Part 19

What wonder that Miss Hardacre’s influence grew less and less, and that mere airy and fragile sentiments weighed like gossamer against the gold of love. Time and the Lady Letitia appeared to be clearing the metaphysical fog from Jeffray’s brain. The dark melted, the noon sun shone. True, he could not marry Bess, but his love for her should save him from perjuring himself by an alliance with Jilian. The truth was as plain as an Egyptian obelisk against the desert sky. Why should he shut his eyes and wander on, hating himself, and hating Jilian. What—and did he not pity her? Yes, in a vague and passive way, remembering ever the Lady Letitia’s cry of “money,” and Mr. Lancelot’s insolent face.

It was the fourth day of Jeffray’s sojourn at The Wells when the Lady Letitia succeeded in convincing him, somewhat dramatically, of how he was being exploited by the gentry at Hardacre. The dowager produced a letter from her reticule and handed it to Richard with a grim twinkle in her shrewd old eyes. It was a letter written from a confidential friend of Lot Hardacre’s to a confidential friend of the Lady Letitia’s. Jeffray’s betrothal had been broached in a gossip between the dowager and her confidant, and the letter had been confided to the old lady’s care, on the understanding she was on no account to disclose its contents to her nephew. The Lady Letitia’s jesuitical conscience disposed very easily of the promise, and Jeffray was admitted behind the scenes.

The passages that concerned him ran as follows:

“Jill Hardacre, that gay spinster, has had the small-pox, and looks—so folks say—like a pitted orange with a wig. She is betrothed, as you have probably heard, to a wealthy young sapling whose grandsire made a fortune in iron. It seems that the young gentleman is inclined to withdraw from the match, since the sweet maid is grievously disfigured. But our friend Lancelot thinks otherwise in the matter. Jilt my sister, sir, egad, but you may bet your last guinea that he won’t. The lad is a soft young fool, and will faint, damme, at the sight of a sword.”

“So you see, sweet coz, that the noble Lot intends to pin the calf to his promise in swaggering fashion. Well, Jill Hardacre has had her day, and this promises to be her last and final hunting-party. Now or never is the cry. The Hardacres want money, and the young squireling has a veritable pot of gold. Amusing, eh? Life is a merry jest, to be sure.”

When Richard had read the letter through he handed it back very quietly to the dowager. His face had hardened to that white, expressionless mobility that bespeaks action. The mouth was no longer soft and plastic, the eyes full of melancholy and reflective doubt.

“Well, Richard, what is to be done?”

Jeffray stood up and stretched himself.

“Take fencing lessons,” he said, curtly.

“Ah ha, that is the right spirit!”

“I could handle a sword in Italy, but am stiff and out of play. I suppose there is a fencing-master in the place?”

The old lady’s eyes glittered, and she looked at her nephew approvingly.

“Yes, a Frenchman, a wonderful fellow, I believe. I will tell Parsons to go at once and find where he lodges.”

“Thanks, madam. I will have a week’s practice with him before I return to Rodenham.”

XXXII

The lilac had fallen and the roses were in bloom when Jeffray took a stately and affectionate leave of the Lady Letitia, and journeyed back to Rodenham with Peter Gladden in his coach and four. The dowager had appeared sincerely sorry at Richard’s departure. He had refused to permit her to repay him the two hundred guineas that she had borrowed at Rodenham; moreover, he had made the old lady several handsome presents, lace and jewelry being still acceptable to the belle of seventy. Day by day the Lady Letitia diligently applauded Jeffray’s strengthening spirit of revolt, trumpeting in his ears the preposterous insolence of Mr. Lancelot’s contempt, and bidding him work out his own salvation. Her only regret appeared to have been that Richard had refused her the joy of choosing him a wife.

Dick Wilson remarked the change in Jeffray when they walked in the garden on the evening of his return. The man’s face and figure appeared to have gained alertness and decision. There was a new suppleness and grace about his carriage that contrasted with the half-slouching and dreamy melancholy that had burdened him before. His eyes were keen and alive to the things about him. He carried his head high, and spoke with more decision than of old.

“I must confess, sir,” said the painter, frankly, “that the air of Tunbridge seems to have suited you.”

Jeffray smiled as they paced the terrace side by side.

