CALLED AWAY.
JASPER was installed in Morwell as bailiff in spite of the
remonstrances of Barbara. He was given a room near the gatehouse, and
was attended by Mrs. Davy, but he came for his dinner to the table of
the Jordans. Barbara had done what she could to prevent his becoming an
inmate of the house. She might not tell her father her real reasons for
objecting to the arrangement.
She was rendered more uneasy a day or two after by receiving news that
an aunt, a sister of her mother, who lived beyond Dartmoor, was dying,
and she was summoned to receive her last sigh. She must leave Morwell,
leave her father and sister in the house with a man whom she thoroughly
mistrusted. Her only comfort was that Jasper was not sufficiently
strong and well to be dangerous. What was he? Was there any truth in
that story he had told her father? She could not believe it, because
it would not fit in with what she already knew. What place had the
convict’s garb in that tale? She turned the narrative about in her
mind, and rejected it. She was inclined to disbelieve in Jasper being
the son of old Mr. Babb. He had assumed the name and invented the story
to deceive her father, and form an excuse for remaining in the house.
She hardly spoke to Jasper when they met. She was cold and haughty, she
did not look at him; and he made no advances to gain her goodwill.
When she received the summons to her aunt’s deathbed, knowing that she
must go, she asked where Mr. Babb was, and, hearing that he was in the
barn, went thither with the letter in her hand.
He had been examining the horse-turned winnowing machine, which was
out of order. As she came to the door he looked up and removed his hat,
making a formal salute. The day was hot; he had been taking the machine
to pieces, and was warm, so he had removed his coat. He at once drew it
on his back again.
Barbara had a curt, almost rough, manner at times. She was vexed now,
and angry with him, so she spoke shortly, ‘I am summoned to Ashburton.
That is close to Buckfastleigh, where, you say, you lived, to make my
father believe it is your home.’
‘Yes, Miss Jordan, that is true.’
‘You have not written to your home since you have been with us. At
least—’she hesitated, and slightly coloured—’you have sent no letter
by our boy. Perhaps you were afraid to have it known where you are.
No doubt you were right. It is essential to you that your presence
here should not be known to anyone but your father. A letter might
be opened, or let lie about, and so your whereabouts be discovered.
Supposing your story to be true, that is how I account for your
silence. If it be false——’
‘It is not false, Miss Jordan.’
‘I am going to Ashburton, I will assure myself of it there. If it be
false I shall break my promise to you, and tell my father everything. I
give you fair warning. If it be true——’
‘It is true, dear young lady.’
‘Do not be afraid of my disclosing your secret, and putting you in
peril.’
‘I am sure you cannot do that,’ he said, with a smile that was sad. ‘If
you go to Buckfastleigh, Miss Jordan, I shall venture to send word by
you to my father where I am, that the money is lost, and what I have
undertaken.’
Barbara tossed her head, and flashed an indignant glance at him out of
her brown eyes.
‘I cannot, I will not be a porter of lies.’
‘What lies?’
‘You did not lose the money. Why deceive me? I know your object in
lurking here, in the most out-of-the-way nook of England you could
find. You think that here you are safe from pursuit. You made up the
story to impose on my father, and induce him to engage you. O, you are
very honourable! discharging a debt!—I hate crime, but I hate falsehood
even more.’
‘You are mistaken, Miss Jordan. The story is true.’
‘You have told the whole honest truth?’
‘I do not profess to have told the whole truth. What I have told has
been true, though I have not told all.’
‘A pinch of truth is often more false than a bushel of lies. It
deceives, the other does not.’
‘It is true that I lost the money confided to me. If you are going to
Ashburton, I ask you, as a matter of kindness—I know how kind you can
be, alas, and I know also how cruel—to see my father.’
She laughed haughtily. ‘This is a fine proposition. The servant sends
the mistress to do his dirty work. I thank you for the honour.’ She
turned angrily away.
‘Miss Barbara,’ said Jasper, ‘you are indeed cruel.’
‘Am I cruel?’ She turned and faced him again, with a threatening brow.
‘I have reason to be just. Cruel I am not.’
‘You were all gentleness at one time, when I was ill. Now——’
‘I will not dispute with you. Do you expect to be fed with a spoon
still? When you were ill I treated you as a patient, not more kindly
than I would have treated my deadliest enemy. I acted as duty prompted.
There was no one else to take care of you, that was my motive—my only
motive.’
‘When I think of your kindness then, I wish I were sick again.’
‘A mean and wicked wish. Tired already, I suppose, of doing _honest_
work.’
‘Miss Barbara,’ he said, ‘pray let me speak.’
