Part 18
Jeffray turned, and leaned upon one hand, looking at the pool and the reflection of the sky that colored the water.
“Did you believe it?” he asked her, quietly.
“Yes, I had to.”
“What did you think?”
“I thought it wonderful that you should have been so kind to me.”
Jeffray plucked at the long grass with his hands, and laughed, and the note of bitterness in his laughter made her understand all that was hidden in his heart.
“You were generous to me, Bess,” he said, grimly; “and how often I have hated myself, you cannot tell. Still, child—” and he looked up at her with brightening eyes—“it is not for me to put the weight upon your shoulders. I do not know whether I shall marry this fine lady. Let us forget her to-night, you and I.”
He might have told Bess that he hated Jilian, for her woman’s instinct had seized the truth, a secret joy finding rebellion easy in her heart. Jeffray had no love for the woman he was to marry, a confession that Bess had almost hoped to hear. She felt now that she could lean on Jeffray, and look perhaps for a more mysterious thing than pity.
Bess understood but vaguely what the future might devise. It was sufficient for her to know that Jeffray’s thoughts were hers and not Miss Hardacre’s. A great barrier seemed to have been beaten down between them, and she felt happier that night than she had felt for many days. They talked on as the twilight gathered, like children beside a deep and treacherous river, the one bank rich with sunshine, the other a chaos of light and shade. As yet they would not dare the deeps. Sufficient unto the hour was their joy in each other’s presence.
When the twilight deepened, Bess went away through the solemn yews, smiling to herself over the new hope born within her heart, while Jeffray rode back like one in a dream through the darkening thickets, and the long, odorous grass towards his home. Before noon next day he had shaken Dick Wilson by the hand, and was travelling over the heavy Sussex roads, Peter Gladden wondering why his master looked so sad.
The night after Bess’s meeting with Jeffray in the yew valley, Dan told his wife that he was going out after wild duck to the Holy Cross pools, and, shouldering his gun, left Bess alone to go to bed. The sky was clear, with a full moon swinging up in the east above the tangled boughs of the pines. Dan slipped away to old Isaac’s cottage with his black spaniel at his heels, and, keeping under the shadows of the orchard, knocked at the heavy door. A candle was burning in the lower room, the pewter and china, the brass work, and quaint furniture showing through the curtainless window. A figure rose up from an arm-chair before the fire, stopped a moment by the table to snuff the candle. Then the bolts were shot back, and Isaac’s white head came peering out into the moonlight. He had a lantern in one hand and a canvas-bag in the other, while with a keen glance at Dan he jerked his head in the direction of an out-house standing in the garden.
“Get the pick and spade, lad.”
Isaac slammed the door after him by the bobbin-cord, and waited by the garden-gate while Dan groped in the shed for the tools. Finding them at last, he swung the spade and pick over one shoulder, and carried the gun sloped over the other. They set off together in the moonlight and took a southward path that plunged into the deeps of Pevensel.
Bess was creaming the milk in the little dairy next morning when Dan came in to her, grinning and looking good-humored. His clumsy shoes were foul with muck from the byre, his shirt open, showing his hairy chest. He hugged Bess, flattening his coarse lips on her cheek, the girl taking the kiss with dull-eyed self-restraint.
“I’ve got a present for ye, Bess.”
The wife kept her color and looked calmly at her husband.
“Ay, and a purty one. You shall be giving me three smacks for it. Come, fetch a glimpse.”
He fumbled in his pocket, his eyes fixed the while on the girl’s face. Bess saw a scrap of gold in his palm, green stones shining like a dog’s eyes in the light. Dan chuckled, his hairy and sweating chest heaving. He held the brooch out to her.
“There’s a purty bauble! A flash bit of stuff! How be you liking it, Bess?”
She took it from Dan’s palm, and, as by instinct, pinned it on the red handkerchief that covered her bosom. The man’s clumsy courting reminded her by contrast of Richard Jeffray. She hated her husband’s sweating bulk and the stare of his eyes.
“I like it well enough, Dan,” she said.
“Now don’t you be for asking questions. Give me the kisses, wench. Lud, but I like ye; I like every limb and tooth of ye, Bess.”
