XXX
Jeffray had taken lodgings at Tunbridge Wells over a stationer’s shop, Peter Gladden, pompously indefatigable, having discharged all the petty preliminaries for his master. The windows of the parlor gave a slanting view of the Pantiles, and a broad glimpse of the common, gilded with gorse, its may-trees bursting into snow, the rocks sleeping like toads on the sunny slopes. The woods of Eridge bristled beyond, and Crowborough Beacon climbed purple into the south-western sky. The village with its biblically-named hills seemed gay with spruce gentlemen, beflowered ladies, lackeys, and such gaudy beetles. The frivolous little Sybaris nestled amid the dazzling freshness of spring, orchards still white upon the slopes, flowers thick in every meadow.
It was a dewy morning after rain, the landscape a-shimmer in the sun when Peter Gladden shaved and valeted his master, and prepared him for a parade upon the Pantiles and the public walks where he might study the life of the place. Jeffray, who still wore black and dressed without great respect to fashion, discovered himself scrutinized with some closeness by the smart idlers whose lives appeared consecrated to studying the shape of a buckle or the cock of a hat.
Jeffray sat down on a seat in the public walk and watched the people go to and fro. A strutting, waddling crowd it was, picturesque at a distance, with its brocades and colors, but, like a bold and splashing picture, disclosing its artifices and its flaws to the close observer. The men, with a few signal exceptions, appeared to belong to that indefinable order of beings who combined the semi-sentimental spirit of libertinism with the coarse arrogance of an aristrocratic animal. What thrusting out of elbows was there; what delicate dabbings of the nose with lace; what strutting and smirking; what showing off of legs and gesturings with white ruffled hands! It was a clever crowd, too, with the exception of a few clumsy squires who lumbered through it, and the open-mouthed toadies gaping and ready like stupid codfish for “my lord’s joke.” Shallow and superficial seemed the gay, epigrammatic philosophy of such people. Jeffray felt that fashion was justified of her children, and that even the pageantry of life could not make such mumming bearable.
At three o’clock Jeffray dined at a quiet “ordinary” preparatory to paying a state call on the Lady Letitia. He took his meal in a little white-fronted inn whose casements opened on trim lawns, fruit-trees, and white palings. The beds cut in the grass were bright with pansies, stocks, and arabis. A broad brick path led up to the trellised porch.
Even in this quaint, black-beamed old place the same feeling of artificiality haunted him. The bobbing, scurrying waiter was a servile offence against liberty, while at a table in one corner three young exquisites were discussing the virtues of a new shoe-buckle and the piquances of the latest demi-mondaine of the place. The proprietor of the inn, a fat, tallow-faced foreigner in black, scuttled hither and thither, and beamed with delight when Jeffray spoke to him in Italian. Richard felt that the fellow would have licked the dust off any great, little gentleman’s shoes had his highness honored him with such an order. Money, impudence, and ostentation were the only noble necessities amid such surroundings. Beggared, sea-stained Ulysses would have had the dogs set on him in such a pace.
Richard, after being conducted to the gate by the proprietor, who jabbered Italian, and appeared ready to embrace his patron had not etiquette intervened, strolled down the village towards the Pantiles, and looked for the house where the Lady Letitia was staying. A rat-tat from a brass knocker on a green front door brought Jeffray face to face with the dowager’s footman in cerise and buff. The man’s smug face relaxed into a grin as he bowed Richard into the narrow hall, and surrendered him to the urbanity of Mr. Parsons. The Lady Letitia was at home, and expected a few folk of some consequence to tea and cards. The major-domo dared to assure Richard that her ladyship would be rejoiced at seeing him.
When Jeffray was ushered into his aunt’s room, he found the old lady seated alone at one of the windows overlooking the Pantiles. Two card-tables were set out at the upper end, and a great silver tray ladened with choice china in blue and gold stood on a gate-legged table by the fire. For the rest, the room appeared shabby and colorless, the gilding on the walls dull and cracked, the carpet worn, the brocades and tapestries faded. Certainly its atmosphere was one of genteel elegance, and in a fashionable health resort even a grocer’s parlor was considered elegant. It was the inmates who mattered, not the upholstery and the chandeliers.
The Lady Letitia received her nephew with absolute effusion. She tottered up, putting aside her stick, and held out two gouty hands to him with the smile of a most amiable of grandmothers. The recollection of her hurried flight from Rodenham did not appear to disturb her equanimity, for the old lady had grown accustomed to forgetting “incidents” in her day. She kissed Jeffray on both cheeks, leaving in each case a patch of powder behind, and then held him at arm’s length, gazing in his face.
“Ha, ha, mon cher; why, you look quite brave and well, though a little thin. By the Queen of Hearts, I am overjoyed at seeing you, with hardly a spot or a pock-mark either! You are a credit to your physician, Richard; all’s well that ends well; a wise proverb. And when did you arrive, sir? What, last night! To be sure, Richard, you ought to have shown yourself to a poor old woman earlier. And how is the dear Jilian, is she with you?”
The Lady Letitia, still talking, subsided again into her chair. She looked very yellow and ugly despite her rouge, and she was short of breath, as Richard noticed. Age seemed to be gaining fast on her, and even a liberal remittance from her bankers could not keep her from growing feeble. Jeffray was astonished at the change that even two months had wrought in her. Her fierce, peering eyes were bright as ever, but he could see that her hands trembled, and that a senile tremor was shaking the feathers in her “head.”
