Part 2

“On my honor, Aunt Letitia.”

“Dear lad, how innocent you are! Your virginity is better than a sermon. A pity Miss Jilian Hardacre cannot say the same about her sweet person. Well, Richard, if you take an old woman’s advice, you will break with the lady, delicately, gently, mind you. Miss Jilian is a tender young thing, and must be handled with discretion.”

“And Cousin Lot—?”

“Can you fight, Richard?”

“Well, I am not much of a swordsman. But if Sir Peter thinks—”

“That you have paid undue attention to his dear daughter—”

“Yes—”

“You will sacrifice your virgin honor, eh?”

“Aunt Letitia, I trust I shall never act dishonorably by any woman.”

The dowager shut up her fan suddenly with a snap, yawned, and announced that she was going to her chamber.

“You are an incorrigible fool, Richard,” she said, contemptuously; “please ring for my maid. I see that it is quite useless to reason with such a saint.”

III

In one of the valleys of the forest of Pevensel lay the hamlet of the forest-folk, some half-dozen cottages of unhewn stone, their flagged roofs covered with moss and lichen. There were gardens about the scattered cottages, an orchard or two, and a few strips of cultivated land where trees had been grubbed up, and whin and heather routed. On the west the ground fell abruptly to the banks of a stream that flashed and glittered under the pine-boughs.

These forest-folk mingled but little with the hinds of the neighboring villages. They were all of Grimshaw stock, sprung from the loins of Isaac Grimshaw and his brother. There were Dan and David, sons to Isaac; old Ursula their aunt, and Bess, her foster-child; also Solomon, Isaac’s brother, who had caused ten youngsters to be brought into the world. Isaac, a white-haired septuagenarian with a lame leg and a pair of unfathomable gray eyes, gave law and order to the clan like a patriarch of old. Dan, Black Dan, as the others called him, upheld his father’s word with the brute strength of his untamed body.

Rude and unlettered as were these woodlanders, they came of finer stock than the oafs who toiled on the Sussex farms. The Grimshaws never seemed to lack for money, for Dan would drive his wagon into Rookhurst or Lewes thrice a year, and spend sums that a squire might have disbursed with pride. They were considered notorious smugglers, these men of Pevensel, though the burning of charcoal and the smelting of iron were the crafts they practised in pretence of an honest living. They had good stuff, solid furniture, broad beds, pewter, and fine crockery in their cottages. The men wore the best cloth, were well-armed, and never lacked for spirits and tobacco. The squalor and poverty of an average village contrasted with the clean comfort of the hamlet of Pevensel.

How did the Grimshaws come by their money? That was the question the country-folk asked of one another over their pipes and ale, a question also that the revenue gentlemen had attempted to solve in vain. No one knew save Isaac, old Ursula, and Dan, of the chest buried in the deeps of the forest, stuffed with guineas, jewels, and ingots of gold. No one knew that Bess, old Ursula’s foster-child, was a strangeling in Pevensel from over the sea. Twenty years had passed since the _Richmond Lass_ had been scuttled in a fog off Beachy Head, after her captain had been murdered and certain of the crew. An English officer and his wife had shared the same fate, paying with their lives for the treasure they carried with them. Four sailors—two Irishmen, a Hollander, and a Portuguese—had come ashore by night in the jolly-boat with a heavy chest and the dead officer’s daughter, a child of three. They had scuttled the jolly-boat, after filling her with stones, and, striking cross-country, had disappeared with the child into the forest of Pevensel. Only Isaac and Ursula knew the end of the tale, and John, Isaac’s eldest son, who had died five years later. The four sailors had lodged at the Grimshaws, bargained with Isaac, and, after drinking heavily, had been murdered in their sleep. The treasure-chest hidden in the forest, four skeletons buried under an old oak, the girl Bess, were all that recalled that tragedy of the sea.

It was St. Agnes’s Eve, and snow had fallen heavily for a night and a day. The sky had cleared towards sunset, showing the west red above the white hills and the snow-capped trees. The moon was full that night, and her splendor turned Pevensel into a wilderness of witchcraft and white magic, an endless maze of tall, silent trees struck mute betwixt the moonlight and the snow.

