XXXIV
The evening of the day that Jeffray rode to break his betrothal with Miss Hardacre, Isaac Grimshaw came limping across from his cottage to find Dan plastering new tiles on the roof of his small byre. Isaac stood at the foot of the ladder, squinting up at his son against the evening sunlight, his white hair shining under his hat.
Dan pressed a tile home upon its bed of plaster, and, laying his trowel on the roof, looked down at his father.
“What be ye a-wanting?” he asked, scratching his beard with a black thumb nail.
Isaac was frowning and looking fierce and out of humor.
“Come down, lad, I ain’t going to bellow at ye.”
Dan climbed down and stood with one hand on the ladder, staring inquisitively into his father’s face. It was not often that Isaac’s complacency was ruffled by a grievance. His arbitrary nature found few foul winds to trouble him in Pevensel.
“What’s amiss, dad?”
“That damned old she-dog Ursula’s in a pet.”
Dan grunted sympathetically.
“She be growing daft fast,” he said.
“So I say, lad, but the old fool has a tongue, and a meddlesome tongue, too, bad blood to her. She might be doing us a deal of harm unless we quiet her silly old soul.”
“What be Ursula whining for?”
“Guineas, lad; she be as sweet on the gold dirt as Solomon on his liquor.”
Isaac leaned against the wall of the byre and explained the nature of the old woman’s grievance. The gist of it was that Isaac had never given her the eighty guineas that he had promised her on Bess’s marriage. Ursula Grimshaw was slipping into her dotage, and, like many an old creature in that maudlin December of life, she had waxed querulous and testy, jealous of her rights and greedy of her due. Her love of gold had increased with the waning of her intellect, and she was forever bemoaning Bess’s absence and grumbling at her brother for cheating her of her rights. Isaac, who was never eager to disburse gold, and had kept the real secret of their wealth from all save Ursula and Dan, his son, had met the old woman’s complaints with banter, and chuckled at her demand for the guineas he had promised. Ursula, however, had flown at last into a fit of senile rage, spread her claws, and spluttered like a cat. She would have the money, or Isaac should repent of cheating her because she was old and feeble. Had not Dan given Bess the brooch of emeralds? The girl should hear the whole truth unless the money was forthcoming. With dramatic spite, Ursula had tottered up out of her chair, shaken her stick at Isaac, and cackled out threats that had made her brother change his tone.
“We must fetch another bag out of the chest, lad,” Isaac said, at the end of the recital, “unless you are for giving up the guineas I gave ye.”
Dan scratched his head and frowned at the suggestion.
“Drat the old hussy,” he retorted, “I’ll give her none of my guineas. I be wanting a new wagon and new gear, and the girl’ll be wasting a powerful lot of money.”
Isaac’s face suggested the thought that a tap with an axe on the old lady’s crown would have solved the difficulty as clearly as possible. He suppressed the temptation towards violence, however, and bade Dan call at his cottage that night after it was dark. They would go to the Monk’s Grave and bring back the gold that should keep old Ursula quiet.
Bess had been vexing her ingenuity to discover how she might charm from Dan the secret of the brooch. This golden bauble starred with its emerald eyes seemed to her the one talisman that could break the silence of the past. She had tried to charm some confession from old Ursula, but the dame would tell Bess nothing, despite her grievance against Isaac. Thus when Dan, surly and morose, came in to Bess at supper-time, and told her curtly that he would be out with his gun that night, the girl grew keen and alert as a deer that scents peril on the wind.
Had not Dan given her the brooch on the morning after his last night out with his gun in Pevensel? She remembered that he had brought no birds back with him in the morning, and the more Bess pondered it, the more suspicious she grew of her husband’s honesty. To be sure Dan would be out in the forest at night now and again, and she more than suspected that he was in league with the land smugglers who worked from the sea up through Pevensel. Thorney Chapel was notorious in the neighborhood, and it was whispered that the parson had once locked a hard-pressed cargo in the vestry. Bess assured herself that there was some secret to be discovered. She made up her mind to follow Dan, and to see where he went that night in Pevensel.
After supper, looking meek and innocent, she took her candle, bade Dan good-night, and went up to bed. Bolting the door after her, she sat down on the chest to listen, after throwing a gray cloak over her shoulders and buckling on her shoes ready for the adventure. Half an hour passed before she heard Dan stumping to and fro in the kitchen beneath. She heard him take his gun down from the beam, call to his black spaniel, and unlatch the door. Swift and sure-footed she was out of the bedroom, and down the creaking stairs into the kitchen. The wood fire was burning brightly on the irons, the light twinkling on the pewter, and playing with the shadows in the dark corners of the room. She tried the door softly—found that Dan had locked it and taken the key. With a feeling of tense excitement, Bess unlatched the casement, climbed out on to the ledge, and slipped down into the garden. She stood listening a moment, cowering under the shadow of the wall, and looking out into the dark. She could see a light twinkling behind the kitchen window of Isaac’s cottage and hear voices coming gruffly out of the gloom. Stooping, and gliding under cover of the rose-bushes and the pea-sticks to the garden gate, she slipped out and passed along under the shadows of the apple-trees.