“Sit down, nephew, sit down. And how does Miss Jilian like The Wells, sir? You ought to have brought her to see me, Richard.”
Jeffray had settled himself on a stool by the window. He was watching the gay stream of color in the walk below, one hand playing with the hilt of his sword.
“Jilian is at Hardacre, aunt,” he said.
“Indeed, sir, indeed!”
“I was ordered here for my health by Surgeon Stott. It seems a gay place, madam. I have never before seen so many butterflies flitting about together.”
The Lady Letitia’s keen and angular face had taken on an expression of vivid alertness. Her birdlike eyes twinkled over her nephew’s face. Certainly he appeared more melancholy and self-centred than ever, and spoke listlessly, as though some trouble were weighing on his mind. The old lady’s insatiable curiosity was awake on the instant. It was her fate to be forever prying and peering into the affairs of others.
“I hope dear Jilian is well, Richard.”
“Not very well, aunt.”
“Eh, eh! What’s been the matter?”
“Miss Hardacre has had the small-pox.”
“The small-pox!”
“Yes.”
The old lady’s eyes glittered shrewdly. She sat with her hands on the crook of her stick, looking at Richard with penetration. There were cynical and amused wrinkles about her mouth. Jeffray’s melancholy, his air of abstraction, expressed infinite things to the Lady Letitia. She could have chuckled over the apparent fulfilment of her prophecies. Miss Jilian, doubtless, had had her complexion shattered, and Mr. Richard was feeling utterly out of love with her.
“Hum, Richard, mon cher, pardon me, but you look worried, troubled. Will you not confide in an old woman, eh? I have seen a great deal of the world.”
Jeffray, who had been leaning with one elbow on the window-sill, and drumming on the glass with his fingers, turned suddenly, looking vexed and half ashamed. He had still enough mock pride left in him to resent the steady conviction that his elderly relative had warned him very shrewdly. He had always half despised the worldly old Jezebel, but she seemed to have the laugh of him for the moment.
“To tell you the truth, madam,” he said, unbosoming himself with clumsy brusqueness and with an effort, “Jilian has been much disfigured.”
The Lady Letitia leaned forward on her stick.
“There, there, mon cher Richard, I understand.”
“I gave it to her.”
“And now you love her no longer, nephew, eh? Do not contradict me, sir, I can see it in every line of your face. Poor boy! poor boy! It is a mercy that you are not married.”
Jeffray, who had been writhing and reddening before the old lady’s eyes, started and flashed a questioning look at her as the last words were uttered.
“A mercy, madam!” he exclaimed.
“Of course, my dear.”
Jeffray’s upper lip tightened, and he looked sullen about the eyes.
“It was all my fault,” he said. “I suppose I ought to act like a man of honor. I ought to marry her, I know.”
The Lady Letitia actually broke out into a merry laugh. Her eyes twinkled, and she tapped on the floor applaudingly with her stick.
“Richard, mon cher, when will you learn to put on the breeches?”
“Madam!”
“Lud, sir, when will you discover that these silly sentiments, these toys of honor, are only idols invented and decorated by us women to delude and impress the callow male. We must get husbands, and keep ’em, if we can. Foh, sir, better marry a red-cheeked, bouncing wench who wants you because you are a man, than a fine spinster who is hunting for a household and for money.”
Jeffray, sentimentalist that he was, looked surprised and even shocked.
“Why, madam, you are a lady yourself, one of a class, and can you talk like this?”
The dowager chuckled with cynical delight.
“Come, come, Richard; I have played the game, have I not? I have schemed and plotted, tilted my nose, and rustled my silken skirts. Yes, yes. But I know what it is worth, sir; I know the value of a pawn, a bishop, and a king. I have studied the moves, the openings, the finesse, the checkmate. It is only a game that we polite and religious gamblers cultivate. Do not be deluded, sir. Hearts are not broken at five-and-thirty; they are leather at twenty when the modesty dries up. Do you think that Miss Hardacre would marry you if you were a common attorney or a penniless ensign? No, no. The illusions have gone. It is comfort, carriages, servants, baubles, money for cards. That is her disease, Richard.”
Jeffray hung his head and stroked his chin, yet discovered, despite his sensibility, a comforting flavor in the old lady’s words.
“It may be so,” he said, with the air of a fatalist.
The Lady Letitia, however, saw nothing inevitable in the marriage. She cackled with the greatest good humor, and tapped Jeffray’s knee with the point of her stick.
“Dear Lord, Richard, don’t pull such a very long face. Do you think you are the first man who has grown tired of the angel? There is not a more scheming, artful, intrigue-eaten veteran in the county. Why should you marry her because she wants your money? As for a betrothal, nephew, sensible people ought to regard it as a state trial, a bargain that either may break with honor, when it seems likely to prove a bad one. Let the scandal-mongers go hang. When you have money, Richard, you need not be afraid of people’s tongues. Cock your hat at them all, step out and swagger. And how does the noble Lancelot behave to you, sir?”
Jeffray’s mouth hardened as he remembered his cousin’s red face and overbearing manner. The Lady Letitia had struck the right chord. The look on her nephew’s face applauded her diplomacy.
