Part 15

Jeffray’s face was still red under his waving hair. He laughed, the quiet, pleased laugh of aspiring yet incredulous youth, and looked at Wilson with affectionate amusement.

“I am glad you like the work, Dick,” he said. “Heaven knows, I have copied nobody, and yet my lines seem childish when set beside Pope’s or Dryden’s.”

“Childish, sir, and if they are childish, you should thank Heaven for their innocence. As for Pope, he’s nothing but a pedant setting prose on stilts, and trying to make her tread a stately measure. Why, sir, his poetry is like a respectable old lady knitting epigrams together on her needles. Dash his preciseness, and his pompous and ponderous conceit! Set him beside Will Shakespeare, and you will hear an artificial waterfall trying to thunder against the sea.”

Jeffray smiled, and stretched out his hand for the manuscript. He glanced at the neat and sensitive writing with satisfaction, moving his lips the while as though reading certain of his favorite passages over to himself.

“But what would the critics say of them?” he asked.

“Critics, sir!”

“Yes.”

Wilson blew his nose with great vigor, and grimaced as though he had swallowed vinegar. He reached for a volume of the _Annual Register_, that was lying on the table beside Jeffray’s chair, and opened the book at the place dedicated to verse.

“Here, sir,” he said, holding the volume at arm’s-length and declaiming, sententiously, through his nose—“here is the sort of stuff we English feed the imaginative passion on.

“‘TO A ROBIN

“‘Sweet social bird! Whose soft harmonious lays Swell the glad song of thy Creator’s praise, Say, art thou conscious of approaching ills? Fell winter’s storms, the pointed blast that kills?’

“There, sir, there’s the proper pedantic stuff for you. It puzzles me to think what our English woods would be like if all the ‘sweet social birds’ sang in that fashion. And can you tell me, sir, why winter is always ‘fell’ with these gentlemen, and any poor thrush ‘a member of the feathered tribe’? Damn it, why can’t they call a wind a wind, instead of ‘Black Boreas’s breath,’ or some such scholarly twaddle? I tell you, Richard, this sort of stuff sickens me; it is like looking at some painted and behooped old hag, and trying to think she’s a pretty shepherdess. Why, sir, your verses are as different from them as the scent of new-mown hay from the scent of a beauty’s pomade-box. They smell of the downs and of the woods and the sea, sir—they do that, by gad!”

Jeffray was watching the strenuous play of thought on Wilson’s countenance.

“Then you do not think, Dick, that my poetry would be popular?”

An indescribable flash of ironical amusement leaped across the painter’s face.

“Popular!”

“Yes.”

“No, sir; plain people who love nature and the truth are not popular in these learned days. Why, were I to paint one of your Sussex landscapes with the dawn coming up over the downs a great gush of gold, not a soul would look at it; but if I took Lady Tomfool, draped her, shoved her in front of a bit of a Greek temple, made her strike some silly attitude, and called her Juno or Proserpine, or Alcestis returned from Hades, all the silly women would crowd round and gape at it, and declare that I had a most classic style.”

Jeffray laughed, and lay back with a thoughtful light in his eyes, as he watched the cloud shadows playing over the sunny heights of Pevensel. Wilson was drumming on the window-sill with his fingers, and still holding the _Annual Register_ upon his knee. He was watching Richard with a grave and bent-browed tenderness, seeming to see in him the spirit of the coming age, when fine gentlemen would give up the carrying of muffs and the writing of odes in imitation of Horace. Men would wake again to the beauty that lived in the woods and upon the mountains. But for the present, Wilson had other duties to perform beside the praising of Jeffray’s poetry. He had been intrusted by Surgeon Stott with the responsibility of breaking the news of Miss Hardacre’s illness to his host. He had desired to put the lad in as good spirits as possible before flinging the unpleasant confession in his face.

“There is no doubt, Richard,” he said, slowly, “that you have the true fire in you. Go on, sir, go on as you have begun, and let the big-bellied academicals snort and blow rhetoric through their noses. But the Muses must go flower-gathering for a moment; I have another matter on my mind this morning.”

There was a forced and suspicious cheerfulness in Wilson’s voice that made Richard Jeffray turn his eyes to him from the slopes of Pevensel. The painter had something of the air of a nurse, who was about to administer physic to a child, pretending barefacedly the while that it was sweet and palatable as sugared milk. Wilson’s eyes were fixed on the _Annual Register_ in his hand; he was turning the leaves and glancing perfunctorily from page to page.