Dan kissed her twice, though she shuddered as his hairy arms crushed her against his chest. When Dan had gone she shook her clothes as though to rid them of the scent of him, and dashed water from the pump into her face. Then she took the brooch, and, standing before the lattice-window with the great beams dark overhead, gazed at it a long while, holding it in the hollow of her hand.
A rush of strange memories had flooded back into her brain, dim and tantalizing, yet full of meaning. This was the brooch she remembered at the throat of the tall lady who had run to comfort her when she had fallen and cut her knees as a little child. How had Dan come by it? To whom had it belonged?
XXX
Jeffray had taken lodgings at Tunbridge Wells over a stationer’s shop, Peter Gladden, pompously indefatigable, having discharged all the petty preliminaries for his master. The windows of the parlor gave a slanting view of the Pantiles, and a broad glimpse of the common, gilded with gorse, its may-trees bursting into snow, the rocks sleeping like toads on the sunny slopes. The woods of Eridge bristled beyond, and Crowborough Beacon climbed purple into the south-western sky. The village with its biblically-named hills seemed gay with spruce gentlemen, beflowered ladies, lackeys, and such gaudy beetles. The frivolous little Sybaris nestled amid the dazzling freshness of spring, orchards still white upon the slopes, flowers thick in every meadow.
It was a dewy morning after rain, the landscape a-shimmer in the sun when Peter Gladden shaved and valeted his master, and prepared him for a parade upon the Pantiles and the public walks where he might study the life of the place. Jeffray, who still wore black and dressed without great respect to fashion, discovered himself scrutinized with some closeness by the smart idlers whose lives appeared consecrated to studying the shape of a buckle or the cock of a hat.
Jeffray sat down on a seat in the public walk and watched the people go to and fro. A strutting, waddling crowd it was, picturesque at a distance, with its brocades and colors, but, like a bold and splashing picture, disclosing its artifices and its flaws to the close observer. The men, with a few signal exceptions, appeared to belong to that indefinable order of beings who combined the semi-sentimental spirit of libertinism with the coarse arrogance of an aristrocratic animal. What thrusting out of elbows was there; what delicate dabbings of the nose with lace; what strutting and smirking; what showing off of legs and gesturings with white ruffled hands! It was a clever crowd, too, with the exception of a few clumsy squires who lumbered through it, and the open-mouthed toadies gaping and ready like stupid codfish for “my lord’s joke.” Shallow and superficial seemed the gay, epigrammatic philosophy of such people. Jeffray felt that fashion was justified of her children, and that even the pageantry of life could not make such mumming bearable.
At three o’clock Jeffray dined at a quiet “ordinary” preparatory to paying a state call on the Lady Letitia. He took his meal in a little white-fronted inn whose casements opened on trim lawns, fruit-trees, and white palings. The beds cut in the grass were bright with pansies, stocks, and arabis. A broad brick path led up to the trellised porch.
Even in this quaint, black-beamed old place the same feeling of artificiality haunted him. The bobbing, scurrying waiter was a servile offence against liberty, while at a table in one corner three young exquisites were discussing the virtues of a new shoe-buckle and the piquances of the latest demi-mondaine of the place. The proprietor of the inn, a fat, tallow-faced foreigner in black, scuttled hither and thither, and beamed with delight when Jeffray spoke to him in Italian. Richard felt that the fellow would have licked the dust off any great, little gentleman’s shoes had his highness honored him with such an order. Money, impudence, and ostentation were the only noble necessities amid such surroundings. Beggared, sea-stained Ulysses would have had the dogs set on him in such a pace.
Richard, after being conducted to the gate by the proprietor, who jabbered Italian, and appeared ready to embrace his patron had not etiquette intervened, strolled down the village towards the Pantiles, and looked for the house where the Lady Letitia was staying. A rat-tat from a brass knocker on a green front door brought Jeffray face to face with the dowager’s footman in cerise and buff. The man’s smug face relaxed into a grin as he bowed Richard into the narrow hall, and surrendered him to the urbanity of Mr. Parsons. The Lady Letitia was at home, and expected a few folk of some consequence to tea and cards. The major-domo dared to assure Richard that her ladyship would be rejoiced at seeing him.
