XXII
The old parsonage house, with its sombre atmosphere and its silence broken only by the ticking of the great Dutch clock in the parlor, seemed to Bess a secluded hermitage where she would be safe from her kinsfolk and from the savagery of her forest lover. The kitchen was in the wing at the back of the house, shut off from the fields by Dr. Sugg’s orchard and a holly hedge, and parted on the west from the church-yard by the garden and a high stone-wall. The very consciousness of her nearness to Jeffray filled her with contentment. She flitted about the brick-paved kitchen singing to herself at times, and thinking of Jeffray as she did her work. There was the cow to be called in from the parsonage meadow and milked at dawn and sunset. Mary Sugg herself answered the kitchen door so that Bess’s presence should be kept as secret as possible. Dr. Sugg alone went into Rodenham village, for since the breaking out of the small-pox his daughter had kept to the house and garden, leaving such business as lay outside the rectory to her father. Bess served her new friends with all the ardor of her nature. She brushed Dr. Sugg’s coat for him, buckled on his shoes, and warmed his slippers. As for Miss Mary, she had fallen coyly in love with their handsome handmaid, and treated her more as a friend than as a servant.
Each day Dr. Sugg would trudge up to the priory and make inquiries after Richard Jeffray’s health. For Bess it was the culminating moment in the day when she unlocked the front-door for the rector—for they kept the door locked—saw him hang his hat in the hall, and heard him remark with a twinkle that “Mr. Jeffray was doing very well.” Bess would turn back, in her red petticoat, white cap and apron, into the kitchen and sing softly to herself as she turned the joint on the spit, polished the pewter, or peeled apples for a tart. As yet she knew nothing of Jeffray’s betrothal to Miss Hardacre, and in her simple and passionate way she let her imagination roam at will. It was more a rare and sensuous dream with the girl, a passing and repassing of mysterious and alluring visions. Practical as she was in the trivialities of life, she became a desirous-eyed child of nature when love opened the gates of the sunset and of the dawn.
As for Miss Mary Sugg, she was a very modest creature, and had grown to regard the passionate intoxications of life as bordering on indecency. Like many inevitable spinsters, she had become ashamed, as it were, of her own sex, and the very reading of the banns in church made her mouth straighten primly and her hands clasp each other more chastely in her lap. The parson’s daughter appeared sincerely disturbed when Bess spoke to her of her life in Pevensel. Prudence and propriety! The very thought of such savagery as Dan’s sent a pious shiver through Miss Sugg’s frame. She admired Bess for her courage, and even looked up to her with some sort of awe as to one who had survived terrible temptings of the devil. Bess grew to trust the prim, kindly little creature in the course of a few days. She felt greatly moved to pet Miss Sugg, to stroke her gentle face, and caress her as a child might caress some smiling and delightful grandmother. Poor Mary took Bess’s attentions with blushes and a secret sense of pleasure. It had been her lot to be one of the odd women in the world, slighted by every one with the exception of Richard Jeffray and her father.
It has been said that Mary Sugg regarded matrimony with suspicion, and though Miss Sugg had not the remotest hope of marrying Richard Jeffray herself, she had no liking for his betrothal to Jilian Hardacre. Mary, like all women of sense, was something of a gossip, and it was at Rodenham parsonage that Bess learned at last of Jeffray’s entanglement at Hardacre. Mary was helping Bess to clean the silver and the pewter in the pantry when she let the truth slip casually into the girl’s ears.
Bess started, reddened, and went on polishing Dr. Sugg’s tankard as though the news had no concern for her heart.
“I did not know Mr. Jeffray was to be married,” she said, frowning a little, and staring out of the narrow window.
Miss Sugg, lost in her own reflections for the moment, noticed nothing strained or unnatural in Bess’s manner.
“Yes, I suppose it will soon be quite an old affair,” she said, with a sigh.
“And is Miss Hardacre very handsome?”
“A matter of opinion, my dear.”
“Mr. Jeffray is very much in love with her?”
Miss Sugg’s mouth tightened primly.
“It is not my business,” she said, quietly, “to inquire into the warmth and nature of a gentleman’s affections.”
Poor Bess, her forecastings of the future were greatly changed by those few words of Mary Sugg’s. She woke no longer in the morning with a rush of joy to hear the thrushes singing in the parsonage garden. All her quaint imaginings were past and gone, for she was woman enough to feel the significance of this new truth. A kind of hopelessness took possession of her, a conviction that Jeffray had given her nothing but pity, and that all her dreams had been made of mist. Miss Hardacre was a great lady, and of course Mr. Jeffray was right in wishing to marry her. Bess went about her work with a dull ache at her heart. She no longer dreamed of the day when she should see Jeffray face to face again; rather, she dreaded the very thought of it, and grew full of a bitter humbleness that softened her whole nature. Her one yearning was to be saved from Dan and Isaac, to be left in peace awhile, unquestioned and alone.
It was the seventh evening of Bess’s sojourn at the parsonage. Dr. Sugg had gone down into the village to visit certain of the villagers who were sick to death of the fever, and Miss Sugg was sitting in her bedroom, sewing. Bess had been sweeping the kitchen and polishing the pewter and the plate. The evening was full of the splendor of spring, birds singing in every tree, and the sky a great sheet of gold in the west. The garden looked so green and fair with the sunlight shimmering through upon the grass, and daffodils asleep in the shade, that Bess had opened the garden door and looked up at the blue zenith and the golden west. The broad beds would soon be ablaze with tulips, red and white. Anemones and primroses were flowering in the shrubbery, and the gorse on the heath above Rodenham was gilding the purple of the hills.
