“I would see you soon. Jael has been of use to me.”“A. P.”
“I would see you soon. Jael has been of use to me.”“A. P.”
“I would see you soon. Jael has been of use to me.”
“A. P.”
V
Aship’s boat came up the river with half a dozen brown fellows tugging at the oars, their dark skins and the patched picturesqueness of their gaudy-colored shirts giving them something of the air of a boat-load of buccaneers with gayly kerchiefed heads, ringed ears, and belts full of pistols. A man in a soiled red coat, with remnants of lace hanging to the cuffs, sat in the stern-sheets, his sword across his knees, and beside him on the gunwale squatted a boy whose cheeky sparrow’s face stared out from a tangle of crisp fair hair.
The man in the red coat looked even more brown and picturesque than the seamen at the oars. He wore no wig under his battered beaver, and his own black hair looked as though it had not been barbered for six months. His shoes had lost their buckles, and the stocking of his right leg showed a hole the size of a guinea above the heel.
“Three more strokes—and easy—lads.”
“Right, capt’n.”
“Let her run now; in with the bow sweeps.”
They had passed the Savoy, and drawn close in toward Charing Steps, with a west wind sending the water slapping against the planking. The man in the red coat held the tiller, and let the boat glide in, while the seamen shipped their oars. The boat’s nose rubbed against the stone facing of the steps, while a brown hand or two grabbed at the mooring-rings. The boy on the gunwale was the first to leap ashore.
A number of watermen lounging about the steps were staring at the boat and its crew, and exchanging opinions thereon with more candor than curtesy. The sea-captain, standing in the stern-sheets, buckled his sword to a faded baldric, callous to any criticism that might be lavished on him by the river-side sots.
“Good-luck to you, capt’n.”
“You won’t forget us, sir.”
“We’ll follow you round Cape Horn again for a fight.”
The man in the red coat looked down at the brown faces along the boat that were turned to him with a species of watchful, dog-like alertness.
“I shall have my flag flying in a month,” he said; “men sha’n’t rot down at Deptford—the devil knows that. We have our tallies to count in the South, eh, and Jasper shall have a long caronado to squint along. Good-luck to you, lads. Here’s the end of the stocking. I wish it were deeper.”
He tossed a purse to a grizzled old giant who was leaning upon his oar. The man picked it up, looked at it lovingly a moment, and then glanced over his shoulder at the men behind him.
“No dirty dog’s tricks here,” growled one.
“There’s a gold piece or two for ye,” said another, slapping his belt.
The giant stretched out a great fist with the purse in it.
“Maybe you’ll be selling the little frigate, capt’n; we can knock along—”
The man in the red coat looked him straight in the eyes.
“Damnation, Jasper, I owe you all your pay—yet. Pocket it for beer money.”
“Drink your last guinea, capt’n, not me!”
“Why, man, I can get a bagful for the asking—in an hour. And, look you all, stand by down at ‘The Eight Bells’ to-morrow. I’ll pay every man of you before noon.”
The watermen above had been listening to this dialogue with ribald cynicism.
“Holy Moses,” said one, “here’s a boat-load of saints!”
“Throw it up here, mate, we ain’t shy of the dross.”
The captain had climbed the steps, with the boy beside him. But old Jasper, standing up in the boat with his oar held like a pike, turned his sea-eagle’s face toward the gentry on the causeway.
“Squeak, ye land-rats. By God’s death, you’ve never seen the inside of a Barbary prison. If you were men you’d take your hat off to the capt’n. But being land-gaffers, you’re all mud-muck and tallow. Shove her off, mates, or I’ll be smashing some chicken’s stilts with my oar.”
The loungers jeered him valiantly as the bow sweeps churned foam, and the boat, gathering weigh, swung out into the river.
“Look at their great mouths,” said the sea-wolf, grimly; “when we want our bilge emptying we’ll send for ’em to have a drink.”
