"Mees Durrell, will you make me old!"
"I don't think you are very young!"
He laughed and bowed.
"Mam'selle, your father is the cleverest of men. But to have such a daughter! That was a stroke of genius."
Nance smiled, but there was no pleasure in her smile. She supposed these were French manners, but they made her feel foolish and ill at ease.
"I am afraid father has never spoken to me of you."
She noticed that the men exchanged glances. Durrell intervened.
"Nance, child, the Chevalier will take tea with us."
"Yes, father."
She understood the hint and was glad to go. There was something puzzling and unwholesome about the man.
De Rothan followed her with his eyes.
"Faith, sir, the child is charming, and so innocent."
Durrell was not pleased.
"Do not try your airs and graces here, my friend."
"Psst—I am perfectly sincere. I pay homage to beauty——"
"Curtail it. Shall we walk a little way over the common?"
He glanced at the windows of the house, crossed the terrace and descended the steps. De Rothan followed him, staring with a certain whimsical contempt at Durrell's back.
"Has the young squire been here again?"
"This very morning—at six o'clock."
"Youth is in a hurry!"
"I have put a bridle upon his eagerness. I sent him packing. And Nance knows."
"Knows what?"
"That young Benham is a reprobate, and a loose liver."
"The devil she does! You told her?"
"Certainly. I did not mean the friendship to develop."
De Rothan looked half grave and half amused.
"Well, you have given me your news without miserliness. I return you news of my own. Villeneuve has got out of Toulon."
"What!"
"And has given Nelson the slip."
Durrell's face shone with sudden exultation.
"Man, is it true?"
"True as news can be. But listen to this. He has picked up some of the Spaniards, driven Orde's squadron out of the way, and is at sea. All England is in a sweat, and cursing. They know nothing. They quake in the dark."
"Yes—but Nelson?"
"Listen. This would be worth money in England. Villeneuve sails for the West Indies. Don't breathe it. He cuts himself loose, see—disappears. The English are left at blindman's-buff. Then the West Indies are harried. Nelson is lured thither. Back bolts Villeneuve, drives the blockading fleet from Brest, joins our ships there, and sails up the Channel with close on forty sail of the line. The straits are ours. Napoleon rushes his grenadiers across. After that—the deluge!"
Durrell stood and stared towards the sea with a look of exultation.
"And we shall help to bring in liberty."
De Rothan sneered behind the visionary's back.
"We shall show them where and how to strike. This house and hill of yours, Durrell, will be the first point they will make safe. There will be trenches and batteries here. The Emperor will stand upon your terrace, sir, with all the gorgeous gentlemen of his staff. As for me, I shall be the light-heeled Mercury. I know where the cattle and corn are to be found. I know the powder-mills, the best wells, every road and by-road. I shall be with the cavalry. God—these raw, red-coated bumpkins! How we shall sabre them!"
Durrell was like a man who had heard that his great enemy was to be overwhelmed with ruin and shame. England had made him suffer, and, fanatic and dreamer that he was, his enthusiasm did not lack a spice of vengeance. He wanted to see England suffer in turn, to see her purged of the poison of privilege, of the aristocrats, the lordlings, and the rich commoners whom he hated.
His mood came near to gaiety, if an austere and fanatical excitement can be called gay. He forgave De Rothan his vanity, and went in holding the arch-spy's arm as a man holds the arm of his dearest friend. De Rothan had twinkles of cynical amusement in his eyes. What did a bookworm and a dreamer expect from Napoleon and the French? He would be left to chant rhapsodies in a corner, and to shout "Liberty! Liberty!" provided that he did not turn round and shout it to the English.
De Rothan took advantage of Durrell's good humour, and prepared to enjoy himself with Nance. The girl's silence and reserve piqued him. He loved conquests, and would boast that no woman could withstand him.
His gallantry and his oglings worried Nance. She disliked the expression of his quarrelsome blue eyes. He was too free, too familiar to please her, nor was she in a mood for coquetry. Her opinion of De Rothan was suggested by the fact that she had not changed her old stuff dress.
"Ah, Mees Nance, your hands play with the cups and the sugar and the milk as though you played the harpsichord. Have you music here? No? Your father should buy you a harpsichord. It would show off your pretty fingers."
"I should not be able to play it."
"No? Why, by the honour of Louis, I would teach you myself. So many of us exiles have become music-masters. Durrell, my good friend, buy your daughter a harpsichord, and I will teach her to play and to sing."
Durrell gave them one of his austere smiles. He was happy, exultant, and saw nothing sinister in De Rothan's playfulness.
"All in good time—all in good time. Nance has not had all that she might have had."
"What, sir! And she has so much already! Most of the women would think she had too much."
He bowed to Nance.
"One may not drink to beauty—in tea. The sparkling wine of France! I imagine that I drink it to you, Mees Nance."
The girl was silent and irresponsive. Perhaps De Rothan felt challenged; perhaps she pleased him more than he had expected. Before the meal was over some of the froth had been blown from his fooling. The man was more than half in earnest. The expression of his eyes changed. They betrayed a subtle, gloating, admiration that is seen at times in the eyes of men.
De Rothan's leave-taking was half insolent, half tender. It had always been his way to treat women with audacity. He attacked them with the bold ferocity of his self-confidence.
"Mees Nance, this is the first day of spring. I kiss your hands. I felicitate your father. Never will he produce another such poem."
His bold eyes thrust his admiration into her face. Durrell was still living in dreams.
"Must you go, my friend? Well, well, now that you are in these parts, we shall see you more often."
"Sir, could I help it? The sun shines at Stonehanger."
Nance was silent and thoughtful when De Rothan had gone. She cleared the tea things away, while Anthony Durrell sat on the couch by the window and filled the bowl of a long clay pipe.
"Who is that man, father?"
"De Rothan? An exile, a French aristocrat. He waits for the return of King Louis."
Durrell showed the Jesuitical spirit in his belief that the end justified the means.
"Has he been long in Sussex?"
"No, not very long. Otherwise you would have seen him before."
"Where does he live?"
"He has rented an old house away yonder over the ridge?"
It was on Nance's tongue to speak of that night when she had heard De Rothan's voice in her father's room. But some impulse drove the words back. She went put with the tray, leaving her father to dream impossible dreams of an impossible future.
She was thinking of Jasper Benham, nor was it very marvellous that Jasper could keep her in countenance in the matter of thinking. He had ridden home in no pleasant temper, puzzled and challenged by Anthony Durrell's blunt prejudice against him. Nor could Jasper help remembering Parson Goffin's insinuations. Durrell might not want strangers at Stonehanger. And yet it seemed bad policy to be so frankly churlish.