When Jeffray was ushered into his aunt’s room, he found the old lady seated alone at one of the windows overlooking the Pantiles. Two card-tables were set out at the upper end, and a great silver tray ladened with choice china in blue and gold stood on a gate-legged table by the fire. For the rest, the room appeared shabby and colorless, the gilding on the walls dull and cracked, the carpet worn, the brocades and tapestries faded. Certainly its atmosphere was one of genteel elegance, and in a fashionable health resort even a grocer’s parlor was considered elegant. It was the inmates who mattered, not the upholstery and the chandeliers.
The Lady Letitia received her nephew with absolute effusion. She tottered up, putting aside her stick, and held out two gouty hands to him with the smile of a most amiable of grandmothers. The recollection of her hurried flight from Rodenham did not appear to disturb her equanimity, for the old lady had grown accustomed to forgetting “incidents” in her day. She kissed Jeffray on both cheeks, leaving in each case a patch of powder behind, and then held him at arm’s length, gazing in his face.
“Ha, ha, mon cher; why, you look quite brave and well, though a little thin. By the Queen of Hearts, I am overjoyed at seeing you, with hardly a spot or a pock-mark either! You are a credit to your physician, Richard; all’s well that ends well; a wise proverb. And when did you arrive, sir? What, last night! To be sure, Richard, you ought to have shown yourself to a poor old woman earlier. And how is the dear Jilian, is she with you?”
The Lady Letitia, still talking, subsided again into her chair. She looked very yellow and ugly despite her rouge, and she was short of breath, as Richard noticed. Age seemed to be gaining fast on her, and even a liberal remittance from her bankers could not keep her from growing feeble. Jeffray was astonished at the change that even two months had wrought in her. Her fierce, peering eyes were bright as ever, but he could see that her hands trembled, and that a senile tremor was shaking the feathers in her “head.”
“Sit down, nephew, sit down. And how does Miss Jilian like The Wells, sir? You ought to have brought her to see me, Richard.”
Jeffray had settled himself on a stool by the window. He was watching the gay stream of color in the walk below, one hand playing with the hilt of his sword.
“Jilian is at Hardacre, aunt,” he said.
“Indeed, sir, indeed!”
“I was ordered here for my health by Surgeon Stott. It seems a gay place, madam. I have never before seen so many butterflies flitting about together.”
The Lady Letitia’s keen and angular face had taken on an expression of vivid alertness. Her birdlike eyes twinkled over her nephew’s face. Certainly he appeared more melancholy and self-centred than ever, and spoke listlessly, as though some trouble were weighing on his mind. The old lady’s insatiable curiosity was awake on the instant. It was her fate to be forever prying and peering into the affairs of others.
“I hope dear Jilian is well, Richard.”
“Not very well, aunt.”
“Eh, eh! What’s been the matter?”
“Miss Hardacre has had the small-pox.”
“The small-pox!”
“Yes.”
The old lady’s eyes glittered shrewdly. She sat with her hands on the crook of her stick, looking at Richard with penetration. There were cynical and amused wrinkles about her mouth. Jeffray’s melancholy, his air of abstraction, expressed infinite things to the Lady Letitia. She could have chuckled over the apparent fulfilment of her prophecies. Miss Jilian, doubtless, had had her complexion shattered, and Mr. Richard was feeling utterly out of love with her.
“Hum, Richard, mon cher, pardon me, but you look worried, troubled. Will you not confide in an old woman, eh? I have seen a great deal of the world.”
Jeffray, who had been leaning with one elbow on the window-sill, and drumming on the glass with his fingers, turned suddenly, looking vexed and half ashamed. He had still enough mock pride left in him to resent the steady conviction that his elderly relative had warned him very shrewdly. He had always half despised the worldly old Jezebel, but she seemed to have the laugh of him for the moment.
“To tell you the truth, madam,” he said, unbosoming himself with clumsy brusqueness and with an effort, “Jilian has been much disfigured.”
The Lady Letitia leaned forward on her stick.
“There, there, mon cher Richard, I understand.”
“I gave it to her.”
“And now you love her no longer, nephew, eh? Do not contradict me, sir, I can see it in every line of your face. Poor boy! poor boy! It is a mercy that you are not married.”