Halting suddenly as she crossed the grass, she fancied that she caught the sound of footsteps close by in the church-yard. The stone-wall that divided the burial-ground, with its gray headstones and its yews, from the parsonage garden, stood some seven feet high, and was tufted along the summit with gilliflower and grass. Bess ran her eyes suspiciously along the edge that cut the gold of the western sky. Suddenly, just above her, she saw a pair of hairy hands come over the wall, the fingers clawing at the stone-work to gain a surer hold. A fur cap jerked up above the wall; a face followed it, the mouth agape, the eyes straining right and left into the dusk.
Bess, standing stone-still, recognized Dan, her cousin. He had a red handkerchief knotted about his forehead, and a pad of lamb’s-wool over his wounded ear. Her fear of him made her like Lot’s wife for the moment, as she stood discovered on the open lawn. She was conscious only of the grin on the man’s face, as he stared at her, and of the great, hairy hands still gripping the wall.
Her pistol! She felt in her bosom for it, and found with a shock of horror that she had left it in the attic. Dan, who had scrambled astride the wall, gave a hoarse shout and waved his hand. Bess had turned and was racing for the house. She heard Dan leap down from the wall and come padding after her across the grass. Mary Sugg’s white and terrified face showed for a moment at one of the upper windows. The parson’s daughter saw two more men leap down from the church-yard into the garden.
Bess stumbled over the step at the kitchen door, and half fell across the threshold. She struggled up and in, and clapped to the door, only to find Dan’s weight heaving against it before she could put up the bar. The latch and bolt gave way like brittle wood, and Bess herself was sent staggering against the wall. Before she could recover, Dan’s great arms were round her, his face thrust close to hers, his breath beating on her cheek.
Bess struggled fiercely, beating one fist in his face, and striving to untwine herself from his arms. He was too strong for her, however, and she read the savage delight of it in his eyes. Crushing Bess to him, and lifting her off her feet, he carried her out into the garden, mocking her as she pleaded, fought, and threatened.
Isaac, and Solomon, his brother, were waiting under the holly hedge closing the orchard. They ran forward to meet Dan, and set to to bind Bess’s wrists and ankles, while Dan held her down upon the grass. Isaac was mocking her the while with an exultation that made his smooth face seem diabolical under its white hair. Bess, desperate, and struggling still, cursed him as he held her left arm pinned against the ground while Solomon knotted the cord about her wrist.
“Old man,” she said, “be sure that I shall kill you some day.”
Isaac, thrusting his hand into her hair, and twisting a mass of it about his fingers, wrenched at the strands till Bess cried out with pain.
“You would run away from us, eh! We’ll cure you of your tricks, my lady. This is the last time you’ll laugh at us, I guess.”
“Devil—”
“That’s as it may be, my dear. Quick, lad, tie up her feet. I’ll shove this rag in her mouth and tie the cloth over it. That’s the trick. Up with her, Dan, she’s yours now, I reckon.”
Dan took Bess in his arms, hugging her tight to his broad chest, and carried her through the orchard and out into the meadow. Isaac and Solomon followed, keeping a keen watch behind them to see whether they were to be meddled with from the house. On the road over Rodenham heath old Isaac’s wagon was waiting, with three stout horses in the team. One of Solomon’s sons, Enoch, held the ropes. There was a pile of loose straw in the wagon, and Dan, half throwing Bess in over the tail-board, climbed in after her and covered her with the straw. Isaac and Solomon clambered in after him, and, whipping up the horses, they went at a trot for the wooded slopes of Pevensel.
XXIII
Richard Jeffray’s recovery from the small-pox was hailed by the tenants of the Rodenham estate as nothing less than a public blessing. The farmers were astute enough to know when they had a generous “booby” for a landlord, a man who could easily be cheated, and who was ready to listen to their grievances instead of sensibly grinding the gold out of their tough and materialistic hearts. Hence they listened with unction to Dr. Sugg’s thanksgiving sermon, and thanked Providence when they realized that there would be no raising of their rents.
Even the Lady Letitia experienced a comfortable sensation when she read the good news in a letter from Dr. Sugg, or, rather, when Parsons read it to her at a distance of three paces, lest there should be any infection in the sheet. Jeffray was an amiable relative who might oblige her delicately on occasions. As for the Hardacre folk, their sympathies were centred for the moment in their own family, for Jilian was abed with the small-pox, and Sir Peter and Mr. Lot were much agitated in their minds as to how her precious complexion would withstand the ravages of the disease.
There were flowers on the broad window-seat of Jeffray’s bedroom window, flowers that should have testified to some gentle and soft-eyed presence in the house. Who was it that had set those gorgeous king-cups in that bowl of blue, filled those tall vases with wild hyacinths, and ranged the tulips red and white in pots along the window-ledge? No woman’s hand had done the deed. Blunt Dick Wilson was the culprit on this occasion. Wilson, whose creased and cynical face had come back through Rodenham, tanned by the sea-wind and the sun upon the downs. Peter Gladden had shown no reluctance to delegate many of his duties to his master’s friend, and the painter had put aside his brushes and busied himself with phials and feeding-cups, spoons and red flannel, warming-pans and iced-wine.
One May morning Richard sat at his open window, looking over the park towards Rodenham village and the purple slopes of Pevensel. There had been no Maying in the village that month, and the blackthorn and the broom, the palm and wild-cherry, had escaped unbroken, for though the pest appeared to have spent its malice, death had entered many of the cottages. George Gogg, of the Wheat Sheaf, had lost his daughter, a plump, black-haired, bright-eyed wench, whose red cheeks and red ribbons had turned many a young farmer’s head. Old Sturtevant, the cobbler, had gone the way of all flesh, and several more of the villagers, men, women, and children, were lying under the green-sward in Rodenham church-yard. As for Jeffray, he was but in a feeble way himself, and Surgeon Stott had decreed it that he was to be troubled with no news from the outer world as yet.