At Rush Heath Jasper found half-a-score red-coats drinking beer in the stable-yard. Jack Bumpstead was watering their horses, and joining in the gossip that flitted about the pewter pots.
"Capt'n Jennison be in t' parlour, Master Jasper."
And Jasper found Captain Jennison comfortably seated at breakfast, making himself wholly at home in Squire Kit's chair.
He was a grim-mouthed, swarthy little man, with massive limbs and a big chest. His temper was abrupt and dangerous.
"Morning to you, Benham. Time's precious, sir. Excuse me if I open my mouth to eat and to talk. I have important orders, sir, but Captain Curtiss was not to be found. God knows what the man has done with himself!"
Jasper drew a chair to the table, and helped himself to cold meat-pie.
"I am at your service, captain."
"The fact is, sir, that Villeneuve has got out of Toulon. Where Nelson is, only the devil knows. Mischief is brewing, and we are most damnably in the dark. They say that in London men have faces as long as lamp-posts. We are to be on the alert, sir. I have been sent out to warn all the volunteer officers to have their men ready for any emergency."
"Then there is a chance of the French getting across?"
"A confoundedly good chance, sir, and I can't say I have much faith in our row of dove-cots and their pop-guns. We must have every man ready who can carry a musket. Whip up all your men, billet 'em in Battle, somewhere handy—here, if you like. Have your wagons ready. We are waiting in the dark. Villeneuve may be coming up the Channel for all we know."
Jasper had the grave face of a man who took his duties very seriously.
"It shall be done, Captain Jennison. I am to act for Captain Curtiss?"
"Good Lord, sir, yes. That gentleman will be shaving himself when the French cavalry are galloping past Tunbridge."
Captain Jennison gathered his men and rode on, while Jasper sent Jack Bumpstead to re-saddle Devil Dick, and went to spend five minutes with his father. He was fond of the fiery, blasphemous old curmudgeon, and Squire Kit was proud of Jasper, and very generous in his way. He was the sort of man who cursed because it had become a habit with him, and ill health had not sweetened his temper.
"Well, Jasper, well, lad——?"
"Captain Jennison has been here, father. It is likely that the French may get across."
"The French! Rot their teeth! Let 'em come, sir. What are we in such a pest of a fear of the French for? We'll give 'em something to remember. Let 'em come, I say."
Jasper was at the door and ready to mount when a green curricle came swinging up the road, with Rose Benham's plain face looking out from a big straw bonnet.
Jasper smothered a gust of impatience. Rose threw the reins to the groom, and descended with an air of eager concern.
"Jasper, what is the news? I have heard all sorts of rumours."
"It seems likely that the French will get across."
"The wretches!"
"We have orders to bring our men together. I am off to whip them in."
A gloved hand came out, and touched Jasper's sleeve.
"O, Jasper, what will happen? I can't help being afraid."
Rose was not at her best when she was sentimental.
"Every one will be warned. You will have to go inland."
"I was not thinking of myself, Jasper. I shall be praying to God for you and our friends. But why should I be sent away? Women may be of use."
"It may not come to that, Rose."
Her hand still touched his sleeve, and her display of tenderness irritated him. He could not return it, and his mouth felt stiff.
"How grave you look. Does Uncle Kit know?"
"Yes."
"Poor, dear old man. I might go and comfort him."
"I shouldn't, Rose."
For Squire Kit was deep in one long, blasphemous soliloquy.
There was a short, constrained silence, Jasper avoiding his cousin's eyes.
"Now, I know I am keeping you. Duty calls. But, O Jasper, it is hard——"
"The French are not here yet."
"How brave and calm you look."
She had tried very hard to make the man kiss her, but Jasper's face was obstinate and cold.
A labourer came running up to Rush Heath House about eleven o'clock that night. He hammered at the yard-door, and bawled at the servants' windows.
"The beacon be burning, the beacon be burning."
The men of Jasper's volunteer company were quartered at Rush Heath, and red-coats came tumbling out of barns, stable, and kitchen. The maids could be heard screaming in their attics, till Jack Bumpstead went up to reassure them and to tell them to dress. The men had crowded to the high field above the orchard, and were looking toward the sea.
"Beachy Head—that's her."
"Where's Captain Jasper?"
"It be the French, sure."
Jasper had been roused. He came up to the high field, and saw the burning beacon like a huge star, low down upon the black horizon. The flames were flinging their message through the night. It meant that the French had landed, or were preparing to land.
The whole household, save Squire Kit, were in the high field above the orchard. The women were there, awed and frightened, and huddling close for comfort.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! They'll be cutting our throats."
"Ye'll fight, lads, won't 'e? Don't let 'em terrify ye."
"O, Bob, lad, I be sure you'll get a bullet in your heart."
Jasper told the women to be quiet, and called his sergeant to him. Captain Curtiss was still an absentee. Gossip said that he had a love affair in London.
"That's Beachy Head, Cochrane."
"It is, sir."
"Fairlight should be lighting up. The signal will go in to Flimwell and Crowborough. Have the men had a meal?"
"They have, sir."
Jasper reflected a moment, with confused figures and a confused murmur of voices about him in the darkness. Some one had brought a lantern, but it was lost in the crowd.
Squire Christopher had utterly refused to desert the house.
"What! run away from a lot of beggarly French! Damn 'em, I'm a gentleman; I don't put my King on a chopping-block. I stay here, Jasper. If they come into my bedroom, sir, they'll hear how an English gentleman can swear."
Jasper had decided that Jack Bumpstead should be left to look after his father. The maids, the cottagers, and their children were to be packed into wagons and driven away inland.
"Jack, saddle Devil Dick. Farmer Lavender promised to come up and see after the wagons. Let the bullocks take the red wagon. The blue wagon and the horses must not leave here before dawn. Remember that—not before dawn. If any one comes bringing my gold ring, they are to have places in the blue wagon."
"Sure, Master Jasper."
"Sergeant Cochrane!"
"Sir?"
"In an hour, you will march your men off on the Hastings road. I shall rejoin you here, or else pick you up on the road. That's clear?"
The sergeant saluted.
"Clear, sir."
Jasper rode out toward Stonehanger.
"Durrell be hanged," he said to himself, "some one ought to warn them."