Jeffray, who had been writhing and reddening before the old lady’s eyes, started and flashed a questioning look at her as the last words were uttered.
“A mercy, madam!” he exclaimed.
“Of course, my dear.”
Jeffray’s upper lip tightened, and he looked sullen about the eyes.
“It was all my fault,” he said. “I suppose I ought to act like a man of honor. I ought to marry her, I know.”
The Lady Letitia actually broke out into a merry laugh. Her eyes twinkled, and she tapped on the floor applaudingly with her stick.
“Richard, mon cher, when will you learn to put on the breeches?”
“Madam!”
“Lud, sir, when will you discover that these silly sentiments, these toys of honor, are only idols invented and decorated by us women to delude and impress the callow male. We must get husbands, and keep ’em, if we can. Foh, sir, better marry a red-cheeked, bouncing wench who wants you because you are a man, than a fine spinster who is hunting for a household and for money.”
Jeffray, sentimentalist that he was, looked surprised and even shocked.
“Why, madam, you are a lady yourself, one of a class, and can you talk like this?”
The dowager chuckled with cynical delight.
“Come, come, Richard; I have played the game, have I not? I have schemed and plotted, tilted my nose, and rustled my silken skirts. Yes, yes. But I know what it is worth, sir; I know the value of a pawn, a bishop, and a king. I have studied the moves, the openings, the finesse, the checkmate. It is only a game that we polite and religious gamblers cultivate. Do not be deluded, sir. Hearts are not broken at five-and-thirty; they are leather at twenty when the modesty dries up. Do you think that Miss Hardacre would marry you if you were a common attorney or a penniless ensign? No, no. The illusions have gone. It is comfort, carriages, servants, baubles, money for cards. That is her disease, Richard.”
Jeffray hung his head and stroked his chin, yet discovered, despite his sensibility, a comforting flavor in the old lady’s words.
“It may be so,” he said, with the air of a fatalist.
The Lady Letitia, however, saw nothing inevitable in the marriage. She cackled with the greatest good humor, and tapped Jeffray’s knee with the point of her stick.
“Dear Lord, Richard, don’t pull such a very long face. Do you think you are the first man who has grown tired of the angel? There is not a more scheming, artful, intrigue-eaten veteran in the county. Why should you marry her because she wants your money? As for a betrothal, nephew, sensible people ought to regard it as a state trial, a bargain that either may break with honor, when it seems likely to prove a bad one. Let the scandal-mongers go hang. When you have money, Richard, you need not be afraid of people’s tongues. Cock your hat at them all, step out and swagger. And how does the noble Lancelot behave to you, sir?”
Jeffray’s mouth hardened as he remembered his cousin’s red face and overbearing manner. The Lady Letitia had struck the right chord. The look on her nephew’s face applauded her diplomacy.
“Do not be browbeaten by that oaf, Richard,” she continued, with much spirit. “Lot Hardacre is a fine fellow to set himself up as a judge of honor. Why, he has jilted three girls to my knowledge, and is content now to amuse himself with farmers’ daughters, without the burdens of matrimony. Stand up to him, nephew; rattle your sword. The more you show your teeth in this world the better will people respect you. The Christian fool is a poor creature. He gets an abundance of kicks, sir, and, by Heaven! he deserves them. Ah, here is my dear friend, Dean Stubbs. Nephew, you must stay and drink tea with us, and take a hand at cards.”
XXXI
The following morning a letter came to Richard from Hardacre, a carefully sealed epistle smelling strangely of musk. He stared at it like a spendthrift eying an unpayable bill, opened the letter as he sipped his chocolate, spread it on the tray before him, and read it grudgingly at his leisure. He was no longer moved to kiss the place where Miss Jilian’s hand had rested. The sentimental infatuation had withered in a week. It had never possessed roots in the natural soil. The letter ran:
“MY DEAR RICHARD,—I was a little surprised to receive the note that informed me that you were proceeding to Tunbridge Wells for your health. Was it shame or delicacy of feeling that prevented you from taking leave of me in person? You must remember how little sympathy you showed me when we first met after my illness. I am ready to pardon you, however, and shall expect more sensibility in you in the future.