Meanwhile the man in the red coat and the boy had passed up the passage from the river in the direction of Charing Cross, the shabbiness of their raiment flattering the curiosity of the passers-by. The man in the red coat appeared wholly at his ease. As for the boy, he was ready to spread his fingers at the whole town on the very first provocation. Even the fact that he had a rent in his breeches that suffered a certain portion of his underlinen to protrude did not humble his self-satisfaction.
The sea-captain, who had been walking with his chin in the air, glanced down suddenly at the boy beside him.
“How are the ‘stores,’ Sparkin, my lad?”
“Getting low in the hold, sir.”
“We will put in and replenish.”
The boy gave a greedy twinkle.
“Hallo! I thought I told Jasper to patch you up with a piece of sail-cloth?”
Sparkin did not betray any self-conscious cowardice.
“He was worse off, captain.”
“Poor devil!” And the man in the red coat laughed.
They turned into “The Three Tuns” at Charing Cross, the sea-captain looking more like a Whitefriars’ bully than a gentleman adventurer. Two comfortable citizens gathered up the skirts of their coats and edged away sourly when the new-comers sat down next them at a table. The captain remarked their neighborly caution, and smiled.
“Good-day, gentlemen. We embarrass you, perhaps?”
There was a humorous grimness about his mouth that carried conviction.
“Not at all, sir, not at all,” said the larger of the twain, poised between propitiation and distrust.
“We are not Scotch, sir, so you will catch nothing.”
They dined in silence, the boy’s animation divided between his plate and his surroundings, while the man in the red coat watched him with the air of one who has an abundant past to feed his thoughts. His neighbors cast curious momentary glances at him from time to time, but having once spoken he appeared to have forgotten their existence. They had but to look beneath the superficial shabbiness to see that the man was of some standing in the world. He had that gift of remaining statuesquely silent, that poise that suggests power. The brown, resolute face had the comeliness of courage. Of no great stature, his sturdy, hollow-backed figure betrayed strength to those who could distinguish between fat and muscle.
The boy’s appetite reached impotence at last. The man in the red coat beckoned to the servant, paid his due with odd small change routed out of every pocket, and with a curt bow to his neighbors walked out into the street.
He made his way toward St. James’s, and paused in the street of that same name, before a big house with a pompous portico. A flight of steps led up to the great door.
“Run up—and knock.”
The boy obeyed, his breeches bringing a smile to the sea-captain’s face as he waited unconcernedly on the sidewalk.
“Don’t mind your knuckles, my lad.”
And Sparkin hammered as though he were sounding the ship’s bell.
A servant in livery opened the door and looked down at the boy with the air of a bully scenting a beggar. The man in the red coat listened to the following dialogue:
“My Lord Gore’s house, this?”
“What d’you want at the front door?”
“Lord Gore’s house?”
“Oh—is it?”
“Well, is it, stupid?”
“Here, you skip it, you—”
The sea-captain interposed with a laugh curving his mouth. There was so much significance in the fellow’s gospel of cloth.
“Wake up, Tom Richards!”
The footman’s eyes protruded. He stared down at the seaman with the air of a superior being resenting and distrusting familiarity.
“Well, what d’you want?” And his glance added, “You shabby, cutthroat-looking devil!”
The man in red ascended the steps, while the servant’s face receded inch by inch, so that he resembled a discreet dog backing sulkily into his kennel. He was about to clap the door to, when the captain pushed Sparkin bodily into the breach.
“Richards, man, have you forgotten me?”
Sparkin’s head had taken the fellow well in the stomach, and the shock may have accounted for the man’s vacant and astonished face.
“Is my lord in? Brisk up, man, and don’t judge the whole world by its coat.”
“The Lord forgive me, sir!”
“Possibly He will, Richards.”
“I didn’t know you, Mr. John, sir, you’re so brown—and—”
“Shabby, Richards; say it, and have done. Is my lord in town?”