It was a darkish night, and the woods made the night darker. The beacon at Beachy Head showed its ominous yellow eye whenever Jasper was on high ground, and looked back over his right shoulder. Fairlight Down was invisible, but he believed that he could detect a faint glow in the eastern sky. Fairlight beacon should be well ablaze. Far hills would catch the signal, and blaze it on into the darkness.
Stonehanger Hill appeared as a dim outline looming up against an overcast sky. Jasper could see no light, in the house. He had to follow the lane, since the path over the common was too uncertain by night. The familiar yew-tree saluted him with its shadow. He left Devil Dick fastened to the gate that Anthony Durrell had slammed so unceremoniously in his face.
Jasper made his way round to the front of the house. From the terrace he seemed to look right away to the distant headland where the yellow beacon blazed between sea and sky. A light breeze played through the straggling thorns, and a lattice that was open creaked and rattled against its hook.
There was not a light to be seen in the house. Jasper looked for Nance's window, and found that it was the one with the open lattice. He stood looking up at it a moment, and then groped in one of the flower beds for a few small stones. Stepping back across the grass he took aim at the window, lobbing the stones up softly so as not to break the glass.
Pebble after pebble rattled against the panes. Jasper stood and listened. Nothing happened. He picked up more stones, and tossed them up harder, more than one entering the window and rattling on the floor within.
Something white flickered behind the glass, and a face appeared at the window.
"Nance—Nance."
"Who is it?"
"Jasper Benham. The beacon has been fired on Beachy Head. You can see it from your window."
She stood at gaze, holding her hair back with one hand.
"I thought you might be asleep and I rode over to warn you. It means that the French are coming."
Nance remained silent. Roused out of sleep to stare at that great yellow eye out yonder, her consciousness was confused for the moment, nor did the man's presence below her window help her toward tranquillity. The things that her father had told her concerning him were as vivid as the burning beacon. She felt numb and inarticulate, constrained to speak yet knowing not what to say.
"It was good of you to think of us."
Her voice seemed to come from a distance.
"I could not help coming."
"Oh."
"I have to join my men. There is room in one of our wagons for you and your father. I have an hour to spare. I can take you to Rush Heath."
A strange and obstinate contrariness seized her. She had a sense of a dull and undeserved pain at the heart.
"Father will not trouble——"
"He must."
"He is not afraid."
"Is he asleep?"
"I don't know."
"For God's sake, go and wake him. You must not be left here."
"It is quite useless, Mr. Benham. I know that father will not leave the house."
Her voice fell coldly on Jasper out of the darkness. It was not the voice he knew.
"Nance——"
"Please don't call me Nance."
It was as though she emptied her displeasure upon him. The rebuff was too real to be ignored.
"I shall have ridden ten miles when I ought to be with my men."
"I did not ask you to come."
Jasper was human, nor was he one of those soft fools who grovel.
"Nance, I did not come for this. What has turned you against me?"
"What do you mean?"
"Confound it, didn't your father slam the gate in my face! I'm a man—not a dog to be hallooed off down the road!"
The passion in his voice moved her more than he imagined.
"Please don't talk like this. Father——"
"Well, what has your father against me?"
"Why will you make it so difficult?"
"Difficult! It is a new thing for a Benham to have a door slammed in his face. Confound it. This is sheer nonsense. You must come to Rush Heath. Every one is being sent inland. These devils of French——"
He saw her arm come out. The hook of the lattice grated. She was closing the window.
"Nance——"
The lattice clattered to, and he was left to his own emotions.
Jasper's astonishment struck tragic attitudes. These people had been kind to him that night when he had been shot in the arm. What had made them change toward him? What had old Durrell told the girl that she should treat him so unreasonably?
Parson Goffin's accusation recurred to him.
"Impossible. The parson's a gossiping toper!"
Jasper stared up at the closed window, frowning and trying to put these detestable thoughts away.
"Either some one has been telling lies, or——"
He stood stiffly alert, like a sentinel who has heard a suspicious sound in the darkness. Some one was moving below the terrace. Footsteps shuffled on the rough stone steps. Jasper turned very slowly, but could see nothing.
"Libertas—libertas!"
Jasper's muscles quivered and hardened like the muscles of a horse that is struck with a whip. It was Anthony Durrell's voice, but Jasper could not see him.
Away yonder shone the beacon on Beachy Head. For the moment it was a clear and brilliantly yellow mass, the stone wall of the terrace showing under it as a black line. Suddenly it was obscured. A black figure interposed itself, a figure that stretched out its arms as a great bird expands its wings.
"Libertas—libertas! The destroyer comes. He shall winnow out the chaff to the four winds. Hail, Napoleon, man of destiny!"
Jasper stood stiff as a stone post. Durrell's black figure loomed across his consciousness. And suddenly Jasper understood. The man was a traitor, a spy!
He had a sense of smothering at the heart. Anger, shame, bewilderment had hold of him. He was thinking of Nance, and all that the closing of that window signified.
An impulse of anger drove him toward the figure outlined against the beacon. Some other influence drove him back. He turned and began to move away, sliding his feet cautiously over the grass.
He threw one glance at Nance's window.
"A spy, and the child of a spy!"
Then he remembered the little wicket gate that led into the passage opening into the stable-yard. Jasper turned to look at Durrell, and once more stood tied to the spot.
A second figure had joined the first. It was pointing with outstretched arm toward the sea.
A rush of anger and bitterness carried Jasper away. He fled from Stonehanger, cursing it and himself.
In two minutes he was galloping Devil Dick down the lane.
"In the pay of the French! But Nance——? I'll not believe it!"
Strong language prevailed next day, and the eloquence of disgust. Mounted men had gone galloping along the roads and lanes, overtaking farm wagons laden with people and household gear, and stopping at inns to drink and spread the news.
"A false alarm. The French never showed their noses out of Boulogne."
"Then who fired the beacon?"
Angry-faced farmers asked each other this question outside the village inns after they had returned their teams and rumbled back the way they had come. Only fools and red-coats saw the humour of the thing. Respectable citizens were angry. Shopkeepers who had sat up all night behind locked doors were ironical and grieved. Women embraced their children and scolded their husbands in the exuberance of their relief. The whole community, like a man who has been scared out of his dignity by boys playing "ghost" at night, flew into a rage, and tried to cover the unseemliness of its panic by a display of valiant indignation.
A big dragoon mounted on a bay horse was emptying a pewter pot outside the principal inn at Hurstmonceux. The dragoon's face looked fat and round and lazy under his heavy helmet. A fair crowd had gathered about him. Beer and admiration are equally cheap.
