Part 16

John Gore ran his hands along the plinth, feeling for the main stems of the ivy where they had lifted and cocked the flagstones of the terrace. These stems were stout and tough as a great ship’s cable, forked here and there so that a man’s foot might rest, and sending out a net-work of ropes over the tower. John Gore thought of Sparkin, and how he would have laid a hatful of gold on the boy’s pluck and sinew for such a climb. But since there was no Sparkin to venture such a climb for him, he pulled his stockings up, took a look at the precipice overhead, and staked his neck on a scramble into the dark.

A rat would have thought nothing of such a climb, for you may find them nesting high up in the ivy about a house. A daring boy might have ventured it by daylight, but to scale such a place at night might have made the most monkeyish seaman swear that he was not yet tired of the taverns. John Gore was not a man who had trained as a sea-captain by drinking wine in his state-room and strutting in scarlet upon his quarter-deck. He could make the tops as briskly as any man in his ship’s company, and carry tarry hands and shiny clothes to the credit of his seamanship.

But his heart never felt so near his mouth before, nor his fingers so desperately tenacious, as when he had climbed some forty feet up that tower of Thorn. The ivy stems were smaller and gave less grip, while the sheer mass above him made the black void behind and below seem full of a sense of suction drawing him toward a smashing fall upon the terrace stones. He pressed his chest to the brickwork, breathing hard through dilated nostrils, his teeth set, and his hands clinched upon the cordage of the creeper.

His brain grew steadier anon, and he went on, slowly and grimly, like a mountaineer laboriously and patiently clinging to narrow niches in the rock. Another ten feet brought him to one of the windows. It was barred, but the bar gave him something to hold to, and he found a knotted stem beneath that jutted out like a corbel. He rested there awhile, listening, and he could hear a dull, rhythmic sound above, as though some one were pacing to and fro in an upper room.

Then he went on again, even more slowly and perilously than before, thinking what a mad fool he was, and trying to forget that the return journey was before him. He was so close to the window now, and so grimly intent on keeping his hold, that he had no instinct left in him but the instinct of self-preservation. His whole consciousness seemed in his fingers and his toes. At last he felt one hand go over the window-ledge, and, lifting himself slowly, he got a grip of the stanchions and drew himself up till he could rest his elbows on the sill.

He hung there dizzy and out of breath, yet with a sense of infinite comfort at having his hand upon an iron bar. His fingers were bleeding, and his stockings torn into holes at the toes. Life and the full memory of things came back to him as he lay on the sill of the window. It was no moment for elaborate curtesy, as though he were in a velvet coat and bowing himself gallantly on the threshold of a great lady’s salon.

One word came to him as the blood steadied in his brain, and he uttered it in a half whisper, as though it would have the power of a spell.

“Barbara!”

He heard some one move, and the creaking of woodwork.

“Barbara, is it you?”

There was a rustling sound against the wall, and two hands came up to him out of the darkness.

“John—John Gore?”

“Dear, you should know my voice.”

“You, John! is it you? Oh, but you frightened me! I heard something climbing, and was shivering in a corner.”

Now John Gore seemed suddenly to forget the eighty feet of space below him. His heart had given a great leap and was drumming against his ribs, for the truth that he had discovered went far beyond his dreams. The window was cut in the thickness of the wall, and the stanchions set deeply in it, so that he contrived to drag himself over the sill and wedge himself there with his face close to the bars.

“Thank God,” he said, “that I dared this climb! It was a climb into the dark, dear, but I have found more than ever I sought.”

He saw her hands come up to the bars. They touched his face, and then drew back as though she had not thought him so near. Her heart was so full of manifold emotions that for the moment she could not think. The suddenness of it had dizzied her, and yet through the strange tumult of it all she felt an infinite sweet joy.

“Barbe!”

His voice roused her suddenly to a sense of keen reality.

“Speak softly, or they may hear. You—you should not have risked so much.”

“Barbe, why are you here, and why did they tell me lies?”

“Lies?”