Old Ursula Grimshaw, Isaac’s sister, lived alone with Bess in the cottage nearest to the woods. Pine-boughs overhung the roof, and the allies of the forest ran black and solemn from the very walls. Whin, whortleberry, heather, and the blown wind-rack of the trees had conquered one-half of the little garden. Bess and old Ursula were the pair whom Richard Jeffray had passed the day before, tending hogs in the beechwood by the road.

It was St. Agnes’s Eve, and Bess sat before the wood-fire in the kitchen, her chin in her palms, her elbows on her knees. Old Ursula had gone to bed, leaving Bess to watch the flickering embers. The room was paved with stone, a warm, snug chamber despite the deep snow gleaming under the moon without. Herbs, bundles of onions, flitches of bacon, a gun, sheaves of feathers, hung from the great beams. There was much polished pewter on the shelves; a great linen-press behind the door; several oak chairs ranged about the walls; brass candlesticks, an hour-glass and a Dutch clock stood on the mantle-shelf, and on an iron hook above the fire a kettle still hissed peacefully.

Bess had loosed her black hair about her shoulders so that it rippled and shone about her face. Her bare feet were on the hearth-stone, her gray stockings and buckled shoes lying near to dry before the fire. Bess’s eyes were building pictures amid the embers stacked behind the iron bars. It was St. Agnes’s Eve, and the girl’s head was packed full of old Ursula’s superstitious lore. She was bent on trying a dream that night. She had kissed neither man, woman, nor child all day, had fasted since noon, and whispered a charm up the great chimney. Now that old Ursula’s black cat had lapped up some milk, and was dozing before the fire, Bess rose up to put herself to bed.

The girl’s room lay on the upper floor at the back of the cottage, its single window looking out over the valley. Bess, after raking out the fire and seeing that the door was fast, lighted her candle, and climbed the wooden stairs to her room under the roof. A clean shift was laid out on the bed, and the sheets had been put on fresh that morning, for St. Agnes, it was said, loved to find a wench in spotless gear. There were fresh pulled bays strewn upon the pillow, a couple of red apples, and a new shoe.

The room being cold, and Bess propitiously sleepy, she disrobed briskly, drew on the clean shift, laid the bay sprigs, apples, and shoe on the chair by the bed, and slipped in between the sheets. Lying straight and on her back, after old Ursula’s orders, she put her right hand beneath her head, saying:

“Now the God of Love send me my desire.” Then, since it was deemed discreet to make sure of sleep with all speed, Bess rolled the clothes about her, blew out the candle, and flung her black hair away from her over the pillow.

Whether it was a mere trick of the brain or no, or whether the good saint tripped down from heaven on the girl’s behalf, Bess dreamed a dream that night as she lay in her attic with the pine-boughs swaying snow-ladened without her window. It seemed to her that she was gathering herbs for old Ursula amid the ruins of the Abbey of Holy Cross in the woods beside the river. The sun was at full noon, since the roofless refectory was ablaze with light. By the doorway Bess dreamed that she came upon a plant with green and lustrous leaves and a great red bloom shooting up upon a tall, straight stalk. The flower was so fair and strange that she stooped to pluck it, and in the plucking found the petals change to blood. Drawing back in fear, and looking at her red hand, she saw the figure of a man darken the arched doorway. He stood there looking at Bess in silence, with a peculiar expression of pain upon his brown and boyish face. Bess took notice even in her dream that he was dressed in black and had white ruffles at his wrists. As she wondered where she had seen the face before, the man vanished away from her without a word, and St. Agnes’s dreamer awoke in her bed.

She lay still, yet shivering a little, the vision still playing before her eyes. A low wind had risen, and she could hear it moving in the boughs of the trees without. Beams of moonlight came slanting through the casement to shine upon the polished panelling of an old cupboard that stood against the wall. The cottage seemed utterly still and dark. Bess started up in bed on her elbow of a sudden, her hair falling down upon the pillow, her eyes shining even in the dusk of the room.

Surely she had heard a shower of pebbles rattling against her window. The pine-boughs had been lopped but a week ago by Dan because they smote the glass when the wind blew. She sat up with the bedclothes looped about her waist, and her shift showing her big white arms and full round throat. As she listened there came a second pattering of stones against the casement. Bess, slipping out of bed and pulling on her stockings, threw her red cloak over her shoulders and crept across the room to the window.