"How did that thur bonfire get alight?"
"Go along with you trying to tap a King's trooper."
The dragoon winked at a group of women. He was a fat, lusty, cheerful dog, and the women giggled and were flattered.
"The sergeant knows."
"Just look at his wicked eye."
"I like a chap to be red and healthy. They do say the French be the colour o' tallow."
"Now, sergeant, we were that terrified!"
"Sure—you'll be for telling——"
"Well, ladies, if old men will nip a little to keep out the cold! It all came of old Daddy Tonks having a bottle of smuggled rum on him."
"What, he set her alight while he was merry?"
"That's it. Half Eastbourne went panting up to the Head when the beacon started burning. What d'ye think they found? Old Daddy Tonks dancing round the fire like mad and shouting that he was burning them as was damned. The language! Some one knocked the old man's pins from under him with the butt-end of a musket. And here were we sent galloping after all the poor sheep as had stampeded, and all the death and glory boys holding each other up for fear o' fainting with joy."
The people grew confidential, crowding close about the dragoon's horse.
"Do ye think t' French ull cross, sergeant?"
"They do say as Nelson 'as lost hisself."
"My ol' sow's just had a fine fam'ly. 'Taint no sense. What be a body to do!"
"It terrifies ye from sowing seeds. I ain't going to grow peas for Johnny Crappo to pick!"
The dragoon gazed profoundly at the bottom of the pot.
"Bone manure may be cheap—French bones, hee-hee!"
"Give me m'own mixen."
"Who wants the Bonypart!"
"Some of our fellows, too, thrown in."
The dragoon looked round scornfully.
"If there was a man here," he said, "he'd stand a King's soldier another mug of beer."
The trooper trotted eastward toward Ashburnham, and encountered a green curricle at the meeting of four ways. The occupant hailed him, and the dragoon was urbane and gallant.
"A false alarm, miss. The beacon-keeper got in liquor and set the beacon-light. We are cantering round to quiet the poor things."
Rose thought by his fat smile that his officers had chosen wisely. There was nothing savouring of famine and sudden death about the trooper.
"Can you tell me if the Eastbourne road is clear?"
"You may overtake some of the wagons, miss, but they'll pull aside for such as you."
And the green curricle whirled on.
Meanwhile Jasper Benham was at Hastings in the battery at the east end of the parade. He had left his men bivouacked in a field by Halton barracks, and had spent the night with a number of roaring, wine-drinking officers who had waited for the crisis in the large room of an inn in High Street. The morning was still and sunny, and to judge by the number of people who had gathered on the sea-front, the Hastingers had not deserted the town at the first flash of the alarm. There was a goodly gathering on the Castle Hill, staring out to sea. Younger women, who had not forgotten to put on gay prints and muslins, kept to the parade by the east battery, in order to be reassured by the red-coated gentlemen who were laughing and joking among the guns. Green hills, red coats, blue sea, brown roofs were spread before the people who climbed the east and west hills. There were more red coats to be seen about the three-gun battery at White Rock. Signals were being passed along the coast, from Fairlight Down to Galley Hill, Wall End Pevensey, Beachy Head, and so on westward.
Jasper, leaning against a gun, stared hard at nothing in particular with the savage intentness of a man plagued with doubts. He was sick of the sound of the voice of his own conscience that talked so obviously about duty and honour, and loyalty to one's King. He ought to be reporting his suspicions to the officer commanding the troops in the neighbourhood. A dozen troopers ought to be riding up to Stonehanger, and old Durrell laid by the heels and his house searched.
But Jasper's decision faltered, and he fell to temporising and to making excuses. Was he sure of his facts? Had he trusted to mere sinister coincidences and to suspicions? He realised that if he denounced Anthony Durrell as a French spy, the burden of proof would rest on his own shoulders. He would have to hurt Nance; that was what bothered him. He could not forget the touch of her hands that night. She had fired all the mysteries of sense and spirit. How could he throw shame and ignominy in her face?
A corporal of volunteers was leading Devil Dick up and down the parade. Jasper roused himself, and marched out of the battery with a casual nod to his brother officers. The volunteer companies had been ordered back to their country quarters. The presence of the men near their own homes would restore confidence, and help to smother panic.
"Corporal Jenner."
"Sir?"
"Go up to Halton and tell Sergeant Cochrane to march the men back to Battle."
"Yes, sir."
"The men will parade on the green at seven o'clock."
"Yes, sir."
"I shall be there."
Jasper mounted Devil Dick and rode westward toward Bexhill. He was in a restless mood, driven to keep step with his own urgent thoughts. The happenings of the night were like so many thorns spread in the path of his pilgrimage. The gloom of an inevitable choice lay over him.
He rode across the great green Level of Pevensey where kingcups were all golden along the waterways, and the larks hovered and sang. Countryfolk and men on horseback were gathered at Castle End, but Jasper did not turn aside. The grey, shimmering downs swelled before him against the blue of the sky. Yonder rose Beachy Head, its beacon a heap of ashes. An insane hatred of the headland leapt into Jasper's heart. It was as though love had been martyred there, and the ashes scattered over the seas.
Devil Dick carried Jasper into Eastbourne, urged thither by a vague restlessness rather than by any desire to get anywhere in particular. The town had soon recovered from the night's scare, and being a gay place it laughed and made fun of the whole affair. Eastbourne had a certain fashionable reputation, and by the Sea Houses where the London coach started, and where the great circular redoubt had been thrown up, idlers enjoyed the sunshine and aired their little genteel vanities as though there were no such thing as war.
Jasper rode Devil Dick to the edge of this little world of valetudinarianism, gossip, and dissipation. Blue sea and sky and the grey gloom of Beachy Head formed the background, while the space between the houses and the redoubt was stippled over with the little coloured figures that idled to and fro. Here were leering old men, foppishly dressed, yet unable to hide their tainted bodies behind the craft of valet and tailor. There were women to keep these old men in countenance, mature, sly, scandalous old women who still triumphed, and rouged, and tattled. It was a quick-witted, gay, cynical crowd, vicious according to the conceptions of the moralists, but having the laugh of the moralists in the matter of enjoyment.
Jasper drew rein, the serious gloom of youthful romanticism refusing to mingle with this mature frivolity. He had turned Devil Dick, and was walking the horse away from the Sea Houses and the redoubt when he heard some one calling him by name.
"Meester Benham, Meester Benham."
