The House of Spies
I
Jasper Benham tumbled out of bed, with the crack of a pistol-shot
splitting the silence of the night. Before him ran the long casement
window, each diamond pane a silver lozenge set in a frame of jet.
Moonlight came through and lay patterned upon the floor.
"Master Jasper--Master Jasper----!"
It was a plaintive howl from under the window, the voice of a man who
was afraid.
"Master Jasper--horse-thieves in t' yard!"
The lattice opened, and a pair of broad shoulders caught the moonlight.
"What's this--Jack----?"
John Bumpstead, the groom, was squeezing himself against the wall.
"Dear Lord--sir--they've bruk into t' stable. Me and Jim Burgess tumbled
up to see what was wrong. We couldn't face pistols, sir. They be there
still, sir----"
"What! The infernal rogues! Here, take the blunderbuss, Jack, and have a
blaze----"
"Master Jasper--I dursn't----"
"You're not man enough to scare rooks!"
The figure disappeared from the window, and from the moonlit room came
the sounds of an active young man plunging furiously for his clothes.
Anything served; a frilled shirt, the red coat of a lieutenant of
volunteers thrown over a chair, a pair of riding-breeches and rough
boots. A hanger hung from the bed-post, and there was the blunderbuss in
the corner. Jasper Benham went down the oak stairs with the clattering
impetuosity of a boy playing hide-and-seek. He drew back the bolts of
the heavy porch door, and ran the oak bar out of its socket.
Jack Bumpstead waited in the porch, with little coquettish flirts of
something white swaying in the draught. He had been valorously quick in
dressing, but his teeth chattered behind his thin beard.
"Take the oak bar, Jack; it's a good cudgel. How many of them?"
"May be a dozen."
"Fudge! Where's Jim Jenner?"
"I shouldn't like t' say, sir."
"No doubt back in bed and under the sheets by this time! Shout--if you
can't fight, Jack; make a noise--anything. Come along."
They skirted along the terrace, turned down by the yew hedge, and so by
the stone-paved passage between the bake-house and the great brick barn.
The passage was in deep shadow, and Jasper had no notion that a man was
lurking there till the yellow spurt of the powder in the priming-pan of
a pistol made him throw himself against the wall. The piece missed fire,
and the clatter of heavy boots over the stones betrayed what had become
of the man who had pulled the trigger. There was some shouting in the
stable yard, and the stamping of horses. One deep voice sent oaths
flying, the savage and impatient oaths of a man in a fluster.
Jack Bumpstead had thrown himself flat on his face. He caught young
Benham by the ankle.
"You shan't go for to be shot, master; they be some of Dan Stunt's
gang."
"Let go--you fool!"
"They don't mind God or devil, sir. Better for 'em to have the nags----"
"Let go, Jack, or by Jove----"
He twisted free and ran on into the yard in time to see a hustle of
horses crowding through the gateway into the moonlight. One fellow was
still lying across his horse's back with his legs dangling. Another sat
gaunt and erect, pistol raised, ready, like a big forefinger.
Jasper's blunderbuss came up. He fired high, because of the horses, and
the belching mouth of the blunderbuss stabbed the night with flame.
Smoke hung for a moment, drifting away in wisps. The gateway had emptied
as though by magic, and in the place of the black knot of men and
horses, a strip of moonlit road was guarded by the two black, brick
pillars with their two stone balls.
Jasper ran for the gate, shouting to Jack Bumpstead as he ran.
"Get a lantern--get a lantern."
Nothing lay in the roadway beyond the gate, no dark thing that squirmed
with leaden slugs burning in its body. A dark blur that moved broke the
white road across the paddock. Jasper watched it a moment with jaws set,
and then turned back into the yard. He was in an ugly temper, and even
the tail of Jack Bumpstead's shirt, flickering in doleful whiteness by
the stable door, flapped no laughter from him. A tinder-box was kept on
a window-ledge close to where the cord that held the great stable
lantern sloped down to a hook in the wall. The groom had groped for the
tinder-box and was trying to get a light, though his hands were shaking
so that he struck the flint with his knuckles more often than he struck
it with the steel.
"The deuce, Jack! Here, give me the things!"
From the loose-box at the far end of the stable came the whimpering of a
horse and the clatter of hoofs on the brick floor.
"Why, they've left Devil Dick!"
"Sure, Master Jasper, sure!"
"That's luck, indeed!"
John Bumpstead managed to get one of the sulphur-tipped matches alight.
Benham had lowered the great lantern and it dangled close by. The groom
put the match to the candle, and the yellow rays shooting between the
black bars showed four empty stalls littered with trampled straw.
Benham pulled a wry face.
