Part 15

They rode out through the gate and over the bridge of tree-trunks with a vague, black gleam of water on either side. They had hardly crossed when the gate was slammed on them, and they heard the woman laughing, and calling with coarse words to her man.

“The pope deliver us, John, but I congratulate my throat on being sound.”

“Did you get a glimpse of the man’s face?”

“No.”

“Nor did I. He seemed shy of showing it.”

“The surly scoundrel! As I said before, John, thank Heaven there is a hell.”

They pushed on slowly in the dim light, riding over spongy grass-land that sloped upward toward the west. Everywhere the silence of the night still held, save for the fluttering call of an awakened bird. They had gone little more than a furlong when they came to the outstanding thickets of a wood, the trees rising black and strange against the heaviness of the sky. John Gore drew rein suddenly, and swung out of the saddle.

“What’s your whim, John?”

For he was leading his horse by the bridle toward a clump of beech-trees whose boughs swept close to the ground.

“I am going to wait for the dawn.”

“There is some wisdom in that,” said Mr. Pepys.

“What is more, I want to have a look at the place where we have spent the night. And the folk yonder will not get a glimpse of us in the thick of these trees.”

A slow grayness gathered in the east with little crevices of silvering light opening across the sky. The silver turned betimes to gold, with tawny edges to the clouds, and here and there the faintest flush of rose. The grayness rolled back gradually, with a glimmer here and a glimmer there of a hill-top catching the first gleams. In lieu of the ghastly twilight the landscape began to take on color, and to glow, as though touched by fire, with all the wild tints of an autumn dawn.

As the day came John Gore saw a great house rise in the valley, with water about it, and grass-land and woods on every side. The walls were smothered with ivy, and through some of the empty windows shone the dawn. Above the roofless rooms a square tower rose, showing a few feet of red brick above its mantling of ivy. There were rotting out-buildings beyond the court-yard, and a green space that looked like a wild garden, while in the meadows about the place grew a number of old thorns.

Now there flashed suddenly across John Gore’s mind the picture of Donna Gloria in the Purcells’s house at Westminster. And he knew as he gazed upon it that this place in the valley was their ruined house of Thorn.

Mr. Pepys was too short-sighted to distinguish the place distinctly.

“Well, John, what do you make of it?”

His companion jerked a look at him as though he had forgotten Mr. Pepys’s existence.

“Strange chance, Sam! We have spent the night, without knowing it, at the Purcells’s house of Thorn.”

“Thorn!”

“I have seen a picture of it before the Parliament men made it a ruin. The windows are out, the roof in, and the walls shaggy with ivy. I wonder that they did not batter down the tower.”

Mr. Pepys was screwing up his eyes and shading them with his hand, but things run into a blur at a distance, and much straining made the tears come.

“We had better be mounting, John.”

“Wait! Bide quiet a moment.”

John Gore’s face had a keen, hawk-like look as he leaned forward a little, drawing a beech bough down to shade his eyes. He had seen several white pigeons flutter up from the circular brick dove-cote that still stood in one corner of the court, and beat their wings about a narrow window high up in the tower. The dark ivy seemed to give distinctness to the fluttering specks. Two of the birds had perched upon the sill, and it was then that John Gore’s far-sighted eyes had seen something that made him wonder. For two faint, white things had appeared at the window, like hands thrust out, and the pigeons had fluttered to them as though to be fed.

“What is it, John?”

The sea-captain ignored the question, and Mr. Pepys began to yawn and fidget.

The white birds had fluttered away again, and the faint hands and wrists showed in the dark framing of the narrow window. They looked like hands thrust up in supplication, the hands of a prisoner who could only see the white birds and the sky.

John Gore turned sharply, and climbed into the saddle with the air of a man gripped and held by some inspired suspicion. He rode off slowly, Mr. Pepys following him, and they began to pick their way through the autumn woods. And fortune was kind to them that morning, for they struck a track that led them to the Battle road.