“I have been taking fencing lessons, Dick,” he said.

“Fencing lessons, sir?”

“From D’Aiglan, the Frenchman. He has done me a great deal of good. I am ready for any emergency.”

Wilson elevated his eyebrows expressively, and looked at Jeffray with curious intentness.

“I always thought that you were a man of peace, sir,” he said.

Jeffray laughed rather grimly, and, drawing Wilson away into the yew walk, told him briefly the whole tenor of his love affair with Miss Hardacre. He was beginning to learn that truth and the sword are much akin, and that brave candor is often more magical than sentimental secretiveness. Wilson, much astonished, plodded to and fro at Jeffray’s side, fingering his chin and emitting an expressive interjection from time to time. He was a broad-minded student of the world’s whims and weaknesses, and his sympathies were wholly with Jeffray in the matter.

“What are you going to do, sir?” he asked at last.

“Tell the truth as kindly as I can, Dick, and defy this fire-eating cousin of mine. I have no intention of financing the family by marrying the daughter.”

“You have made up your mind, eh?”

“I am tired, Dick, of contemplating a life-long hypocrisy.”

Wilson brushed the tobacco ash and snuff from his waistcoat, whistled a few lines of a favorite ditty, and then laid his hand on Jeffray’s shoulder.

“I think you are right, sir,” he said.

“Thanks, Dick, thanks.”

“There is too much damned trafficking in matrimony in this world. I shall never forget old Hogarth’s preaching. Unless God and the heart are in the thing, the bond is but a pledge to the devil.”

Jeffray looked Wilson straight in the eyes.

“I am glad to hear you speak like this, Dick,” he said; “it strengthens me.”

“And I am glad, sir,” quoth the painter, “that you are one of the few people who can tell the truth.”

Meanwhile Bess had been watching and waiting in Pevensel for Jeffray’s return, eager to show him the brooch that Dan had given her—a cross within a circle of gold studded with emeralds. The brooch had proved to her that her memories of the past were not mere dreams begotten out of restless fancy of childhood. Perhaps old Ursula was not her aunt, and perhaps Dan and the forest-folk had no blood communion with her, as she had been taught to believe. Once she showed the brooch to Ursula, watching the old woman’s wrinkled face keenly the while. The crone had peered at it with some uneasiness, working her toothless mouth and fidgeting at her apron-strings with her fingers. She had asked Bess how she had come by the bauble, and, being told that it was Dan’s present, she had held up her hands, turned her back on the girl, and refused to utter another word on the matter. Ursula’s attitude puzzled Bess. She went solemn-eyed through the early days of June, thinking of Jeffray and the past, and wondering what would happen in the future.

Twice she had quarrelled fiercely with Dan since he had given her the brooch, and it was only by grappling her passions down that she could keep her hands from shedding blood. Silence and an attitude of meek submission went sorely against the temper of her soul. It was only the dire necessity for dissimulation that held her quiet under her husband’s bullyings. For bully her he did after the fashion of a great, clumsy savage, proud of his own huge strength and the prerogatives thereof. It pleased the oaf to fancy that he was taming Bess as he would have tamed a bad-tempered filly; that he was breaking her spirit, and fastening his bondage upon her with the masterful complacency of a lord and a possessor. Like a great ape he would grin and mock her, tweak her hair, pinch her arms, twit her with his triumph, and gloat over the passivity that seemed to flatter his strength. Now and again Bess’s anger would blaze up in hot revolt, a passion-play that lent a charm to the brute pride of conquest. He believed that he had tamed and subdued the girl, not suspecting that he was only stacking the pent-up fire within her heart.

It was not till Jeffray had ridden on three successive evenings to the yew valley that Bess was able to slip away from the hamlet to meet him. It was a still evening in June, the grass knee-deep in the golden meadows, the scent of the white may heavy on the air. The voices of the birds alone broke the deep silence of the summer woods. The black spires of the yews and their massive limbs were streaked and eyeleted with the flooding gold of the western sky.