“Do not be browbeaten by that oaf, Richard,” she continued, with much spirit. “Lot Hardacre is a fine fellow to set himself up as a judge of honor. Why, he has jilted three girls to my knowledge, and is content now to amuse himself with farmers’ daughters, without the burdens of matrimony. Stand up to him, nephew; rattle your sword. The more you show your teeth in this world the better will people respect you. The Christian fool is a poor creature. He gets an abundance of kicks, sir, and, by Heaven! he deserves them. Ah, here is my dear friend, Dean Stubbs. Nephew, you must stay and drink tea with us, and take a hand at cards.”
XXXI
The following morning a letter came to Richard from Hardacre, a carefully sealed epistle smelling strangely of musk. He stared at it like a spendthrift eying an unpayable bill, opened the letter as he sipped his chocolate, spread it on the tray before him, and read it grudgingly at his leisure. He was no longer moved to kiss the place where Miss Jilian’s hand had rested. The sentimental infatuation had withered in a week. It had never possessed roots in the natural soil. The letter ran:
“My dear Richard,—I was a little surprised to receive the note that informed me that you were proceeding to Tunbridge Wells for your health. Was it shame or delicacy of feeling that prevented you from taking leave of me in person? You must remember how little sympathy you showed me when we first met after my illness. I am ready to pardon you, however, and shall expect more sensibility in you in the future.“Doubtless you will be rejoiced to hear that I am in good health, and that my poor complexion promises to improve. The great Dr. Buffin visited me yesterday. He had travelled down by private coach to Lady Polsons, and Lancelot rode over to desire him to call on me at Hardacre. His opinion proved to be most sympathetic and comforting, so that you can rejoice with me in my fresh flow of spirits.“Is that terrible old woman—your aunt—at The Wells? Let me warn you against her, Richard. She has led a wicked life, and has no respect for God or the truth.”
“My dear Richard,—I was a little surprised to receive the note that informed me that you were proceeding to Tunbridge Wells for your health. Was it shame or delicacy of feeling that prevented you from taking leave of me in person? You must remember how little sympathy you showed me when we first met after my illness. I am ready to pardon you, however, and shall expect more sensibility in you in the future.
“Doubtless you will be rejoiced to hear that I am in good health, and that my poor complexion promises to improve. The great Dr. Buffin visited me yesterday. He had travelled down by private coach to Lady Polsons, and Lancelot rode over to desire him to call on me at Hardacre. His opinion proved to be most sympathetic and comforting, so that you can rejoice with me in my fresh flow of spirits.
“Is that terrible old woman—your aunt—at The Wells? Let me warn you against her, Richard. She has led a wicked life, and has no respect for God or the truth.”
Here followed certain very proper expressions of affection that made Jeffray wince and color. The letter ended with a veiled threat, the significance of which the man was world-wise enough to understand. He suspected, and suspected rightly, that Miss Hardacre was not singly responsible for the document before him. He had received letters from Jilian of old, formless, feeble, and vaporish things, indifferent as to spelling, commonplace as to style. Richard imagined that some family friend had collaborated with her in the production of the letter, and his docility was not increased by the impression.
Needless to say the Lady Letitia was permitted to read the epistle, and the unflattering reference to her morals brought the light of battle into the old lady’s eyes. She smiled very grimly at her nephew, tapped on the floor with her crooked stick, and desired him to state what he thought of Miss Hardacre’s letter. Richard had been watching the people parading on the Pantiles, looking morose and melancholy, a man with a growing grievance.
“You will see, madam,” he said, turning restlessly in his chair, “that Miss Hardacre’s complexion is likely to improve.”
The dowager sniffed, and made an irritable gesture with the letter.
“So she writes, Richard,” she retorted.
“Dr. Buffin is a physician of experience.”
“An old mollycoddle, sir, fit to treat a cold in the head. He is one of those gentlemen who takes two guineas for telling people just what they wish to hear. But supposing the lady’s complexion mends, Richard, will your love mend with it?”
This was a home-thrust, and Jeffray’s face betrayed his inability to parry it. He played with his watch-chain and seals, and looked blank pessimism so far as his affection for Miss Hardacre was concerned.
“I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself,” he confessed.
“Nonsense, mon cher, nonsense.”
“I cannot help my instincts.”
“Exactly, sir, exactly. Supposing now that you were set down in front of an ugly china cat, and were told that unless you admired and adored it eternally you would be the most dishonorable rascal in Christendom. What should you think, sir?—what should you think?”
The sally drew a smile even from Richard’s melancholy.
“I should feel that the command was unreasonable,” he said.
“Of course, Richard, no one can accomplish the impossible. Love has wings of fire, sir, it does not crawl like a spider in a web. And supposing now that you hesitated about adoring the same china cat, and that a great, red-faced bully stood over you with a whip, and swore he’d thrash you into admiring the monstrosity, what would you do then, Richard, eh?—what would you do then?”
“Rebel, I suppose,” confessed the catechumen, with a frown.
Though sitting as a disciple at his aunt’s feet, Jeffray had no great difficulty in amusing himself reflectively in the village. He walked on the Pantiles, watched the little comedies of life, listened to the music, dined at the various inns, and modestly refused the ogling invitations of sundry damsels in gay gowns and gaudy hats. Twice he attended at the Assembly Rooms with the Lady Letitia, and was not a little amused to find that the old lady had already discovered a rich and pretty rival to outshine Miss Jilian. Jeffray’s pulses remained unstirred by this new nereid. He danced with her twice, found her amiable and commonplace, and laughed with modest incredulity when the dowager rallied him on his chances. A young man in love might vote Dame Venus herself a very prosaic and ordinary person.