“Oh yes, sir. Won’t you come in and dine? There is a good joint of roast, Mr. John, sir, and a barrel of oysters. My lord is at Lady Purcell’s in Pall Mall.”
“Lady Anne Purcell’s?”
“Yes, Mr. John.”
He turned and walked down the steps, the footman marvelling at his effrontery in wearing such dastardly clothes.
“Take the boy in, Richards.”
Richards and Master Sparkin regarded each other suspiciously.
“Give him a wash, and a new pair of breeches, if you can find a pair to fit.”
“Yes, Mr. John; and your baggage, sir?”
“Lies somewhere in Barbary, Richards, so you need not trouble your head about that.”
The whole episode so piqued the footman that he proceeded to lead the boy in the direction of the kitchen quarters by the ear. Whereat, Sparkin, who had already gauged the gentleman’s tonnage, fetched him a valiant kick upon the shin, and broke loose with a grin of whole-hearted scorn.
“You keep your hands to yourself, Tom Richards.”
The footman made a grab at the boy, but Sparkin was on the alert.
“Touch me, and I’ll dig my dirk into you.”
Mr. Richards reverted to that easier and safer weapon—the tongue.
“Didn’t Mr. John tell me to wash you, you little bundle of rags?”
Sparkin’s hand went to his belt.
“You touch me, and I’ll let your blood for you, Tom Richards. The Lord forgive me, sir”—and he imitated the man’s voice—“you’d be learning something if you went to sea with Captain Gore.”
“Oh, I should, should I!”
“The devil you would.”
“And you’d be teaching me, perhaps!” said the man in livery, with a sententious sniff.
“’Twouldn’t be my business. They’d send you to the cook’s galley to clean pots.”
While Sparkin was instilling obfuscated respect and caution into Tom Richards, Captain John Gore made his way to Lady Purcell’s house. The stare he met there was no more flattering than that which his father’s servant had given him. A three days’ beard, no wig, a soiled coat, and a moulting beaver were not calculated to conciliate menials.
“My Lord Gore is here?”
“What may your business be?”
He walked in over the servant’s toes.
“Tell my lord that Captain Gore is below.”
“Captain Gore, sir?”
The gentleman merely reiterated the order with a straight stare.
“Would you be pleased, sir, to walk into the garden.”
John Gore followed the fellow’s lead, amused at the caution that did not intend to offer him the chance of pocketing anything of value in the house. He was left pacing the gravel walks, with his red coat showing up against the green of the grass.
John Gore had taken two turns up and down the garden when a girl came out between the pillars of the music-room, and stood gazing at the gentleman’s broad back with the impatient air of one who has been cornered by a stranger. She drew back again, as though waiting her opportunity to cross from the portico to the house without being observed. Her chance came and she seized it, only to discover that the garden door of the house was locked.
The man in the red coat turned and came down the path again. He caught sight of the girl standing on the steps, bowed, and lifted his hat to her.
“I am afraid you are locked out,” he said.
“Oh—”
“Your man did not like the look of me, I suppose, and wisely turned the key in the lock. There seems nothing to be pocketed in the garden but a few green peaches.”
They were looking straight into each other’s eyes. Who this sturdy, shabby gentleman could be Barbara could not gather for the moment. Nor was she pleased at being left there—at his mercy.
“You have forgotten me, Mistress Barbara,” he said.
She frowned slightly.
“My father, Lord Gore, is here, I believe.”
Her eyes flashed suddenly, and she colored.
“Oh—you are—”
“The boy who pulled your ribbons off—that day—at Sheen. You may remember the incident,” and he bowed.
Barbara remembered it. There was a short pause.
“You have changed,” she said, curtly, glancing over her shoulder at the glass panel in the door.
He passed a hand critically over his chin.
“Seemingly, in the heat of adventure. My father’s man took me for a bully. I have been in England about five hours.”