John Gore fell into a deep silence, a slight frown on his forehead and his mouth firmly set. Mr. Pepys’s sallies lighted upon a stubborn and irresponsive surface, for his companion seemed grimly set upon reflection.

“It puzzles me to know,” the Secretary had said, “what that man and his woman are doing down at Thorn. Has my Lady Purcell established them there as her retainers, and if so—why? Or have they taken up their lodging there like rats in a ruin?”

Mr. Pepys did not suspect how sudden a significance that same question had gathered for John Gore. The sea-captain kept his own counsel on certain matters, nor did he tell his companion of the hands he had seen at the tower window. They might have belonged to the woman, but John Gore did not imagine her to be a creature who would climb a tower in order to feed pigeons.

And yet the suspicion that had seized him seemed wild and incredible when he thought of the people who were responsible for such a thing. Even in an age when the mad were treated more like caged beasts, no man with manhood in him could have given a mere girl such a prison and such keepers.

John Gore gave his horse the spur suddenly, and took Mr. Pepys into Battle at a canter, the Secretary bumping fiercely in the saddle, much to the delight of certain rude children who watched them come riding into the town.

But at Thorn, Barbara, cold and very quiet, sat on the bed under the window, with the red book in her lap and her eyes full of vague musings. For though those four walls let life in only by the window overhead, her thoughts flew out into the wide world—sad and poignant thoughts that bled at the bosom like a bird that has been wounded by a bolt.

She had heard strangers come and go, and with them the echo of a voice that made her heart hurry and her white face flush, and her eyes grow full of desire and mystery. It had seemed but an echo to her from far away, no dear reality—yet there had been tears upon the page when she read the book that morning.

For many things had changed in Barbara’s heart that autumn, with the cold and the loneliness, the wretched food, and the wind in the tower at night. She had grown gentler, more wistful, less sure of her own soul. It was as though suffering were softening her, even ripening the heart in her, despite the raw nights and the shivering dawns. What the future had in store she could not tell, but she fed the birds at the window, and the mouse that now crept out to her in the daytime and not only when dusk fell. And with these childish things some new impulse seemed to quicken and take fire within her, like the life of a child that is reborn in those who suffer.

XXIX

Mr. Pepys looked very glum when John Gore told him over their wine that he could go no farther into the county of Sussex. The business between my Lord Montague and the Secretary to the Admiralty had been thrashed out confidentially in my lord’s private parlor in the Abbey the day after the adventurous return from Thorn. Mr. Pepys was ready for the Portsmouth road, and could not or would not be brought to understand for the moment John Gore’s humor in deserting him thus suddenly. The sea-captain would only hint at a reason, and Mr. Pepys’s curiosity was piqued to the extreme limit of good temper. He even suggested rather pointedly that Mistress Green Stays might be to blame, but John Gore looked so grim at the innuendo that Mr. Pepys pushed his pleasantries no further.

“Well, John,” he said, at last, like a man of sense, “let each dog follow his own nose. I gather that you have affairs that need careful watching, and a friend should be able to respect a friend’s privacy. If you have any winks to give me, John, let me have them that I may not blab anything that will rouse your wrath.”

He was such a shrewd good soul that John Gore felt tempted to tell him everything, but refrained, from a sense of sacredness and pride.

“Rely on it, Sam,” he said, gravely, “this is no whim of mine. I am not a man to be blown here and there for nothing. I have happened on something here in Sussex that has made me drop anchor and bide my time.”

“And should I return to London before you?”

“Know nothing about me, and I will thank you.”

“So be it, John; I will keep my tongue quiet, though I trust you are not for meddling in any mischievous plot.”

“I have no finger in any plot, Sam; that is the plain truth.”

And though Mr. Pepys looked mystified, and even helplessly inquisitive despite his self-restraint, he made the best of the business as far as his own plans were concerned, and said no more either one way or the other.

