THE DOVES.
BARBARA had no thought of going to bed. She could not have slept had
she gone. There was a clock in the tower, a noisy clock that made its
pulsations heard through the quadrangle, and this clock struck twelve.
By this time Jane had roused the young policeman, and he was collecting
men to assist him in the capture. Perhaps they were already on their
way,—or were they waiting for the arrival of warders from Prince’s
Town? Those warders were more dangerous men than the constables, for
they were armed with short guns, and prepared to fire should their game
attempt to break away.
She looked across the court at Jasper’s window. No light was in it. Was
he there, asleep? or had he taken her advice and gone? She could not
endure the thought of his capture, the self-reproach of having betrayed
him was more than she could bear. Barbara, usually so collected and
cool, was now nervous and hot.
More light was in the sky than had been when she was on the down. The
moon was rising over the roof. She could not see it, but she saw the
reflection in Jasper’s window, like flakes of silver.
What should she do? Her distress became insupportable, and she felt she
must be doing something to relieve her mind. The only thing open to her
was to make another attempt to recover the prison suit. If she could
destroy that, it would be putting out of the way one piece of evidence
against him—a poor piece, still a piece. She was not sure that it would
avail him anything, but it was worth risking her father’s anger on the
chance.
She descended the stairs once more to her father’s room. The door
was ajar, with a feeble yellow streak issuing from it. She looked
in cautiously. Then with the tread of a thief she entered and passed
through a maze of quivering bezants of dull light. She stooped, but,
as she touched the garments, heard her father’s voice, and started
upright. He was speaking in his sleep—’De profundis clamavi ad te;’
then he tossed and moaned, and put up his hand and held it shaking
in the air. ‘_Si iniquitates_’—he seemed troubled in his sleep,
unable to catch the sequence of words, and repeated ‘_Si iniquitates
observaveris_,’ and lay still on his pillow again; whilst Barbara stood
watching him, with her finger to her lip, afraid to move, afraid of the
consequences, should he wake and see her in her disobedience.
Then he mumbled, and she heard him pulling at his sheet. ‘Out of love,
out of the deeps of love, I have sinned.’ Then suddenly he cried out,
‘_Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine, quis sustinebit?_’—he had the
sentence complete, or nearly so, and it appeased him. Barbara heard him
sigh, she stole to his side, bowed over his ear, and said, ‘_Apud te
propitiatio est: speravit anima mea in Domino._’ Whether he heard or
not she did not know; he breathed thenceforth evenly in sleep, and the
expression of distress left his face.
Then Barbara took up the bundle of clothes and softly withdrew. She was
risking something for Jasper—the loss of her father’s regard. She had
recently drawn nearer to his heart than ever before, and he had allowed
her to cling round his neck and kiss him. Yet now she deliberately
disobeyed him. He would be very angry next morning.
When she was in the hall she turned over in her mind what was best to
be done with the clothes. She could not hide them in the house. Her
father would insist on their reproduction. They must be destroyed. She
could not burn them: the fire in the kitchen was out. The only way she
could think of getting rid of them was to carry them to the Raven Rock
and throw them over the precipice. This, accordingly, she did. She
left the house, and in the moonlight walked through the fields and wood
to the crag and hurled the bundle over the edge.
Now that this piece of evidence against Jasper was removed, it was
expedient that he should escape without further delay—if he were still
at Morwell.
Barbara had a little money of her own. When she unlocked her desk
and looked at the withered flowers, she drew from it her purse, that
contained her savings. There were several pounds in it. She drew the
knitted silk purse from her pocket, and, standing in the moonlight,
counted the sovereigns in her hand. She was standing before the
gatehouse near the old trees, hidden by their shadow. She looked up at
Jasper’s other window—that which commanded the entrance and was turned
from the moon. Was he there? How could she communicate with him, give
him the money, and send him off? Then the grating clock in the tower
tolled one. Time was passing, danger drew on apace. Something must be
done. Barbara picked up some pebbles and threw them at Jasper’s window,
but her aim was bad or her arm shook, and they scattered without
touching the glass.
All at once she heard feet—a trampling in the lane—and she saw also
that lights were burning on the down. The lights were merely gorse
blazes, for Morwell Moor was being ‘swaled,’ and the flames were
creeping on; and the trampling was of young colts and bullocks that fed
on the down, which were escaping before the fires; but to Barbara’s
nervous fear the lights and the tramp betokened the approach of a body
of men to capture Jasper Babb. Then, without any other thought but to
save him, she ran up the stair, struck at his door, threw it open, and
entered. He started from his bed, on which he had cast himself fully
dressed, and from dead weariness had dropped asleep.
‘For God’s dear sake,’ said Barbara, ‘come away! They are after you;
they are close to the house. Here is money—take it, and go by the
garden.’
She stood in the door, holding it, trembling in all her limbs, and the
door she held rattled.
He came straight towards her.
‘Miss Jordan!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, Miss Jordan I shall never forgive
myself. Go down into the garden—I will follow at once. I will speak to
you; I will tell you all.’
‘I do not wish you to speak. I insist on your going.’
He came to her, took her hand from the door, and led her down the
stairs. As they came out into the gateway they heard the tramp of many
feet, and a rush of young cattle debouched from the lane upon the open
space before the gate.