They stood regarding each other in silence, the man puzzled by her swarthy, sullen face, the girl conscious of a rush of embittered memories. It was as though something out of the past had risen up before her, something ignorant and unwelcome that might blunder any moment against her sensitive reserve.
“I trust that Sir Lionel is hearty as ever?”
She seized the handle of the door and shook it.
“I wonder where that fool—Miles—”
“Pardon me, shall I shout?”
Barbara kept one shoulder turned toward him, her face, bleak and white, reflected in the glass panel of the door.
“Oh—at last!”
There was the sound of a key turning in a lock. She pushed past the man as he opened the door, leaving John Gore wondering what manner of mischief three years had made in a girl’s temper.
In the parlor, with its panelling, its massive furniture, and great fireplace filled with blue Dutch tiles, Anne Purcell and my Lord Gore had been talking for above an hour. My lord was standing at a window in his favorite attitude of philosophic stateliness. The lady’s face had an impatient sharpness of expression that hinted that the man’s sympathy had not sounded the deeps of her unrest.
“I tell you, Nan, that these—these possibilities—leave us where we stood before. The girl may be a little touched in the head. Leave her to Hortense; if she cannot tame her, well, there are other ways.”
Anne seemed less credulous—and more obstinate than he desired.
“I am not superstitious, but to think of the girl praying to those—I tell you, Stephen, the thought of it makes me afraid. Thank Heaven, she is praying—in the dark.”
“Tush—tush,” and he smiled down at her, “the girl is not quite human. We understand her, you—and I. Yet you seem to lack that diplomatic foresight, Nan, that sees in an enemy’s tricks—the very tools for one’s own hand.”
She looked up at him blankly.
“No, I foresee nothing save that—betrayal.”
“Which, if it occurred, could be turned aside as easily as I snap my fingers. There is but one person to be considered, and we must keep her fat and contented.”
“Jael?”
“Yes; the woman is greedy; that simplifies everything. To-morrow, then, you will come with me to the Mancini’s?”
“Oh—if it will help.”
“At least it can do no harm. Listen!”
They heard the footsteps of the servant climbing the stairs, and in ten seconds my Lord Gore had the first news of his seafaring and unshaven son.
VI
My Lord Gore could not conceal an instinct of fastidious disapproval as he walked homeward with his son along Pall Mall. Sumptuousness came before godliness in his scheme of values, and though poverty and slovenliness were inevitable to the world, my lord found them useful as a respectable background to heighten the effect of an exquisite refinement in dress. But to have a soiled and weather-beaten scamp familiarly at one’s elbow offered too crude a contrast, and suggested a sinister interest in Whitefriars.
“What a devil of a mess you are in, Jack, my man!” And there was a slight lifting of my lord’s nostrils. “You might have sent one of the men to me instead of making a martyr of yourself.”
The reference to martyrdom carried a perfect sincerity, for it would have pained Stephen Gore inexpressibly to have been caught in a seedy coat.
John Gore met his father’s critical sidelong glance.
“It is only in plays and poems, sir, that you find your adventurer clean and splendid. We were muzzle to muzzle with those heathen for half a day; the prison they put us in was monstrously dirty; and the vegetation they plant in their gardens and about their fields seems to have been created with a grudge against people who have to run. We ran, sir, like heroes, despite aloes, cacti, and thorns like a regiment of foot with sloped pikes. After such incidents one has a tendency toward torn clothes.”
My lord nodded.
“Still, Jack,” said he, “when you fall in a ditch and get muddied to the chin, you do not stroll home through the park at three in the afternoon. You should readDon Quixote, sir—a great book that.”
“I am more of a philosopher than the Spaniard.”
His father did not trouble to suppress a sarcastic smile.
“Oh, if you are a philosopher I have nothing more to say, save that you have chosen the wrong school. There is the philosophy of clothes to be considered at this happy period of ours. If you wish to try your Diogenes’ humor, go to court in some such scraffle. You would be clapped in the Tower for insulting the King.”
John Gore laughed.