The voices came from the direction of Isaac’s cottage. Bess recognized the old man’s impatient treble, Dan answering him curtly in his gruff bass. The candle went out of a sudden, and she heard the yelp of a dog and the closing and locking of a door. Two dim figures showed in the murk before her. They moved away towards the woods. Bess, running forward on the edge of the orchard, reached Isaac’s cottage and crouched under the window, listening. She caught the whimpering of a dog, and knew that Dan had left the spaniel locked in the cottage. It would be safer for her to follow them now that they were alone.
Brushing past the spreading bracken, halting, listening, peering from behind the great trunks, Bess followed the voices that led her through the forest. The scent of pines drifted through the warm darkness, while here and there a ghostly may-tree shed fragrance from its white dome. Soon Bess saw a light gleam out and go jigging and waving through the darkness. Isaac had lit his lantern. Bess blessed him for it, knowing that it would help her in the chase. She walked warily, her arched feet a-tingle with a sense of peril and adventure, her eyes watching the light that flashed and fled beyond the trees.
It was a mile before Isaac and his son came to the glade where a white-trunked fir grew on the Monk’s Knoll. They set the lantern down on the grass. Dan handling the spade, while Isaac squatted on the trunk of a fallen tree.
Bess, seeing that the light had become stationary among the trees, drew near slowly, slipping from trunk to trunk. Fearful of treading on dead wood and hearing it snap in the deathly stillness of the forest, she felt the ground with her foot each time before putting her weight upon it. At the edge of the glade bracken and white chervil and goutweed were growing. Bess, going down on her hands and knees, crawled slowly to where a low bush stood, and, drawing her hood forward over her face, looked out over the glade.
The lantern threw a vague circle of light over the grass barred with the black shadows cast by its frame. Bess could see old Isaac sitting hunched on the dead tree. He had lit his pipe, and a faint glow showed above the brown bowl, the smoke wreathing upward into the dark. The light from the lantern fell upon Dan, who had thrown off his coat and was working in his shirt. The bull neck and the hairy chest were showing, though the level of the light hardly reached his face.
Bess, crouching under the bush, which was a thorn, and holding her breath, saw Dan thrust his spade into the pile of earth beside the hole, catch something that Isaac threw to him, and bend his broad shoulders over the pit. The light from the lantern fell on his black and frowsy head and the swelling curves of his hairy forearms. Bess heard the click of a shooting lock. Dan reached deep into the hole and swung something that jingled on to the grass. Then he stood up, wiping his forehead with his forearm, and staring round into the darkness of the woods.
Isaac had reached for the bag of money when Bess, who was drawing back into the deeper shadow, set her hand on a dead thorn-bough. The spikes stabbed her palm. With the sudden pain of it she drew her breath in through her teeth with a slight and sibilant sound. She crouched down behind the thorn-bush, but both Dan and Isaac had heard her. The elder man was peering right and left like an old hawk, Dan stooping a little and staring straight to where Bess lay hid. He picked up the lantern and came striding round the edge of the glade, looking fiercely into the dark. Isaac had snatched up the gun and cocked it.
Bess, crouching behind the thorn-bush, trembled like a frightened hare. Dan was only twenty paces away, the lantern darting out arms of light into the forest. He would certainly see her if he passed the place, and with the swift instinct of the moment she chose the instant fortune of flight. Starting up like a wild thing from cover, she scurried back among the trees and took the winding path by which they had come.
Dan, giving a snort like a startled horse, dropped the lantern, flung up one arm, and plunged after her. He had seen the dark figure flit in among the trees, and could hear the crackling of twigs under her hurrying feet. With his mouth open and his hands clawing the air, he ran, rolling clumsily at the hips like a fat ketch in a heavy sea. Bess had twenty yards start of him and no more, and, quick and strong as she was, her skirts and cloak hindered her.
Bess heard him thudding in her wake, breathing hard like an angry bull. The trees sped by, solemn and untroubled, the winding path seemed to have no ending. Plod, plod, plod, came the heavy foot-falls at her heels till she felt like a child chased by an ogre. Strain as she would she could not outpace the man, and she knew enough of Dan’s doggedness to guess the end.
After all, why should she run from her own husband? She had merely caught him uncovering money in the forest, and there was no reason why he should suspect her. Halting suddenly and struggling for her breath, with her hands to her bosom, she stood in the middle of the path and laughed a shrill, breathless laugh as the man came up with her.
“Ha, Dan, I have led you a dance, hey!”
Dan stopped dead with a great oath, then came close to her, panting, and glaring in her face.
“What be you doing in the forest, you she-dog?”
“I may follow my husband when he goes hunting.”
Dan, with a curse, lifted up his great fist, struck her in the face, and bent over her as she lay half-stunned by the blow.
XXXV
Dan dragged Bess up by the wrist, and, seeing that she was dazed and faint, let her lean for a moment against a tree. The girl had been half stunned by the blow he had given her; blood was trickling from her mouth, her head drooping upon her bosom.