Barbara was not one to cry, but she shivered and shrank before her eyes
told her what a mistake she had made.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘I give you my purse. Go!’
‘No,’ answered Jasper. ‘There is no occasion for me to go. I have acted
wrongly, but I did it for the best. You see, there is no occasion for
fear. These ponies have been frightened by the flames, and have come
through the moor-gate, which has been left open. I must see that they
do not enter the court and do mischief.’
‘Never mind about the cattle, I pray you. Go! Take this money; it is
mine. I freely give it you. Go!’
‘Why are you so anxious about me if you hate me?’ asked Jasper. ‘Surely
it would gratify hate to see me handcuffed and carried off!’
‘No, I do not hate you—that is, not so much as to desire that. I have
but one desire concerning you—that we should never see your face again.’
‘Miss Jordan, I shall not be taken.’
She flared up with rage, disappointment, shame. ‘How dare you!’ she
cried. ‘How dare you stand here and set me at naught, when I have done
so much for you—when I have even ventured to rouse you in the depth of
night! My God! you are enough to madden me. I will not have the shame
come on this house of having you taken here. Yes—I recall my words—I do
hate you.’
She wrung her hands; Jasper caught them and held them between his own.
‘Miss Barbara, I have deceived you. Be calm.’
‘I know only too well that you have deceived me—all of us,’ she said
passionately. ‘Let go my hands.’
‘You misunderstand me. I shall not be taken, for I am not pursued. I
never took your sister’s money. I have never been in jail.’
She plucked her hands away.
‘I do not comprehend.’
‘Nevertheless, what I say is simple. You have supposed me to be a thief
and an escaped convict. I am neither.’
Barbara shook her head impatiently.
‘I have allowed you to think it for reasons of my own. But now you must
be undeceived.’
The young cattle were galloping about in front, kicking, snorting,
trying the hedges. Jasper left Barbara for a while that he might drive
them into a field where they could do no harm. She remained under the
great gate in the shadow, bewildered, hoping that what he now said was
true, yet not daring to believe his words.
Presently he returned to her. He had purposely left her that she might
have time to compose herself. When he returned she was calm and stern.
‘You cannot blind me with your falsehoods,’ she said. ‘I know that
Mr. Ezekiel Babb was robbed by his own son. I know the prison suit
was yours. You confessed it when I showed it you on your return
to consciousness: perhaps before you were aware how seriously you
committed yourself. I know that you were in jail at Prince’s Town, and
that you escaped.’
‘Well, Miss Jordan, what you say is partly true, and partly incorrect.’
‘Are you not Mr. Babb’s son?’ she asked imperiously.
He bowed; he was courtly in manner.
‘Was not his son found guilty of robbing him?’
He bowed again.
‘Was he not imprisoned for so doing?’
‘He was so.’
‘Did he not escape from prison?’
‘He did.’
‘And yet,’ exclaimed Barbara angrily, ‘you dare to say with one breath
that you are innocent, whilst with the next you confess your guilt!
Like the satyr in the fable, I would drive you from my presence, you
blower of true and false!’
He caught her hands again and held her firmly, whilst he drew her out
of the shadow of the archway into the moonlight of the court.
‘Do you give it up?’ he asked; and, by the moon, the sickle moon, on
his pale face, she saw him smile. By that same moon he saw the frown on
her brow. ‘Miss Barbara, I am not Ezekiel Babb’s _only_ son!’
Her heart stood still; then the blood rushed through her veins like the
tidal bore in the Severn. The whole of the sky seemed full of daylight.
She saw all now clearly. Her pride, her anger fell from her as the
chains fell from Peter when the angel touched him.
‘No, Miss Jordan, I am guiltless in this matter—guiltless in everything
except in having deceived you.’
‘God forgive you!’ she said in a low tone as her eyes fell and tears
rushed to them. She did not draw her hands from his. She was too much
dazed to know that he held them. ‘God forgive you!—you have made me
suffer very much!’
She did not see how his large earnest eyes were fixed upon her, how he
was struggling with his own heart to refrain from speaking out what he
felt; but had she met his eye then in the moonlight, there would have
been no need of words, only a quiver of the lips, and they would have
been clasped in each other’s arms.
She did not look up; she was studying, through a veil of tears, some
white stones that caught the moonlight.
‘This is not the time for me to tell you the whole sad tale,’ he
went on. ‘I have acted as I thought my duty pointed out—my duty to a
brother.’
‘Yes,’ said Barbara, ‘you have a brother—that strange boy.’
A laugh, jeering and shrill, close in their ears. From behind the great
yew appeared the shoulders and face of the impish Walter.
‘Oh, the pious, the proper Jasper! Oh, ho, ho! What frail men these
saints are who read their Bibles to weak-eyed Leahs and blooming
Rachels, and make love to both!
He pointed jeeringly at them with his long fingers.
‘I set the down on fire for a little fun. I drove the ponies along this
lane; and see, I have disturbed a pair of ring-doves as well. I won’t
hoot any more; but—coo! coo! coo!’ He ran away, but stopped every now
and then and sent back to them his insulting imitations of the call of
wood-pigeons—’Coo! coo! coo!’