“Yes, may God confound them! Come close to the window, dear; you can trust me to the death.”

He heard her catch a short, sharp breath as though some one had dashed icy water upon her bosom.

“John, I can’t tell you—I can’t!”

“Why, child?—come?”

“Don’t ask me—don’t ask me anything to-night. I cannot bear it, when you have risked so much.”

He could not see her, not even her hands, but he felt that she was very close to him. Assuredly this was not the Barbara of the old sullen days? Her infinite dumb distress went to his heart like wine.

“Barbe!”

She could not answer him for the moment, her thoughts in a tumult with the miserable secrets of the past.

“I cannot—I cannot!”

“Tell me, dear; you can trust me.”

She was leaning her arms against the wall and her head against her arms.

“Oh, I was mad, John, and I think I had no heart—then. You must have heard; they must have given you some reason for this.”

The wrath in him flashed out for an instant.

“Whether you were mad or not, child, I have no need to ask. They had put me off with lies, and but for God’s mercy I should never have chanced upon the truth.”

He heard her move with a little sound of anguish in the throat.

“The truth—what truth?”

“Why, that you were never mad, Barbara; God even pardon me for uttering the word.”

“Mad—only that?”

“And does that mean nothing to me—to-night.”

She saw that he was only half wise as to the miserable intrigue that had let blood forth, blood that had dimmed her vision and filled her with a hate that now made her shudder. His tenderness would out, beating about her like mysterious movement in the air, making her dizzy and in terror of the past.

“Of your goodness, John, don’t ask me anything—don’t ask me anything to-night.”

She broke down utterly, and though she tried to stifle it, the sound of her weeping would not be smothered. Pity of it went to the man’s heart. A great tremor swept across his face. He stretched out an arm between the bars into the darkness of the room.

“Barbe, I ask nothing—I’ll know nothing—till you wish. Don’t weep, dear heart, when I cannot come at you to comfort.”

His tenderness beat in on her, so that she seemed to master herself, only to fall into a new fear, and that lest he should be discovered.

“You must go, John. Why am I keeping you here? If they were to come!”

No words could have made him hardier in his daring.

“Take no care for me, Barbe. This is but the beginning of it all.”

She put up her hands to him in appeal.

“No, no; they would kill you, perhaps!”

“I am not so easily dealt with, dear. Answer me one thing. Some brute struck you to-night?”

She leaned her head against the wall.

“Oh, that is nothing—nothing.”

“Nothing!” And she could picture the bronzed grimness of his face. “Tell me, Barbe—the big man, or the little crooked rogue?”

“The big man.”

“Now I know my dog.”

The hardness of the window-stone, and the cramp and stiffness in his muscles, forced him to remember that he had the descent to make, and that it would not do to waste his strength.

“I must go now, Barbe,” he said, “before I get too stiff.”

She seemed to realize suddenly all the peril of that dark descent, and the dear hardihood that had brought him to her.

“John, if you should slip!”

Her tone held him there, loath to leave her when her voice thrilled so.

“No, I have done my scrambling about a ship’s gear. Next time I shall bring a rope.”

She put up her hands to the bars.

“But it is so dark, and so deep. Can’t I help you, John?”

He hung there, and, seeing her hands so near, stretched one of his to meet them.

“What have you in the room, Barbe?”

“There are the sheets on the bed.”

“How many?”

She climbed down and pulled the bedclothes on to the floor.

“Two sheets and the blanket.”

“A short three fathoms. They would help me over the worst piece. Are you strong enough to knot them into a rope?”

“Yes, John—yes.”

She set to work in the dark, rolling the sheets up and knotting the ends as stoutly as she could. Yet she mistrusted the knots, lest they should slip and dash the man to the stones below. And in her dread of it she pondered the case, and then looked up at the window.

“Have you a knife?”

“Surely, being a sailor.”

He fumbled for it, cramped and wedged in as he was, and dropped it down upon the bed. Barbara felt for it, and, cutting off two thick strands of her hair, bound down the ends of the knots with the strands so that they should hold more surely under his weight.