"Confound the blackguards! Two cart-horses, and Peggy, and Brown Bob
gone. And they have left Devil Dick, the best of the whole bunch!"
He went to the loose-box, and a warm nose was thrust over the door. The
horse's lips nibbled affectionately at his hand.
"Jack, light that other lantern there. Run into the house and get me a
brace of pistols. You'll find them in the case on the oak chest in my
room. Run, man, run. I'll saddle Dick."
"Sir----?"
"Don't stand and stare, you fool! Do you think I'm going to let these
gentry go without a gallop! I may follow them up if I can't bring them
to action."
In ten minutes Devil Dick was prancing sideways through the gateway,
carrying a bare-headed, bare-legged man with a pistol in each pocket. A
good square jaw, blue eyes, and a firm mouth are the points of a
youngster who does not fawn upon fate. Jasper Benham had been an
impudent young cub, a little laughing, keen-eyed imp who had been
whacked and cuffed into a sturdy, determined, brown-faced man.
Jasper drew Devil Dick on to the grass and listened. The night was
still, with a gibbous moon sailing away up yonder, and a vague,
inconstant breeze murmuring occasionally in the trees and hedgerows.
Rush Heath House stood black and huge at Jasper's back. He listened to a
faint galloping rhythm coming like the noise of a stream running in the
distance. The moonlight shone on the deep-set eyes under the square
brows.
"Tsst--Dick--on--lad."
They started away through the paddock, and over the furze-covered slopes
of Rush Heath, the big black horse swinging smoothly between Jasper's
knees. Stones clinked in the road. The stunted thorns rushed by,
stretching out warning hands. In the damp places the rush tufts
splintered the moonlight like silver wires. The further woods were very
black upon the hillsides, and the fresh smell of the spring night was
tinged with the scent of the sea.
Jasper galloped through Polecat Wood, on over Stubb's Common, and past
Flanders Farm into Lavender's Hole. At the top of the further hill he
drew in to listen, and heard something that heartened him and set his
blood a-spinning. There was good turf along the track over Stonehanger
Heath, and by the light of the moon he could see the fresh marks left by
the horses ahead. A lively imagination is needed for the making of a
coward, and Jasper Benham's shoulders were too sturdy to form a
squatting-place for fear. Devil Dick at a gallop was made for audacity,
pistol-shots, and the clashing of swords.
"Scurvy thieves----!"
The land was very wild here, rough wood and heathland rising toward
uplands that overlooked the sea. Stunted oaks and firs hung in black
tangles against the moon. Desolate furze-covered knolls heaved this way
and that, and the track plunged, twisted, and burrowed through thickets.
Even higher ground lay up yonder under the moon, a bluff ridge where the
trees had been blown all one way by the wind, and the furze rolled like
green breakers.
Jasper saw the roof and chimneys of a house rising black against the
sky. He lost sight of it for a moment as the track curved under a rocky
bank where dwarf trees and brushwood broke the moonlight. Then the house
reappeared again upon the hilltop, a bleak house, parapeted,
square-windowed, with massive chimneys built for the roar of the wind.
Tattered thorns, oaks, and firs sheltered it on the north and the
south-west, and held out their arms to it as though it had tormented
them for years with some strange secret. The furze broke upon the very
walls of its terrace and garden.
Jasper drew in, like a man challenged in the darkness.
"Stonehanger! I had forgotten the old place!"
He looked up at it, frowningly, as though it roused grim thoughts,
ghostly drifts of gossip that made folk draw nearer to the fire.
"Who's there now? Bless me if I know! These horse-thieves----!"
He took a pistol from his pocket and let Devil Dick advance at a walk.
The black house up yonder oppressed him. Such things had happened there.
It was as though it threw a shadow across his heart.
What was that? Horses galloping! By George--what a fool he was to be
shying at a dark house like a nervous horse, while the gentry yonder
were going over the hill. Jasper urged Devil Dick to a trot. The track
was steep here, and littered with loose stones.
But in chasing blackguards a man may forget to be on his guard against
the blackguards' tricks. At the spot where the grey stone wall of the
Stonehanger garden began a great yew threw its shadow across the road.
And a man leaning round the trunk of the tree, flashed a pistol at
Jasper, and then jumped into the road.
"Take that--for being obstinate, and be darned to you!"
Jasper was down in the road as quickly as the man, simply because Devil
Dick had swerved and thrown him, and left him lying on his back. The
horse-thief bent over Jasper with the butt-end of his pistol ready. A
superfluous precaution. Benham of Rush Heath lay as still as a stone,
and his horse had bolted down the road.
The man spat, and nodded.
