IN PART.
MR. JORDAN knew more of what went on than Barbara suspected. Jane Welsh
attended to him a good deal, and she took a mean delight in spying into
the actions of her young mistresses, and making herself acquainted with
everything that went on in the house and on the estate. In this she
was encouraged by Mr. Jordan, who listened to what she told him and
became excited and suspicious; and the fact of exciting his suspicions
was encouragement to the maid. The vulgar mind hungers for notoriety,
and the girl was flattered by finding that what she hinted stirred the
crazy mind of the old man. He was a man prone to suspicion, and to
suspect those nearest to him. The recent events at Morwell had made
him mistrust his own children. He could not suppose that Martin Babb
had escaped without their connivance. It was a triumph to the base
mind of Jane to stand closer in her master’s confidence than his own
children, and she used her best endeavours to thrust herself further in
by aggravating his suspicions.
Barbara was not at ease in her own mind, she was particularly annoyed
to hear that Martin was still in the neighbourhood, on their land;
naturally frank, she was impatient of the constraint laid on her. She
heartily desired that the time would come when concealments might end.
She acknowledged the necessity for concealment, but resented it, and
could not quite forgive Jasper for having forced it upon her. She even
chilled in her manner towards him, when told that Martin was still
a charge. The fact that she was obliged to think of and succour a
man with whom she was not in sympathy, reacted on her relations with
Jasper, and produced constraint.
That Jane watched her and Jasper, Barbara did not suspect. Honourable
herself, she could not believe that another would act dishonourably.
She under-valued Jane’s abilities. She knew her to be a common-minded
girl, fond of talking, but she made no allowance for that natural
inquisitiveness which is the seedleaf of intelligence. The savage who
cannot count beyond the fingers of one hand is a master of cunning.
There is this difference between men and beasts. The latter bite and
destroy the weakly of their race; men attack, rend, and trample on the
noblest of their species.
Mr. Jordan knew that Jasper and Eve had gone together for a long
journey, and that Barbara sat up awaiting their return. He had been
left unconsulted, he was uninformed by his daughters, and was very
angry. He waited all next day, expecting something to be said on the
subject to him, but not a word was spoken.
The weather now changed. The brilliant summer days had suffered an
eclipse. The sky was overcast with grey cloud, and cold north-west
winds came from the Atlantic, and made the leaves of beech and oak
shiver. On the front of heaven, on the face of earth, was written
Ichabod—the glory is departed. What poetry is to the mind, that the sun
is to nature. The sun was withdrawn, and the hard light was colourless,
prosaic. There was nowhere beauty any more. Two chilly damp days had
transformed all. Mr. Jordan shivered in his room. The days seemed to
have shortened by a leap.
Mr. Jordan, out of perversity, because Barbara had advised his
remaining in, had walked into the garden, and after shivering there a
few minutes had returned to his room, out of humour with his daughter
because he felt she was in the right in the counsel she gave.
Then Jane came to him, with mischief in her eyes, breathless. ‘Please,
master,’ she said in low tones, looking about her to make sure she was
not overheard. ‘What do y’ think, now! Mr. Jasper have agone to the
wood, carrying a blanket. What can he want that for, I’d like to know.
He’s not thinking of sleeping there, I reckon.’
‘Go after him, Jane,’ said Mr. Jordan. ‘You are a good girl, more
faithful than my own flesh and blood. Do not allow him to see that he
is followed.’
The girl nodded knowingly, and went out.
‘Now,’ said Mr. Jordan to himself, ‘I’ll come to the bottom of this
plot at last. My own children have turned against me. I will let them
see that I can counter-plot. Though I be sick and feeble and old, I
will show that I am master still in my own house. Who is there?’
Mr. Coyshe entered, bland and fresh, rubbing his hands. ‘Well, Jordan,’
said he—he had become familiar in his address since his engagement—’how
are you? And my fairy Eve, how is she? None the worse for her junket?’
‘Junket!’ repeated the old man. ‘What junket?’
‘Bless your soul!’ said the surgeon airily. ‘Of course you think only
of curdled milk. I don’t allude to that local dish—or rather bowl—I
mean Eve’s expedition to Plymouth t’other night.’
‘Eve—Plymouth!’
‘Of course. Did you not know? Have I betrayed a secret? Lord bless me,
why should it be kept a secret? She enjoyed herself famously. Knows no
better, and thought the performance was perfection. I have seen Kemble,
and Kean, and Vestris. But for a provincial theatre it was well enough.’
‘You went with her to the theatre?’
‘Yes, I and Mr. Jasper. But don’t fancy she went only out of love of
amusement. She went to see the manager, a Mr. Justice Thing-a-majig.’
‘Barret?’
‘That’s the man, because he had known her mother.’
Mr. Jordan’s face changed, and his eyes stared. He put up his hands as
though waving away something that hung before him.
‘And Jasper?’
‘Oh, Jasper was with her. They left me to eat my supper in comfort. I
can’t afford to spoil my digestion, and I’m particularly fond of crab.
You cannot eat crab in a scramble and do it justice.’
‘Did Jasper see the manager?’ Mr. Jordan’s voice was hollow. His hands,
which he held deprecatingly before him, quivered. He had his elbows on
the arms of his chair.
‘Oh, yes, of course he did. Don’t you understand? He went with Eve
whilst I finished the crab. It was really a shame; they neither of them
half cleaned out their claws, they were in such a hurry. “Preciosa” was
not amiss, but I preferred crab. One can get plays better elsewhere,
but crab nowhere of superior quality.’
Mr. Jordan began to pick at the horse-hair of his chair arm. There
was a hole in the cover and his thin white nervous fingers plucked at
the stuffing, and pulled it out and twisted it and threw it down, and
plucked again.