“You are not the only sick person in the neighborhood, Richard,” he said, significantly; “they say that love is wondrous sympathetic, and that your Corydon can feel the toothache that is swelling in his Chloe’s cheek.”

Jeffray stared at Wilson with vague surprise.

“What do you mean, Dick?” he asked.

“Mean, sir! Why, your betrothed, like the sweet lady that she is, has been keeping you company in the matter of boluses and bleedings, that is all.”

“Jilian ill?”

Wilson nodded and exercised his facial muscles in the production of a reassuring smile.

“Miss Hardacre caught the small-pox, sir,” he explained, “but she is facing it famously, and Stott declares her to be out of danger. Let me assure you, Richard, that there is no need for you to distress yourself about the lady. Stott forbade me to mention her illness to you until he felt convinced that she would recover.”

Jeffray leaned back in his chair with a sigh, frowned, and stared fixedly out of the window.

“I must have given it to her, Dick,” he said.

Wilson shut the book up with a snap.

“Nonsense!” he retorted. “Why imagine such a thing? Nothing is to be gained by saddling one’s self with hypothetical responsibilities.”

The sensitive lines about Jeffray’s mouth had deepened, and there was a strained look about his eyes. Wilson, who was watching him affectionately, misread the whole meaning of the mood. He assumed Richard to be in love with Miss Jilian, and magnified his friend’s distress like the warm-hearted fellow that he was.

“Dick.”

“Well, sir?”

“Has she had it badly? Will it—will it disfigure her?”

Wilson shut one eye and sniffed, an expression peculiar to him in moments of deep feeling.

“Confound it!” he said, cheerfully, “why heap up imaginery woes, sir? Stott has said nothing about scars. Besides, my dear friend, the lady will recover, and that is the great thing, eh?”

Jeffray lay back heavily in his chair.

“Yes, that is the great thing,” he answered.

XXIV

Three days after hearing of Jilian’s illness, Jeffray took his first drive with Wilson, in a light chaise that his father had used when his increasing feebleness had debarred him from the saddle. Dame Meg, the most sedate mare in the stable, was between the traces, with Wilson, who was equal to ruling so amiable a lady, in possession of the reins. They rattled through the park and turned down towards Rodenham village, intending to follow the Lewes coach-road as far as the Lane that branched off to Thorney Chapel, a hamlet lying under the southern slopes of Pevensel. Jeffray, who felt the fog shifting from his brain as they rolled along under the open sky, dilated to Wilson on the beauties of the place, insisting that he must paint it, and that he, Richard, would be the purchaser of the picture. He had been striving to persuade the painter to pass the summer at the priory, a kindness that Mr. Dick’s pride found some difficulty in accepting.

As they drove down into Rodenham village several of the women ran out to courtesy to the young squire and grin congratulations at him on his recovery. Richard bowed to them with a pleasant color rising in his cheeks. He was a man whose natural desire was to be loved and trusted by his fellows, and any affection that was shown to him inevitably kindled a kindred feeling in his heart. On the steps of the Wheat Sheaf they saw George Gogg standing, his hands thrust into his breeches-pockets under his apron, and a blackened clay pipe between his teeth. Jeffray bade Wilson draw up before the inn while he spoke sympathetically to the old man on the loss of his daughter. George Gogg’s face looked flushed and sodden as though he had been drinking heavily to drown his thoughts. His blue eyes, that seemed to see everything and understand nothing, stared blankly at the roofing of the village pump.

“Well, sir,” he said, “Parson Sugg tells me as how it is God’s way of doing things, and I reckon it is a comfortable sort of notion that no man can quarrel with. I mus’ say my poor wench was a purty wench, and I reckon she won’t disgrace ’em up above in the matter of looks. Anyway, the angels have got her, sir, for she was a gal as never did nobody any harm. Her old father can best say ‘hallelujah,’ and think a bit more of trying to climb up after her, and with Parson Sugg’s leave, sir, I’ll hang on to his coat-tails till I feel a bit surer of my feet. Will it please your honor to take a glass of wine?”

Jeffray shook Gogg’s hand sympathetically, and declined the courtesy.