Jeffray’s favorite haunt was a rock on the Common, where he could bask in the sun, and look into the blue distance towards Pevensel. Bess was in his thoughts always; in truth, she was thought itself, the very blood within his brain. He rehearsed her every pose, gesture, and expression, the simple and half-tender words that she had spoken to him, the way her eyes grew full of light when they met his. He remembered her bathing at Holy Cross, a white pillar of loveliness glimmering in the sun. He remembered her at Thorney Chapel, fierce, miserable, and ashamed. Sweetest of all were the memories of the night when she had bent over him as he lay in bed, and the day when he had met her in the larch-wood and she had poured out all her despair into his ears.
What wonder that Miss Hardacre’s influence grew less and less, and that mere airy and fragile sentiments weighed like gossamer against the gold of love. Time and the Lady Letitia appeared to be clearing the metaphysical fog from Jeffray’s brain. The dark melted, the noon sun shone. True, he could not marry Bess, but his love for her should save him from perjuring himself by an alliance with Jilian. The truth was as plain as an Egyptian obelisk against the desert sky. Why should he shut his eyes and wander on, hating himself, and hating Jilian. What—and did he not pity her? Yes, in a vague and passive way, remembering ever the Lady Letitia’s cry of “money,” and Mr. Lancelot’s insolent face.
It was the fourth day of Jeffray’s sojourn at The Wells when the Lady Letitia succeeded in convincing him, somewhat dramatically, of how he was being exploited by the gentry at Hardacre. The dowager produced a letter from her reticule and handed it to Richard with a grim twinkle in her shrewd old eyes. It was a letter written from a confidential friend of Lot Hardacre’s to a confidential friend of the Lady Letitia’s. Jeffray’s betrothal had been broached in a gossip between the dowager and her confidant, and the letter had been confided to the old lady’s care, on the understanding she was on no account to disclose its contents to her nephew. The Lady Letitia’s jesuitical conscience disposed very easily of the promise, and Jeffray was admitted behind the scenes.
The passages that concerned him ran as follows:
“Jill Hardacre, that gay spinster, has had the small-pox, and looks—so folks say—like a pitted orange with a wig. She is betrothed, as you have probably heard, to a wealthy young sapling whose grandsire made a fortune in iron. It seems that the young gentleman is inclined to withdraw from the match, since the sweet maid is grievously disfigured. But our friend Lancelot thinks otherwise in the matter. Jilt my sister, sir, egad, but you may bet your last guinea that he won’t. The lad is a soft young fool, and will faint, damme, at the sight of a sword.”
“Jill Hardacre, that gay spinster, has had the small-pox, and looks—so folks say—like a pitted orange with a wig. She is betrothed, as you have probably heard, to a wealthy young sapling whose grandsire made a fortune in iron. It seems that the young gentleman is inclined to withdraw from the match, since the sweet maid is grievously disfigured. But our friend Lancelot thinks otherwise in the matter. Jilt my sister, sir, egad, but you may bet your last guinea that he won’t. The lad is a soft young fool, and will faint, damme, at the sight of a sword.”
“So you see, sweet coz, that the noble Lot intends to pin the calf to his promise in swaggering fashion. Well, Jill Hardacre has had her day, and this promises to be her last and final hunting-party. Now or never is the cry. The Hardacres want money, and the young squireling has a veritable pot of gold. Amusing, eh? Life is a merry jest, to be sure.”
When Richard had read the letter through he handed it back very quietly to the dowager. His face had hardened to that white, expressionless mobility that bespeaks action. The mouth was no longer soft and plastic, the eyes full of melancholy and reflective doubt.
“Well, Richard, what is to be done?”
Jeffray stood up and stretched himself.
“Take fencing lessons,” he said, curtly.
“Ah ha, that is the right spirit!”
“I could handle a sword in Italy, but am stiff and out of play. I suppose there is a fencing-master in the place?”
The old lady’s eyes glittered, and she looked at her nephew approvingly.
“Yes, a Frenchman, a wonderful fellow, I believe. I will tell Parsons to go at once and find where he lodges.”
“Thanks, madam. I will have a week’s practice with him before I return to Rodenham.”
XXXII
The lilac had fallen and the roses were in bloom when Jeffray took a stately and affectionate leave of the Lady Letitia, and journeyed back to Rodenham with Peter Gladden in his coach and four. The dowager had appeared sincerely sorry at Richard’s departure. He had refused to permit her to repay him the two hundred guineas that she had borrowed at Rodenham; moreover, he had made the old lady several handsome presents, lace and jewelry being still acceptable to the belle of seventy. Day by day the Lady Letitia diligently applauded Jeffray’s strengthening spirit of revolt, trumpeting in his ears the preposterous insolence of Mr. Lancelot’s contempt, and bidding him work out his own salvation. Her only regret appeared to have been that Richard had refused her the joy of choosing him a wife.
Dick Wilson remarked the change in Jeffray when they walked in the garden on the evening of his return. The man’s face and figure appeared to have gained alertness and decision. There was a new suppleness and grace about his carriage that contrasted with the half-slouching and dreamy melancholy that had burdened him before. His eyes were keen and alive to the things about him. He carried his head high, and spoke with more decision than of old.