Jasper became aware of a group close on his left, one tall and stately cypress in the midst of a smother of flowering shrubs. The cypress bowed and swept a hat. The flowering shrubs exhaled perfumes, and delighted the eyes with colour.
It was the Chevalier de Rothan, and with him four or five gay ladies in Empire gowns and bonnets, very seductive, very merry, very frail. They were classic in more than the mere incidents of dress. One had black hair, huge dark "orbs," and a melancholy mouth. Another was a little, red-haired woman, wonderfully dainty, with china-blue eyes, and every feminine impertinence for the provoking of men. They were looking at Jasper with the eyes of connoisseurs. A somewhat elderly charmer had levelled an ebony-handled lorgnette.
De Rothan had a way of enveloping people and entangling their activities in the net of his magnificent manners.
"Meester Benham, our friends were in ecstasy over your horse. I thought I knew both the horse and the rider. It is a splendid animal, ladies, and splendidly ridden, eh?"
He included them all in one sweeping gesture.
"Mr. Benham, let me present you to my friends. Mrs. Juno, Mrs. Venus, Mrs. Impertinence, Mrs. Pallas. We are very young, sir, although so ancient. I myself am Mr. Paris of Troy."
They laughed, and looked with friendly interest at Jasper, who had responded with a rather perfunctory bow.
"Mr. Benham looks disappointed about something," said the little red-haired woman with a provocative glance.
"Mars cheated of a battle, eh! Meester Benham, pardon me, but I have been delighted by your droll people."
"Oh!"
"A little, old man drinks too much—goddesses, forgive me—and a whole county is in consternation. You call the French excitable, sir, but, by St. Louis, you run us close. I was disappointed in the stolidity of the English."
Jasper suspected the presence of malicious raillery. De Rothan's figure filled his consciousness. He felt ready to quarrel with the man and quite ready to forget the ladies.
"What did you expect, sir?"
"Less scuffling into clothes, and the pulling on of stockings inside out. Little things—but significant."
"We were prompt in getting the people away."
"Prompt! Excellent word! Dear goddesses, your good countrymen were prompt at running away."
He gave Jasper an exasperatingly roguish look.
"I have heard of no running away. There seem plenty of people in Eastbourne."
"The panic was soon put out here, Meester Benham. But I rode fifteen miles before I came to Eastbourne this morning. You should have seen the roads, sir. People running away with their pans and kettles and cash-boxes on their backs. It was like the rout of an army."
"They had been ordered to go inland. The French would have found the stem stuff ready for them, even if they had survived themal de mer."
"You are facetious, Meester Benham."
"I echo you, Chevalier."
"It is my privilege to amuse the ladies."
"We have often amused ourselves at the expense of the French."
De Rothan drew himself up dramatically.
"Meester Benham, I do not permit myself or others to pass beyond mere jesting words."
"Very good, sir, then keep clear of the facts. You have thrashed us, and we have thrashed you. Though I think we can count three Blenheims to one Fontenoy."
De Rothan made a gesture as though he would lay a hand on a sword.
"I do not quarrel, Meester Benham, when ladies are present. Insult me some other day."
"With pleasure," said Jasper, and rode on in a black rage.
He had not gone more than a hundred yards when two smart horses drawing a green curricle came into view. A whip was held slantingly at a professional angle. The sea-breeze played with the reddish curls under the big bonnet.
Jasper blasphemed under his breath. Cousin Rose was the very last creature he desired to meet that morning.
She drew up, with a heightened colour and a shallow glitter of the eyes. The woman had dash, and a certain audacity in her methods of attack.
"You see, Jasper, I had not run away. What a reprieve for us all. We should thank God from our hearts."
She eyed him steadily, noticing his morose, inward look.
"The responsibility has been heavy on you, lad. Do you know I prayed for you last night. I felt that you were not alone. I was with you—in the spirit."
"You are always very good, Rose."
"Am I? I think we always understood each other, Jasper, even when we were children."
Rose Benham's sentimentality was part of the guile of the huntress. Ordinarily she was a hard and very shrewd young woman, capable of managing most men and horses, and sincere enough when her egotistical piety was on the prowl. She knew that there were other women who desired to marry Jasper Benham. Her determination to marry him herself was made up of the lust to possess, and the desire to defeat rivals.
"Jasper, you will see me back to Beech Hill."
She was on the edge of an appealing simper, and detestable as most plain and hard young women are when they ape passions that they do not possess. Rose went about such matters as though she were selling pots and pans in a shop. Cleverness cannot take the place of instinct. That is why clever people are often such wearisome fools.
"Do you want to go back at once?"
They had driven and ridden a little way along the Sea Road, and Miss Benham was looking with some of her provincial scorn at the gay folk who idled there. To a certain type of woman all fashionable people are profligates. Most women have a secret desire to dazzle and to devastate. It is the utter inability of the majority to do anything of the kind that gives such a feline viciousness to their morality.
"I do not think that there is much to see in Eastbourne, Jasper. What absurd creatures there are here. Look at that thing yonder, like a lettuce tied up at the top with bass."
"Shall we turn back?"
"Such women always make me cross. As if men were worth all the trouble!"
Courtesy, not necessity, put Jasper in the position of outrider. Rose was perfectly capable of driving alone across England, but when a thin-natured woman tries to be melting, she muddles the mingling of the wine and honey.
"I have a little basket under the seat, Jasper. Cold chicken and a bottle of wine. We can put up the horses at some farm, and make a meal under a tree."
Such feasting in Arcady was wholly outside Jasper's mood.
"Oh, yes, we could do that."
The tiredness of his voice piqued her.
"I believe you are sorry that the French did not come. I know; you have uncorked your courage and it has gone flat."
Jasper left her to think what she pleased.
They found a farm-house set back in a little meadow, and a big chestnut-tree made them a green pavilion. The horses were left in the care of a lad who bit his thumb-nail and stared.
Jasper's attitude was one of impatient reserve. Every thought that came into his mind unrolled itself from the one word "if." If another face had been inside that bonnet. If other hands——! He had to sit there and listen to Rose Benham's thin suggestions, when love had become almost a ferocity, a tormented thing that was ready to break out into violence.
"There is only one glass, Jasper."
Her playful coyness made him feel evil.
"It doesn't matter."
When he drank he was careful to avoid the place that Rose's lips had touched. She noticed it, and her eyes registered the impression.
Her sentimental gaiety was like the buzzing of gnats in the sunshine. It intensified that other richer reality, that passion that had become akin to pain. Rose, too, had a way of asking direct questions, as exasperating a trick as pretending to tread on the toes of a gouty old man.