“You have your boy, Gogg,” he said, kindly.

“Yes, I have the boy, sir, and he’s a stocky lad, though a bit fond of helping himself to other folk’s fruit. I am glad to see your honor looking so fit and hearty.”

“Thank you, Gogg, I am nearly myself again.”

“And I hope, sir, you will be soon saying the same of your good lady—Miss Hardacre.”

Jeffray’s face hardened at the innkeeper’s words; the frank, beaming look died out of the eyes, the angles of the sensitive mouth sank instantly. Even this fat fool’s suavity seemed to summon before his eyes all those grim and staring sentimentalities that hemmed him in like a crowd of attorneys. George Gogg’s round person vanished with its white-stockinged legs and dirty apron, and in its place Jeffray beheld the implacable Sir Peter and Mr. Lot’s red and arrogant face. A small crowd of children had gathered about the chaise, their natural impertinence suppressed by a hoped for largesse of pence. Jeffray threw some coppers among them as Wilson flapped the reins on Dame Meg’s back. The brats scrambled and fought for the money, one urchin, a head taller than the rest, concluding the scramble by forcing the pennies from the fists of the feebler competitors. Richard’s munificence had wrought more woe than pleasure. There was much blubbering and squealing, much running together of angry mothers, ready to squabble over their children’s feuds.

There was an amused glint in Wilson’s eyes as he caught a glimpse of Jeffray’s melancholy face.

“See, sir,” he said, “the evils of too promiscuous a generosity. There is about as much evil caused in this world by giving as by grinding. As to that pretty superstition with regard to the beautiful innocence of childhood, it is about as outrageous a myth as ever rose out of the affectations of maternity. Children are generally worse than animals, sir, since they inherit all the devilish and human cunning of their ancestors.”

Jeffray lay back in the chaise as though he were weary.

“What it means to be an idealist!” he said.

“Live on a desert island and you may succeed,” quoth the painter, with a smile.

The day was one of those magical days in May when the earth seems radiant as for a bridal. A pearly haze hung like a great veil of gossamer, tempering the blue of the cloudless heavens. The wind that came from the east was scarcely strong enough to set the bluebells nodding in the woods, or to scatter the fading blackthorn blossom from the boughs. Despite his unlovely recollections of Rodenham village, Jeffray’s spirit kindled as the chaise threaded the green, and he saw the chaffinches darting in the hedgerows, and the larks shivering and singing in the sun. Over the ploughed lands the crops were thrusting up a myriad emerald spears, and already the buttercups were gilding the quiet meadows.

They came to the lane that branched off from the high-road, and wound over green hills and plunged into forest hollows towards the hamlet of Thorney Chapel. The woods rose up before them with all the deepening mystery of May as Dame Meg drew the chaise between the hedgerows. Dome on dome, and height on height, the trees were piled towards the blue. The spirits of spring were spinning everywhere, bronze for the oak, silver and gold for the poplar and the willow, shimmering green for the birch, beech, and thorn. Yonder a great larchwood rose solemn and stiff beneath a thousand emerald spires. Dark yews and pines stood black amid the lighter multitude. About the pillared fore-courts of the forest the gorse was fringed and seamed with gold. Purple orchids had speared through their sheaths. Bluebells dusted each lush green knoll. The broom blazed like living fire.

The lane had turned down from the woods into a shallow valley that ran east and west under the shadows of Pevensel. Meadow-land filled it, with here and there a pine thicket isleted amid the green, while astride the road lay the hamlet of Thorney, some half a score timbered cottages huddled about a tumble-down inn. To the east of the hamlet, and divided from it by a small stream and a fourteen-acre meadow, stood Thorney Chapel, a squat, sombre-colored building of stone with an open belfry and a wooden porch.

A few frowsy women, with children hanging about their skirts, were loitering outside the chapel-gate as the chaise came down the hill towards the hamlet. Wilson, who had a keen scent for all the human interests of life, however trite and humble they might seem, prophesied that a country wedding was in progress.

“To be sure, May is an unlucky month,” he said, with a smile, “but the sun will shine on the bride; and, confound it, sir, the majority of wedded couples might have been tied together in May to judge by the unlucky show they make in after life. See, they seem to be coming out; the brats and the shes are pointing their noses up the path. Let’s stop, sir, and watch.”