Dan, who was biting his nails and looking the creature of fury and indecision, turned on her at last, and, taking her by the cloak, dragged her back along the path. Bess had no spirit left in her for the moment. Faint, dizzy, and unable to think, she was yet conscious of the fact that she was utterly at her husband’s mercy. Dan dragged her along roughly, cursing her when she stumbled, and shifting his grip from her cloak to her arm. She felt his fingers bruising the flesh as he gripped the muscles, grinding his teeth and shaking her now and again as though she were a child.
Dan brought his wife to the Monk’s Grave again. From afar they saw the light of the lantern blinking through the forest, for Isaac had relit it and was standing on guard with his gun at full-cock. Dan gave a shout as he dragged Bess through the undergrowth, careless of how the boughs and briers smote and scratched her face. Isaac came limping up the glade towards them, the lantern in one hand, the gun in the other.
“Who be it, Dan?” he asked.
Dan laughed and held the girl out at arm’s-length towards his father. Isaac lifted the lantern. The light flashed upon Bess’s face with its wild and shadowy eyes and bleeding mouth.
“Bess!”
“A pretty trick she’s been playing us, father.”
“Odds my life, how much have you seen, wench—how much have you seen?”
He set the lantern down, seized Bess by the bosom of her gown, and shook her.
“Speak, you she-dog, what were you spying on us for?”
Bess shivered and her lips twitched.
“I followed Dan,” she said.
“The deuce—you did!”
“I saw him throw the money out.”
She broke suddenly into half-hysterical laughter, the mirthless and uncontrollable laughter of one unnerved by shock. Isaac threw her back from him so roughly that she reeled and staggered against Dan. Bess felt her husband’s hands over her bosom, gripping her so that she stood with her back to him and could not move. Isaac was limping to and fro before them, handling his gun, flashing now and again a fierce look at Bess. For the moment she understood but vaguely what was passing in the old man’s mind.
Isaac faced them suddenly, his eyes glinting from a net-work of wrinkles.
“Stand aside, lad,” he said, his fingers contracting about the stock of the gun.
Bess felt Dan’s arms tighten about her body.
“What be ye thinking of, father?” he asked.
“Stand aside.”
Bess, with a sudden flash of dread, understood the fierce purpose in him, and her terror swept away all other feelings for the instant. She twisted herself round in Dan’s arms and clung to him desperately, looking up into his face.
“No, no,” she panted, “hold me, Dan; dear God, don’t let the old man shoot me.”
Dan’s arms were fast about her, and he faced his father, who was poking the gun forward and licking his lips.
“Odd’s my life, stand aside from the she-dog.”
Dan kept his post, feeling the pressure of his wife’s arms and the terror of her appealing face.
“Put the gun down, father,” he said.
Isaac hesitated. Bess cast a rapid glance at him over her shoulder.
“I’ll not tell,” she said. “I’ll not tell.”
Dan still held her fast and kept his eyes fixed on his father’s face.
“Put the gun down,” he said, with a hoarse oath.
Isaac lowered the muzzle and came a step nearer to his son.
“Ye great fool,” he said, “will ye trust to a woman’s word!”
“I’ll not have ye shoot my wife like a dog,” quoth the younger man, fierce with the pride of ownership.
Isaac uncocked the gun and threw it from him with a curse.
“As ye will, as ye will,” he said, limping rapidly to and fro in his agitation. “I have heard o’ kings losing their crowns from the curse of a woman’s tongue.”
Dan had freed Bess. He sprang forward and picked up the gun.
“Ye shall not be doing murder this night, father,” he said.
The dawn was creeping up over Pevensel when Isaac, Dan, and Bess came through the woods towards the hamlet. The forest was full of mist and silence, vague and ghostly vapor standing in the glades. The stars sank back as the gray light increased in the vault above. Then came the first whimper of a waking bird, followed as by magic by the shrill piping from a thousand throats. The whole vast wilderness seemed to grow great with sound. The trees stood as though listening, their huge polls shrouded in mysterious vapor. From the east a gradual glory of gold swam up into the heavens, flashing over the misty hills, touching all the dewy greenness of the woods with light.
Isaac limped along in front, sniffing the air, and darting rapid glances from side to side. Bess and her husband followed him, the girl white and silent, her black hair in a tangle, her eyes dark with the perilous fortune of the night. She walked wearily, looking neither to the right hand nor the left, but watching old Isaac limping in the van. Dan, dour and sullen, strode at her side, his gun over one shoulder, spade and pick over the other.
Not till he reached his own doorway did Isaac turn and face the two who followed him. He gave a fierce glance at Bess, a questioning look at Dan, and, unlocking the door of the cottage, went in without a word. They heard the merry whimpering of the dog, the jingle of money, the sound of the old man rummaging in a cupboard. When he came out again there were pistols in his belt.
“Take her home, lad,” he said, curtly.
Dan nodded Bess towards the cottage beyond the orchard. She walked on slowly, Dan setting himself beside his father as they followed under the trees. Bess heard them talking together in undertones, the old man’s voice suave and insinuating, Dan’s gruff and obstinate. When they came through the garden, with its monthly roses dashed with dew and all its green life fragrant and full of a summer freshness, Dan laid a hand on Bess’s shoulder, unlocked the door, and pushed her over the threshold. He bade her sit down in the heavy oak chair, while Isaac sank with a tired grunt on the settle by the window. Dan brought Bess a mug of water and a hunch of bread and commanded her to eat. She obeyed mechanically, wondering what they were going to do with her. Isaac and his son watched her in silence.