Richard, muffled up in a dressing-gown, with dusky mottlings covering his thin face, sat before the open window and looked out over the park. The disease had seized him sharply, but not dangerously, and even Richard had vanity enough to feel some satisfaction at Surgeon Stott’s verdict that he would be left with few scars. There is a delicious languor in convalescence when the world seems to spread itself anew before the reawakened eyes, and life is reborn like a dream of renewed youth into the heart. Nature seems to welcome the exile with smiling eyes and soft breathings of her green-clad bosom. So might it have been for Richard that spring day as he saw the great trees standing so calm and still under the blue heavens, and the green billows of the park a-glisten under the sun.
Sickness is held to solemnize the soul, to chasten the understanding, and purge the passion out of man. It is considered to be a season of severe self-judgment, and of inward searchings of the heart, a season when religious impulses should struggle to the surface, and solemn promises be made to propitiate the god who has granted health. Such is the orthodox exposition of the doctrine of disease. The pious hand points to the precipice that has provided the mortal with a chance of realizing the abysses of the unknown.
But with Jeffray his recovery was as the coming forth of a moth from the cramping sack of custom. He had much to repent of in the past, but the repentance was romantic rather than religious. It was a lifting up of the hands to the light, not the wan and sickly light of prosaic morality, but the glow of the instincts that burn on the altar of nature, the life fire of love, of wonder, and of worship.
It was towards Bess—Bess of the Woods—that Jeffray’s thoughts flew feverishly as he lay in bed or sat propped up in his chair before the window. He yearned to see that face again, to watch the light kindling in the keen-sighted eyes, to hear the deep and husky modulations of her voice. He was eager to learn whether she were safe from Dan or no, and to tell her why the tryst at Holy Cross had been broken. His thoughts hovered more tenderly about her radiant face bathed by the splendor of its dusky hair than about Miss Jilian’s tawny head. His recollections of Miss Hardacre were neither satisfying to his soul nor flattering to the future. He remembered her as vain, peevish, ready to wax petulant over trifles, selfishly jealous of her own safety.
It is scarcely necessary to spin a flimsy tissue of words about Richard Jeffray’s thoughts. Probably his illness had suffered his convictions to sink to the solid earth instead of drifting feather-like in air. Frankly, he discovered in himself a strong and aggressive disinclination to make Miss Jilian Hardacre his wife. It was no great psychological problem, but merely a question of nature asserting herself in the magic person of poor Bess. Bess was a finer and lovelier being than Miss Hardacre; she had more soul, more splendor of outline, more womanly suggestiveness. And thus Mr. Richard sat brooding in his chair, watching the clouds drift across the blue, and wondering what the near future had in store for him.
Perhaps Jeffray was not sorry to have his solitude broken by the sound of Dick Wilson’s heavy and deliberate footsteps in the gallery, and the shining of his red face round the edge of the oak door. The painter wore the same rusty suit of clothes, and he had been mourning his approaching parting with these well-worn retainers, for Surgeon Stott had ordered him to burn every shred of them before he left Rodenham. In danger of being “nonsuited,” Mr. Dick was contemplating a descent upon the late Mr. Jeffray’s wardrobe, since it was certain that he could not turn Adamite in the cause of cleanliness, and perhaps end in a mad-house by reason of his nudity.
Jeffray’s pale face, with the shadow-rings under the eyes, lighted up at Wilson’s coming. The painter had a roll of manuscript in his hand. He went and sat in the window-seat, after pushing aside the bowl of king-cups, and patted the roll of paper with peculiar and amusing emphasis.
“May I congratulate you, sir,” he said, “on having revived the spirit of the Elizabethans?”
Jeffray colored, like a boy whose mother has caught him inditing verses to a pretty milliner.
“What! You have been reading my epic, Dick?”
“I have, sir, I have. I discovered it in the library, and you will pardon the friendly curiosity that prompted me to bury my nose in it.”
Jeffray laughed shyly, and lay back with his hands clasped behind his head. The painter had unfolded the roll, and, holding it before him, with a quaint and sententious pride, read the three opening stanzas of the poem.
“There is life for you,” he said, warmly. “The divine utterance, the gushing out of song.”
Jeffray’s face was still red under his waving hair. He laughed, the quiet, pleased laugh of aspiring yet incredulous youth, and looked at Wilson with affectionate amusement.
“I am glad you like the work, Dick,” he said. “Heaven knows, I have copied nobody, and yet my lines seem childish when set beside Pope’s or Dryden’s.”
“Childish, sir, and if they are childish, you should thank Heaven for their innocence. As for Pope, he’s nothing but a pedant setting prose on stilts, and trying to make her tread a stately measure. Why, sir, his poetry is like a respectable old lady knitting epigrams together on her needles. Dash his preciseness, and his pompous and ponderous conceit! Set him beside Will Shakespeare, and you will hear an artificial waterfall trying to thunder against the sea.”
Jeffray smiled, and stretched out his hand for the manuscript. He glanced at the neat and sensitive writing with satisfaction, moving his lips the while as though reading certain of his favorite passages over to himself.
“But what would the critics say of them?” he asked.
“Critics, sir!”
“Yes.”
Wilson blew his nose with great vigor, and grimaced as though he had swallowed vinegar. He reached for a volume of theAnnual Register, that was lying on the table beside Jeffray’s chair, and opened the book at the place dedicated to verse.
“Here, sir,” he said, holding the volume at arm’s-length and declaiming, sententiously, through his nose—“here is the sort of stuff we English feed the imaginative passion on.
