Part 17

He was still in a fever about Bess, and unable to bear with any calmness the thought of her sacrifice to the lewd cunning of her cousin. Jeffray felt that his word had been pledged to the girl, pledged for her honor’s sake, and that he had failed through circumstance to keep his pledge. The bond was as real to him as his betrothal to Miss Hardacre, and far more real in the matter of romance. On the one hand, he recognized a perfunctory and half-pitying sense of duty; on the other, all the passionate chivalry that had lain latent till now within his heart.

Why should he not desire to befriend the girl in her trouble? Was there any dishonor in the desire, and need the world know how much tenderness must needs be locked and hidden in his heart? He would not make love to her or court her love in turn. And yet was it not possible that he might succor her in her distress, comfort her, lighten her lot a little? He might even protect her from Dan’s brutality, should that savage give him a reasonable and an honorable excuse. Bess was married. So far there was an impenetrable barrier between them. He could not break the gate of fate, but he might touch her hands between the bars.

Nothing was more natural, therefore, to such philosophy than that Jeffray should signalize his return to the saddle by a pilgrimage through Pevensel in quest of Bess. The brisk delight of a canter over the purpling moors was itself a joy to a man who had been three weeks abed. How the larks sang, and how the broom flashed and glittered in the wind! The cloud galleons bellied out their white sails over the crests of the downs. The diverse greens, checkering the landscape, seemed dusted with gold-dust by the daughters of the dawn. The day brought back to him the warm, romantic splendor of the south, the memory of Sicilian skies and the isles of Greece, a-dream in the blue Ægean.

Richard rode down to the weir-pool, and found no life there save a heron standing in the shallows, the bird rising on its heavy wings and flapping away above the trees. He crossed at the ford and rode in and out among the ruins, scanning the ivied windows and searching behind the crumbling piers that were bearded with ferns. No Bess was there, though the very grasses seemed to smell of the sweet woodland odor of her clothes. Jeffray came into the refectory that was rendered the more mysterious by her dream, but found no red flower blooming, no swarthy girl waiting to lift up her face to his.

He abandoned Holy Cross at last, but loitered at the pool a moment. The water lay like glass above the curling cornice that thundered down into the crackling foam below. The grass-land was ablaze with gold, deep, dewy, the grass-land of a dream. Jeffray was wondering within himself whether he should take the path that led up towards the hamlet, in the hope that Bess might be coming to the ruins. Crossing the ford again, he plunged upward into the woods, not guessing at the moment that his heart’s desire was very near.

It was at the winding down of the path into a little dell in the midst of a larch-wood that Richard, with a sudden leap of the heart, saw a streak of color coming amid the trees. The tall, stiff trunks crowded all around the dell that lay like a green bowl under the vaultings of the boughs above. Wild hyacinths spread a blue mist over the lush, green grass, and a few late wind-flowers were scattered like snow-flakes under the trees.

Jeffray had reined in instinctively. Bess was coming down the path, walking with her head bowed down, breaking a dead bough in pieces between her hands. She wandered aimlessly from side to side, as though life had little purpose for her now. A red scarf covered her shoulders and was knotted over her bosom, her brown neck bare, the black masses of her hair shining in the sunlight, an errant strand or two falling down each cheek.

Jeffray’s black mare tossed her head, the rattling of the bit and bridle causing Bess to start and look up rapidly. She had come to a place where the knotted roots of a fir ran across the path, the ground falling away on the farther side and making a species of rough dais. She stood motionless, leaning forward slightly, her eyes fixed on Jeffray with wondering steadfastness. For a moment they looked at each other, with no sound to break the silence save the soughing of the wind in the tree-tops overhead.

Jeffray dismounted, left the mare loose, and went slowly towards Bess. Her eyes were still fixed steadily on his, yet she seemed to quail a little and grow pale as he drew near to her. Richard could see her trembling excitement, her hands opening and shutting spasmodically as she stood above him in all the swarthy splendor of her loveliness.

“Bess.”

She gave a sudden, low cry, twisted away from him, and, throwing her arms up against the trunk of the fir, leaned against it with her cheek against the rough, brittle bark. Jeffray’s hands fell limp to his sides. He stood looking at Bess helplessly, as though shocked and baffled by her deep distress, knowing not for the moment what to do or say.