“I must confess, sir,” said the painter, frankly, “that the air of Tunbridge seems to have suited you.”
Jeffray smiled as they paced the terrace side by side.
“I have been taking fencing lessons, Dick,” he said.
“Fencing lessons, sir?”
“From D’Aiglan, the Frenchman. He has done me a great deal of good. I am ready for any emergency.”
Wilson elevated his eyebrows expressively, and looked at Jeffray with curious intentness.
“I always thought that you were a man of peace, sir,” he said.
Jeffray laughed rather grimly, and, drawing Wilson away into the yew walk, told him briefly the whole tenor of his love affair with Miss Hardacre. He was beginning to learn that truth and the sword are much akin, and that brave candor is often more magical than sentimental secretiveness. Wilson, much astonished, plodded to and fro at Jeffray’s side, fingering his chin and emitting an expressive interjection from time to time. He was a broad-minded student of the world’s whims and weaknesses, and his sympathies were wholly with Jeffray in the matter.
“What are you going to do, sir?” he asked at last.
“Tell the truth as kindly as I can, Dick, and defy this fire-eating cousin of mine. I have no intention of financing the family by marrying the daughter.”
“You have made up your mind, eh?”
“I am tired, Dick, of contemplating a life-long hypocrisy.”
Wilson brushed the tobacco ash and snuff from his waistcoat, whistled a few lines of a favorite ditty, and then laid his hand on Jeffray’s shoulder.
“I think you are right, sir,” he said.
“Thanks, Dick, thanks.”
“There is too much damned trafficking in matrimony in this world. I shall never forget old Hogarth’s preaching. Unless God and the heart are in the thing, the bond is but a pledge to the devil.”
Jeffray looked Wilson straight in the eyes.
“I am glad to hear you speak like this, Dick,” he said; “it strengthens me.”
“And I am glad, sir,” quoth the painter, “that you are one of the few people who can tell the truth.”
Meanwhile Bess had been watching and waiting in Pevensel for Jeffray’s return, eager to show him the brooch that Dan had given her—a cross within a circle of gold studded with emeralds. The brooch had proved to her that her memories of the past were not mere dreams begotten out of restless fancy of childhood. Perhaps old Ursula was not her aunt, and perhaps Dan and the forest-folk had no blood communion with her, as she had been taught to believe. Once she showed the brooch to Ursula, watching the old woman’s wrinkled face keenly the while. The crone had peered at it with some uneasiness, working her toothless mouth and fidgeting at her apron-strings with her fingers. She had asked Bess how she had come by the bauble, and, being told that it was Dan’s present, she had held up her hands, turned her back on the girl, and refused to utter another word on the matter. Ursula’s attitude puzzled Bess. She went solemn-eyed through the early days of June, thinking of Jeffray and the past, and wondering what would happen in the future.
Twice she had quarrelled fiercely with Dan since he had given her the brooch, and it was only by grappling her passions down that she could keep her hands from shedding blood. Silence and an attitude of meek submission went sorely against the temper of her soul. It was only the dire necessity for dissimulation that held her quiet under her husband’s bullyings. For bully her he did after the fashion of a great, clumsy savage, proud of his own huge strength and the prerogatives thereof. It pleased the oaf to fancy that he was taming Bess as he would have tamed a bad-tempered filly; that he was breaking her spirit, and fastening his bondage upon her with the masterful complacency of a lord and a possessor. Like a great ape he would grin and mock her, tweak her hair, pinch her arms, twit her with his triumph, and gloat over the passivity that seemed to flatter his strength. Now and again Bess’s anger would blaze up in hot revolt, a passion-play that lent a charm to the brute pride of conquest. He believed that he had tamed and subdued the girl, not suspecting that he was only stacking the pent-up fire within her heart.
It was not till Jeffray had ridden on three successive evenings to the yew valley that Bess was able to slip away from the hamlet to meet him. It was a still evening in June, the grass knee-deep in the golden meadows, the scent of the white may heavy on the air. The voices of the birds alone broke the deep silence of the summer woods. The black spires of the yews and their massive limbs were streaked and eyeleted with the flooding gold of the western sky.
Jeffray came first to the trysting-place, feeling like a man who has drunk a bumper of sparkling wine. He tethered his horse deep in one of the thickets, and went and stood in the entry of the Hermit’s Cave, a rough chamber cut in the rock, with a low doorway and a mere slit of a window. The air was damp, pungent, and refreshing. Below lay the pool covered with white water-weed, where the old recluse of yore had drawn his water and kept his fish. There was still the outline of a cross cut in the wall of the chamber, and a broken bench of stone jutted out beneath the window.
Richard straightened suddenly as he leaned against the rough jamb of the doorway, and stood listening with a smile hovering about his mouth. Some one was singing in the yew wood—an old country song, simple and full of pathos. The mellow and half-husky voice rose and fell amid the shadows of the trees.
Soon he saw her coming down the path, the gnarled and rugged trunks and spreading boughs building a sun-splashed colonnade towards the pool. Jeffray went down through the tall grass and met the girl at the edge of the wood.
They did not touch each other’s hands, but stood quite close together, smiling shyly like a pair of children. Neither seemed to have a single word to say for the moment. It was all silent intuition with them, a glance, a sense of nearness, a rush of blood to the face. They turned and walked towards the great stone by the pool. Bess sat down there. Richard found himself beside her, a foot of the bare rock between them.