When she had made a meal, Dan went out to the shed behind the cottage and brought back some fathoms of stout cord. He ordered Bess to hold out her hands. There was no sign of hesitation on his sullen, black-bearded face. He tied Bess’s hands together, bound her about the body and the ankles to the chair, Isaac watching with silent satisfaction. When Dan had bound her thus he went out with his father, locking the door after him, and left Bess to the fellowship of her thoughts.
Isaac turned into his cottage for a moment to count out the eighty guineas he had promised Ursula and to lock the rest of the gold in his strong box at the bottom of the oak hutch. He did not doubt that the money would put the old lady in the best of tempers, and that he could safely confide in her concerning Bess. Isaac rejoined Dan in the garden, and they moved away towards Ursula’s cottage whose stone-wall and thatched roof showed amid the dark trunks and drooping branches of the pines. The old woman was in bed when Isaac knocked at the door. A lattice opened overhead, and a red beak and a pair of beady eyes under a pink night-cap appeared, with a few wisps of gray hair falling about a yellow and skinny neck. Isaac spoke a few words to her and jingled the money. The face popped in again and they heard Ursula hobbling down the stairs. She had tied on a red petticoat and thrown a black shawl over her shoulders. Isaac went into her when she had unbolted the door, leaving Dan leaning against the wall with his hands deep in his breeches-pockets.
Isaac remained with the old woman half an hour or more, the sound of their voices stealing out on the morning silence. He appeared in the best of tempers when he emerged from the cottage, slapped Dan on the shoulder, and limped away with him towards the hamlet, smiling to himself as though pleased with his own cleverness.
“The money’s tickled her into a good temper, lad,” he said. “I told her about the wench, and she took it very quiet.”
Dan cocked an eye shrewdly at his father.
“We waste a powerful lot of patience on the women,” he retorted.
Isaac wagged his head and looked particularly wise and saintly for the moment.
“I reckon we’d better shift the money,” he said.
As they rounded the corner of Ursula’s cow-house Isaac’s glance lighted on a man who was standing in the garden before his cottage. The fellow was busy throwing pebbles at the upper casements, imagining that the owner was still asleep within. As Dan and Isaac crossed the open stretch of grass-land that ran like a broad highway through the hamlet, the man standing in the garden caught sight of them as he turned to gather a fresh handful of pebbles from the path. He looked at them suspiciously for the moment, then waved his cap and came striding towards them over the grass. He was a rough, strongly built fellow, with the keen yet foxy air of a born poacher, his bushy brown beard and whiskers hiding fully half of his red and sun-tanned face.
“Hallo, Jim! What brings you this way, eh?”
The man grinned, and glanced first at Isaac and then at Dan.
“It be probable, Master Grimshaw, that we shall be running the ‘osses’ through to-morrow.”
“So—so!”
“Mus Garston be a-wanting to see ye both down at Thorney Chapel. There be a fat load comin’ through, and Mus Garston he’ll share like a gentleman.”
Isaac’s gray eyes gave that peculiar twinkle that told those who knew him that he was in the sweetest of tempers. He was never backward where money might be made, and he had no objection to cheating the Customs occasionally, provided that the adventure was worth the risk. Mus Garston was one of the finest land smugglers on the southern coast—a keen, black-eyed fellow, who loved the game better than he loved his soul. Bess, too, was safe, bound to the chair in Dan’s cottage. They could join Garston’s men and leave the girl to be dealt with at their leisure.
“We’ll come, Jim,” he said. “Come in and have a bite of food and a pull at the ale-pot.”
The poacher capped Isaac, for Grimshaw was a man of some circumstance among the night-moths of Pevensel. They went, the three of them, into Isaac’s cottage, and were soon gossiping over their bacon, brown bread, and ale. When they had ended the meal, Isaac whispered a few words into his son’s ear, and Dan, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, marched off to his cottage to look at Bess.
He found her much as they had left her, sitting stiffly in the chair, and gazing out of the window. Her face brightened a little when Dan entered, and she tried to smile at him as though for welcome. The man appeared in no mood to pity her. He felt the cords about her wrists and ankles, stared at her a moment in silence, stroking his beard with the palm of his hand.
“Dan,” she said, with a wistful drooping of the mouth.
Her husband’s dark eyes were hard and without light.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Do with ye?”
“Yes.”
Dan frowned as he turned towards the door.
“Keep ye from playing more tricks,” he said. “You will bide there safe, I reckon, till we come back.”
Bess said never a word to him, but it was with a sinking heart that she heard Dan shut and lock the door. What would they do with her when they returned? Of a surety she had discovered some great secret that had lain hid in the deeps of Pevensel. What if her meddling should bring her to her death?
XXXVI
An hour passed, dragging its linked minutes like a snake crawling lazily in the long grass under the summer sun.