He was greatly cheered and comforted next morning by a piece of news that he had from one of my Lord Montague’s men. Dr. William Watson, the Dean of Battle, was riding down to Chichester next day with two armed servants who knew the road. Mr. Pepys went instantly to call upon the churchman, and proved himself so amiable and engaging a soul that they were soon agreed as to the advantages of their taking the road together. And so they set out for Lewes on a fine October morning, bobbed to most respectfully by all the old dames and children of the place, and talking perhaps less of salvation than of Cambridge dinners and of wine and the wit that was to be had in college halls. For Dean Watson was an old St. John’s man, and had drunk of other things besides the classics.

John Gore, left to himself in Battle Town, spent the day in riding over the Sussex hills, probing the tracks and woodways on the side toward Thorn. He had done much meditating since that dawn amid the beech-trees, and his suspicions, such as they were, importuned him to satisfy his curiosity with regard to Thorn. For he had only his surmises and the strange coincidences of the affair to launch him on such a fool’s adventure.

He rode back to Battle soon after noon, with his horse muddy and his face warm with a blustering wind. And being minded to learn what he could in the matter of gossip and common report, he went, after dinner, into the public parlor of the inn and sat down on a settle near the window. A little round man and a great gaunt farmer were drinking and smoking opposite each other in the ingle-nook, and John Gore pulled out his pipe, for gossip’s sake, and smoked himself into the pair’s good graces.

The little man proved to be the barber-surgeon of the town, a rolling, jolly quiz of a rogue who made his patients laugh even when he was bleeding them, and had a wink for every pretty girl and a pat of the hand or a pinch for the children. He was a communicative person, and had been carrying on most of the conversation with the farmer, who sat with his long legs crossed and the stem of his pipe resting upon his folded arms. The farmer would give his pipe a cock and nod his head when the surgeon said anything he heartily approved of, and scrape the heels of his boots on the bricks and heave himself when he was inclined to disagree.

John Gore had joined these worthies in a gossip on the Dutch wars, and was proving to them how a ship could throw a broadside of shot to the best advantage, when the sound of a trotting horse came down the street, and the surgeon, who never let a cart pass without looking to see what was in it, came to the window to look out. They saw a man in a brown coat and a big beaver loom up on a lean black horse. He pulled in toward “The Half Moon,” and, glancing about him for a moment, got out of the saddle as though he were stiff and tired. A hostler came running from the yard, and the man in the brown coat tossed the bridle to him, and, stooping down, lifted his nag’s near forefoot. The horse had cast a shoe, and his master looked vexed over it, as though he grudged the delay.

The little surgeon was noticing all these details, but not with the same interest as the man at his elbow. Something familiar in the man’s figure had struck John Gore at the first glance, but it was only when he dismounted that he noticed that the fellow carried one shoulder a little higher than the other, and that his head seemed set a trifle askew. Then suddenly he remembered the man’s face, with its sallowness, its roving eyes, and its air of impudence that could change into quick servility. It was the man whom my Lord Gore had spoken of as Captain Grylls, and whom he had met with him by Rosamond’s Pool in the park that evening before the gathering at the house of Hortense.

John Gore stood irresolute a moment. Then, after he had turned over twenty possibilities in his mind, he walked out of the parlor and down the passage leading to the stairs. My lady of the inn was standing in the street doorway, waiting till the man in the brown coat should have finished giving orders about his horse. John Gore loitered on the stairs and listened.

“My nag has cast a shoe, ma’am, and I am held up for an hour, and deuced hungry. Get me some good hot liquor and some dinner, and I will remember you in my prayers.”

“Will you please to step into the parlor, sir?”

“My best services, ma’am; I have another three leagues of road yet. Your fellow has taken my nag to the smith’s.”

John Gore heard the bustle of the landlady’s petticoat, and retreated up the stairs to the private parlor overhead. He walked to and fro for a while, with a frown of thought on his face, before crossing to the bedchamber to pack his belongings into the little leather valise he carried strapped to the saddle. He was fastening the straps when he heard footsteps on the stairs, and caught Mistress Green Stays coming up with a bosomful of clean linen.