“ ‘TO A ROBIN“ ‘Sweet social bird! Whose soft harmonious laysSwell the glad song of thy Creator’s praise,Say, art thou conscious of approaching ills?Fell winter’s storms, the pointed blast that kills?’
“ ‘TO A ROBIN“ ‘Sweet social bird! Whose soft harmonious laysSwell the glad song of thy Creator’s praise,Say, art thou conscious of approaching ills?Fell winter’s storms, the pointed blast that kills?’
“ ‘TO A ROBIN“ ‘Sweet social bird! Whose soft harmonious laysSwell the glad song of thy Creator’s praise,Say, art thou conscious of approaching ills?Fell winter’s storms, the pointed blast that kills?’
“ ‘TO A ROBIN“ ‘Sweet social bird! Whose soft harmonious laysSwell the glad song of thy Creator’s praise,Say, art thou conscious of approaching ills?Fell winter’s storms, the pointed blast that kills?’
“ ‘TO A ROBIN
“ ‘Sweet social bird! Whose soft harmonious lays
Swell the glad song of thy Creator’s praise,
Say, art thou conscious of approaching ills?
Fell winter’s storms, the pointed blast that kills?’
“There, sir, there’s the proper pedantic stuff for you. It puzzles me to think what our English woods would be like if all the ‘sweet social birds’ sang in that fashion. And can you tell me, sir, why winter is always ‘fell’ with these gentlemen, and any poor thrush ‘a member of the feathered tribe’? Damn it, why can’t they call a wind a wind, instead of ‘Black Boreas’s breath,’ or some such scholarly twaddle? I tell you, Richard, this sort of stuff sickens me; it is like looking at some painted and behooped old hag, and trying to think she’s a pretty shepherdess. Why, sir, your verses are as different from them as the scent of new-mown hay from the scent of a beauty’s pomade-box. They smell of the downs and of the woods and the sea, sir—they do that, by gad!”
Jeffray was watching the strenuous play of thought on Wilson’s countenance.
“Then you do not think, Dick, that my poetry would be popular?”
An indescribable flash of ironical amusement leaped across the painter’s face.
“Popular!”
“Yes.”
“No, sir; plain people who love nature and the truth are not popular in these learned days. Why, were I to paint one of your Sussex landscapes with the dawn coming up over the downs a great gush of gold, not a soul would look at it; but if I took Lady Tomfool, draped her, shoved her in front of a bit of a Greek temple, made her strike some silly attitude, and called her Juno or Proserpine, or Alcestis returned from Hades, all the silly women would crowd round and gape at it, and declare that I had a most classic style.”
Jeffray laughed, and lay back with a thoughtful light in his eyes, as he watched the cloud shadows playing over the sunny heights of Pevensel. Wilson was drumming on the window-sill with his fingers, and still holding theAnnual Registerupon his knee. He was watching Richard with a grave and bent-browed tenderness, seeming to see in him the spirit of the coming age, when fine gentlemen would give up the carrying of muffs and the writing of odes in imitation of Horace. Men would wake again to the beauty that lived in the woods and upon the mountains. But for the present, Wilson had other duties to perform beside the praising of Jeffray’s poetry. He had been intrusted by Surgeon Stott with the responsibility of breaking the news of Miss Hardacre’s illness to his host. He had desired to put the lad in as good spirits as possible before flinging the unpleasant confession in his face.
“There is no doubt, Richard,” he said, slowly, “that you have the true fire in you. Go on, sir, go on as you have begun, and let the big-bellied academicals snort and blow rhetoric through their noses. But the Muses must go flower-gathering for a moment; I have another matter on my mind this morning.”
There was a forced and suspicious cheerfulness in Wilson’s voice that made Richard Jeffray turn his eyes to him from the slopes of Pevensel. The painter had something of the air of a nurse, who was about to administer physic to a child, pretending barefacedly the while that it was sweet and palatable as sugared milk. Wilson’s eyes were fixed on theAnnual Registerin his hand; he was turning the leaves and glancing perfunctorily from page to page.
“You are not the only sick person in the neighborhood, Richard,” he said, significantly; “they say that love is wondrous sympathetic, and that your Corydon can feel the toothache that is swelling in his Chloe’s cheek.”
Jeffray stared at Wilson with vague surprise.
“What do you mean, Dick?” he asked.
“Mean, sir! Why, your betrothed, like the sweet lady that she is, has been keeping you company in the matter of boluses and bleedings, that is all.”
“Jilian ill?”
Wilson nodded and exercised his facial muscles in the production of a reassuring smile.
“Miss Hardacre caught the small-pox, sir,” he explained, “but she is facing it famously, and Stott declares her to be out of danger. Let me assure you, Richard, that there is no need for you to distress yourself about the lady. Stott forbade me to mention her illness to you until he felt convinced that she would recover.”
Jeffray leaned back in his chair with a sigh, frowned, and stared fixedly out of the window.
“I must have given it to her, Dick,” he said.
Wilson shut the book up with a snap.
“Nonsense!” he retorted. “Why imagine such a thing? Nothing is to be gained by saddling one’s self with hypothetical responsibilities.”
The sensitive lines about Jeffray’s mouth had deepened, and there was a strained look about his eyes. Wilson, who was watching him affectionately, misread the whole meaning of the mood. He assumed Richard to be in love with Miss Jilian, and magnified his friend’s distress like the warm-hearted fellow that he was.
“Dick.”
“Well, sir?”
“Has she had it badly? Will it—will it disfigure her?”
Wilson shut one eye and sniffed, an expression peculiar to him in moments of deep feeling.
“Confound it!” he said, cheerfully, “why heap up imaginery woes, sir? Stott has said nothing about scars. Besides, my dear friend, the lady will recover, and that is the great thing, eh?”
Jeffray lay back heavily in his chair.