The chapel burial-ground was bounded by a low stone-wall, and within two gnarled thorns and a few yews watched over the lichened stones that looked distinctly irreverent in their convivial attitudes. The bell in the open belfry began to clang vigorously. The women and children crowded round the gate, elbowing one another to enjoy one of the rare and elemental sights life in such a wilderness provided.

Wilson had drawn the chaise up under one of the thorn-trees that overhung the wall. He tilted his hat on to the back of his head, dropped the reins, and wiped his forehead with a red cotton handkerchief.

“This would have been a chance for that knave Herrick,” he said, with a wink. “His muse was wanton, but his life was chaste, so he said, sir, the fox. He should have been a pleasant old pagan, should Robert Herrick. He and Mr. Ovid would have made Miss Venus a lovely pair of twins.”

Richard, leaning forward slightly in the chaise, was watching the folk who were filing out of the chapel porch while the bell creaked to and fro in the belfry overhead. There were half a dozen lads and men with flowers in their hats and green jackets on their backs, chuckling and elbowing one another outside the porch. Richard saw the bride come out upon the bridegroom’s arm, a tall, black-haired girl gowned in green, with a garland of flowers on her head, rosemary and ribbons in her bosom. Her face looked strained and white in the sun, her dark eyes sullen and restless, like the eyes of one afraid. Her hand was laid lightly on the sleeve of the bridegroom’s coat, and she seemed to hold apart from him, as though there were more hate in her heart than love.

There was a shout from the lads and men.

“The garters—the garters—”

It was a coarse custom in some country-sides that the oafs should scramble for the bride’s ribbons. One lad, bolder than the rest, seized hold of the bride’s gown, and began to fumble about her ankles. The others followed him, and amid much coarse laughter, struggling and scrambling, the garters were torn from below the bride’s knees. She stood motionless the while, her face flushing crimson, her teeth biting into her lips.

Jeffray’s face was like the face of a man undergoing torture. It was Bess—Bess of the Woods, mocked by this ribaldry, Bess looking miserable and fierce as any Cassandra wedded against her will. Richard’s eyes were fixed on her face as she moved on down the path beside Dan—Dan dressed out in his best clothes, rosemary in his button-hole and ribbons in his hat. Bess held her head very high, looking neither to the right hand nor the left. A few children threw flowers at her as she passed, but she seemed neither to notice them nor the stupid, curious faces at the gate. Limping behind her, bareheaded, came Isaac Grimshaw, his white hair shining in the sun. Solomon and his sons followed with old Ursula and the rest of the forest-folk.

At the gate Black Dan turned suddenly, clawed Bess’s waist, and put up his great, hairy face, sweating with satisfaction, for the bride’s kiss. What followed seemed swift as the flash of a swallow across the calm surface of a pond. Jeffray, looking with terrible earnestness at Bess, saw her face flush scarlet and a fierce flare of hate stream up into her eyes. She twisted herself free of Dan of a sudden, and swept him a blow with the back of the hand across the mouth.

There was a loud burst of laughter from the crowd at the gate. Dan’s face darkened, as though he were minded to return the blow had not Isaac limped in between them and cursed Bess in an undertone. Old Ursula was beginning to snivel, and at the same instant Bess’s eyes fell on the chaise waiting under the shadow of the thorn. She stood rigid, staring at Jeffray, her mouth working, her bosom rising and falling. For the moment the look in her eyes was as the look of a hunted thing ready to run for shelter to Jeffray’s feet. Then the soul seemed to ebb out of her again. She hung her head as though ruined and ashamed, and swayed out of the gate, her hands hanging limply at her sides. Dan followed her, grinning and slouching his heavy shoulders. Isaac, Ursula, and the rest crowded behind them along the road.

Wilson, who had been utterly unconscious of Jeffray at his elbow, laughed cynically, and watched Bess, who was thrusting aside the arm Dan offered her.

“Zounds!” he said, “the wench has a temper; she looks too fine to be broken by that boor. I never saw a woman seem less willing. Why, Richard, lad, what’s amiss with you, eh?”

Jeffray was lying back in the chaise, white as linen, with his eyes half closed. He had bitten his lower lip till the red blood showed in contrast to his gray, strained face.

“I am faint, Dick, nothing more.”

“Let me drive you to the inn and get some brandy.”