Jeffray came first to the trysting-place, feeling like a man who has drunk a bumper of sparkling wine. He tethered his horse deep in one of the thickets, and went and stood in the entry of the Hermit’s Cave, a rough chamber cut in the rock, with a low doorway and a mere slit of a window. The air was damp, pungent, and refreshing. Below lay the pool covered with white water-weed, where the old recluse of yore had drawn his water and kept his fish. There was still the outline of a cross cut in the wall of the chamber, and a broken bench of stone jutted out beneath the window.

Richard straightened suddenly as he leaned against the rough jamb of the doorway, and stood listening with a smile hovering about his mouth. Some one was singing in the yew wood—an old country song, simple and full of pathos. The mellow and half-husky voice rose and fell amid the shadows of the trees.

Soon he saw her coming down the path, the gnarled and rugged trunks and spreading boughs building a sun-splashed colonnade towards the pool. Jeffray went down through the tall grass and met the girl at the edge of the wood.

They did not touch each other’s hands, but stood quite close together, smiling shyly like a pair of children. Neither seemed to have a single word to say for the moment. It was all silent intuition with them, a glance, a sense of nearness, a rush of blood to the face. They turned and walked towards the great stone by the pool. Bess sat down there. Richard found himself beside her, a foot of the bare rock between them.

The girl’s eyes were searching his face.

“You look quite brown and strong,” she said.

“Yes, I am strong again,” he answered her.

“Have you ridden here—before?”

“The two past evenings. I had a feeling that I should find you to-night.”

“Dan went out into the woods, and so—I came.”

They sat in silence a moment, looking at each other, and hearing no sound save the occasional plash of a fish leaping in the pool. Bess’s fingers were feeling for the brooch at her bosom. She unpinned it, and, holding it in her palm, held it out to Jeffray with a smile.

“Dan has given me this,” she said.

Their fingers touched and lingered an instant in the contact.

“It is the brooch I remember—”

“Yes—”

“At the tall lady’s throat who was near me when I was a little child.”

Jeffray, who was staring at the thing, glanced up suddenly into Bess’s face. A look of mute inquiry, of significant sympathy, flashed between them.

“How did the brooch come to Dan?” asked the man.

“I do not know.”

“Strange. Perhaps—”

“Dan went out one night, and gave me this in the morning. Where it came from I cannot tell, unless Isaac, his father, gave it him.”

Jeffray sat in thought, balancing the brooch in his palm, and gazing out over the still waters of the pool. Bess watched him, her hands resting on the stone, her brown forearms bare to the elbow.

“Bess,” he said to her at last.

She swayed slightly towards him, her eyes on his.

“Can you discover how Dan came by the brooch?”

She frowned, and her mouth hardened; it was not in her heart to seek anything from Dan.

“I will not ask anything from him,” she said.

“Why not, Bess?”

“Because I hate him, hate him night and day.”

Richard looked at her almost wistfully.

“Yet you may learn something of your past from him,” he said.

“Yes—”

“You may be no Grimshaw, Bess; you look to have finer blood in you than theirs.”

Bess lifted her head as though some ennoblement would be very sweet to one who felt the shame of her present lot. Any such discovery would lift her nearer to Jeffray and lessen that gulf between them that was ever stretched before her pride.

“I will try,” she said at last—“try what I can learn from Dan. He is a great fool, though he is so strong.”

“And you do not love him any better?”

“Love Dan?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, is there any heart in me that I should love the brute! I have felt near killing him before now.”

Scarcely had this burst of passion spent itself in words when Bess’s face grew bleak and set. She held up a hand and sat listening, rigid yet alert. Jeffray could hear nothing, for his ears were less quick to the sounds of the forest than the girl’s. Only by the look of strained intentness on her face could he tell that she caught sounds that did not reach his hearing.

“What is it?” he asked her, in a whisper.

“I hear a dog panting in the wood.”

“Ah!”

“Where is your horse?”

“Well out of sight of the path.”

“Good. Listen to that!”

The rapid sound of some brute beast’s breathing drew near out of the silence of the wood. Even Jeffray could hear it as he sat with his eyes fixed on Bess’s face. Then a whistle shrilled out from the darkness of the trees, seeming to make the still air quiver. It was Dan’s whistle, and the panting was the panting of his dog.