“Betty, my girl, run down and ask your mother to let me know her charges. I am following my friend on to Chichester in an hour.”

The girl looked surprised, but, putting down her linen, went below about the bill. Her mother came up betimes with some show of concern, hoping that the gentleman had not found anything lacking. John Gore relieved her from any such doubt, paid her her money, with a gold piece thrown in, and asking her to fill his flask for him and make him a small parcel of food, he gathered up cloak, sword, pistols, and valise, marched down the stairs and out by a side door into the stable-yard.

His horse had finished a good meal of bran and oats when a stable-boy pitched the saddle on again, while John Gore stood and looked on. Through the doorway of the stable he had a view of the street, and kept his eyes upon it, knowing that the smithy lay down in the borough of Sanglake. Mistress Green Stays came in with John Gore’s flask and some food tied up in a clean napkin, and John Gore gave her a kiss and a piece of silver while the boy was fastening the girths under the nag’s belly. The girl had gone, blushing a little, with the coin in her palm, when Captain Grylls’s black horse came up the street with a hostler at his head.

John Gore appeared to remember of a sudden that he had left a bunch of seals in his bedroom, and he walked off, telling the boy to keep the horse warm in the stable, for the beast’s coat was still wet with the sweat of the morning. From the window of the upper parlor John Gore saw Captain Grylls come out into the road and look at the new shoe on his nag’s foot. He had a roll of brown tobacco leaves between his lips, and looked flushed and comforted by his dinner. John Gore saw that the captain was ready to mount before he went down again into the stable-yard. A clatter of hoofs warned him that his man was on the road, so he mounted and rode quietly out of the yard with his eyes on the watch for Captain Grylls.

The man in the brown coat rode out by the western end of the town, puffing smoke from his cigarro, and looking about him alertly like a man who is no longer tired. John Gore let him draw ahead, so that there was a good space between them, and the curves of the road to hide them from each other. He kept his distance upon Captain Grylls by catching a glimpse of him every now and then over a hedge-top. For from the moment that John Gore had recognized the gentleman, the suspicion had seized on him that Captain Grylls was bound for Thorn. What charges the fellow had there, or whether he were riding on my Lord Gore’s service, John o’ the Sea could only guess.

There was a good hour’s daylight left when they approached the track that led down through the woods toward Thorn. John Gore drew up a little, riding on the grass, and going very warily, so as not to blunder into a betrayal. He had a mind to get to the bottom of this business, and to prove whether he was the fool of fancy or whether his grim surmises were drawing toward the truth. The road ran straight for two hundred yards or more, and the sea-captain, pulling close under some brushwood, reined in to see what Captain Grylls would do. John Gore saw him rein in, pause, and then turn his horse suddenly toward the left, where a dead oak stood, and disappear into the woods. Captain Grylls had taken the track for Thorn, and John Gore brought his fist down on his knee with the air of a man whose suspicions were closing up, link by link.

John Gore shadowed Captain Grylls through the woods, riding very warily till he saw him go trotting over the grass-lands where the waning light from the west beat vividly upon Thorn. Turning into that same thicket of beeches, he tethered his horse where the trunks hid him from the house, and advancing from tree to tree he was in time to see Captain Grylls lead his horse up to the gate. One glance at that window of the tower showed it him as a mere slit of blackness amid the ivy, and he kept his eyes fixed upon the figure at the gate. He could see into the court-yard from where he stood, and as he watched he saw a man come round the angle of the house with what looked like a white cloth tied over his face. Even at that distance John Gore recognized him by his slow, ponderous walk, and by his size, for the man who had taken them in that night stood nearly six feet four.

The gate opened, and Captain Grylls led his horse in, turning to glance up the valley, as though to see if any one were moving there. They crossed the court and disappeared round the angle of the house, and though he watched there till dusk fell, John Gore saw no more of the captain or the man with the white cloth over his face.