It was not long before she seemed to master herself, and, falling aside from the trunk of the tree, turned a dull and almost sullen face to his.

“I did not think I should see you to-day,” she said, with monotonous steadiness.

Richard, hot and cold by turns, watched her earnestly.

“I came to try and find you, Bess,” he answered.

“Find me!”

There was an indescribable ring of self-scorn in her voice, though she carried her head more bravely and labored less with her breathing.

“Am I worth finding, Mr. Jeffray?”

“I have been much troubled for your sake, Bess.”

She flashed a wonderful look at him, her eyes lighting up like water in the sun. It was sympathy she needed, and the flow of a friend’s words.

“Ah, you are very good to me,” she said.

“I gave you a promise; I failed to keep it, and I am sorry.”

Jeffray stood like a man confessing his dishonor, for the girl’s self-shame had shaken him, and her eyes were fixed upon his face. She stepped down with sudden noiselessness and stood close to Jeffray, bending towards him a little.

“I know,” she said, hurriedly. “Yes, you were ill; you could not help me; it was no fault of yours. You would have helped me, yes; I know that, and—and I thank you.”

She hung her head again, and swung away from him with a look of miserable and overpowering shame. Her eyes were dull and tearless, her mouth bitter and very sullen. Jeffray stretched out his hand and touched her arm.

“Bess.”

She turned her head and looked at him with longing, the color rising to her face.

“Bess, I can’t bear it, this misery of yours. I heard all after I saw you at Thorney Chapel. They tricked you, Dan and Isaac together. It should have been otherwise had I not been in bed.”

A peculiar light kindled in the girl’s eyes. It seemed born of wonder, of incredulity, and some subtle and uprushing joy. Was her shame bitter, then, to this earnest-faced man, so bitter that it could make him stammer, grow fierce, and look at her in a way that made her whole body tingle? Warmth seemed to spread from her heart, up through her brown neck, through all her flesh till she felt alive to the eyes that gazed at hers.

“Mr. Richard—”

“Yes.”

She drooped a little towards him, her hands hanging passive, her lips growing full and tender again, her eyes losing all their thick and sullen thoughtfulness.

“I have been very miserable. I had one joy left to me—”

“Bess.”

“The hope that I might see—see you—again. Yes, every day, every day when I could escape from Dan, I have come down through the woods to Holy Cross.”

Jeffray was standing with his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on Bess’s face. She moved still nearer to him, speaking hurriedly, passionately, as though afraid that he might stay her words.

“Yes, they took me away. I fought, but they were too strong for me. Dan had tried to bring me to shame, and I had run away—to you—to save me. And then, and then—you can see—you can understand—”

She threw up her arm with a great catching of her breath and covered her face. Jeffray, feeling like a man who has drunk of the wine of the immortals, held out both his hands to her with a hoarse cry.

“Bess. Listen to me. Before God—I want to help you.”

She rocked to and fro a moment, then dropped her arm, and looked at him with an almost childish trust.

“I must see you again, see you—soon.”

“Where?”

“Not at Holy Cross, no, it is too near. There is the Hermit’s Rock in the yew valley—above Thorney Chapel—”

Jeffray had straightened up with the air of a man ready to march with a forlorn hope.

“I know it,” he said.

“It is a wild place. I can fool Dan. I will be patient.”

She seemed to be plotting it all with all the passionate and ready ardor of her heart. To Jeffray even this perilous and solemn complicity was very sweet. His reason appeared to have been heated to white heat and cooled again like a tempered sword to serve him.

She looked at him dearly, as though he held all the warmth and light that life could give.

“I will ride to the yew valley every evening—till—”

“Till?”

“You can come.”

A great sigh escaped her. She drooped her face nearer to his, her lips apart, her eyes shining.

“I shall come,” she said.