Quick as thought Bess started up, beckoned to Jeffray, and ran through the grass towards the hermitage. The man followed her, glancing back over his shoulder at the impenetrable shadows of the yews. Bess sprang in up the low steps of the doorway, seized Richard’s wrist as he entered after her, and, with her face close to his, spoke in a whisper.

“It is Dan, curse him!”

“He may not see us.”

“The devil must have put it into the fool’s head to come this way.”

“Shall I slip out and leave you?”

Bess understood the spirit that prompted him, and that it was not cowardice that inspired the question. They were still very close to each other, Bess’s stray side curls brushing Jeffray’s cheek.

“Stay with me,” she said.

“Bess!”

“Stay.”

“I will.”

She flashed a wonderful look at him of a sudden and tightened her fingers for one moment about his wrist. Jeffray colored as he drew his sword and watched Bess move towards the window. Stepping back to where the inner wall of the room lay in deep shadow, he heard the panting of the dog and the rasp of Dan’s gruff voice as he called the brute to heel.

Bess drew back from the window and came gliding along the wall towards Jeffray. He understood that she had caught a glimpse of Dan or of the dog, and that their one hope was that the man might pass by and keep the spaniel at his heel. Bess drew close to Jeffray and leaned back against the wall where the darkness lay. Their hands touched and held each other. A strong thrill passed up Jeffray’s arm. He could feel the warmth of Bess’s body as she half leaned against him. She was holding her breath and watching the stretch of sward that showed through the doorway.

Again they heard Dan calling to the dog. He was passing by the pool, and they could catch his heavy foot-falls on the grass. The footsteps ceased of a sudden, and they could hear the panting of the dog quite near. Jeffray felt the pressure of Bess’s fingers. They looked into each other’s eyes—one long look that seemed to challenge fate.

Dan’s harsh hail rang out again.

“Heel, Doll, heel—you bitch!”

The spaniel whimpered wistfully. They heard her move through the long grass, splash through the shallows of the pool, the sound of her breathing growing less and less. They saw Dan go striding past the doorway, his gun over his shoulder, a hare dangling by the legs from his left hand. In a flash he was gone, the black spaniel padding at his heels and looking back restlessly from time to time.

Bess gave a great sigh and leaned heavily against Jeffray. Somehow the man’s arm had crept round her, and he felt the full ebb and flow of her breath. The warmth of her body seemed to steal into him with a sense of nearness and of contact. Her head was half resting on his shoulder, her hair brushing his cheek.

“Bess.”

She turned her head and looked up at him, half wearily, yet with a tired tenderness. Her eyes seemed doubly bright in the cool darkness of the place.

“He has gone.”

“Thank God.”

XXXIII

The abominable and discourteous indifference displayed by the master of Rodenham would have been sufficient to incense a less selfish person than Miss Jilian Hardacre. Three days had passed since Jeffray had returned from The Wells, and yet he had not so much as presented himself at the house of his betrothed. No gentleman’s behavior could have been more deserving of censure, and Miss Hardacre had shed angry tears over the indecent remissness of her lover. As for Brother Lot, the gathering cloud of thunder on his face would have honored the solemn temper of an Epic. Sir Peter and his son took counsel together in the dilemma, and the elder restrained his hot-headed Rupert of a son from galloping straightway to the charge. Sir Peter declared against an immediate recourse to methods of moral torture lest Mr. Richard should complain of provocation. A letter should be despatched from the fair Jilian, requiring Jeffray to pay his respects to her or challenge the peril of her severe displeasure.

When Jeffray returned from the yew valley that night, he found that a servant had left a letter for him from Hardacre. From the warm fragrance of the summer twilight he came into the old library where Gladden had lit the candles in the silver candlesticks. Jeffray threw open the window and stood for a moment looking out into the night. A myriad stars were shining in the dusky vault of blue; dew was in the air; a faint, fresh perfume ascended out of the earth. In the thickets nightingales were singing, and a streak of gold still gleamed in the west.

Jilian’s letter was in his hand. He turned back from the window with a great sigh, and sat down before the bureau where the candles were burning. It was no desire of his to read what was written in his betrothed’s letter. He could picture the bitter words it might contain, and his own conscience hinted at reproaches. Why had Jilian written to him that night, the night of all nights, when the stars seemed afire and the earth smelled of love? Could not the rich joy of it have been his without this note of discord?