Slipping the catch, she thrust open the frame and peered out, with her head on a level with the swaying boughs. The carpeting of snow stretched clear and brilliant under the moon to end in the murk where the woods thickened, and there was no sound save the soughing of the wind in the trees. Bess’s eyes hardened as she leaned over the sill. She gave a short, sharp cry, and drew back as though to close the casement.

“Bess,” came a gruff whisper up the wall.

There was trampled snow under the window. A man was standing there in the moonlight, the upper part of his face shadowed by the brim of his hat. A dwarfed and exaggerated silhouette of his broad and burly figure was thrown by the moon’s light upon the snow. He was standing with one arm against the wall, while his head was but six feet or less below the ledge of the low window.

“Bess.”

The girl leaned out again, and looked down into the man’s face.

“Is that you, Dan?”

“Yes. Old Ursula’s snoring, eh?”

“What are you meddling here at midnight for?”

She could see the man’s hairy face straining up towards her, the lips parted in an insinuating grin, the moonlight shining in his eyes.

“I’ve had a dream of you, Bess,” he said.

She frowned, and stared down at him almost fiercely from her vantage-point.

“Well, what of that?”

“It’s the saint’s night, lass. I reckon you’d rather see a man of blood and muscle under your window than lie dreaming of that sheep-faced fool of a David.”

Bess’s mouth curled in the moonlight. She drew her red cloak about her throat, and laughed at the man beneath her on the snow.

“Go home to bed, you great fool,” she said. “Do you think I shall thank you for being dragged up in the cold to see your ugly face?”

Dan Grimshaw stood back from the window and looked up at her with his teeth showing above his beard.

“Steady, Bess!” he growled—“steady!”

She made as though to close the window, her bare arm gleaming in the moonlight as she reached for the catch.

“You are not my man, Dan Grimshaw,” she said, curling her lips over the words.

“Maybe young David would have had a kiss thrown him,” he retorted, hotly.

“Maybe—he would.”

“I’ll break the young fool’s back if I catch him dangling at your heels.”

“Take care of your own business, Dan,” she said, clapping to the casement and creeping back to bed.

IV

Bess was coming over the snow next morning from the thatched shed where she had been milking Dame Ursula’s cows, when Dan Grimshaw slouched round the corner of the cottage with his gun over his shoulder. He had been away in the woods early and had brought back a hare, a brace of woodcock, and a widgeon that he had knocked over in the old fish-ponds of the Abbey of Holy Cross. A black spaniel followed at his heels. Bess, in her red petticoat, her cheeks aglow under her coal-black hair, came over the snow towards him with the fresh milk frothing in the pail.

“Morning to ye, Bess,” quoth the great, hairy-faced animal whose huge calves and bulging shoulders were those of a stunted giant. “I’ve brought ye back some game, lass, in return for breaking your sleep last night. I’m sorry if I angered ye.”

He held out the hare and the three birds in one great red paw, grinning amiably, yet with a glint in his red-brown eyes. Bess smiled at Dan under her scarlet hood. A lass needed wit in such a woodland haunt as this, where the strongest arm ruled, and men fought like quick, subtle, and resourceful, glib with her tongue and clever with her eyes. The felinity of her nature was developed when she must purr and fawn, or spit and extend her claws as necessity commanded. Bess did not love Black Dan, but Isaac Grimshaw’s son was a man to be humored rather than rebuffed.

“You have a good heart, Dan,” she said, kindly enough. “I was oversharp with ye last night. I jumped out of bed on the left side, and was as cross in the cold as might be. Won’t you come in and take breakfast with us?”

The man turned and walked with her towards the cottage, carrying the game in one hand, the gun in the other. His eyes watched Bess as she walked, tall and straight as a cypress, her stride almost that of a man, her head poised finely on her slightly arched neck. He noticed the muscles and sinews standing out in the strong brown forearm that carried the pail, the trim, gray-stockinged ankles under the short red petticoat.

“Did ye dream of me, Bess?” he asked, with a grin.

“Not I,” she laughed, good-humoredly.

“Or of young David?”

“No, nor of David.”

“Then ye did not dream at all, lass,” he said, with his brown eyes burning.

“No, Dan, I have not seen my man as yet.”

Old Ursula came to the door of the cottage at the moment with a broom in her brown fists, looking for all the world like an old witch. She gave Dan a glare from her bright eyes, and scolded Bess for going out into the snow in her best shoes.