Bess, bound fast to the chair, sat like one weak after a long illness, the sunlight falling on the floor, to be reflected upon the brown beams of the old room. The girl’s face looked white and apathetic against the dark background of an old linen-press. Her eyes stared out steadily through the window at the green woods bathed in sunshine, and the white clouds sailing slowly north across the infinite azure of the June sky. The life fire had burned low in her since Dan had struck her down in the woods. The shock of the night had not yet lifted from her heart. Old Isaac’s pitiless gray eyes still haunted her, and she remembered the gleam of the barrel of the gun.
This same evening she was to have met Jeffray at Holy Cross, and the thought stirred the blood in her a little. She lay back in the chair, resting her head upon the rail, and taking her breath in deeply with slow, sighing inspirations. The memories of her last meeting with Jeffray began to work in her with quickening force. All the sweet complicity of the plot set the cords of her heart vibrating. If he but knew, if he had but guessed how Dan had treated her! If he were only wise as to her present peril!
With the increasing sense of her own powerlessness the spirit of revolt in her waxed but the more importunate. Why should she be made the creature of this man’s passions? She seemed to feel again the great fist, swinging with all the brutality of the man’s nature, and crashing into her face. All the ignominies of the past weeks rose up to taunt and madden her. All her hate and loathing waxed fiercer as she thought of her helpless yearning towards Jeffray. She began to struggle and twist in the chair, striving to get her teeth to the knots about her wrist. Dan had fastened them down to the front stretcher of the chair, and wrestle and strain as she would she could not reach them.
What could she do to free herself from the shame and the dread that encompassed her? Scream! Yes, but who would hear her, and who would help her if they heard? Ursula? Poor doddering Ursula! Doubtless she had been locked safely in her cottage, and Bess mistrusted the old woman’s courage when Isaac’s will had been declared law. Incensed the more by her own thoughts, she struggled again and again with the cords, twisting and straining till the oak chair rocked and creaked. The muscles stood out under the brown skin of her forearms. Her bruised lips began to bleed again as she held her breath, struggling and working her body from side to side.
Another hour passed. The bees droned on, the smell of the garden came in upon the breeze. Not a voice reached her from the hamlet. Silence prevailed save for the murmur of the insects, the vague rustling of the leaves, the steady, mocking tick of the old clock against the wall. The woods rolled up before her, their green splendor heightened by the blaze of the June sunlight. The very calm of the place seemed to intensify the passionate despair in her own heart.
Suddenly some new sound drifted to Bess’s ears. She twisted forward in the chair, straining at the cords. Some one was moving towards the cottage; Bess heard the rustle of feet in the long grass. Was it Dan returning, or old Isaac with those pistols in his belt? The footsteps stopped at the garden-gate. Bess could see neither the gate nor the path from where she sat. The latch lifted; some one was coming up the brick-paved path. She heard the sound of breathing, the sound of a hand trying the locked door. For a moment silence held. Then with the rustling of clothes against the wall of the cottage a round-backed figure showed blurred by the sunlight at the window, a hook-nosed face looked in at Bess through the open lattice.
It was Ursula.
Bess, leaning forward in the chair, stared at the old woman with a swift flooding of blood into her face.
“Is that you, mother?”
Instinctively she had chosen the word that she had used to Ursula when she was a child. There was a husky and vibrating wistfulness in the voice that seemed to carry strange and simple pathos.
Ursula was standing at the window, wringing her hands together. For two hours past she had been the creature of indecision, halting between fear of Isaac and great dread of the hints that the old man had cast into her ears.
“Mother!”
Ursula began to whimper as she looked in at the girl, the impotence of her dotage showing in her face.
“What!—they have bound ye to the chair?”
“I can’t stir, mother.”
“Oh, dear Lord! what shall I do?”
“Are we alone?”
“They be all away save Solomon,” she answered.
Bess’s face strained painfully towards the window.
“Where is Solomon?” she asked.
Ursula still twisted her hands together and peered round her suspiciously.
“Chopping firewood in his shed. I slipped round through the trees. Lord o’ mercy, what’s to be done—what’s to be done!”
Bess’s strength of purpose increased with Ursula’s indecision.
“Mother,” she said, in a whisper.
“Ay, child.”
“Ye’ve always been kind to me. Will ye let them bury me in the forest with a bullet in my heart?”
Ursula began to sway to and fro, pressing her hands to her bosom, whimpering and muttering like one demented.
“Why did ye meddle, Bess—why did ye meddle?”
“Isaac wanted to shoot me by the Monk’s Grave.”
“He be a fierce man, be Isaac.”
“Dan stood for me then; he’ll not stand for me again. Isaac will shoot me; I’ve seen death in his eyes.”
Ursula stretched herself across the window-sill with her head between her hands. Her distress was pitiable in its impotence. Bess watched her, realizing that her one hope rested on the feeble and faltering courage of this crooked and half-witless creature.
“Mother,” she said, hoarsely.
Ursula darted up her head and looked at Bess.
“Climb in through the window.”
“Lord have mercy on me, how can a poor old cripple climb in to ye?”
“Mother, you must.”
“I can’t, I can’t, wench; how can I?”
“Try, now try for Bess’s sake. My blood will be upon you if Isaac has his way.”