“Here, John.”

She mounted the bed and held the end to him, and he knotted it about the bar as firmly as a seaman could.

“Can you reach it when I have gone? Try.”

She reached out her hands.

“Yes, easily. Take the knife back. They might find it, and suspect.”

Their hands touched and thrilled in the darkness of the night. Then John Gore drew the sheet rope out, trying the knots to see that they were firm.

“What have you bound them with? Why, child, you have cut your hair!”

“Only two small pieces.”

“Then the rope is blessed, dear. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

“Trust to me, dear; I shall have you away from here before long. Trust me in your heart.”

Barbara stood close to the wall, the anguish of the past, with all its memories, flooding back on her, now that he was going. She thought of that secret that seemed to flow between them like a river of doom. Her heart grew chilled and afraid with dread of the truth.

“John!”

He hung there, waiting.

“You must not come again, John. Promise me; it is risking your life, and I—”

“And you?”

“Don’t ask me to tell you; I have not the courage; it was all so terrible, and the truth was too great for me. Promise you will not come.”

“If I promised that,” he said, simply, “I might as well drop and end it.”

“Oh—but—John—”

“Barbe, good-night.” And she felt the tightening of the rope against the bar. “I cannot part with such wild talk from you. Good-night. God hold you in His keeping.”

She heard the rustle of leaves and the dull chafing of the sheet against the stone. Leaning against the wall and listening, her heart seemed to beat but thrice in a minute while she waited to hear whether he were safe or no. The rope slackened, and she heard the faint rustle of leaves go slowly down the tower. Then all was silent, and there was nothing left but the empty night.

Suddenly, as though bending beneath some great weight of humiliation and utter helplessness, she sank down on the bed with her head resting against the wall. A great shudder ran through her, yet no tears came; for all the dreariness of the hour seemed lost in the miserable menace of the past.

XXXI

John Gore made his retreat from Thorn with nothing more threatening in the way of a betrayal than a low, querulous growl from the mastiff chained in the yard. He scaled the gate, and made his way back to the thorn-tree where he had left his heavier clothes and his sword.

Now the sea-captain’s brain might have been a Spanish treasure-ship, and the happenings of the night so many buccaneers by the way they stormed in and put everything to confusion. There were a hundred questions to be asked and answered, and many of them were the worst of riddles. The night sky seemed full of new meanings, new mysteries, new secrets, and Thorn itself a strange dim place where the heart of a man might lose itself in wonder. Yet one truth shone out like a great star above the tower, steady and sure amid so many drifting clouds. He had found the girl with the white face and the dusky hair, and learned that she was no more mad than he was; and for that he gave God thanks.

But setting the romance and the tenderness thereof aside for a moment, John Gore found himself face to face with some very sinister and savage questions. Plodding back over the grass toward the beech-thicket where he had left his horse, he began to scan the past as he walked, beating up memories with the keenness of a lawyer sifting evidence. Why had they mewed the girl up in this ruin of a place? Why had they lied to him about her madness? What had they to fear from her that they had made such a secret of the thing? Barbara herself had seemed haunted by some hidden anguish, some mysterious dread that had made her shudder at the simplest question. He recalled all that he had heard concerning her—the mystery of her father’s death, her moodiness and silence, the fears my lord had expressed as to her state of mind. He retold, piece by piece, the tale his father had told him on the night of his return from Yorkshire in September. Why had they gotten her into their power, made some pretence of madness, and shut her up with such keepers, and at the mercy of a ruffian’s fist? The inevitable answer was that Barbara had discovered some secret that my Lord Gore and her mother were fiercely compelled to conceal. It had not been madness on her part, but perhaps too much knowledge, that had led them to seize such sinister methods. As for the secret itself, the core and pith of the whole mystery! He could only recall the tale his father had told him, and knit his brows over it like a man meeting the sleet of a storm.