The girl’s eyes were searching his face.
“You look quite brown and strong,” she said.
“Yes, I am strong again,” he answered her.
“Have you ridden here—before?”
“The two past evenings. I had a feeling that I should find you to-night.”
“Dan went out into the woods, and so—I came.”
They sat in silence a moment, looking at each other, and hearing no sound save the occasional plash of a fish leaping in the pool. Bess’s fingers were feeling for the brooch at her bosom. She unpinned it, and, holding it in her palm, held it out to Jeffray with a smile.
“Dan has given me this,” she said.
Their fingers touched and lingered an instant in the contact.
“It is the brooch I remember—”
“Yes—”
“At the tall lady’s throat who was near me when I was a little child.”
Jeffray, who was staring at the thing, glanced up suddenly into Bess’s face. A look of mute inquiry, of significant sympathy, flashed between them.
“How did the brooch come to Dan?” asked the man.
“I do not know.”
“Strange. Perhaps—”
“Dan went out one night, and gave me this in the morning. Where it came from I cannot tell, unless Isaac, his father, gave it him.”
Jeffray sat in thought, balancing the brooch in his palm, and gazing out over the still waters of the pool. Bess watched him, her hands resting on the stone, her brown forearms bare to the elbow.
“Bess,” he said to her at last.
She swayed slightly towards him, her eyes on his.
“Can you discover how Dan came by the brooch?”
She frowned, and her mouth hardened; it was not in her heart to seek anything from Dan.
“I will not ask anything from him,” she said.
“Why not, Bess?”
“Because I hate him, hate him night and day.”
Richard looked at her almost wistfully.
“Yet you may learn something of your past from him,” he said.
“Yes—”
“You may be no Grimshaw, Bess; you look to have finer blood in you than theirs.”
Bess lifted her head as though some ennoblement would be very sweet to one who felt the shame of her present lot. Any such discovery would lift her nearer to Jeffray and lessen that gulf between them that was ever stretched before her pride.
“I will try,” she said at last—“try what I can learn from Dan. He is a great fool, though he is so strong.”
“And you do not love him any better?”
“Love Dan?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, is there any heart in me that I should love the brute! I have felt near killing him before now.”
Scarcely had this burst of passion spent itself in words when Bess’s face grew bleak and set. She held up a hand and sat listening, rigid yet alert. Jeffray could hear nothing, for his ears were less quick to the sounds of the forest than the girl’s. Only by the look of strained intentness on her face could he tell that she caught sounds that did not reach his hearing.
“What is it?” he asked her, in a whisper.
“I hear a dog panting in the wood.”
“Ah!”
“Where is your horse?”
“Well out of sight of the path.”
“Good. Listen to that!”
The rapid sound of some brute beast’s breathing drew near out of the silence of the wood. Even Jeffray could hear it as he sat with his eyes fixed on Bess’s face. Then a whistle shrilled out from the darkness of the trees, seeming to make the still air quiver. It was Dan’s whistle, and the panting was the panting of his dog.
Quick as thought Bess started up, beckoned to Jeffray, and ran through the grass towards the hermitage. The man followed her, glancing back over his shoulder at the impenetrable shadows of the yews. Bess sprang in up the low steps of the doorway, seized Richard’s wrist as he entered after her, and, with her face close to his, spoke in a whisper.
“It is Dan, curse him!”
“He may not see us.”
“The devil must have put it into the fool’s head to come this way.”
“Shall I slip out and leave you?”
Bess understood the spirit that prompted him, and that it was not cowardice that inspired the question. They were still very close to each other, Bess’s stray side curls brushing Jeffray’s cheek.
“Stay with me,” she said.
“Bess!”
“Stay.”
“I will.”
She flashed a wonderful look at him of a sudden and tightened her fingers for one moment about his wrist. Jeffray colored as he drew his sword and watched Bess move towards the window. Stepping back to where the inner wall of the room lay in deep shadow, he heard the panting of the dog and the rasp of Dan’s gruff voice as he called the brute to heel.
Bess drew back from the window and came gliding along the wall towards Jeffray. He understood that she had caught a glimpse of Dan or of the dog, and that their one hope was that the man might pass by and keep the spaniel at his heel. Bess drew close to Jeffray and leaned back against the wall where the darkness lay. Their hands touched and held each other. A strong thrill passed up Jeffray’s arm. He could feel the warmth of Bess’s body as she half leaned against him. She was holding her breath and watching the stretch of sward that showed through the doorway.
Again they heard Dan calling to the dog. He was passing by the pool, and they could catch his heavy foot-falls on the grass. The footsteps ceased of a sudden, and they could hear the panting of the dog quite near. Jeffray felt the pressure of Bess’s fingers. They looked into each other’s eyes—one long look that seemed to challenge fate.
Dan’s harsh hail rang out again.
“Heel, Doll, heel—you bitch!”
The spaniel whimpered wistfully. They heard her move through the long grass, splash through the shallows of the pool, the sound of her breathing growing less and less. They saw Dan go striding past the doorway, his gun over his shoulder, a hare dangling by the legs from his left hand. In a flash he was gone, the black spaniel padding at his heels and looking back restlessly from time to time.