“I have asked Dan to breakfast, mother,” said the girl, with a laugh; “see the game he has brought us home.”

“Dan to breakfast, indeed! There be but two rashers in the pan and two eggs in the pot. We can’t feed Dan at such short notice.”

The man frowned at her, kicked his dog that was for sparring with old Ursula’s cat, tossed the hare and birds onto a settle by the door, and jerked his gun up over his shoulder. He and Dame Ursula were not the best of friends, and Black Dan, who feared no mortal thing in breeches, stood half in awe of the old beldam. He clawed his fur cap from off his head, stared hard at Bess, and stood fidgeting on the step.

“I reckon I’d better go home, lass,” he said, sulkily.

Bess set her milk-pail down on the stone floor and untied her hood.

“You take some cooking for, Dan,” she said, mischievously.

“I don’t want to lick shoe-leather for a welcome.”

“Never worry. We will be ready for you another day.”

Bess, having caught a significant twinkle in Dame Ursula’s eyes, gave Dan Grimshaw a courtesy, and picked up her pail. The man pulled his fur cap down over his eyes, and, with a last glance at the girl, plodded away over the snow, whistling, his breath steaming on the frosty air. Bess watched him go, and then closed and locked the door. Old Ursula was bending over the fire, turning the bacon in the pan.

She looked at Bess curiously, and scolded the black cat that had put its fore-paws on the milk-pail and was trying to lap the milk.

“Did you dream, lass?” she asked, inquisitively.

Bess looked serious of a sudden and colored, though her face hardly betrayed any deepening flush. She was still puzzling over the face of the man she had seen in her dream, and yet the girl was not in a mood to confess to Mother Ursula in the matter.

“Not I,” she said, laughing, and taking a rough cloth from a drawer and spreading it on the oak table.

“Not of David?”

“Why should I dream of David, mother?”

Ursula frowned, and mumbled over the pan. Isaac’s youngest son was her favorite, a tall, flaxen-polled stripling, with a merry face and good-humored blue eyes. Ursula did not love Black Dan. He was too big and masterful, too surly, too much of a great bully.

Bess had spread the cloth.

“Dan came and threw stones at my window,” she said, suddenly.

“Hey!”

“I told him I wouldn’t have climbed out of bed to see his ugly face.”

Old Ursula forked the rashers onto a hot plate and looked at Bess meaningly, wagging a lean forefinger to give emphasis to her words.

“You must be shy of Dan,” she said, shrewdly.

“Shy, mother?”

“The great fool is a rough, masterful dog. Throw him a bone now and then, lass, to keep him from growing surly. He’s no mate for you, girl, the great, black-faced oaf. David’s the lad to make a good husband. You must be shy of Dan, Bess.”

The girl swept her black hair over her ears, laughed, and began to bustle about the kitchen.

“I can take care of myself, mother,” she said.

“Better be your own mistress, lass, than let Black Dan have the handling of your love.”

Thus a certain superficial similarity may be traced between the lots of Richard Jeffray and Bess of the Woods. Both had a garrulous and world-wise relative to stem with the calthrops of caution the careless confidence of youth. While old Ursula pattered in the inglenook of Black Dan’s ugliness of face and temper, and extolled the blond David for his red cheeks and good-humored eyes, the Lady Letitia would ask her nephew with the greatest gravity, “What color Miss Jilian fancied for her hair this season? Had Miss Hardacre had that front tooth replaced? Had Richard ever heard of the Soakington affair, when Miss Jilian had eloped with Ensign Soakington of a marching regiment, and had been overtaken and brought back unmarried by Sir Peter? Yes, it was quite true that Miss Hardacre had spent the night with the ensign at an inn at Reigate before Sir Peter and Brother Lot had ended the romance with their whips. What! Richard had not heard the tale! Well, it was an old scandal, and had happened ten years ago. Yes, there had been other affairs. Sir Peter was wise in desiring to get his daughter married.”