“Yes, that is the great thing,” he answered.
XXIV
Three days after hearing of Jilian’s illness, Jeffray took his first drive with Wilson, in a light chaise that his father had used when his increasing feebleness had debarred him from the saddle. Dame Meg, the most sedate mare in the stable, was between the traces, with Wilson, who was equal to ruling so amiable a lady, in possession of the reins. They rattled through the park and turned down towards Rodenham village, intending to follow the Lewes coach-road as far as the Lane that branched off to Thorney Chapel, a hamlet lying under the southern slopes of Pevensel. Jeffray, who felt the fog shifting from his brain as they rolled along under the open sky, dilated to Wilson on the beauties of the place, insisting that he must paint it, and that he, Richard, would be the purchaser of the picture. He had been striving to persuade the painter to pass the summer at the priory, a kindness that Mr. Dick’s pride found some difficulty in accepting.
As they drove down into Rodenham village several of the women ran out to courtesy to the young squire and grin congratulations at him on his recovery. Richard bowed to them with a pleasant color rising in his cheeks. He was a man whose natural desire was to be loved and trusted by his fellows, and any affection that was shown to him inevitably kindled a kindred feeling in his heart. On the steps of the Wheat Sheaf they saw George Gogg standing, his hands thrust into his breeches-pockets under his apron, and a blackened clay pipe between his teeth. Jeffray bade Wilson draw up before the inn while he spoke sympathetically to the old man on the loss of his daughter. George Gogg’s face looked flushed and sodden as though he had been drinking heavily to drown his thoughts. His blue eyes, that seemed to see everything and understand nothing, stared blankly at the roofing of the village pump.
“Well, sir,” he said, “Parson Sugg tells me as how it is God’s way of doing things, and I reckon it is a comfortable sort of notion that no man can quarrel with. I mus’ say my poor wench was a purty wench, and I reckon she won’t disgrace ’em up above in the matter of looks. Anyway, the angels have got her, sir, for she was a gal as never did nobody any harm. Her old father can best say ‘hallelujah,’ and think a bit more of trying to climb up after her, and with Parson Sugg’s leave, sir, I’ll hang on to his coat-tails till I feel a bit surer of my feet. Will it please your honor to take a glass of wine?”
Jeffray shook Gogg’s hand sympathetically, and declined the courtesy.
“You have your boy, Gogg,” he said, kindly.
“Yes, I have the boy, sir, and he’s a stocky lad, though a bit fond of helping himself to other folk’s fruit. I am glad to see your honor looking so fit and hearty.”
“Thank you, Gogg, I am nearly myself again.”
“And I hope, sir, you will be soon saying the same of your good lady—Miss Hardacre.”
Jeffray’s face hardened at the innkeeper’s words; the frank, beaming look died out of the eyes, the angles of the sensitive mouth sank instantly. Even this fat fool’s suavity seemed to summon before his eyes all those grim and staring sentimentalities that hemmed him in like a crowd of attorneys. George Gogg’s round person vanished with its white-stockinged legs and dirty apron, and in its place Jeffray beheld the implacable Sir Peter and Mr. Lot’s red and arrogant face. A small crowd of children had gathered about the chaise, their natural impertinence suppressed by a hoped for largesse of pence. Jeffray threw some coppers among them as Wilson flapped the reins on Dame Meg’s back. The brats scrambled and fought for the money, one urchin, a head taller than the rest, concluding the scramble by forcing the pennies from the fists of the feebler competitors. Richard’s munificence had wrought more woe than pleasure. There was much blubbering and squealing, much running together of angry mothers, ready to squabble over their children’s feuds.
There was an amused glint in Wilson’s eyes as he caught a glimpse of Jeffray’s melancholy face.
“See, sir,” he said, “the evils of too promiscuous a generosity. There is about as much evil caused in this world by giving as by grinding. As to that pretty superstition with regard to the beautiful innocence of childhood, it is about as outrageous a myth as ever rose out of the affectations of maternity. Children are generally worse than animals, sir, since they inherit all the devilish and human cunning of their ancestors.”
Jeffray lay back in the chaise as though he were weary.
“What it means to be an idealist!” he said.
“Live on a desert island and you may succeed,” quoth the painter, with a smile.
The day was one of those magical days in May when the earth seems radiant as for a bridal. A pearly haze hung like a great veil of gossamer, tempering the blue of the cloudless heavens. The wind that came from the east was scarcely strong enough to set the bluebells nodding in the woods, or to scatter the fading blackthorn blossom from the boughs. Despite his unlovely recollections of Rodenham village, Jeffray’s spirit kindled as the chaise threaded the green, and he saw the chaffinches darting in the hedgerows, and the larks shivering and singing in the sun. Over the ploughed lands the crops were thrusting up a myriad emerald spears, and already the buttercups were gilding the quiet meadows.
They came to the lane that branched off from the high-road, and wound over green hills and plunged into forest hollows towards the hamlet of Thorney Chapel. The woods rose up before them with all the deepening mystery of May as Dame Meg drew the chaise between the hedgerows. Dome on dome, and height on height, the trees were piled towards the blue. The spirits of spring were spinning everywhere, bronze for the oak, silver and gold for the poplar and the willow, shimmering green for the birch, beech, and thorn. Yonder a great larchwood rose solemn and stiff beneath a thousand emerald spires. Dark yews and pines stood black amid the lighter multitude. About the pillared fore-courts of the forest the gorse was fringed and seamed with gold. Purple orchids had speared through their sheaths. Bluebells dusted each lush green knoll. The broom blazed like living fire.