XXVIII

Meanwhile, Richard received a sealed and perfumed note from Miss Jilian bidding him visit her at last at Hardacre. Jeffray, who felt cold and reluctant when he read the letter, did not guess how much plotting and planning, how many fears and heart-searchings had been squandered over that simple sheet of paper. Poor Jilian had been pressed by Lot to send for Jeffray before her inclination was mature. She had desired to wait till her face was fairer, but her Ulysses of a brother willed it otherwise, being suspicious of Richard’s faith. He argued that it would be better for the lad to see Jilian soon and be impressed by the trouble he had brought on her. Jeffray was an amiable fellow with a wealth of sentiment in his blood. And then when Miss Hardacre’s looks improved, as improve they would, her cousin might be so charmed with the change as to fall in love with the betterment of the bargain. There would have been much wisdom in Lot’s strategy had he not been ignorant of the subtle undercurrent in the romance. He counted on his cousin’s impressionable good-nature, and he might have counted on it with some confidence but for the existence of Bess of the Woods.

It was as unpropitious a moment as fate could have found for thrusting him back upon his allegiance to poor Jilian.

Miss Hardacre had spent two hours at her toilet that morning, and had warred with nature to the best of her ability. She had crimped her short aureole of hair, daubed her cheeks, salved her lips, and used pearl powder for her neck and arms. She wore a green gown that morning covered with red carnations, a red silk hoop, and a band of black velvet about her throat. In the dusk she might have passed for a comely woman, but the full glare of day dissolved the dream.

Jilian chose the red parlor for the receiving of her betrothed, since the coloring of the room was red, damask curtains tempering the white light and diffusing a glow over her face. Seated on a high-backed chair before the harpsichord, she let her fingers idle over the keys, while she listened every now and again for the sound of hoofs on the gravel space before the house. It was a little before noon when she heard the clangor of hoofs passing under the gate-tower into the paved court-yard. To ease her nervousness and the sense of tightness over her heart, she broke into a ditty from the “Beggar’s Opera,” her eyes brightening with the fever of waiting. She heard Lot’s voice rising from the hall below, the sound of footsteps on the stairs, a quiet knocking at the door. The handle rattled. Pushing back the chair, she stood up, trembling, her hands opening and closing, her lips dry. She saw Jeffray standing on the threshold, one hand on his sword-hilt, the other holding the lappet of his coat.

“Richard!”

Unconsciously, Jilian had put all the strained self-shame of her poor soul into the cry. She took two steps forward, holding out her hands. Jeffray closed the door slowly, like a man seeking to compose his thoughts. He turned and looked at Jilian. Unwittingly, in her agitation, she had taken her stand where a sunbeam slanted full upon her face, disclosing all its seamed and pitted ugliness with a brilliance that was almost brutal.

A woman’s eyes are quick in piecing together the emotions on a man’s face. She saw Jeffray start, saw him catch his breath, saw the critical yet instinctive repulsion in his eyes. He appeared to conquer himself by an effort, yet the smile he gave her was soulless and unreal. She said nothing as he came forward, bent, and kissed her hand.

“Richard, mon cher, and are you glad to see me?”

She spoke very softly to him, as she turned aside and walked a little unsteadily to a settle standing by the harpsichord. Jeffray felt a great flush of shame and a miserable sense of reluctance that made him gauche and clumsy. He followed her as though under compulsion, and sat down beside her on the settle.

“Of course I am glad to see you, Jilian,” he said.

Miss Hardacre’s hands were fidgeting in her lap. She had prepared a gay and airy part, but all her brave impudence and coquetry seemed to have deserted her. She was too conscious of her ugliness; the inspiration of vanity was dead within her. The pretty puppet could no longer ply her fan, flash her gray eyes, simper, and show her teeth. She seemed to realize of a sudden that courteous pity alone could make a man look kindly at her face. Jeffray’s first stare had told her that.

“I have been very ill, Richard,” she said, almost humbly, looking at him a moment as for sympathy, and then lowering her eyes.

Jeffray was sitting very stiffly on the settle, looking like a man who had been offered a cup of poison or the renunciation of his faith.

“I know; I am sorry; it was all my fault,” he answered her.

There was a lack of tone and of vitality about the reply that made Jilian shrink.

“I am not what I was, Richard,” she said, pressing her handkerchief against her lips and leaving a vermilion stain on the cambric; “no doubt you find me greatly changed.”

Her eyes challenged him with the shallow despair of a vain woman. Jeffray reddened, and could not meet her look as he stammered out feeble contradictions.