“Doubtless you will be rejoiced to hear that I am in good health, and that my poor complexion promises to improve. The great Dr. Buffin visited me yesterday. He had travelled down by private coach to Lady Polsons, and Lancelot rode over to desire him to call on me at Hardacre. His opinion proved to be most sympathetic and comforting, so that you can rejoice with me in my fresh flow of spirits.
“Is that terrible old woman—your aunt—at The Wells? Let me warn you against her, Richard. She has led a wicked life, and has no respect for God or the truth.”
Here followed certain very proper expressions of affection that made Jeffray wince and color. The letter ended with a veiled threat, the significance of which the man was world-wise enough to understand. He suspected, and suspected rightly, that Miss Hardacre was not singly responsible for the document before him. He had received letters from Jilian of old, formless, feeble, and vaporish things, indifferent as to spelling, commonplace as to style. Richard imagined that some family friend had collaborated with her in the production of the letter, and his docility was not increased by the impression.
Needless to say the Lady Letitia was permitted to read the epistle, and the unflattering reference to her morals brought the light of battle into the old lady’s eyes. She smiled very grimly at her nephew, tapped on the floor with her crooked stick, and desired him to state what he thought of Miss Hardacre’s letter. Richard had been watching the people parading on the Pantiles, looking morose and melancholy, a man with a growing grievance.
“You will see, madam,” he said, turning restlessly in his chair, “that Miss Hardacre’s complexion is likely to improve.”
The dowager sniffed, and made an irritable gesture with the letter.
“So she writes, Richard,” she retorted.
“Dr. Buffin is a physician of experience.”
“An old mollycoddle, sir, fit to treat a cold in the head. He is one of those gentlemen who takes two guineas for telling people just what they wish to hear. But supposing the lady’s complexion mends, Richard, will your love mend with it?”
This was a home-thrust, and Jeffray’s face betrayed his inability to parry it. He played with his watch-chain and seals, and looked blank pessimism so far as his affection for Miss Hardacre was concerned.
“I suppose I ought to be ashamed of myself,” he confessed.
“Nonsense, mon cher, nonsense.”
“I cannot help my instincts.”
“Exactly, sir, exactly. Supposing now that you were set down in front of an ugly china cat, and were told that unless you admired and adored it eternally you would be the most dishonorable rascal in Christendom. What should you think, sir?—what should you think?”
The sally drew a smile even from Richard’s melancholy.
“I should feel that the command was unreasonable,” he said.
“Of course, Richard, no one can accomplish the impossible. Love has wings of fire, sir, it does not crawl like a spider in a web. And supposing now that you hesitated about adoring the same china cat, and that a great, red-faced bully stood over you with a whip, and swore he’d thrash you into admiring the monstrosity, what would you do then, Richard, eh?—what would you do then?”
“Rebel, I suppose,” confessed the catechumen, with a frown.
Though sitting as a disciple at his aunt’s feet, Jeffray had no great difficulty in amusing himself reflectively in the village. He walked on the Pantiles, watched the little comedies of life, listened to the music, dined at the various inns, and modestly refused the ogling invitations of sundry damsels in gay gowns and gaudy hats. Twice he attended at the Assembly Rooms with the Lady Letitia, and was not a little amused to find that the old lady had already discovered a rich and pretty rival to outshine Miss Jilian. Jeffray’s pulses remained unstirred by this new nereid. He danced with her twice, found her amiable and commonplace, and laughed with modest incredulity when the dowager rallied him on his chances. A young man in love might vote Dame Venus herself a very prosaic and ordinary person.
Jeffray’s favorite haunt was a rock on the Common, where he could bask in the sun, and look into the blue distance towards Pevensel. Bess was in his thoughts always; in truth, she was thought itself, the very blood within his brain. He rehearsed her every pose, gesture, and expression, the simple and half-tender words that she had spoken to him, the way her eyes grew full of light when they met his. He remembered her bathing at Holy Cross, a white pillar of loveliness glimmering in the sun. He remembered her at Thorney Chapel, fierce, miserable, and ashamed. Sweetest of all were the memories of the night when she had bent over him as he lay in bed, and the day when he had met her in the larch-wood and she had poured out all her despair into his ears.