met Jeffray coming down the oak stairs, a cloak over one arm, his sword under the other. As the men shook hands there was the sound of a door opening in the gallery above. Light footsteps came down the stairway; Bess, with her gray cloak over her shoulders, descended slowly towards the hall. She looked fresh and pure after her night’s rest, her eyes soft and dewy, her red lips parted in a smile. Jeffray waited for her at the foot of the stairs. He took her hand and kissed it, and led her into the dining-room, looking into her eyes.
“You are rested?” he asked her, with a pressure of the hand.
“Yes—quite.”
“We shall start in an hour or two. We have much to do at Lewes.”
Bess looked at her clothes, her short skirt and green petticoat, and then glanced at Jeffray.
“I have thought of all that,” he said, smiling.
“Ah—”
“You shall look as fine a lady as any in Sussex. Silks and brocades, Bess, you shall have them all.”
In the midst of all the bustle of preparation, a trooper of the Light-Horse Regiment came cantering through the park with a letter for Richard Jeffray tucked under his white belt. Wilson saw the speck of scarlet from the terrace, and, walking down the drive, met the man as he reined up before the iron gates closing the garden. The trooper produced his letter and explained that he had been told, to deliver it into Mr. Jeffray’s hands. Jeffray himself appeared on the terrace at the same moment, and the painter, beckoning to him, turned back with the soldier.
“A letter for you, sir,” he said, as Jeffray came up to them.
The trooper saluted, and delivered the despatch. Jeffray ordered him to ride round to the stable and have his horse watered, and rubbed down with straw.
“From your cornet, I presume?” he asked.
The man nodded and rode on in the direction of the stables.
Jeffray and the painter went back to the terrace and leaned against the balustrade. There was an anxious frown on Jeffray’s face as he broke the seal, and spread the letter on the stone coping before him. He ran his eyes over the straggling and ill-formed sentences, his face clearing as he neared the end.