“You are not recovered yet, Jilian, and Lot hinted that I might find you a little changed. I am sorry; believe me, I am. Why, you don’t look so pale as I expected, nor yet so thin. We shall soon have you well and handsome again, and all the women round about will be for envying you.”

It was a poor and jerky apology enough, and Miss Hardacre was not for one moment deceived by it. The boy was shocked, disgusted, even as she had feared he would be, and no doubt he was wondering how he could marry such a painted hag. Jilian imagined that she understood the whole of Jeffray’s heart, and that he shrank from her just as the rest of the world might shrink. From humiliation her mood turned suddenly towards impatience, and from impatience to reproachful bitterness.

“It is very hard, Richard,” she said, keeping her eyes fixed upon her satin slippers.

“Hard, Jilian?”

She flashed up petulantly, her eyes beginning to glitter.

“To be sure, I am ugly now, an old fright; I shall never be pretty again. Don’t deny it, Richard; I saw it all in your eyes from the first moment. Yes, I am ugly, and very miserable, and it is hard and bitter and cruel. I am beginning to hate myself just as everybody else will hate me.”

Jeffray hung his head, looked as ashamed and contrite as though every word accused him of dishonor. Yet for the life of him he could not forget Bess Grimshaw’s face, the scent of her clothes, the glimmer of her hair. The generous hypocrisies died unuttered on his tongue. His sincerity grappled him; he was sorry for Jilian, but he could not do his pity justice.

“It is all my fault,” he said, dejectedly.

Miss Hardacre’s fingers were crushing her handkerchief into a ball. The interview was proving too bitter to her, and she was beginning to revolt against Jeffray’s apathy. Why did he not try to comfort her? She would never have believed that Richard had so hard a heart.

“You are very cold, cousin,” she said.

Jeffray blushed, and looked almost afraid to meet her eyes.

“Of course, men change. They only care for a pretty face, and love only so long as the woman pleases them. Is not that so, Richard?”

“For God’s sake, Jilian, don’t talk like this—”

“Yes, yes, that is very well, but can I—a woman—help seeing the truth?”

Jeffray drew a deep breath and leaned back against the harpsichord.

“I know it is all my fault,” he said, “and I am very miserable over what has happened. Leave me alone a moment, and let me take it all in. I am just as unhappy as you are, Jilian; it is no use my pretending that I do not see the change in you.”

Jeffray, full of the egotism of a man in love, could not have spoken more biting words. Jilian started as though he had struck her, rose up from the settle with a sudden dignity and restraint that made Richard appear wholly in the wrong. She made him a slight courtesy, turned on her heel, and walked towards the door.

“To be sure, you must think it over, cousin,” she said, with a vicious sneer; “remember that I am ugly, and remember also that you have told me so.”

“Jilian!”

“Think it over, sir, but do not imagine that I am going to be thrown aside like a soiled shoe. I have more pride, more conceit, than that. No, I have no wish to have all the women jeering and laughing behind my back. You understand me, Richard, eh? Very good. Think it over, by all means, but remember that we are betrothed.”

“I have not forgotten it, Jilian.”

“Very good, cousin. I will excuse you from the discomfort of studying my ugliness any further to-day. Sir Peter and Lot will be glad to see you to dinner.”

When Jeffray left Hardacre House that afternoon, after enduring a somewhat embarrassing interview with Sir Peter and Mr. Lot, he was filled with mingled feelings of recklessness and shame. He almost detested Jilian for her reproachful bitterness and her threats, forgetting to pity her now that she had shown the will to govern him. Moreover, Lancelot, who had seen his sister in one of the galleries after her meeting with Richard, had treated his cousin with ominous and threatening courtesy. Three months ago Jeffray would have blushed crimson at the thought of wounding the sensibilities of his kinsfolk. Any suggestion of personal dishonor that his conscience might then have flung at him would have brought him to the penitential kissing of Miss Jilian’s hands. Now, the swarthy splendor of a single face had blinded him to all else as a great light blinds the eyes. He hated Sir Peter, he hated Lancelot, he hated his old self, he almost hated Jilian. Was he not to see Bess that very evening? Was not Pevensel before him with all its mystery, its glamour, its romance?