The lane had turned down from the woods into a shallow valley that ran east and west under the shadows of Pevensel. Meadow-land filled it, with here and there a pine thicket isleted amid the green, while astride the road lay the hamlet of Thorney, some half a score timbered cottages huddled about a tumble-down inn. To the east of the hamlet, and divided from it by a small stream and a fourteen-acre meadow, stood Thorney Chapel, a squat, sombre-colored building of stone with an open belfry and a wooden porch.
A few frowsy women, with children hanging about their skirts, were loitering outside the chapel-gate as the chaise came down the hill towards the hamlet. Wilson, who had a keen scent for all the human interests of life, however trite and humble they might seem, prophesied that a country wedding was in progress.
“To be sure, May is an unlucky month,” he said, with a smile, “but the sun will shine on the bride; and, confound it, sir, the majority of wedded couples might have been tied together in May to judge by the unlucky show they make in after life. See, they seem to be coming out; the brats and the shes are pointing their noses up the path. Let’s stop, sir, and watch.”
The chapel burial-ground was bounded by a low stone-wall, and within two gnarled thorns and a few yews watched over the lichened stones that looked distinctly irreverent in their convivial attitudes. The bell in the open belfry began to clang vigorously. The women and children crowded round the gate, elbowing one another to enjoy one of the rare and elemental sights life in such a wilderness provided.
Wilson had drawn the chaise up under one of the thorn-trees that overhung the wall. He tilted his hat on to the back of his head, dropped the reins, and wiped his forehead with a red cotton handkerchief.
“This would have been a chance for that knave Herrick,” he said, with a wink. “His muse was wanton, but his life was chaste, so he said, sir, the fox. He should have been a pleasant old pagan, should Robert Herrick. He and Mr. Ovid would have made Miss Venus a lovely pair of twins.”
Richard, leaning forward slightly in the chaise, was watching the folk who were filing out of the chapel porch while the bell creaked to and fro in the belfry overhead. There were half a dozen lads and men with flowers in their hats and green jackets on their backs, chuckling and elbowing one another outside the porch. Richard saw the bride come out upon the bridegroom’s arm, a tall, black-haired girl gowned in green, with a garland of flowers on her head, rosemary and ribbons in her bosom. Her face looked strained and white in the sun, her dark eyes sullen and restless, like the eyes of one afraid. Her hand was laid lightly on the sleeve of the bridegroom’s coat, and she seemed to hold apart from him, as though there were more hate in her heart than love.
There was a shout from the lads and men.
“The garters—the garters—”
It was a coarse custom in some country-sides that the oafs should scramble for the bride’s ribbons. One lad, bolder than the rest, seized hold of the bride’s gown, and began to fumble about her ankles. The others followed him, and amid much coarse laughter, struggling and scrambling, the garters were torn from below the bride’s knees. She stood motionless the while, her face flushing crimson, her teeth biting into her lips.
Jeffray’s face was like the face of a man undergoing torture. It was Bess—Bess of the Woods, mocked by this ribaldry, Bess looking miserable and fierce as any Cassandra wedded against her will. Richard’s eyes were fixed on her face as she moved on down the path beside Dan—Dan dressed out in his best clothes, rosemary in his button-hole and ribbons in his hat. Bess held her head very high, looking neither to the right hand nor the left. A few children threw flowers at her as she passed, but she seemed neither to notice them nor the stupid, curious faces at the gate. Limping behind her, bareheaded, came Isaac Grimshaw, his white hair shining in the sun. Solomon and his sons followed with old Ursula and the rest of the forest-folk.
At the gate Black Dan turned suddenly, clawed Bess’s waist, and put up his great, hairy face, sweating with satisfaction, for the bride’s kiss. What followed seemed swift as the flash of a swallow across the calm surface of a pond. Jeffray, looking with terrible earnestness at Bess, saw her face flush scarlet and a fierce flare of hate stream up into her eyes. She twisted herself free of Dan of a sudden, and swept him a blow with the back of the hand across the mouth.
There was a loud burst of laughter from the crowd at the gate. Dan’s face darkened, as though he were minded to return the blow had not Isaac limped in between them and cursed Bess in an undertone. Old Ursula was beginning to snivel, and at the same instant Bess’s eyes fell on the chaise waiting under the shadow of the thorn. She stood rigid, staring at Jeffray, her mouth working, her bosom rising and falling. For the moment the look in her eyes was as the look of a hunted thing ready to run for shelter to Jeffray’s feet. Then the soul seemed to ebb out of her again. She hung her head as though ruined and ashamed, and swayed out of the gate, her hands hanging limply at her sides. Dan followed her, grinning and slouching his heavy shoulders. Isaac, Ursula, and the rest crowded behind them along the road.
Wilson, who had been utterly unconscious of Jeffray at his elbow, laughed cynically, and watched Bess, who was thrusting aside the arm Dan offered her.
“Zounds!” he said, “the wench has a temper; she looks too fine to be broken by that boor. I never saw a woman seem less willing. Why, Richard, lad, what’s amiss with you, eh?”
Jeffray was lying back in the chaise, white as linen, with his eyes half closed. He had bitten his lower lip till the red blood showed in contrast to his gray, strained face.
“I am faint, Dick, nothing more.”
“Let me drive you to the inn and get some brandy.”
“No, no, turn back home. I shall be better with the east wind blowing in my face.”
XXV
Jeffray lay back in the chaise with the landscape moving unmeaningly before his eyes. He felt numb and cold, utterly humiliated for Bess’s sake. Painter Dick, who had scarcely so much as heard of this Belphœbe of the woods, was the last person to suspect that the fierce-faced girl who had smitten her husband on the mouth had any tragic hold over Jeffray’s destiny. The eager joy in the loveliness of the May morning had overtaxed Richard’s strength. Wilson knew something of the exhaustion that may follow even an innocent intoxication of the senses.