The words seemed to strike Ursula full in the face. She stood shaking, blinking her eyes, and working her loose, inturned lips together. Then she thrust her arms over the sill, gripped the wooden ledge within, and tried to drag herself to the level of the window. Bess watched the wrinkled and trembling head straining forward upon its yellow neck. The sinews stood out in the sticks of forearms, the feet scraped and worked against the wall. Slowly Ursula dragged herself up and through so that she could get one knee upon the ledge. She lay there panting a moment, looking at Bess.
“Quick, mother, quick!”
Ursula drew her left knee up on to the window-ledge, knelt, and, getting on her feet, crouched half within the opening of the lattice. There was a wooden stool under the window. Ursula caught one foot in her petticoat in the descent, lurched forward, and came tumbling on the floor. Her forehead struck the brick-work heavily. For a moment she lay groaning and twitching, Bess gazing at her in an agony of helpless dread.
Ursula was shaken but not stunned. She struggled up on her hands and knees, looking round her with a vacant pathos that might have appeared ludicrous at any other time. Bess was bending forward in the chair.
“Quick, mother, a knife!”
Ursula picked herself up, and went tottering round the room, holding her head between her hands. She moved to the dresser, dragged out one drawer after another, and came back at last with a horn-handled knife in her hand. Bess never shifted her eyes from the old woman’s face.
“My wrist, here, the cord—cut it.”
Ursula tumbled on her knees, sawed at the rope shakily, and stabbed Bess’s wrist in her clumsy fright. The sight of blood startled her. She dropped the knife, and sat on her heels, gaping at Bess.
“Cut the rope, mother; ye haven’t hurt me.”
Ursula picked up the knife and sawed at the cord again, Bess straining at it to keep it taut. Blood was trickling slowly down her fingers; that was nothing. Strand by strand the thin rope gave under the edge of the knife. A last twist of the girl’s strong arm and her hand was free.
She took the knife from Ursula instantly, cut the cords about her other wrist and ankles, careless of how she hurt herself in her haste. A stifled cry came from Ursula as Bess rose free of the oak chair. The old woman had tottered forward and fallen in a faint upon the floor.
Bess stood staring at her in mute vexation, then went on her knees beside her, turning Ursula upon her back, and chafing her hands. The old woman gave no single sign of consciousness, but lay there with her mouth open and her eyes shut, the pallor of her face contrasting with the red bricks in the floor. Bess gazed at her, hesitating. What should she do? Leave Ursula to Isaac’s anger, and take time and its precious fortune to herself? Solomon Grimshaw might be hanging about the cottage; every moment Bess thought to see a face looking at her through the open lattice.
Desperate, she ran to the window and looked out. The garden seemed asleep in the sunshine; no one was to be seen. In the distance she fancied she could catch the sharp play of Solomon’s bill as he split the pine-boughs in his woodshed. With necessity for her inspiration, she turned back to Ursula, lifted her easily in her strong arms, carried her to the window, and lowered her unceremoniously by her skirts into the garden. Then she climbed out after her, picked Ursula up again, for she was nothing but a sack of skin and bone, and, passing round to the back of the garden, broke away into the woods that rose close about the cottage. Casting a half circle through the trees, breathing hard through her set teeth, and stopping often to listen, she drew towards Ursula’s cottage with the woman still unconscious in her arms. Interminable minutes seemed to pass before she came through the pine-thickets to the cottage, raised the latch of the door, and carried Ursula within.
Bess laid her down on the settle before the fire, and, kneeling, saw that Ursula showed signs of a return to consciousness. The eyes opened, the hands groped out towards the girl’s face. Bess bent and kissed the old woman upon the mouth.
“Mother, mother—”
Ursula stared at her vacantly as though trying to remember what had happened. Bess gave her no moment to delay. She was fearful, and grew more fearful each instant of Dan’s return.
“See, I have brought you back to your own cottage,” she said; “now—I must go. Remember, when Isaac comes back—you know nothing, you have not been near Dan’s house. They may think I broke free by myself.”
Ursula nodded, sighed, and put her hands to her head.
“I’ve saved ye, child,” she said.
“God bless you for it, mother! I must go.”
Bess kissed Ursula again, smoothed her gray hair for her, and, starting up, turned towards the door. She closed it softly after her, and, looking round warily, darted across the open stretch of grass-land for the farther woods. She would take the path for the Beacon Rock, strike across the heath, and reach the road for Rodenham. Her one hope of safety was with Jeffray. He would defend her against Isaac and against Dan.
Bess had barely reached the trees when Solomon Grimshaw sauntered out from the woodshed, wiping his forehead with his bare forearm. He caught sight of Bess as she slipped into the woods, gave a shout, and started after her. Bess heard the shout, stopped, and glanced back over her shoulder. She saw Solomon running towards her, shaking his fist. One look was sufficient. Bess gathered up her skirts and ran, her gray cloak melting away amid the trees, her ankles in their red stockings flashing under her green petticoat. Solomon was but a lame old horse; she could out-distance him easily in the woods.
XXXVII
That same evening while Bess sat bound in Dan’s cottage in the deeps of Pevensel, there was much weighing of words in the dining-room at Hardacre.