But Jeffray did not find Bess in the valley of yews that evening. She had been unable to escape Dan’s vigilance and had bided at home, hoeing the weeds in the garden sullenly. As for Richard, he rode back to Rodenham very sad and weary, and feeling sick and faint as though he had overtaxed his strength.

XXIX

Surgeon Stott, that blue-coated member of the company of surgeons, pounced upon Jeffray next morning, and delivered a most professional condemnation of his patient’s method of convalescence.

“Too much riding—too much riding, sir, eh? Hardacre House yesterday; fourteen miles there and back! Not very gentle exercise, to be sure.”

Richard Jeffray had the mopes that morning, and Stott fully believed that he knew the cause thereof. He sniffed, pulled out his gold repeater, and sat with his head cocked on one side as he held Jeffray’s wrist between his thumb and fat, pink fingers.

“I am going to order you to The Wells, sir,” he said, bluntly.

“The Wells!”

“Yes, for the good of both parties. Pardon the suggestion, but ladies need time for proper and reasonable convalescence. Let there be an interlude, Mr. Jeffray; I recommend it as a man of sentiment.”

Jeffray caught the surgeon’s meaning, and discovered himself not so very prejudiced against the proposal, in that it offered him time for procrastinating with the future. He had had but little sleep the previous night, with Jilian’s scarred face haunting him and her patheticisms and her sneers ringing changes in his brain. He experienced an almost fierce desire to escape for a while from the importunate responsibilities of the present.

“Very probably, Stott, the change would do me good,” he said.

“Certainly, sir, certainly; pack your books away, and leave the thinking part of you at home. That is my advice—take it or leave it, as you like.”

Jeffray flattered the surgeon by acknowledging his authority, and by straightway deciding to join the Lady Letitia at The Wells for one month. He was glad of the excuse to commend himself to Jilian by letter, pleading ill-health and Surgeon Stott’s advice. He imagined that his absence might prepare Miss Hardacre for a possible parting, and at least he would gain leisure to face the future calmly and without haste.

He rode out that same evening, and found Bess in the valley of yews, a dusky fiord that ran from the green levels about Thorney Chapel into the towering gloom of Pevensel. Hundreds of yews were crowded about piled-up rocks that looked like the broken towers and battlements of a ruin. A path ran amid the trees, leading to a little glade where a pool covered with the white stars of the water-crowfoot glimmered before the old, rock-cut hermitage.

She started up on seeing him, the blood in her cheeks, sunlight in her eyes. Jeffray was as red as Bess, the sense of her nearness adding the charm of strangeness to the meeting.

“So you have found your way?”

She held out her hands, and Jeffray took them, brown and rough-skinned as they were. They seemed to smell of new mown hay and milk to him, and of the pots of musk that grow in cottage windows.

“I rode here last night, but you did not come.”

“No, I could not get free from Dan.”

They stood looking at each other awhile in silence, as though letting the subtle consciousness of love steal in upon their hearts. All about them the brown trunks of the yews broke into sheaves of dusky pinnacles and slender spires. The silence of the place was as the silence of some sacred wood. The grass grew green and deep in the glade, while the thickets above seemed dusted with lapis lazuli, so thick were the bluebells.

Bess seated herself on a stone beside the pool, Jeffray lying in the grass at her feet. The happy abandonment of children was theirs, for the sordidness of life seemed far from them for the moment. Bess’s eyes darkened a little when Jeffray told her of Surgeon Stott’s warning to him that morning, but there was no distrust upon her face. Stott’s month at The Wells was dwindling to vanishing point in Jeffray’s mind as he talked to Bess, and watched the play of feeling on her face.

It was then that Bess spoke for the first time to Jeffray of Miss Hardacre. She had thought often of the great lady in her silks and brocades queening it in the stately house guarded by its ancestral trees. Bess wished to hear Jeffray speak of this woman whom he was to marry, and to watch his eyes to see whether they lit up like a lover’s eyes.

Jeffray’s face and mood changed on the instant; he was no longer the dreamer watching the sun sinking behind the yews.

“Why do you ask me about Miss Hardacre?”

Bess saw that the thought was bitter to him, and yet felt glad at heart.

“I know,” she said, slowly, “you are to marry her.”

“Who told you that?”

“Miss Sugg, before—”

“Before you married Dan?”

“Yes.”