“Who himself knows what ragged stockings and flea-ridden beds mean.”
“Exactly so, sir, and therefore any tactless allusion to the past would be uncourtierlike in the extreme.”
My lord betrayed some impatience in his last retort, very possibly because he beheld a group of acquaintances approaching with all the niceness of fashionable distinction. The young gallants of the court had all the merciless cynicism of premature middle-age. Genius, to prove itself, scintillated with satire. Even when the youngsters laughed, their laughter symbolized an epigram, a caricature, or a lampoon.
Lord Gore advanced very valiantly under the enemy’s fire. The party numbered among its members Tom Chiffinch, the redoubtable royal pimp.
There was an ironical lifting of hats. John Gore’s costume had interested the party for the last twenty yards of its approach. My lord would have marched past with flags flying. But from some instinct of devilry the gentlemen appeared overjoyed at therencontre.
“We must take you with us to the Mall, my lord.”
“His Majesty has a match there.”
“Bring your friend with you, sir. By-the-way, who is he?” And Chiffinch took Stephen Gore familiarly by the button and dropped his voice to a forced whisper.
My lord’s dignity did not falter. He had caught a peculiar look in his son’s eyes that pricked the pride in him.
“Gentlemen, Captain John Gore, my son.”
They bowed, all of them, with sarcastic deference.
“Delighted, sir.”
“You have seen hard service, sir.”
“No doubt you are a great traveller. May I ask your honor whether it is true that the Spaniards in Peru grow their beards down to their belts?”
The man in the red coat showed no trace of temper.
“I lost my laces and my ribbons on the coast of Africa, gentlemen,” he said. “They are a slovenly crew—those Barbary corsairs. It is a pleasure to find myself once more among—men.”
My lord stood regarding the upper windows of a house with stately unconcern. He glanced sharply at his son, and then bowed to Chiffinch and his party.
“Come, Jack. Simpson of the Exchange must have been waiting an hour for you. My son is like King John, gentlemen—he has lost bag and baggage to the sea.”
They parted with ironical smiles, my lord spreading himself like an Indian in full sail.
“Who the devil may Simpson be?” asked the son, bluntly.
His father frowned.
“My recommendation, sir.” And in a lower voice: “The first tailor in the kingdom, you booby; the one reputation that might carry shot into those gentlemen’s hulls. Such is the world, sir, that you can be put in countenance by uttering the name of your tailor.”
Concerning his adventures, John Gore spoke with the grim reserve of a man who had learned that the least impressive thing in this world is to boast. He had lost his ship and seen the walls of an African prison, an ironical climax to a seventeenth-century Odyssey. More from incidental allusions than from any coherent confession, his father learned that he had touched even Japan and far Cathay, his knight-errantry of the sea carrying him into more than one valiant skirmish. An unhappy whim had lured him, when homeward-bound, into the blue sea of the Phœnicians and the Greeks, there to be pounced upon by a squadron of African rovers. They had carried his decks by boarding after a five hours’ fight.
My lord listened with an air of fatherly condescension before reverting to the eternal topic of clothes.
“I must turn you loose in my wardrobe, Jack, my man. You can contrive a makeshift for a week or two. We must have Simpson in for you to-morrow.”
His manner was semijocular and genial, as though this man of many oceans were still a boy poling a punt on an ancestral fish-pond. My lord had never travelled, save into France and Holland, and the wild by-ways of the world had no significance for him. As a courtier and an aristocrat he was a complete and perfect figure, and the life of a gentleman about court had given him the grandiose attitude of one who had turned the last page of worldly philosophy. He had said what he pleased for many years to the great majority of people with whom he had come in contact. His “air” itself suggested the majestic finality of experience.
They supped together in the house of St. James’s Street, my lord asking questions in a perfunctory fashion, often interrupting the replies by irrelevant digressions and displaying the careless contempt of the egotist for those superfluous subjects of which he condescended to be ignorant. It appeared to the son that the father was preoccupied by other matters. It was only when they came to the discussion of certain questions concerning property that my lord showed some of the acumen of the master of the many tenants.