Dr. Jessel, rector and chaplain, sat at the polished table, with paper, ink, and pouncet-box before him, and a much-nibbled quill in his fist. For years he had acted as the confidential scribe and scholarly supervisor of letters to the household of Hardacre, and he had been called in that morning to prepare a certain epistle, guided by the baronet’s personal discretion. Sir Peter faced the parson across the table, and advised him magisterially as to the contents of the letter.
Mr. Lancelot was pacing the room behind his father’s chair, cocking his sword under his coat-tails, expanding his chest and swinging his shoulders with an air of exuberant self-satisfaction. He appeared to feel no little contempt for Parson Jessel and the baronet as they squabbled and argued over the phrasing of this momentous letter. The parson’s classic and elegant style was not flexible and fierce enough to adapt itself to Sir Peter’s temper. The chaplain was a diplomat and a literary sycophant by nature. His Ciceronian taste revolted from Sir Peter’s blunt and brutal methods of expression.
The baronet leaned back at last with his thumbs in his waistcoat-pockets, hiccoughed, and regarded Jessel with evident irritation.
“Put it down, Jessel,” he said; “put it down—I say. I ain’t going to draw my ale mild for fear of scalding the young scoundrel’s stomach. Call a blackguard a blackguard, sir, when he deserves it. You’re too damned polite, Jessel. Give it him hot on the last page. I’m right there, ain’t I, Lot?”
Mr. Lancelot came to a halt behind his father’s chair, fixed his eyes on the parson’s face, and upheld Sir Peter.
“Put in plenty of brimstone, Jessel,” he said. “Rub it in, man—rub it in.”
“That’s the tune, Lot,” said the baronet, warmly. “I’m dry to the lungs with haggling with ye. Confound this scholarly niceness, I say! Call a cur a cur, sir, and have done with it.”
The chaplain screwed up his mouth with a whimsical expression of resignation, shook his wig, and put pen to paper. He scratched away for a minute or so to the baronet’s dictation, finished with a flourish, shook the pouncet-box over the page, and leaned back in his chair with the letter in his hand.
“Shall I read the epistle to you, gentlemen?” he asked, clearing his throat.
“Ay, fire away,” quoth Sir Peter; “it ought to be as good as swearing at the young devil in person.”
Dr. Jessel proceeded to the reading of the letter with full nasal unction, striving to crush its literary crudities beneath an episcopalic diction. Sir Peter twinkled and beamed, gurgling and patting his stomach suggestively when some very palatable sentence tickled his native sense of humor. Mr. Lot leaned his elbows on the back of his father’s chair, and joined heartily in the old gentleman’s enjoyment of the word-feast. At the conclusion of Dr. Jessel’s essay in declamation the baronet exploded with characteristic gusto.
“Deuce take it, sir, that ought to make the young devil shake in his shoes. He’ll feel a bit liverish after our brimstone, Jessel, eh? Seal it up, man. And may a good lifter on the rump go with it.”
The chaplain sealed up the letter gracefully, and delivered it with a bow to Mr. Lot.
“May you shine, sir,” he said, “as the noble Achilles shone before Troy.”
Mr. Lot swaggered to the sideboard, poured himself out a glass of wine, and tossed it down with an emphatic tilt of the elbow.
“You’ll do, Lot—you’ll do,” said the baronet.
Mr. Hardacre appeared troubled by no doubts as to the triumph of his cause.
“The lad will just crawl, sir,” he said; “he ain’t fit for anything but scribbling verses.”
Love and hate being thus romantically mingled, Bess’s woodland tenderness and Jilian’s sickly spite, Providence, that cup-bearer to kings and peasants, prepared to deliver the goblet into Jeffray’s hands. Nor was there a league between the two influences as they approached the man that day; Bess skipping brown-footed over the heather, the Hardacre coach rolling with its heroic burden over the rough and dusty road.
Richard Jeffray, abandoning Wilson to Butler’s “Hudibras” and a pipe of Virginia in the library, had turned out to wander in the park. He was to meet Bess at Holy Cross that evening, and the vexed riddle with him was the riddle of the future. The thunder-cloud that he knew must be gathering at Hardacre loomed to his imagination across the northern sky. He would see the lightnings of the Sussex Zeus flashing vengeance out of the heavens. Lot Hardacre was not the demigod to remain idle for lack of bluster. He would descend upon Rodenham, strut and swagger, ruffle it like any scoundrel modelled upon the manhood of old White Friars.
The Hardacre problem was plain enough to him; its solution rested on a frank flouting of Mr. Lancelot’s tyranny. With Bess, however, Jeffray’s thoughts found themselves groping through twilight towards a distant dawn. The play had opened with all the fair inevitableness that makes for tragedy. How was it to be developed? Above all, how was it to end? Three alternatives met Jeffray at the moment. Renunciation, mere intrigue, and a grand defying of the gods.