He leaned against the tree for a while, eating the food he had brought with him from the inn, and washing it down with liquor from his flask. He was summing up the situation, and wondering what to make of it, for it seemed more than probable that he would spend a night in the open woods. Captain Grylls had most assuredly ridden into Thorn, and he suspected Captain Grylls to be his father’s creature. He remembered also that gathering in Hortense’s house, and the hints his father had thrown out to him. Anne Purcell might be in the secret of some intrigue; Thorn was her house and the very place for a refuge in case of need. Then there were the white hands he had seen at the window, those hands that had set all manner of passionate surmises afire within his brain. Yet what a suspicious, speculative fool he might prove himself to be! It was humanly possible and reasonable that the couple down yonder should have a daughter.

Darkness had fallen, and, taking his cloak, he cast it over his horse’s loins. Then after petting and fondling the beast as though to persuade him to patience, he started out from the beech thicket over the grass-land toward the house.

He had come within a hundred yards of the moat when he saw a beam of light steal out suddenly from the black mass of the ruin. It came and went, mounting higher each moment, for some one was carrying a lantern up the tower stair, the light shooting out, as it passed, through the narrow squints in the wall. John Gore gained one of the thorn-trees close to the moat and took cover there, about twenty yards from the gate.

An upper window in the tower shone out suddenly, a yellow oblong against the blackness of the ivied walls. The light remained steady. John Gore heard the sound of a rough, bullying voice that would have rasped any man’s fighting instinct and made him knit his muscles as though to take an enemy by the throat. For a moment there was silence. Then the voice came down to him again, harsh, threatening, with sharp, fierce words that sounded like oaths. Moreover, there was the sound as of a blow given, and then—shrill and full of strange anguish—a woman’s cry.

John Gore straightened where he stood, his upper lip stiffening and his teeth pressing grimly against each other. With the shadow of the thorn-tree over him, he stood there listening, the silence of the night about him, and from the lighted window high up in the tower a faint sound coming like the sound of some one weeping. A dull murmur of voices struck upon his ear. Then the light died away suddenly, the window melted into the darkness, and he heard the rough closing of a door. The light came down the stair again, flashing out where the squints opened, with a muffled thud of feet and the faint growl of voices.

But John Gore, as he stood under the thorn-tree, could still hear the sound as of weeping coming from the shadows of the great tower.

XXX

John Gore let his heart have its way that night, for the impulse in him was too strong to be withstood. Yet, like the cool and dogged man he was, he chastened the adventurous passion of a boy with the quiet hardihood of one who has learned to hold a rough ship’s company in awe of him.

Unbuckling his sword, he thrust it into the grass under the tree, for the thing would only have cumbered him, and after drawing off his heavy boots and coat he went quietly to the bridge and across it to the court-yard gate. As on the night when he had waited there with Mr. Pepys, he could see a light burning in a window near the ground and the shadow of some one moving in the room within. Taking a couple of steps back, he made a running jump at the gate, and got his hands on the top thereof with hardly a sound to convict him of clumsiness. The rest was easy, and he straddled the gate and then dropped softly into the court-yard. His chief fear was lest the dog should hear him and give tongue. But there was not so much as the rattle of a chain to show that the beast was on the alert.

Moving along the court-yard wall that edged the moat, he came to the terraceway that ran along the western front of the house. The place was smothered with weeds and brambles, the brambles catching his ankles like gins, so that he was constrained to go warily and set his teeth and his temper against the pricks. The wall fell to a couple of feet where the terrace began, giving a glimpse of the dim black waters of the moat.

John Gore halted when the outlines of the tower rose above him against the night sky. The western face thereof came down to the terrace stones, and in the western face was the window at which he had seen the hands appear. Crossing the terrace, he leaned against the plinth of the tower, almost burying himself in the ivy that hung there in masses. But for the very faint shivering of the leaves he could hear no sound, not even the sound of a voice from the far wing where the couple appeared to have their quarters.