‘What—what did Jasper hear?’ he asked falteringly.
‘How can I tell, Jordan? I was not with them. I tell you, I was eating
my supper quietly, and chewing every mouthful. I cannot bolt my food.
It is bad—unprincipled to do so.’
‘They told you nothing?’
‘I made no inquiries, and no information was volunteered.’
A slight noise behind him made Coyshe turn. Eve was in the doorway.
‘Here she is to answer for herself,’ said the surgeon. ‘Eve, my love,
your father is curious about your excursion to Plymouth, and wants to
know all you heard from the manager.’
‘Oh, papa! I ought to have told you!’ stammered Eve.
‘What did he say?’ asked the old man, half-impatiently, half fearfully.
‘Look here, governor,’ said the surgeon; ‘it strikes me that you are
not acting straight with the girl, and as she is about to become my
wife, I’ll stand up for her and say what is fitting. I cannot see the
fun of forcing her to run away a day’s journey to pick up a few scraps
of information about her mother, when you keep locked up in your own
head all that she wants to know. I can understand and make allowance
for you not liking to tell her everything, if things were not—as is
reported—quite ecclesiastically square between you and the lady. But
Eve is no longer a child. I intend her to become my wife, and sooner or
later she must know all. Make a clean breast and tell everything.’
‘Yes,’ said Jasper entering, ‘the advice is good.’
‘You come also!’ exclaimed the old man, firing up and pointing with
trembling fingers to the intruder; ‘_you_ come—_you_ who have led my
children into disobedience? My own daughters are in league against me.
As for this girl, Eve, whom I have loved, who has been to me as the
apple of my eye, she is false to me.’
‘Oh, papa! dear papa!’ pleaded Eve with tears, ‘do not say this. It is
not true.’
‘Not true? Why do you practise concealment from me? Why do you carry
about with you a ring which Mr. Coyshe never gave you? Produce it, I
have been told about it. You have left it on your table and it has been
seen, a ring with a turquoise forget-me-not. Who gave you that? Answer
me if you dare. What is the meaning of these runnings to and fro into
the woods, to the rocks?’ The old man worked himself into wildness and
want of consideration for his child, and for Coyshe to whom she was
engaged. ‘Listen to me, you,’ he turned to the surgeon, holding forth
his stick which he had caught up; ‘you shall judge between us. This
girl, this daughter of mine, has met again and again in secret a man
whom I hate, a man who robbed his own father of money that belonged to
me, a man who has been a jail-bird, an escapedfelon. Is not this so?
Eve, deny it if you can.’
‘Father!’ began Eve, trembling, ‘you are ill, you are excited.’
‘Answer me!’ he shouted so loud as to make all start, striking at the
same time the floor with his stick, ‘have you not met him in secret?’
She hung her head and sobbed.
‘You aided that man in making his escape when he was in the hands of
the police. I brought the police upon him, and you worked to deliver
him. Answer me. Was it not so?’
She faintly murmured, ‘Yes.’
This had been but a conjecture of Mr. Jordan. He was emboldened to
proceed, but now Jasper stood forward, grave, collected, facing the
white, wild old man. ‘Mr. Jordan,’ he said, ‘that man of whom you speak
is my brother. I am to blame, not Miss Eve. Actively neither I nor—most
assuredly—your daughter assisted in his escape; but I will not deny
that I was aware he meditated evasion, and he effected it, not through
active assistance given him, but because his guards were careless, and
because I did not indicate to them the means whereby he was certain to
get away, and which I saw and they overlooked.’
‘Stand aside,’ shouted the angry old man. He loved Eve more than
he loved anyone else, and as is so often the case when the mind is
unhinged, his suspicion and wrath were chiefly directed against his
best beloved. He struck at Jasper with his stick, to drive him on one
side, and he shrieked with fury to Eve, who cowered and shrank from
him. ‘You have met this felon, and you love him. That is why I have had
such difficulty with you to get your consent to Mr. Coyshe. Is it not
so? Come, answer.’
‘I like poor Martin,’ sobbed Eve. ‘I forgive him for taking my money;
it was not his fault.’
‘See there! she confesses all. Who gave you that ring with the blue
stones of which I have been told? It did not belong to your mother. Mr.
Coyshe never gave it you. Answer me at once or I will throw my stick
at you. Who gave you that ring?’
The surgeon, in his sublime self-conceit, not for a moment supposing
that any other man had been preferred to himself, thinking that Mr.
Jordan was off his head, turned to Eve and said in a low voice, ‘Humour
him. It is safest. Say what he wishes you to say.’
‘Martin gave me the ring,’ she answered, trembling.
‘How came you one time to be without your mother’s ring? How came you
at another to be possessed of it? Explain that.’
Eve threw herself on her knees with a cry.
‘Oh, papa! dear papa! ask me no more questions.’
‘Listen all to me,’ said Mr. Jordan, in a loud hard voice. He rose
from his chair, resting a hand on each arm, and heaving himself into
an upright position. His face was livid, his eyes burned like coals,
his hair bristled on his head, as though electrified. He came forward,
walking with feet wide apart, and with his hands uplifted, and stood
over Eve still kneeling, gazing up at him with terror.
‘Listen to me, all of you. I know more than any of you suppose. I spy
where you are secret. That man who robbed me of my money has lurked
in this neighbourhood to rob me of my child. Shall I tell you who he
is, this felon, who stole from his father? He is her mother’s brother,
Eve’s uncle.’
Eve stared with blank eyes into his face, Martin—her uncle! She uttered
a cry and covered her eyes.