"You don't look very gay, Jasper. Are you sorry the French did not land?"
"Yes, I am."
"What a desperate mood! You ought to be in love."
This did not make matters flow any more pleasantly. Rose's face began to assume its set, Sabbath expression.
"I think you are very dull. I know men like to talk about themselves. You don't seem to find even yourself interesting."
"I'm not in a mood to talk. The fact is, I was up all night, and drank rather too much sherry."
"How silly you men are. You never seem to think of the to-morrow."
They packed up the basket, left the shade of the chestnut-tree, and travelled on. Rose looked somewhat grim, and Jasper was struck by a sudden amazing likeness to her mother. She appeared to have grown thinner, and her plainness cried out at him. Yet Rose, without knowing it, was to have a very subtle and delicate revenge. She was to be the cause of pain and secret reproaches and a little world of misunderstanding, for half the troubles of life come from people being at cross-purposes and refusing to speak out.
Though the road ran within two miles of Stonehanger, Jasper had no thought of a possible meeting with Nance Durrell. But meet her they did where the road ran through the oak woods in Buckhurst Hollow.
An oak wood in May is one of the most splendid of sights, with the golds and greens of the young foliage giving the effect of reflected sunlight. The lush freshness of the woods enters into the soul of a young man's dreams. Birds sing and the cuckoo calls from mysterious distances. The blue of the wild hyacinths brings visions of chaplets of flowers woven about the dark hair of some young girl.
A stream ran through Buckhurst Wood, crossing the road where a big beech-tree stood on a knoll that was covered with blue-bells. The moist murmur of the running water seemed part of the dewiness of the green and secret thickets.
Under the shade of the beech-tree sat Nance Durrell, a rush basket thrown beside her, her chin resting in the palms of her two hands. She looked intense, passionately preoccupied, her brown eyes staring into the mysterious distances of the wood. Her mouth was grave, and a little sad.
She glanced round with a certain impatient shyness when the green curricle appeared upon the road. For the moment she looked at Rose Benham and did not notice Jasper. Her thoughts had been disturbed, and waited for the disturbers to pass.
Then she recognised Jasper. Her self-consciousness became a thing of the vivid and inevitable present. It was not possible for her to shirk the clamour of her emotions.
Jasper reddened like a boy. He faltered, and then let the two horses and the curricle splash through the shallow water.
Nance had gone very white, with the whiteness of pride that resists. Why did the man thrust himself into her life? She hardened herself against him, and tried to find the impress of the repulsive things she had heard of him upon his face.
"Have you heard the news——?"
Her eyes were two shadowy circles of reticent distrust.
"What news?"
"It was a false alarm last night. The beacon was fired by mistake."
She looked at him and was silent, and her very silence was resistant. Benham had a whole flood of fierce doubts and yearnings urging him forward against her reserve.
"Nance, why did you shut your window on me last night?"
"What right had you to come?"
She soared into haughtiness, and the knoll under the beech-tree became inaccessible.
"I had a man's right."
"And what is that?"
The curricle had drawn up some fifty yards beyond the ford, and a face in a yellow bonnet looked back at them with surprised intentness.
Nance rose. There was something tantalising and repressive about her movements. Few things can surpass the bleak and uncompromising pride of a young girl.
"Your friend is waiting for you."
"It is my cousin, Rose Benham. She——"
"I do not wish to keep her waiting."
Jasper's manhood raged within him. Primitive emotions and the more complex things of the heart made a confused turmoil. He rebelled against her tacit and unexplained antagonism.
"Nance, I must know what has made you change so suddenly."
She had half turned, and she looked back at him from beyond the finality of a dismissal.
"Your cousin is waiting."
"Heaven confound my cousin! What has she to do——"
The silent, backward look of her eyes rebuffed him.
"Nance—listen. I must know why you have changed. You have changed——"
"It is courteous of you to claim it."
She was ready to show that she resented his assumption of a past sympathy.
"Damnation! You must have reasons. Is it your father?"
"It may be. I am not here to be cross-questioned."
"After you shut your window, I saw him on the terrace last night."
His passion drove him toward aggression. The girl remained stone-cold.
"Was he?"
"Yes."
"Well, what of that?"
"He had another man with him."
"Most likely it was old David."
Jasper had come to the very citadel of her reserve. To press further would mean the giving of a final and forlorn assault. Her whole attitude seemed to him to be a beating back of inopportune and dangerous curiosity.
"Shall I say that there are things that you do not wish me to know?"
"What do you mean?"
She stood to attack in turn, alert, and a little haughty.
"Mr. Durrell may have reason for not wishing me to come to Stonehanger."
"You suspect that?"
"You drive me to it."
Her face flushed under her dark hair.
"You are bold to press so far. Are you so sure of yourself? My father has reasons. You might not thank me for telling you them."
"I should thank you—from my heart."
"Not if you have any sense of—pride. Miss Benham must think this conduct of yours as curious as it appears to me."
She turned her back on him, and walked away into the thick of the wood. Jasper could not follow her there without leaving his horse, and Nance knew it. He did not attempt to follow her, but sat staring half vacantly into the green depths, a man staggered in the full stride of his impetuous sincerity.
It cost Jasper something of an effort to ride on and overtake the green curricle. Rose Benham's sharp profile had a very exasperating effect on him. There was something dangerously watchful about her eyes.
They made an elaborate show of ignoring the events of the last five minutes. Jasper might have hung behind to talk to a farm bailiff, to judge by the way they treated the matter.
But Rose's shrewd brain was busy enough behind the forced facility of her chattering. She felt that it was not only absurd, but impolitic to ignore the incident. It had to be touched on lightly and without prejudice.
"You haven't yet told me the name of your friend, Jasper."
"What friend?"
"Why, the damsel among the blue-bells, stupid. You know—I felt horribly guilty. It occurred to me that I had put myself in the way of being an awkward third."
"That was Miss Nance Durrell."
Cousin Rose appeared immensely excited.
"Jasper—the heroine of your night adventure! Think of that now! I thought she would have been prettier. You ought to have made us known to each other. I might have driven her home in the curricle."
Jasper glanced at Rose mistrustfully. Nance had driven him into a world of cross-purposes and suspicions.
"Miss Durrell goes very much her own way."
"Proud, is she?"
"Call it that if you like."
"O, Jasper, Jasper, if only you would let me teach you a little about women."