As for Richard, he was as a man who had held some rich and precious vase between his hands, gazing at it wonderingly, only to find it slip and shatter itself in fragments at his feet. What had happened in the forest that Bess should have become Dan Grimshaw’s wife? Had she despaired of escaping the man, and in a fit of dumb indifference pledged her troth in token of surrender? Richard’s hope in her rebelled at such a paltry reading of the riddle. No, Bess had more heart, more pride than that. They had tricked her, Dan and old Isaac between them—Isaac, that white-haired and soft-voiced old devil whom he had once taken for a saint. They had tricked her, and this marriage had been the only end.
Question and counter-question played through Jeffray’s brain. Why had not Bess come to him for help? Perhaps the news of his illness had reached her; perhaps she had heard of his betrothal to Miss Hardacre? He had read that jealousy was a strong and subtle passion in a woman, but yet why should she be jealous, unless she loved him? His egotism might be confusing the inspiration. But—had Bess come to Rodenham while he was ill? The thought flashed through Jeffray like the news of a good friend’s death. Why had he never asked so simple a question—and yet surely Peter Gladden would have told him if such a thing had happened! And yet the news of Jilian’s illness had been kept from him till three days ago!
It was nearly noon when the spire of Rodenham church rose up against the blue. Dame Meg was going lazily, the reins slack upon her loins. Wilson, who was whistling an old Jacobite song, glanced curiously at Jeffray from time to time, wondering what made the lad look so fierce.
“You seem more yourself again, Richard,” he said.
Jeffray changed his posture restlessly and unbuttoned his cloak. It is not easy to confide at times even in the best of friends, and sensitive mortals shrink from the first explanatory plunge. Jeffray had not the heart to unburden himself of his misery at that moment.
“I am well enough now, Dick,” he said, quietly.
“You looked deuced green, sir, down by the chapel.”
“Faintness—nothing more.”
Wilson’s words seemed to send Jeffray’s thoughts winging back to the chapel in the valley. He remembered the whole scene as though it had been burned into his brain with fire. That look, so shamed and piteous, that Bess had given him, as though she yearned to him from amid the ruins of her pride! There would be the brutal bride—ale, the lewd jesting, the drinking, the rough, clownish games. Then would come scrambling for the bride’s ribbons and for the rosemary she had worn. Her clean shift would be laid out on the bed all decked with bays and flowers. Cake and wine would be taken betwixt the bellowing of coarse and indecent songs.
Peter Gladden’s placid and imperturbable face seemed to offer an unconscious admonition towards calmness as he came forward to help his master out of the chaise. Jeffray appeared to have become oblivious of the fact that he was a convalescent; he brushed Gladden’s arm aside, threw off his cloak, and tossed it aside in the porch.
“Gladden,” he said, with a peculiar tightness about the mouth, “I want to speak with you alone in the library.”
“At once, sir?”
There was just the faintest shade of curiosity upon the butler’s face.
“Yes, Gladden, at once. Dick, you will excuse me, I have some private business on hand.”
Wilson, who was rubbing Dame Meg’s black muzzle and wondering what spiritual quicksilver had diffused itself in Jeffray’s blood, looked hard at Richard, and warned him not to try his strength too greatly.
“You must keep an eye on your master, Gladden,” he said, with a twinkle. “I thought we should have had him in a dead faint on the road this morning.”
The butler was still standing in the porch, leaning forward slightly from the hips, with an expression of deferential concern on his colorless face.
“Dr. Sugg is in the garden, sir,” he interposed. “Shall I tell him that you are tired or request him to wait till I have received your orders in the library.”
Jeffray frowned and hesitated a moment.
“I will see the rector, Gladden,” he said. “Attend me in the library in half an hour.”
Wilson, who was pulling Dame Meg’s ears, watched Jeffray go lightly along the terrace as though he had forgotten such trifles as fever, physics, and small-pox scars. The flushed alertness of Richard’s face, his restless yet decisive manner, puzzled the painter not a little. It was as though he had drunk of some wonderful elixir since they had turned back from Thorney Chapel after the rustic wedding.
Jeffray, passing the warm walls and high gables of the house as the clock in the turret chimed twelve, went down from the terrace towards the green lawns and the flowering shrubberies, and saw Dr. Sugg, in the distance, holding a critical and appreciative nose over his tulip beds and banks of gilliflower. The borders were gay under the glare of the sun, yet to Richard the red tulips recalled the blood-red flower that Bess had plucked at Holy Cross in her dream.
Sugg’s jovial and ruddy face, with its apple cheeks and merry, black eyes, was turned towards Jeffray as he came down the box-edged path. His broad and humanistical mouth wreathed itself into a hearty smile as he held out both his hands to the squire.
“Thank Heaven, sir,” he said, “that I find you looking so alive and well. I had heard less flattering accounts of you. I am rejoiced to see you so speedily recovered.”
Jeffray’s sympathies leaped out to this jovial old fellow with his twinkling eyes, and shrewd, smiling mouth.
“I am mending fast,” he said, as he blushed and gripped the rector’s hands; “and I am glad to see you, sir, at last. Stott has forbidden me visitors hitherto, as you know, but I can turn the tables on him now. How is Mary?—well, and untouched, eh?”
Sugg’s face beamed heartily.
“Indeed, sir, Mary is Martha-like as ever. She sent you all her good wishes in my pocket. It is good to know that you are with us once more, Richard.”
They turned by mutual and tacit consent towards the arbor of clipped yews that stood at the upper end of the gravel walk. The beds cut in the glistening, dew-drenched turf of the lawns were full of pansies and auriculas, whose gold-and-purple faces shone like rich enamels in the sun. The fountain below the terrace, a slim wood-nymph in the nude, was throwing spray from a cypress bough held above her head. Peacocks were sunning themselves upon the balustrades, and the white pigeons coquetted and basked on the red-tiled roof of the columbary.