“No, no, turn back home. I shall be better with the east wind blowing in my face.”

XXV

Jeffray lay back in the chaise with the landscape moving unmeaningly before his eyes. He felt numb and cold, utterly humiliated for Bess’s sake. Painter Dick, who had scarcely so much as heard of this Belphœbe of the woods, was the last person to suspect that the fierce-faced girl who had smitten her husband on the mouth had any tragic hold over Jeffray’s destiny. The eager joy in the loveliness of the May morning had overtaxed Richard’s strength. Wilson knew something of the exhaustion that may follow even an innocent intoxication of the senses.

As for Richard, he was as a man who had held some rich and precious vase between his hands, gazing at it wonderingly, only to find it slip and shatter itself in fragments at his feet. What had happened in the forest that Bess should have become Dan Grimshaw’s wife? Had she despaired of escaping the man, and in a fit of dumb indifference pledged her troth in token of surrender? Richard’s hope in her rebelled at such a paltry reading of the riddle. No, Bess had more heart, more pride than that. They had tricked her, Dan and old Isaac between them—Isaac, that white-haired and soft-voiced old devil whom he had once taken for a saint. They had tricked her, and this marriage had been the only end.

Question and counter-question played through Jeffray’s brain. Why had not Bess come to him for help? Perhaps the news of his illness had reached her; perhaps she had heard of his betrothal to Miss Hardacre? He had read that jealousy was a strong and subtle passion in a woman, but yet why should she be jealous, unless she loved him? His egotism might be confusing the inspiration. But—had Bess come to Rodenham while he was ill? The thought flashed through Jeffray like the news of a good friend’s death. Why had he never asked so simple a question—and yet surely Peter Gladden would have told him if such a thing had happened! And yet the news of Jilian’s illness had been kept from him till three days ago!

It was nearly noon when the spire of Rodenham church rose up against the blue. Dame Meg was going lazily, the reins slack upon her loins. Wilson, who was whistling an old Jacobite song, glanced curiously at Jeffray from time to time, wondering what made the lad look so fierce.

“You seem more yourself again, Richard,” he said.

Jeffray changed his posture restlessly and unbuttoned his cloak. It is not easy to confide at times even in the best of friends, and sensitive mortals shrink from the first explanatory plunge. Jeffray had not the heart to unburden himself of his misery at that moment.

“I am well enough now, Dick,” he said, quietly.

“You looked deuced green, sir, down by the chapel.”

“Faintness—nothing more.”

Wilson’s words seemed to send Jeffray’s thoughts winging back to the chapel in the valley. He remembered the whole scene as though it had been burned into his brain with fire. That look, so shamed and piteous, that Bess had given him, as though she yearned to him from amid the ruins of her pride! There would be the brutal bride—ale, the lewd jesting, the drinking, the rough, clownish games. Then would come scrambling for the bride’s ribbons and for the rosemary she had worn. Her clean shift would be laid out on the bed all decked with bays and flowers. Cake and wine would be taken betwixt the bellowing of coarse and indecent songs.

Peter Gladden’s placid and imperturbable face seemed to offer an unconscious admonition towards calmness as he came forward to help his master out of the chaise. Jeffray appeared to have become oblivious of the fact that he was a convalescent; he brushed Gladden’s arm aside, threw off his cloak, and tossed it aside in the porch.

“Gladden,” he said, with a peculiar tightness about the mouth, “I want to speak with you alone in the library.”

“At once, sir?”

There was just the faintest shade of curiosity upon the butler’s face.

“Yes, Gladden, at once. Dick, you will excuse me, I have some private business on hand.”

Wilson, who was rubbing Dame Meg’s black muzzle and wondering what spiritual quicksilver had diffused itself in Jeffray’s blood, looked hard at Richard, and warned him not to try his strength too greatly.

“You must keep an eye on your master, Gladden,” he said, with a twinkle. “I thought we should have had him in a dead faint on the road this morning.”

The butler was still standing in the porch, leaning forward slightly from the hips, with an expression of deferential concern on his colorless face.

“Dr. Sugg is in the garden, sir,” he interposed. “Shall I tell him that you are tired or request him to wait till I have received your orders in the library.”

Jeffray frowned and hesitated a moment.

“I will see the rector, Gladden,” he said. “Attend me in the library in half an hour.”