Now Richard Jeffray was a sensitive youth, and though the Lady Letitia’s sarcasms gored him beneath his air of amiable patience, he was not a little disturbed by her gibes and her innuendoes. Richard had inherited a chivalrous temper from his father, and he was something of a young Quixote in his notions of honor. Certainly he had often idled beside Miss Jilian’s tambour-frame, attended her as she warbled at the harpsichord, danced and ridden with her, gazed into her gray eyes with a fervor that was not platonic. Miss Hardacre had been very kind to him, so had Sir Peter, and even Cousin Lot, in his insolent and patronizing way. Moreover, the Lady Letitia herself was not a white statue of truth and candor. Richard knew that she cheated poor Sugg at cards, rouged and powdered, and wore false eyebrows. And surely Miss Jilian was a very handsome young lady, and if she dressed somewhat gaudily, it was fashion’s fault and not her own. Richard supposed that most young ladies had indulged in love affairs in their teens. Had not he himself when a boy ogled Dr. Sugg’s daughter Mary for weeks together? And in Italy he had even imagined a little opera singer to be the finest feminine creation the world had ever doted upon.

Thus the amiable and generous assling conceived that it would be a gross piece of dishonor on his part were he to treat Miss Jilian Hardacre after the fashion that the Lady Letitia advised. By reason of the extreme delicacy of his sentiment he felt himself impelled rather to exaggerate his courtesies to that young lady, lest he should be charged with trifling with the pure peace of a spinster’s heart. It was not that Richard stood altogether in awe of Cousin Lancelot’s hectoring courage. Jeffray was no coward, though a dreamer. Very possibly his aunt’s cynicisms had operated in a contrary direction to that which the old pharmaceutist had intended. Contradiction begets contrariness; pessimism preens the wings of ardor. It may have been that the lad’s innate sense of chivalry was stirred, and that the lamps in that gorgeous Temple of Beauty flashed a bewitching glamour into Richard’s soul. At all events, he did not slink like a dishonest cur from the maligned maiden’s side. He still continued to kiss her hand, and to admire her profile, a little forcefully perhaps, as she sat and played to him on the harpsichord.

One morning, a week or more after his debate with Aunt Letitia, Richard rode over to Hardacre House and dined with Sir Peter, Mr. Lot, and certain of the latter gentleman’s sporting friends. These bluff Sussex boobies could by no means fathom young Jeffray’s character. They took his sensitive reserve for pride, his occasional outbursts of enthusiasm for sentimentality. Among these gentlemen the manly virtues were of the florid order. He who swore most, drank most, debauched most, was voted a fine fellow, a man of blood and bottom. Richard Jeffray, refined, sensitive, and a scholar, shrivelled and shrank before these noisy boors. They did not love him for his melancholy and his silence. “The young fool wanted pap and a flannel binder.” One rosy-gilled quipster made it his especial business that day to point his jokes at Richard’s expense, till he was called to order by Cousin Lot across the table.

“Tie up your funny nag, Tom,” quoth Mr. Lancelot, with a glint of the eye, “he’s a stale and dull beast. Dick Jeffray’s too much of a gentleman to straddle your spavined jokes.”

Mr. Piggott blinked and guffawed. Next moment he spilled his wine, and squealed as the heel of Mr. Lot’s boot came crunching upon his toe under the table.

“Damn it, sir—”

“Hallo, was that your foot, Tom? Beg pardon; I’ve got such infernal long legs.”

Mr. Piggott took the hint, mopped up the wine with a napkin, and relapsed into silence. He was one of the Hardacre toadies who swilled Sir Peter’s punch, swore in voluble admiration over Mr. Lot’s escapades, and always expressed himself ravished by Miss Jilian’s charms. Sir Peter had instructed his son as to the necessity for blanketing Richard’s sensitive soul. Hence, Mr. Lot, wise in his generation, had come to regard Jeffray as a prospective brother-in-law, a pretty bridegroom to be cherished for Miss Jilian’s sake. He might despise the youth himself, but it was not Sir Peter’s policy to suffer Richard to be frightened from Hardacre by his raw-boned and boisterous guests.

Richard did not see the fair Mistress Jilian that day. Cousin Lot announced to him, with a leer, that his sister was abed with a sick headache. Should he deliver a note to her from her dear cousin? It would do Jilian a world of good no doubt to get a glimpse of her cousin’s pretty sentences. Richard blushed, smiled, contented himself with sending his “sympathetic and cousinly respect” to the suffering angel. The truth was this, though Richard did not know it, Miss Hardacre had been trying some new cosmetic from town, and the treacherous stuff had blistered her fair cheeks. She was lying abed with a plaster of chalk and olive-oil over her face, and her sweet soul full of tempestuous indignation.