The cynical yet motherly touch was excellent. Rose could be masterly, directly a little malice gave her practical shrewdness an opportunity. She could preach to a man, if she could not make love to him.
"What do you know about women, Rose?"
"La, now, listen to the lad! Jasper, half you men are nothing but great big boys. You think we are so much finer, and purer, and sweeter than you are, until we poor women show the true human stuff in us, and then you make a frightful to-do, and turn into cynics. Don't we want the men sometimes, just as much as the men want the women? And don't we plan and scheme to get them, playing all sorts of tricks with pride and coldness and smiles and relentings. Don't start away, Jasper, with thinking each girl a sweet fool of an angel."
He was caught by her words, and was angry with himself for being influenced.
"Sometimes people are what we wish them to be."
"Yes, especially if they are clever. The girl realises that. She puts on the clothes and the airs that please the man."
"You are a little cynic, Rose."
"Not a bit of it. I'm honest. I don't cover things up."
They said no more on the matter, but Rose had learnt something that made the lips of her soul curl maliciously.
"Always the pretty face!" she thought. "Fools! And we plain women have to look on, while a man squanders himself on a thing with soft eyes and an artful mouth. I'm plain, but am I going to be ousted by some treacle-and-honey chit with eyes like blackberries? This nonsense——!"
Rose had a sense of her limitations. That is what made her bitter.
Nance made her way through Buckhurst Wood, pushing aside the fresh green hazel boughs till she reached a ride that ran eastward under the overhanging branches of the oaks. It was a woodland gallery hung with arras of green and gold, the sunlight streaming in through innumerable windows. The rank grass about the hazel stubs was threaded with wild flowers. Patches of blue sky showed between the golden branches of the oaks.
Nance was both angry and perplexed, an astonishment to herself in the contradictory discontent that mocked her pride. She had not pitied Jasper Benham when they had been face to face. She had resented his pertinacity. It had been easier to believe that he was playing the part that he had played with other women.
Yet something within her spoke up for Jasper now that he could not defend himself in person. Nance had had but a glimpse of Rose Benham, but it had been enough to challenge her dislike. She was sorry for the man, having an instinctive foreknowledge of how such a woman would shape in the middle ways of life. Yet Nance caught herself up in the thick of these thoughts, and refused to be lured into possible justifications. Nance was a little hard, as girls are apt to be. She liked her beliefs and convictions carved in ivory, immutable and flawless. There were so many things she did not know, so many things she did not understand. She believed in a kind of superhuman honour that could never change, never be bent into the making of crooked excuses.
But she did feel bitter and lonely, in spite of her pride. Something had been awakened in her that spring, a richness of thought and of feeling, a going-out of her spirit toward mystery and joy. She remembered days when she had thought of this man with a swift, shy thrill of tenderness. There had seemed a strength about him, a brave, brown-faced kindness that had compelled her to muse and to remember. That was why she felt bitter and resentful. She would smile peevishly over the thought of the red scarf and the cunning use he had made of it. Now and again she had found herself doubting the truth of her father's words, but she could find no reason for his wishing to mislead her. The smart of the thing remained, the raw consciousness that this man had been treating her as one adventure in a succession of adventures. She resented this bitterly. It was the one emotion that had made her determine to thrust the whole affair out of her life.
Nance made her way homeward by a number of familiar lanes and field-paths, for she had wandered extensively since Anthony Durrell had taken Stonehanger. It was when she was following the path that led from the direction of Rookhurst over Stonehanger Common, that De Rothan overtook her and dismounted to walk at her side. He had seen the girl's figure moving along the field-paths as he had ridden along the road.
"My homage to you, Mees Nance. It may be that I shall find your father at Stonehanger. I hope the beacon-fire did not keep you awake last night."
He walked along beside her with an air of fascinating frankness. He had found it serve with women. As for Nance, she was so near home that it did not seem worth while to question De Rothan's company.
"We saw the beacon burning."
"And you were very frightened, eh?"
"No, not very."
"You should have seen the country people! Frightened sheep! I fear that if the French had landed the English red-coats would have followed the women."
Nance had none of her father's political discontent. She had her British beliefs and convictions, and wore her patriotism in her bosom.
"English soldiers do not run away, Chevalier."
"Eh! Assuredly—I ask your pardon. One's own soldiers never run away; they are forced to retreat in the face of overwhelming numbers. We all know that."
The man puzzled her. Usually she could get clear impressions of people, but De Rothan's was a figure that flickered and changed. His vanity and his grand air were definite details, yet they seemed to her like clothes worn at a masked ball. De Rothan was a cynic and an adventurer, a mature and very flexible man of the world. Nothing was absolutely right or absolutely wrong to him. A certain intenseness made Nance incapable of understanding the multifarious selfishnesses that go to the making of such a man.
Anthony Durrell was walking the terrace when these two reached Stonehanger. De Rothan had said, "I give myself the pleasure of seeing your father." He was out of the saddle, and making a great business of offering to hand Nance up the steps.
She was not a gallant's woman, nor did she desire to be touched by De Rothan. Her instincts were fastidious in such matters.
He smiled at her roguishly.
"What a proud young gentlewoman. But you have the right. Beauty is privileged. Pride in a plain woman is like fine wine in a pewter pot."
Her aloofness pleased him. He followed her up the steps, scanning her figure, and noticing the comely way her neck curved where it rose from between her shoulders.
"Mr. Durrell, your daughter is a very great lady. She is too proud to touch my fingers."
He laughed and swaggered, and it was in his swagger that the vulgar blood of the Irish adventurer showed itself. Durrell had a sullen, preoccupied look. He had been disappointed of great events.
"Where have you been, Nance?"
"For a ramble."
"Ah."
His eyes searched her face, and Nance caught a questioning distrust. Youth resents suspiciousness. That momentary glance was seized on and remembered.
"You will stay and drink tea with us, Chevalier."
"I am to be persuaded, sir, I assure you."
"Nance, get the things ready, child."
She answered perfunctorily and passed on toward the house.
De Rothan returned to his horse that was standing quietly at the bottom of the terrace steps.
"Show me the way to your stable, Durrell."
"You know it."
"I don't, sir, so long as there are eyes about. Besides——"
Durrell joined him, and they walked round by the field gate into the yard. David Barfoot met them, and Durrell signed him to take De Rothan's horse.
They turned into the shrubbery, and took to pacing one of the wild, overgrown paths. Laurels and hollies hedged them in, and arched out the sunlight. The thick canopy of leaves had smothered the grass and weeds. The soil was black and bare under the dark stems of the laurels.