Turning back at last towards the house, whose tall chimney-stacks and gables glimmered between the chestnuts and the cedars of the park, Jeffray followed a path that led by a rough bridge over a brook into a short stretch of woodland on the side of the hill. It appeared to be a fragment of the old forest of the weald that had escaped through the centuries from the iron-founder’s furnaces. The oaks stood at a noble distance from one another, the short and mighty boles breaking into the giant grandeur of their knotted limbs. The sweeping canopies of foliage rolled and met from tree to tree. Beneath them bracken grew. Beyond, panels of blue sky and silvery landscape closed in this sylvan temple of old Time.
As Jeffray idled through the wood he heard a voice calling him suddenly by name. The cry startled him as though it had echoed the voices of his inmost thoughts. He started back, looked, and saw a woman’s figure moving towards him under the trees. She came on swiftly, a kind of tired endurance on her face, her eyes turned steadily towards him, like the eyes of one straining towards sanctuary. It was Bess.
Jeffray felt the hot blood streaming to his face. He went forward to meet her, the green-wood filling for him with a double mystery. Bess held out a hand towards him. He saw that she looked white and tired, her eyes shining in her pale face with the fever of some strong emotion. He marked her bruised lips, the strip of blood-stained linen round her wrist. The girl’s face told him that something grim had happened.
She came straight to him with no hesitating look, came to him as though he were the one man on earth whom she could trust. Her strength seemed to fail her when she was within reach of Jeffray’s hands. She tottered and caught her breath. In a moment the man’s arms were holding her. The impulse justified him, as did the tired head that drooped towards his shoulder.
“What has happened, Bess? Tell me everything.”
Jeffray’s eyes had lost all the shadows of indecision. The girl was leaning on him, trusting her womanhood within his arms.
“Bess.”
“Ah—!”
It was a great sigh of contentment that escaped her. Jeffray’s arms drew yet closer. He would not have loosed her at that moment had twenty Lots set their swords at his throat.
“Tell me, Bess, what has happened.”
He spoke with the quiet tenderness of a man sure of his own strength. She turned up her face and looked at him wearily, yet with a shimmer of mystery in her eyes.
“I have half-discovered a secret.”
“The brooch?”
“I cannot tell the meaning of it yet. They caught me, Dan and Isaac, watching them uncovering money in the woods. It was last night, and I had followed Dan, and Isaac tried to shoot me, but Dan saved me then.”
“Yes, yes.”
“They brought me back to the cottage, and left me tied to a chair. Ursula came and cut the rope while they were away, and so—I escaped and came to you.”
She hung with a kind of happy languor in the man’s arms now that her heart could unburden itself of all bitterness. The mouth had softened and was no longer petulant. Their eyes held each other in one long, steady look. Neither desired to have it otherwise.
“Bess.”
She thrilled a little, and colored under her brown skin.
“You are safe with me.”
“You will not send me away? You will not send me away?”
Jeffray drew a deep breath, and knew in his heart that the riddle was solving itself as he had prayed.
“How can I send you away from me?” he said.
“Mr. Jeffray!”
“Do you not know? My God, I ought not to speak to you like this! And yet—I cannot help myself.”
She turned suddenly in his arms, red to the bosom.
“It is the dream,” she said. “We cannot help it; no, we cannot kill the truth.”
“The dream?”
“The dream I had on the saint’s night of you at Holy Cross. It has come true, in spite of Dan. I would not change it for all the gold in the wide world.”
Suddenly she put Jeffray’s arms gently away from her, and drew apart with a simple dignity that preserved her womanhood from any air of wantonness. Jeffray felt the subtle change in her, and respected her the more for it.
He took his inspiration from her on the instant.
“Bess,” he said, “do with me what you will. My honor is yours. You will trust me?”
She smiled at him, a soft light of pride and joy shining in her eyes.
“I will do all that you tell me,” she answered, with a sense of dependence.
“You are tired.”
“No, not now.”
So engrossed were they with each other that neither Bess nor Jeffray had heard the distant sound of wheels as the Hardacre coach rolled up from the lodge-gates towards the priory. The road was hidden from the two in the oak-wood. Only the gables and the tall chimneys showed between the trunks of the trees.
Jeffray took the path that led through beech-thickets to the north wall of the great garden. Bess set herself at his side as though this slightly built man held the threads of her fate firmly in his delicate yet sinewy hands. They walked together under the trees with the sunlight splashing through the fresh, green foliage, Bess telling Jeffray of her night’s adventure in Pevensel, and of the perils she had dared thereby.
They crossed the wooded hollow of the park, and entered the garden by a little gate in the red brick wall. To Jeffray the whole passage seemed a dream—strange, tragic, yet infinitely sweet. His hand touched Bess’s as they walked side by side amid the rose-trees. His fingers closed on hers for one swift moment, tightened as his eyes met hers, and then relaxed with pure regret. They approached the stairway leading to the terrace, holding a little apart, yet very conscious of each other’s nearness.
On the top step of the stair Jeffray halted suddenly. A coach was standing on the gravel drive before the house. On the terrace, not twenty paces away, and walking towards them, came Lot Hardacre with Mr. Robert Beaty at his side. Jeffray turned to Bess, but realized in an instant that all hope of concealment had gone. He pointed her to a stone seat at the end of the terrace, and, gathering his dignity, walked on to meet Lot Hardacre.