Bess gave a great sigh and leaned heavily against Jeffray. Somehow the man’s arm had crept round her, and he felt the full ebb and flow of her breath. The warmth of her body seemed to steal into him with a sense of nearness and of contact. Her head was half resting on his shoulder, her hair brushing his cheek.
“Bess.”
She turned her head and looked up at him, half wearily, yet with a tired tenderness. Her eyes seemed doubly bright in the cool darkness of the place.
“He has gone.”
“Thank God.”
XXXIII
The abominable and discourteous indifference displayed by the master of Rodenham would have been sufficient to incense a less selfish person than Miss Jilian Hardacre. Three days had passed since Jeffray had returned from The Wells, and yet he had not so much as presented himself at the house of his betrothed. No gentleman’s behavior could have been more deserving of censure, and Miss Hardacre had shed angry tears over the indecent remissness of her lover. As for Brother Lot, the gathering cloud of thunder on his face would have honored the solemn temper of an Epic. Sir Peter and his son took counsel together in the dilemma, and the elder restrained his hot-headed Rupert of a son from galloping straightway to the charge. Sir Peter declared against an immediate recourse to methods of moral torture lest Mr. Richard should complain of provocation. A letter should be despatched from the fair Jilian, requiring Jeffray to pay his respects to her or challenge the peril of her severe displeasure.
When Jeffray returned from the yew valley that night, he found that a servant had left a letter for him from Hardacre. From the warm fragrance of the summer twilight he came into the old library where Gladden had lit the candles in the silver candlesticks. Jeffray threw open the window and stood for a moment looking out into the night. A myriad stars were shining in the dusky vault of blue; dew was in the air; a faint, fresh perfume ascended out of the earth. In the thickets nightingales were singing, and a streak of gold still gleamed in the west.
Jilian’s letter was in his hand. He turned back from the window with a great sigh, and sat down before the bureau where the candles were burning. It was no desire of his to read what was written in his betrothed’s letter. He could picture the bitter words it might contain, and his own conscience hinted at reproaches. Why had Jilian written to him that night, the night of all nights, when the stars seemed afire and the earth smelled of love? Could not the rich joy of it have been his without this note of discord?
Almost savagely he broke the seal and tore open the covering. There was no tremor about his hands as he held the sheet towards the light of the candles.
“Richard,—I am amazed that you have not disturbed yourself to visit me, though three days have passed since your return from Tunbridge. Such discourtesy stands in need of explanation. I desire your presence at Hardacre to-morrow before noon. Do not presume to disappoint me.“Jilian.”
“Richard,—I am amazed that you have not disturbed yourself to visit me, though three days have passed since your return from Tunbridge. Such discourtesy stands in need of explanation. I desire your presence at Hardacre to-morrow before noon. Do not presume to disappoint me.
“Jilian.”
Jeffray read the letter through twice, and then, holding it for an instant in the flame of one of the candles, tossed it burning on to the polished floor, and saw it blacken to a film of quivering ash. A grim yet half-humorous smile hovered about his mouth. On the morrow he would tell Jilian the truth, and if the noble Lot desired a quarrel, the sooner the feud were recognized the better.
At Hardacre the red may and the laburnum’s gold shone out from dewy depths of green. The white may and the mountain-ash were covered as with driven snow. In the park the chestnuts stood like huge green pinnacles crocketed with ivory and coral. Copper beeches gleamed in the sun. Peonies and poppies were in flower below the terrace, and the walls of the old house itself were red with a hundred roses.
As before, Jilian received Richard in the red parlor, dressed in her best silks and damasks, and looking more the great lady now that her pride had entered zealously into the play. Her complexion appeared to have improved under the arts of the toilet, but the scars and the seams could not be hid. She had made her father and Lancelot promise that they would leave Jeffray to her devices that day. She desired to treat with him at her own discretion, and to leave male blusterings and high-handedness to the future.
Jilian rose from her chair when Richard was announced, swept him a fine courtesy, and then seated herself on a settle by the harpsichord. She noticed that the man looked sad and sullen, stiff and constrained, with no brightening of the eyes. He stood before her with his hat under his arm, fingering the silver buttons on his coat, and staring at her in melancholy silence. He was thinking how strange and elusive a thing was personality, in that a peevish and swarthy face should have changed the temper of his life within three months.
“You have sent for me,” he said, quietly.
The crude formality of these opening words enlightened Miss Hardacre as to the sentiments she might find in him. His face was firm and immobile as marble, and an extreme and studied dignity chastened his habitual and good-natured grace.
“Yes, I have sent for you, Richard,” she said, eying him critically. “It is time that I received some consideration at your hands.”
Jeffray flushed slightly and bowed to her. For the moment there was an uncomfortable and unnerving pause. Jilian was playing irritably with her fan, an indescribable expression of restrained impatience on her face.
“Well, sir, have you nothing to say for yourself?”
Jeffray appeared to straighten his body, brace back his shoulders for the inevitable confession. He looked straight at Jilian, as though compelling himself to the uttermost candor.
“I have something to tell you, Jilian,” he said.
Miss Hardacre was alert on the instant, an unenviable glint in her eyes, one satin slipper tapping on the floor.
“Ah, yes, Richard, I know quite well what you are going to say to me. And so you think, sir, that you can toss me aside like a soiled shoe!”
A shadow as of pain passed across Jeffray’s face.
“Jilian! Believe me, it is no easy thing for me to speak of what has been working in my mind.”