‘Cruel,’—she recurred to what he had said before, without listening to
his entreaty, ‘It is you who are cruel coming here—you, with the ugly
stain on your life, coming here to hide it in this innocent household.
Would it not be cruel in a man with the plague poison in him to steal
into a home of harmless women and children, and give them all the
pestilence? Had I suspected that you intended making Morwell your
retreat and skulking den, I would never have passed my promise to keep
silence. I would have taken the hateful evidence of what you are in my
hand, and gone to the first constable and bid him arrest you in your
bed.’
‘No,’ said Jasper, ‘you would not have done it. I know you better than
you know yourself. Are you lost to all humanity? Surely you feel pity
in your gentle bosom, notwithstanding your bitter words.’
‘No,’ she answered, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, ‘no, I have
pity only for myself, because I was weak enough to take pains to save
your worthless life.’
‘Miss Jordan,’ he said, looking sorrowfully at her—and her eyes
fell—’surely I have a right to ask some pity of you. Have you
considered what the temptations must be that beset a young man who has
been roughly handled at home, maltreated by his father, reared without
love—a young man with a soul bounding with hopes, ambition, love of
life, with a heart for pleasure, all which are beaten back and trampled
down by the man who ought to direct them? Can you not understand how a
lad who has been thwarted in every way, without a mother to soothe him
in trouble, and encourage him in good, driven desperate by a father’s
harshness, may break away and transgress? Consider the case of one who
has been taught that everything beautiful—laughter, delight in music,
in art, in nature, a merry gambol, a joyous warble—is sinful; is it not
likely that the outlines of right and wrong would be so blurred in his
conscience, that he might lapse into crime without criminal intent?’
‘Are you speaking of yourself, or are you excusing another?’
‘I am putting a case.’
Barbara sighed involuntarily. Her own father had been unsympathetic. He
had never been actually severe, he had been indifferent.
‘I can see that there were temptations to one so situated to leave his
home,’ she answered, ‘but this is not a case of truancy, but of crime.’
‘You judge without knowing the circumstances.’
‘Then tell me all, that I may form a more equitable judgment.’
‘I cannot do that now. You shall be told—later.’
‘Then I must judge by what I know——’
‘By what you guess,’ he said, correcting her.
‘As you will.’ Her eyes were on the ground. A white spar was there. She
turned it over with her foot, and turned it again.
She hesitated what to say.
‘Should you favour me so far as to visit my father,’ said Jasper, ‘I
beg of you one thing most earnestly. Do not mention the name of my
companion—Martin.’
‘Why not?’
‘He may suspect him of having robbed me. My father is an energetic,
resolute man. He might pursue him, and I alone am to blame. I lost the
money.’
‘Who was that Martin?’
‘He told you—that I was nothing to him.’
‘Then why do you seek to screen him?’
‘Can I say that he took the money? If my father gets him arrested—I
shall be found.’
Barbara laughed bitterly.
‘Of course, the innocent must not be brought into suspicion because he
has ridden an hour alongside of the guilty. No! I will say nothing of
Martin.’
She was still turning over the piece of spar with her foot. It sparkled
in the sun.
‘How are you going to Ashburton, Miss Jordan?’
‘I ride, and little John Ostler rides with me, conveying my
portmanteau.’
Then she trifled with the spar again. There was some peacock copper on
it that glistened with all the colours of the rainbow. Abruptly, at
length, she turned away and went indoors.
Next morning early she came in her habit to the gate where the boy who
was to accompany her held the horses. She had not seen Jasper that
morning, but she knew where he was. He had gone along the lane toward
the common to set the men to repair fences and hedges, as the cattle
that strayed on the waste-land had broken into the wheat field.
She rode along the lane in meditative mood. She saw Jasper awaiting her
on the down, near an old quarry, the rubble heap from which was now
blazing with gorse in full bloom. She drew rein, and said, ‘I am going
to Ashburton. I will take your message, not because you asked me, but
because I doubt the truth of your story.’
‘Very well, Miss Jordan,’ he said respectfully; ‘I thank you, whatever
your motive may be.’
‘I expect and desire no thanks,’ she answered, and whipped her horse,
that started forward.
‘I wish you a favourable journey,’ he said. ‘Good-bye.’
She did not turn her head or respond. She was very angry with him. She
stooped over her pommel and buckled the strap of the little pocket
in the leather for her kerchief. But, before she had ridden far, an
intervening gorse bush forced her to bend her horse aside, and then
she looked back, without appearing to look, looked back out of her
eye-corners. Jasper stood where she had left him, with his hat in his
hand.