“How much have you lost by this voyage of yours? As for throwing money into the sea—”
John Gore pretended to no grievance.
“It is only what other men would have spent on petticoats and horses. Call it an eccentric extravagance. I have had a glimpse of the earth to balance the loss. About my Yorkshire property?”
“I have had my hand on it, Jack. Swindale has been a success as steward. More money—for the sea’s maw. Is that the cry?”
John Gore maintained a meditative reserve.
“Possibly.”
“I have the rent-roll—and a copy of the accounts in my desk. Go down and see Swindale for yourself. There is no need to think of such a means as a mortgage. Money has been accumulating. Besides, my boy, though your mother left her property to you, my own purse is always open.”
The son thanked him, and changed to another subject—a subject that had been lurking for an hour or more in the conscious background of my lord’s mind.
“How is Lionel Purcell?”
Stephen Gore turned his wineglass round and round by the stem, eying his own white fingers and the exquisite lace of his ruffles.
“Dead,” he said, shortly.
The man in the red coat drew his heels up under his chair and leaned his elbows on the table.
“Dead! Why, of all the quiet, careful livers—”
“He had no say in the matter. Some one killed him.”
There was a short pause. The elder man’s face remained a stately, meditative mask. He raised the wineglass and sipped the wine, pressing his lace cravat back with his left hand.
“It was a sad affair, Jack, and came as a blow to me.”
“Who killed him?”
“Ah, that is the question! No one knows. I suspect that no one will ever know.”
“Was there a reason?”
My lord looked at his son shrewdly, meaningly.
“A man of the world could infer. These scholars—well—they have blood in them like other mortals. We breathe nothing of it—because of the girl.”
“Barbara?”
My lord nodded.
“The whole tragedy broke something in the child. She was bright and sparkling enough, you remember, though always a little fierce. There is the fear—”
He paused expressively, with his eyes on his son’s face.
“There is the fear of madness. The thing seems to have worn on her, chafed her mind. Anne Purcell and I have done what we can, for God knows—I was Lionel Purcell’s friend. But there is always the chance. She is not like other women.”
My lord spoke as a man who feels an old burden chafe his shoulder. As for the son, he was looking beyond his father at the opposite wall. He recalled the girl as he had seen her in the garden. She had baffled him. Here was the explanation.
“It is well that she should never know,” he said, gravely; “she has enough to haunt her—without that.”
My lord had finished his wine and fruit. He rose from the table, and, catching sight of himself in a Venetian mirror on the wall, turned away with a slight frown.
“You had better amuse yourself choosing some of my clothes,” he said. “I have business to-night with Pembroke, and I may be late. Richards will give you the keys. We are much of a size, Jack, though you are shorter in the shanks. Thank the Lord for one mercy, I have not put on too much fat.”
By the light of a couple of candles in silver sconces John Gore amused himself in my lord’s bedroom, with the boy Sparkin to act as a self-constituted judge of fashions. Mr. Richards, who had accompanied them, indulged in a few polite and irrelevant directions, and then departed, as though he found the boy’s company incompatible with his own. Every corner of the bedroom soon had its selection of satins, camlets, and cloths, for Sparkin appeared possessed by an exuberant desire to see and handle everything.
My lord’s wardrobe was the wardrobe of a gentleman who had a fancy for every color and for every combination of shades. His stockings were to be numbered by the dozen, and Sparkin, half hidden in a chest, baled the stuffs out as though he were baling water out of a boat.
“Easy, there, you young hound. What manner of tangle do you think you are making?”
The boy turned a hot and happy face to him.
“Take your choice, captain. What would some of the Greenwich girls give for a picking! How does crushed strawberry please you?”
John Gore was standing in front of a mirror trying on a coat.