Now John Gore was a man of action, and as such laid his plans that night. He was going to take Barbara out of Thorn, for all the plots and intrigues and miserable shadows of shame the whole world might boast. There was the fellow Grylls to be dealt with, his father’s creature, and though his heart smote him at the thought of it, he was grimly determined to lose no chance. Whatever authority the man might have, he might at least be robbed of information. Captain Grylls would probably spend the night at Thorn, and might be dealt with when he sallied out in the morning.

A night watch in the woods opened for John Gore; he and his horse would have to make the best of such quarters as they had, the shelter of the beeches and the litter of leaves and bracken. John Gore swung himself into the fork of a tree, and, wrapping his cloak about him, sat looking toward Thorn, his heart full of the night’s adventures. The darker thoughts drifted aside for a season, and he thought only of the woman whose womanhood meant so much to him. He found himself wondering at the change in her, for never before had she shown her true self to him with its flood of pathos, simplicity, and passion. A few moments at a window, a touch of the hands, and they were sharing life and its impulses together. He thought of the long, cold nights in that tower room, the loneliness, the forebodings, the burden of past sorrow. It was easy to understand how the less lovable pride in her had been broken, and how with tears her womanhood had come by its true strength. The very sound of her voice had seemed richer to him; the change in her was a change that no true man would ever quarrel with.

Though mists rose and a frail moon came up to make the dark woods seem more raw and cold, John Gore kept watch all night in the fork of the beech-tree, thinking of Barbara and of the strange things he had discovered. He saw the dawn steal slowly into the east, and with the first gray light thereof the flutter of something white at the upper window of the tower. But with the day and the sound of the stirring of birds, John Gore came down out of the beech-tree, for there was work before him, and he had made his plans. There were his pistols to be cleaned and primed, his horse to be given a canter for both their sakes, and a crop at the grass in the forest ride. He still had some victuals left him, and John Gore made a meal under the tree where he had spent the night, keeping an eye on Thorn for a glimpse of Captain Grylls. Nor had the gossamer and the dew shone for long in the sunlight before he saw a horseman ride out from the gate of Thorn, and push on slowly toward the forest track.

Captain Grylls was jogging along peacefully that morning, thinking of such things as a man thinks of when he feels fat and warm, the money he is making, the clever things he may have done, or the woman he happens to fancy for the moment, when he heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs sucking wet grass, and the creak and jingle of harness. The track had broadened into an open place with a number of great oak-trees spreading their branches over it, so that they made a golden dome with the turf green and sleek beneath. A man on horseback appeared suddenly amid the oak-trees, riding at a canter under the sweeping boughs, with his hat over his eyes as though to save his face from the hazel twigs of the track. The stranger bore down straight on Captain Grylls, though that worthy shouted lustily and tried to get his horse out of the path. And even before he could curse the clumsy folly of the thing, his horse went down like a rammed wall, throwing him heavily, and crushing one leg badly under his flank.

Captain Grylls was stunned, and lay there on his back with his mouth open, a great gobbet of wet mud on his forehead. His nag picked himself up, shook himself till the harness rattled, and then stood quietly staring at the stranger who had blundered into him like a cavalry horse at the charge. John Gore was out of the saddle and bending over Captain Grylls. The fellow was far from dead, though conveniently senseless. John Gore opened his coat, searched his pockets, and found in a brown leather pocket-book a little package about the size of a man’s palm, wrapped in a piece of paper that looked like the torn-out fly-leaf of a book. The packet was tied up with worsted and roughly sealed.

John Gore took the thing, slipping the leather pocket-book back again into its place. Then he turned his attention to Captain Grylls’s horse, taking out that gentleman’s pistols, scattering the powder, and rubbing wet mud into the pans. He searched the holsters and the saddle-bags, but found nothing but a pipe and a paper of tobacco, some food, a change of undergear, and a bottle of wine. He had put the things back again when Captain Grylls came to his senses and sat up.

With the first clearing of his wits he laid a hand to his bruised ankle, and began to swear like a buccaneer at the man who had ridden into him so clumsily.