Almost savagely he broke the seal and tore open the covering. There was no tremor about his hands as he held the sheet towards the light of the candles.

“RICHARD,—I am amazed that you have not disturbed yourself to visit me, though three days have passed since your return from Tunbridge. Such discourtesy stands in need of explanation. I desire your presence at Hardacre to-morrow before noon. Do not presume to disappoint me.

“JILIAN.”

Jeffray read the letter through twice, and then, holding it for an instant in the flame of one of the candles, tossed it burning on to the polished floor, and saw it blacken to a film of quivering ash. A grim yet half-humorous smile hovered about his mouth. On the morrow he would tell Jilian the truth, and if the noble Lot desired a quarrel, the sooner the feud were recognized the better.

At Hardacre the red may and the laburnum’s gold shone out from dewy depths of green. The white may and the mountain-ash were covered as with driven snow. In the park the chestnuts stood like huge green pinnacles crocketed with ivory and coral. Copper beeches gleamed in the sun. Peonies and poppies were in flower below the terrace, and the walls of the old house itself were red with a hundred roses.

As before, Jilian received Richard in the red parlor, dressed in her best silks and damasks, and looking more the great lady now that her pride had entered zealously into the play. Her complexion appeared to have improved under the arts of the toilet, but the scars and the seams could not be hid. She had made her father and Lancelot promise that they would leave Jeffray to her devices that day. She desired to treat with him at her own discretion, and to leave male blusterings and high-handedness to the future.

Jilian rose from her chair when Richard was announced, swept him a fine courtesy, and then seated herself on a settle by the harpsichord. She noticed that the man looked sad and sullen, stiff and constrained, with no brightening of the eyes. He stood before her with his hat under his arm, fingering the silver buttons on his coat, and staring at her in melancholy silence. He was thinking how strange and elusive a thing was personality, in that a peevish and swarthy face should have changed the temper of his life within three months.

“You have sent for me,” he said, quietly.

The crude formality of these opening words enlightened Miss Hardacre as to the sentiments she might find in him. His face was firm and immobile as marble, and an extreme and studied dignity chastened his habitual and good-natured grace.

“Yes, I have sent for you, Richard,” she said, eying him critically. “It is time that I received some consideration at your hands.”

Jeffray flushed slightly and bowed to her. For the moment there was an uncomfortable and unnerving pause. Jilian was playing irritably with her fan, an indescribable expression of restrained impatience on her face.

“Well, sir, have you nothing to say for yourself?”

Jeffray appeared to straighten his body, brace back his shoulders for the inevitable confession. He looked straight at Jilian, as though compelling himself to the uttermost candor.

“I have something to tell you, Jilian,” he said.

Miss Hardacre was alert on the instant, an unenviable glint in her eyes, one satin slipper tapping on the floor.

“Ah, yes, Richard, I know quite well what you are going to say to me. And so you think, sir, that you can toss me aside like a soiled shoe!”

A shadow as of pain passed across Jeffray’s face.

“Jilian! Believe me, it is no easy thing for me to speak of what has been working in my mind.”

The lady tossed her head, sneered till her teeth showed, and then broke out into a titter.

“And so, Richard, you find that you have been mistaken.”

“That is the truth, Jilian.”

“And do you not think it a pity, sir, that you did not discover this—some months ago?”

Jeffray, hanging his head and looking very miserable, walked to the window and stood staring out of it in silence. The landscape stretched gray and meaningless before his eyes, so hustled was he by his own thoughts. Jilian was watching him with a rapacious air, her painted face looking old and almost shrewish. Truth, like the shield in the fable, bore a different blazoning to these two who studied it from opposing situations.

Presently Jeffray turned from the window, walked back into the middle of the room, with the look of a man determined to speak the last word.

“It is not easy,” he began, “to confess that one has been mistaken.”

“Not easy, Richard, eh?”

“My sense of honor—”

“Your sense of honor, Richard, compels you to make excuses.”

Jeffray colored at the taunt.

“Jilian, I have not come to make excuses.”

“Ah, no, of course not!”

“My conscience will not let me play the hypocrite.”

“Your conscience, Richard! Ah, this is beautiful!”