De Rothan appeared cynically merry. He talked to Durrell about the happenings of the previous night.
"The whole countryside broke away like sheep. What? You are disappointed? No, no, the scare was of value. It showed how jumpy and unsteady these stolid folk are. They tell me that the troops were out of hand in several places. Whole companies made off and had to be chased and brought back by cavalry. It's a fact, sir, a fact."
Durrell showed a morose surface.
"It may have done them good."
"Steadied them, eh, helped them to get used to it? Bah! I should like to see a beacon fired by mistake every other night. The country's courage would be in tatters. Troops—raw troops—are not improved by being worried and fretted."
"I was too happy last night. I thought the time had come."
De Rothan looked at him intently.
"You are on edge, sir, too much on edge."
"No, no; I long for the great change."
A hand-bell rang, and the two men returned to the house. Nance had set tea in the Gothic parlour. De Rothan was floridly officious in arranging a chair for her.
"You should have been at Eastbourne this morning, Mees Nance. A crowd of gay people, all in the best of tempers from being saved from invasion. They had all got ready to run away in their best clothes. Do you ever take your daughter to the watering-places, Mr. Anthony?"
Durrell grunted, and gloomed over his tea.
"I don't."
"You dislike gay people."
"I detest them."
"Ah—ah, and they are always saying that my poor France is so gay. Why should not one be gay, sir, why should we pull long faces? The good God did not mean us to be miserable. What do you think, Mees Nance?"
His deference bowed her into the conversation.
"Sometimes one can not be gay, Chevalier."
"Not always, not always. But then, when a woman is young and adorable! Cloudy days; beauty all silver and grey, charm, subtlety. Now, come—do you not love fine clothes?"
She smiled.
"As much as women always love them."
"There, that is honest. I would not give a fig for a woman who hadn't a little vanity."
Durrell struck in, jerking his shoulders irritably.
"There is enough nonsense in a girl's head, De Rothan, without stuffing any more into it."
"My dear friend, I disagree with you. There are gentlewomen and gentlewomen. Parents, too, are often the blindest of wiseacres. Now if I were in your place, Mr. Anthony——"
"But you are not, sir. Let us keep to impersonal matters."
De Rothan threw a whimsical and conspiring look at Nance.
"Impersonal matters! As if life could go on with all our desires carefully tied up in silk handkerchiefs and put away in cupboards. Mr. Durrell, you are one of the most learned of men, but——"
He shrugged his shoulders expressively and looked sympathetically at Nance.
"Well, to be impersonal. I saw all kinds of your good English people strutting to and fro on the parade. You look so good, you English, that a well-dressed woman seems scandalous. You are such barbarians. Some one wears a new sort of hat, and all your raw louts and lasses are giggling and nudging with elbows. Some of you try to be fashionable and also pious. I am thinking of Mees Rose Benham, who was there in her curricle. Doubtless, Mees Nance, you have made the lady's acquaintance?"
"No."
"A character—a character. She had Mr. Benham, her cousin, hanging on her eyebrows. They are to be married soon, they say. A case of when Greek meets Greek. Mees Benham is a plain young woman, but she is one who provokes. Impudence, eh, is that what you call it? A turned-up button of a nose, sharp mouth, naughty eyes. Such women sting some of us into passion. Mr. Benham is in the toils."
He talked lightly, easily, observing Nance without betraying his curiosity. Durrell moved uneasily in his chair, and looked irritably austere.
"You need not talk of Mr. Benham here, Chevalier."
De Rothan glanced at him with pretended surprise.
"A young man with a bad reputation."
"Sir, I beg your pardon. I know the man is a little riotous; it is an impersonal matter, surely? Madam, his cousin, will take care of his morals."
For the rest of his stay De Rothan was very gallant to Nance, talking to her and at her with an air of admiring deference. No man could be more picturesquely charming than De Rothan. He had the mellowness of long experience, and could ape the chivalrous and dignified tenderness of an old beau.
"Turn the young thing's head, eh! She's confoundedly alluring. Durrell's a fool."
Nance longed to be away. She escaped when her father went to the mantel-shelf for his pipe, and fled away to her room.
It had been flashed upon her mind that De Rothan was the friend who had told her father these things concerning Jasper Benham. Anthony Durrell saw so few people, and there appeared to be a curious intimacy between these two.
She stood and looked at herself in the glass as though she were questioning her own reflection.
Why were De Rothan and her father friends? Had De Rothan brought these vile tales to Stonehanger? If he was responsible for them, did that alter her impressions?
Yes, but she herself had seen Jasper with his cousin. That part of it seemed true.
And yet she distrusted De Rothan greatly.
Meanwhile Jasper Benham was at the end of his patience, and a creature of moods and savage bewilderment. Nance's strange hostility had not helped him toward decision. He was too much in love with the girl to seek to be revenged upon her because there was something that he could not understand. Even supposing that Anthony Durrell was a French spy, and that Nance knew it and wished to safeguard her father, what had she to fear from him; what reason had she for treating him with suspicion?
Well, what was to be done?
Jasper had spent two morose, vacillating days, and the moral quandary seemed all the deeper. What a scolding shrew was this thing called Duty! He was to denounce Durrell, was he—send red-coats to turn Stonehanger upside down, and lose, perhaps forever, his chance of Nance! No, Duty be cursed; he would do no such thing. If this clumsy meddling were the only means that Duty could suggest, he would throw Duty aside and stand by his own more magnanimous instincts.
Jasper was riding Devil Dick over Rush Heath farm when he came cheek-by-jowl with this decision. Restlessness had set him in the saddle, and it was still early in the afternoon when he found himself looking over a thorn hedge into a big turnip field that sloped southward toward the edge of a wood. A solitary, lean, brown figure showed up against the green of the young growth, a figure that moved its arms with the monotonous action of a man hoeing.
Jasper rode through the gateway into the turnip field and remained watching the man with the hoe. The labourer drew near with his back turned, chopping away sedulously at the young weeds. Jasper knew him for Tom Stook of Bramble End, an odd hand who was taken on by the Benhams' bailiff when there was a press of work, or hay and corn to be gathered in.
Tom Stook was a very tall man with great bony limbs that seemed loosely slung at the joint sockets. He had a hawk's beak of a nose, a little tufted beard at the chin, and deep-set, cautious eyes. He kept on hoeing, as though he had not so much as glimpsed Jasper out of the corner of an eye.