“Teeth and hair of the Almighty! you blind sot of a jackass, isn’t there enough road for you to ride to blazes without blundering into better men than yourself? What the devil do you mean by it, you Sussex clod, you bumpkin, you lousy yeoman? Give us a hand, can’t you? Wet grass ain’t anything of a cushion, especially when a man has no change of small-clothes with him.”

He glanced at John Gore, but did not seem to recognize him, and, getting upon his feet, limped to and fro awhile, cursing. Then he began slapping his pockets with his hands to make sure that his purse and pocket-book were there, looking at John Gore the while out of the corners of his eyes.

“I have not had anything in the way of an apology yet, sir,” he said.

John Gore lifted his hat, watching Captain Grylls carefully, to see whether his lack of recognition was a blind or no. He remembered that he had had the collar of his coat turned up that night in the park, and that he himself might not have recognized Grylls but for the wryness of his figure.

“Most certainly, I offer you my apologies, sir. I was in a hurry, and had taken a bridle-track, having business Hastings way by eight.”

John Gore coarsened himself to the likeness of a gentleman farmer in his best clothes.

“You will crack your skull and spill your business if you ride about it in such fashion.”

“We Sussex folk have hard heads.”

“And no manners—either,” quoth the man in the brown coat, glancing rather threateningly at the pistol-holsters on his saddle.

He limped up to his horse, and examined the saddle-bag to see that his things were there. Then he jammed his hat down on his head, looked sourly at his muddy clothes, and passed a hand over the wettest portion of his figure.

“A nice start for a thirty-mile ride. I shall have to bait somewhere and dry my breeches.”

“A day in the saddle, then?”

“Tunbridge to-night, London to-morrow.” He put his foot in the stirrup and climbed up heavily, grunting and swearing to ease his temper. “I wish you a clear road, sir,” he said, with sarcasm. “You would do well to lead a charge of horse.”

“I can only assure you of my regrets, my dear sir. We farmer gentry ride fast when there is a marriage to be arranged.”

Captain Grylls tilted his nose.

“Green youth, green youth!” he said, sententiously. “In ten years, my lad, you will break your neck riding to be rid of the sweet thing’s temper. Let the blood be hot for a month or two, till she begins to scold in bed instead of kissing.”

John Gore laughed.

“You are a man of experience, sir. Well, I must not waste your time—or my own.”

The man in the brown coat went away with a jeer.

“Spend your time on a wife, my lad, and you’ll waste it. Learn to spend it on other men’s wives—steal the kisses, and leave them the scratches.”

“Good-morning to you, sir; I wish I had some spare small-clothes to lend you.”

“They’ll dry in the saddle, Master Numskull, or I’ll sit with my back to the next fire I come across.” And he went off at a trot into the autumn woods.

John Gore led his horse aside among the oak-trees, and proceeded to examine the package that he had taken from Captain Grylls. On the paper was roughly scrawled “My lord,” and, breaking the seal and the worsted, he found nothing more astonishing than a mass of wool pressed tightly together. But as he unravelled the stuff he came upon something hard that glistened—a gold ring set with a seal and bound round with a piece of red silk. The seal was an intaglio cut in sardonyx—a gorgon’s head with a hand holding a firebrand above it.

John Gore knew it to be his father’s signet-ring, and this circle of gold, with its seal, cast out all doubt as to my lord’s authority in the matter. That ring might carry his father’s orders to and fro without his compromising himself by putting pen to paper. John Gore wondered what the piece of red silk meant. The message it carried might have some sinister meaning, for the mystery and the secrecy of it all had drawn many dark thoughts into his mind. How far would Captain Grylls ride before discovering the loss of the packet? Would he return, or ride on ahead for London? Above all, what message had he carried to Thorn, and had his coming foreshadowed some peril for Barbara? John Gore had thought of holding Captain Grylls at the pistol-point and of forcing a confession from him, but he had realized the rashness of such a measure; nor could he have proved that the rogue was telling him the truth. Captain Grylls might be a mere despatch-rider knowing nothing of the news he carried. It would be wiser to let him go his way without his discovering who was meddling in the plot.