“That’s a sweet thing, captain. Just look at the lace. Here’s a chest we haven’t opened yet.”
“Leave it alone, then. You have tumbled enough shirts to give Tom Richards work for a week.”
Sparkin had been fumbling with the keys. He found the right one as John Gore spoke, and lifted the chest’s lid as though there was no disobedience in looking.
“What have you got there?”
Supremely tempted, Sparkin had fished out a periwig and clapped it on his head. He pulled it off again just as briskly, merely remarking that “the thing tickled.” A second dive of the arm brought up a black cloak edged with gold cord and lined with purple silk.
“Bring that here, boy.”
Sparkin obeyed, and John Gore swung it over his shoulders.
“Just your color, captain,” said the boy, seriously.
“Thanks for a valuable opinion. Well, put it aside with the shirts and stockings I have chosen. The devil take you, but what a fearsome mess you have made!”
“That’s soon mended, captain.” And, after depositing the black cloak on the bed, he proceeded to fill his arms with my lord’s luxuries, and tumble them casually into chest and cupboard.
“Here, leave the clothes alone.”
“But—”
“You had better, out of regard for those new breeches of yours. Richards must come up and restore order.”
A spasm of vivacious devilry lit up the boy’s face.
“So he had, captain. He is such a particular man! Shall I call down the stairs?”
“Yes, call away.”
Sparkin disappeared, and John Gore heard his voice piping through the house.
“Richards—Tom Richards there! I say Richards—Mr. Thomas Richards, the captain’s orders are that you are to come aloft and clear up the clothes.”
Sparkin’s voice reached to the nether regions, for slow and unwilling footsteps were heard below. The boy slipped down the stairs and met the man with a loud whisper.
“The captain has made a most fearsome muddle, Tom. He’s turned out every chest and cupboard in the room. Just you come and look. It’s like a rag booth at a fair.”
VII
Barbara Purcell could not sleep that night, perhaps because she had chosen not to have her curtains drawn, so that the light of the full moon poured into the room. An increasing restlessness brought with it that feverish race of thoughts, where the memories of years flash out and intermingle like fantastic figures at a masked ball.
She sat up at last in bed, shook her dark hair free from her shoulders, and stretched her arms out over her knees. The window stood a brilliant square in the blackness of the wall, each lozenge of glass like crystal set in ebony. Through the open casement she could see the silvery domes of the great trees in the park and the few faint clouds that streaked the summer sky. Her restlessness and the close night air made the moonlight seem like a shower of icy spray. And it was as though some feverish freak inspired her with the whim of bathing her hands and face in it, for she slipped out of bed, her white feet gliding over the polished woodwork of the floor.
A sound like the scuffling of rats behind the wainscoting startled her for a moment, so that she stood listening with her face turned toward the door. The deep silence of the house seemed to listen with her for the recurrence of the sound, but she heard nothing but the sigh of her own breath. Moving to the window, she leaned her hands upon the sill, letting the draught play upon her bosom and in her hair. She felt as though the night laid a cool hand upon her forehead, while the infinite calmness of everything entered into her soul.
Beneath her lay the garden, the lawn like a stretch of dusky silver, the bay-trees casting sharp shadows upon it, the portico of the music-room cut into black panels by its pillars. She stood gazing down upon it all with the air of one whose mind was full of dreams. The moon mirrored itself, twin images, within her eyes, and made her night-gear shine like snow under the torrent of her hair.
Distant clocks began chiming suddenly, to be followed by the deep pealing of the hour. The sound roused the girl from her lethargy, like the challenge of a trumpet waking a sentinel at his post.
The echoes of the chimes still seemed to be sweeping upward into the moonlight when she heard a sound below her in the house. It was like the snap of a turning lock, brief, crisp, and final. The striking of the hour might have had the significance of a signal to some one in the house. She was still listening for other sounds to follow when a shadow moved out between the outlines of the bay-trees on the lawn.