The lady tossed her head, sneered till her teeth showed, and then broke out into a titter.
“And so, Richard, you find that you have been mistaken.”
“That is the truth, Jilian.”
“And do you not think it a pity, sir, that you did not discover this—some months ago?”
Jeffray, hanging his head and looking very miserable, walked to the window and stood staring out of it in silence. The landscape stretched gray and meaningless before his eyes, so hustled was he by his own thoughts. Jilian was watching him with a rapacious air, her painted face looking old and almost shrewish. Truth, like the shield in the fable, bore a different blazoning to these two who studied it from opposing situations.
Presently Jeffray turned from the window, walked back into the middle of the room, with the look of a man determined to speak the last word.
“It is not easy,” he began, “to confess that one has been mistaken.”
“Not easy, Richard, eh?”
“My sense of honor—”
“Your sense of honor, Richard, compels you to make excuses.”
Jeffray colored at the taunt.
“Jilian, I have not come to make excuses.”
“Ah, no, of course not!”
“My conscience will not let me play the hypocrite.”
“Your conscience, Richard! Ah, this is beautiful!”
It was easy to see that the man’s attitude of tragic self-righteousness roused all the scorn in the woman’s nature. Jeffray did not appear to realize how dishonorable his sentiments were when viewed in the calm light of impartial reason. He was disgustingly confident of his own honor. His smug conceit exasperated the lady.
“Richard,” she said, her voice sounding harsh and strained.
Jeffray faced her steadily.
“You have come to tell me that you are not going to marry me. That is so, is it not?”
“I have come to confess that my love is no longer what it was.”
“Did I not say so, cousin? What is the use of our clipping and trimming our phrases? To put it bluntly, you are sick of me.”
Jeffray regarded her as though trying to read her thoughts.
“I can only acknowledge my own guilt,” he said.
Miss Hardacre’s mouth gave a vicious twist.
“Then I may as well warn you, Richard,” she retorted, “that you must consult Sir Peter in the matter.”
“Sir Peter?”
“Of course.”
Richard gave a frank shrug of the shoulders.
“What has Sir Peter to do with our marriage?” he said. “It is no business compact. I cannot promise things to your father which I cannot promise here to you.”
Such dignified innocence became more exasperating each moment to the lady by the harpsichord. Yet she still smiled scornfully at her betrothed as though her superior knowledge of the world justified her in despising him.
“You misunderstand the whole matter, Richard,” she said. “You have promised to marry me, and you gained my father’s consent to the marriage. His authority must be consulted, though I can assure you, sir, he is not the man to suffer his daughter’s affections to be trifled with. I am a weak woman, Richard, and my honor, since you seem so careless of it, had better remain in my father’s keeping.”
Jeffray, looking white and stern, understood whither Miss Hardacre’s strategy was tending. He rallied himself, made her a polite bow, and confessed that he could suffer no parental interference.
“I have nothing to discuss with Sir Peter,” he said.
“Nothing!”
“I cannot recognize his authority, Jilian, nor can your father coerce my conscience. It is a miserable business, but one cannot save the wine when the flask is broken.”
This last sally dissipated the lady’s remaining self-control. Was there ever such a puritanical and canting young hypocrite? He would be quoting the Bible and the marriage service to her in a moment to prove that his dishonor was a commendable virtue. Quivering with the impatience of her spite, she started up, and flashed a look at Jeffray that was more significant than a judicial ruling.
“Drat your conscience, Richard,” she said. “I tell you, sir, that you are fickle and dishonorable, and that you have trifled with my affections. I may have lost some of my good looks, sir, but I am still a woman, to be treated with courtesy and not with cowardly lies and excuses.”
“Jilian!”
“Do not call me Jilian, sir. I refer you instantly to my father. And if you slink and dare not face him, I can promise you that my brother is a man of courage. I may be a weak woman, Mr. Jeffray, a woman who has treated you too kindly, and worn her heart upon her sleeve, but I am not to be trifled with as though I were some common farmer’s daughter. I tell you that you have insulted my affections, sir, compromised my honor and the honor of my family.”
Jeffray stood stock-still in the middle of the room, staring at Miss Hardacre’s red and angry face. Her fury had transfigured her, as though some witch’s wand had changed her from smiling youth into a fierce and scolding shrew. Few women look well when they are the creatures of wrath, and Jeffray was astonished and repelled by the transformation he beheld before him. Three months ago he would have been on his knees at Jilian’s feet. Now he realized that she could look old, vixenish, and ugly.
“I am sorry you have spoken like this,” he said.
“Sorry, sir—sorry! Nonsense; you don’t care the price of a new pin. I am disgusted, sir—disgusted at the miserable lies you have the impudence to throw at me. I thought you a gentleman, sir. I find that you are a villain.”
Jeffray crushed his hat between his hands, restrained himself by a great effort, and bowed to her with all the dignity he could command.
“I think that I had better take my leave of you,” he said, coldly.
“Ah, do so, by all means. Your righteous self-conceit sickens me.”
“Madam, I came to try and tell you the truth as courteously as I could.”
Miss Hardacre pointed him to the door.
“Tell me no more lies,” she said; “as for your conscience—I snap my fingers at it.”
Jeffray, mortified and not sorry to escape, bowed once more to the lady, and left her to her tears, her smelling-salts, and her brother.