The rector took out his snuffbox as they seated themselves in the arbor, and, after a proper and dignified amount of snuffing and dabbing, returned the tortoise-shell case reflectively to his waistcoat-pocket. The courtly expressions of sympathy with regard to Miss Hardacre’s illness were duly forthcoming, and were met by Jeffray with all the sensibility and grace that he could muster. The rector laid his hat on the seat beside him, smoothed his wig, and approached Jeffray on the very subject that was filling the romanticist’s heart.
“Will it tire you, sir,” he said, “if I mention a matter to you that has much exercised my mind of late?”
Jeffray imagined that Sugg was for discussing the outbreak of small-pox in Rodenham and the necessity for keeping the pest-house in proper repair for the future. The rector nodded consentingly, but confessed to a more delicate and picturesque inspiration.
“Perhaps you may remember, sir,” he said, “the girl, Bess Grimshaw, who caused you to come by a broken head in Pevensel?”
Jeffray shot a rapid glance at Dr. Sugg’s face, and felt the blood rushing tumultuously to his cheeks.
“Yes, I remember her,” he said, steadying himself. “The girl was not treated well in the hamlet, and, to be frank with you, I was sorry for her, and promised her help.”
“So I understood, sir,” quoth the rector, tersely.
Jeffray had moved to the end of the seat where he could lean against the hedge of yew. He felt himself trembling in most unmanly fashion, and was wondering whether his emotion was evident to the parson. Dr. Sugg’s eyes appeared fixed reflectively on a distant tulip bed, and he sat with his hands together, his elbows resting on his knees.
“May I ask whether it is true, sir,” he continued, “that you offered to give the girl a home at Rodenham?”
Jeffray’s face was still afire. He had to steady himself before he could reply.
“That is the truth,” he said, slowly, “and I have even been wondering whether Bess Grimshaw could have come to the priory while I was ill.”
“She did come, sir,” quoth Dr. Sugg, rubbing his hands together solemnly.
“Ah!”
“And when they frightened her away I took her in at the parsonage, for the poor lass had run away from home rather than marry a man whom she piously hated.”
The rector turned suddenly and looked with perfect innocence into Jeffray’s face. Its strained and restless expression startled the good man considerably, as did the dull gleam in the sunken eyes.
“I hope I am not vexing your infirmity, sir,” he said, with some concern.
Jeffray, shaking himself free from his thoughts, met Sugg’s stare with quiet composure.
“Rector,” he said, “tell me all you know about this girl.”
Sugg, pocketing his Christian curiosity for the moment, told Jeffray, very simply, how Bess had stopped to speak to him at the parsonage gate, how he had felt pity for her, and by Mary’s advice taken her as a servant. He confessed his liking for poor Bess, and spoke with some heat of the way she had been ambuscaded and snatched away out of his house.
“Well, sir,” said the rector, at the end of the recital, “I was not a little vexed by the rough handling the girl received. She was a handsome, well-spoken lass, and gracious and kind as could be to Mary. My daughter saw the whole thing, sir, and blubbered over it all night. But what could I do, sir? I had no authority over the young woman’s person. I suppose by now they have forced her to marry that oaf of a cousin.”
“I saw Bess married this morning,” Jeffray said, quietly.
Dr. Sugg twitched his eyebrows.
“Indeed, sir—indeed!”
“Wilson and I were out driving and happened to turn down to Thorney Chapel. The wedding-party was coming out, and I suppose Mr. Mossop had been conducting the service. I can assure you, sir, that it was something of a shock to me.”
The rector drummed on his knees with his right fist, and looked at Jeffray with a certain amount of puzzled sympathy. He was at loss to know why the master of Rodenham should feel himself so deeply concerned in the matter, nor was it usual for a young gentleman of birth to take a brotherly interest in a girl of Bess’s station. The suspicion glimmered across the rector’s mind that there might have been some unlawful passage of romance between the two, but he dismissed it as an insult to his belief in Jeffray’s honor.
Richard himself had been touched by the reflection that Dr. Sugg might be concerned about his motives. Flushing at the thought, he marched out his forces boldly to the sound of the drum, like a general who is not ashamed either of his cause or of his men.
“Rector,” he said, “I suppose there is nothing in the world so convincing as the truth. I tell you, as man to man, that I have felt very tenderly towards this girl, for she saved my life, sir, and has had much to bear. I hold that reverence for the purity of womanhood is a virtue more honorable than the giving of gold. Therefore, I was shocked at the thought that this young girl should be sacrificed to the unclean appetite of a coarse and loose-mouthed savage. The fellow filled her with dread and with disgust. That is why I strove to save her from this shame.”
Sugg’s round face beamed sympathetically.
“And by the ever-living prophets, sir, I shake your hand on it.”
Jeffray’s eyes had kindled.
“Moreover,” he said, earnestly, “I believe that there is a secret connected with the girl’s birth. She is no Grimshaw, or I am no gentleman. I know that she has recollections of another and distant past. I wanted to save her from this savage, but they have tricked her, and I am sorry.”
The rector dived for his snuffbox and vented his feelings disguisedly therein.
“I agree with you, I agree with you, sir,” he said, “she’s a fine lass; the more’s the pity, the more’s the pity. God knows what will become of her in the future!”
“Sugg,” said Jeffray, “I hope to save her yet.”
When the rector had gone with a hearty grip of his muscular fist, Richard made his way to the library and found Peter Gladden waiting for him, suave and subservient. The tenor of the interview astonished the butler not a little. What had come to the young master that he looked so stern and masterful and spoke in a way that made poor Gladden’s ears tingle?