Barbara leaned toward the window, and then drew back with an instinct of caution, still keeping her view of the moonlit garden. The shadow and the figure that cast it moved toward the music-room with the gliding motion attributed to ghosts. The breath of the night air seemed doubly cold upon her face and bosom for the moment. She saw the figure disappear under the portico of the music-room with all the mystery of the night to solemnize its passing.
A slight shiver swept up her limbs toward her heart. Things may seem possible at such an hour that the reason might ridicule at noon. Yet she remembered the snap of the shooting lock, and that mere incident of sound held the supernatural vagueness of her thoughts in thrall.
Still listening, she seemed to hear something that brought a sharp and almost fierce expression to her face. Holding her breath, she leaned against the window-jamb as though to steady herself against the slightest movement that might distract her sense of hearing. A murmur of voices came to her out of the silence of the night, like the rustle of aspen leaves in a light wind.
Her body straightened suddenly, bearing its weight upon one out-stretched arm whose hand rested against the jamb of the window. Her eyes became brighter in the moonlight. Her throat showed white under her raised chin. Then turning as though impelled by some inspired thought, she moved toward the door, opened it, and stepped out into the gallery.
Pausing for an instant, she began to walk slowly down the passageway toward a transomed window that gleamed white in the moonlight. She moved haughtily, with no shrinking haste, her head held high, her hands hanging at her sides. It was the poise of a sleep-walker, stately, wide-eyed, without a flicker of self-consciousness.
Barbara had not gone ten steps before she heard a slight sound behind her like the rustle of a skirt. Startled though she may have been, she betrayed nothing, but moved on with every sense alert. That some one was close behind her she felt assured. Her hand was on the latch of her mother’s door before her suspicions began to be confirmed.
She pushed the door open and crossed the threshold; yet though the room was in utter darkness, she felt instinctively that it was empty. Turning slowly so that she faced the door, she saw the outline of a figure framed there against the dim glow of the moonlight that filled the gallery.
Barbara stood motionless awhile, making no sign or sound, and then walked straight toward the door. The figure faltered a moment before gliding aside. Barbara passed it, her eyes fixed as on some dreamy distance, her face blank and expressionless, her step unhurried. As she passed back along the gallery she felt that the figure was following her, and knew that it was a woman, and that woman Mrs. Jael.
Still statuesque as one walking in her sleep she re-entered her room, closed the door, locked it, and moved toward the window. She stood there a moment, motionless, and if she saw anything in the garden beneath her she betrayed no feeling and no conscious life. Before the clocks had chimed the half-hour she was in her bed again, but not to sleep.
By the door leading into the garden two shadowy figures were whispering together.
“She was asleep?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Are you sure?”
“She walked past me as though I was not there. I have seen such a thing before, yet it gave me a fright.”
“And she went to my room, Jael?”
“It was as dark as a cupboard, my lady. No one could have told that it was empty—even if they had been awake.”
The sky was a brave blue next morning, and the air full of the scent of summer when Barbara came down to the little parlor that looked out on the garden. Her air of lethargy had a touch of gentleness to soften it. Anne Purcell was already at the table. A plate of cherries and a flask of red wine added color to the prosaic usefulness of pie and bacon.
Anne Purcell glanced at her daughter with momentary and questioning distrust. The girl’s face betrayed no more self-consciousness than the great white loaf on the trencher near her mother. She sat down, glanced over the table listlessly, and then through the window where the sun was shining.
“You look tired, Barbe?”
An insinuating friendliness approached her in the mother’s voice.
“Tired?—I slept all night. How fresh the garden looks! I feel I should like a drive in the park to-day.”
“Yes; you want more interest—more bustle in your life.”
“Perhaps I should have fewer moods—”
“Take some wine, dear,” and she pushed the flask toward her. “Why not trust yourself to me a little more? We are not all so melancholy.”
“I might only spoil your pleasure.”
“Nonsense. I should enjoy life more if you had a happier face.”