"You lie nice and quiet there, lad. I should have liked your nag, but
the beast's bolted. Good-night to ye----"
And he went off with a wave of the hat.
II
There was a light in Stonehanger House. It had flashed out suddenly in
one of the side windows, as though the black house had raised an eyelid
and looked out on the world with a sinister, yellow eye.
The light disappeared from the window, and left the eastern side of the
house a mere dark surface. At the same moment a gust of wind came over
the hill from the sea. The stunted trees shook their fists at the house,
cursing it and bidding it beware.
Then a door opened, and the light came out into the paved yard at the
back of Stonehanger. It flickered across toward the stable whose stone
roof was brushed by the boughs of a clump of firs. There was the sound
of some one hammering at a door, a hollow sound like blows struck with
the hilt of a sword upon the panelling covering some secret
hiding-place.
The light approached the road, shooting yellow rays among the overgrown
laurels and hollies of the shrubbery inside the stone wall. There was a
gate here, with an arched stone bridge leading over the ditch to the
road. The gate was thrust open and the lantern held out at the end of a
white forearm. Ten yards away Jasper Benham lay flat on his back, one
arm flung out, the other twisted as though it were broken. The lantern
swayed uncertainly at the gate and then came down into the road. It
showed the white face and the slight figure of a girl, a red cloak flung
over her shoulders, her dress open at the throat.
She stood and looked at the figure in the road as though she were
shrewdly afraid, and ready to reason with herself for being so.
"Don't be a coward, Nance. You won't help any one by being afraid."
She spoke the words aloud, in a mood to be reassured by the sound of her
own voice.
"Can't you see that the man has a soldier's coat? The French may have
landed at last. You heard horses go by, and the sound of a pistol-shot."
She moved forward and, holding the lantern shoulder-high, bent over the
man in the road. It was a pure coincidence that Benham opened his eyes
at the same moment, and blinked at the light that was within two feet of
his face.
"Hallo!--O--my head!"
He stirred, turned on one elbow, and fell back with a savage start of
pain.
"Damnation, what's this? What have they done to my arm? Who--? I say--I
beg your pardon----!"
Sudden sanity came into his eyes, and he lay and stared at the girl's
face. It seemed that these two were fascinated momentarily by each
other's eyes. Benham moistened his lips, and made an effort to explain
himself.
"I must have had a crack on the head. Of course, what am I thinking of!
The scoundrel shot at me from behind a tree. Where's Dick? Can you see
anything of a horse?"
She looked up and down the lane, and her eyes returned slowly to his
face. They were very solemn eyes, big and dark, like the eyes of a
southern woman.
"I can't see any horse. Have the French landed----?"
"The French?"
"Yes."
"Nothing so respectable. I was chasing horse-thieves, and one of them
shot me from behind that yew-tree. I'm Benham of Rush Heath."
Her solemnity took the colour of compassion.
"I'm sorry. And your poor arm there! No, don't move. I'm Nance Durrell,
and this is Stonehanger Lane."
"Durrell! H'm. That fellow's bullet must have broken my right arm."
"I heard horses galloping, and the sound of a pistol-shot. You see, I
was watching for father. And I couldn't wake David; he's stone deaf."
"You live here then?"
"Yes, at Stonehanger. Don't you know?"
Jasper looked discomfited by his ignorance.
"It's my head; this tumble has knocked my wits to pieces. I wonder if I
can get up."
She put the lantern down, and they regarded each other with great
seriousness.
"I don't know. There's your arm! And it has been bleeding."
"Has it?"
"Sssh--it must hurt!"
"Well, I can't lie here in the road, can I?"
"No."
"I must get up--and home--somehow."
She looked at him as though considering what was best to do.
"I know. You ought to have your arm fastened to your side. I had my arm
broken once. I'll go in and get a scarf."
She picked up the lantern and disappeared through the gate with beams of
light swinging about her in the darkness. As for Jasper Benham, his head
had cleared sufficiently to admit some measure of astonished curiosity.
Who were the Durrells, and how had they come to Stonehanger House, and
how was it he could not remember ever having heard the name?
"Nance Durrell--Nance Durrell."
He repeated it to himself as he lay under the shadow of the yew-tree, as
though the uttering of the name might help him to realise that he was
not dreaming in his bed at Rush Heath. No; the ground was solid, the yew
bough above him was solid, the pain in his arm was very real. And the
girl who called herself Nance Durrell? He found himself waiting
impatiently for her return, and watching the foliage of the shrubs for
the shine of her lantern.
She was back again in the road, carrying a red scarf in one hand.
"I had to hunt for it, or I should not have been so long."
She put the lantern down, and knelt beside him, her lips parted, her
eyes full of her purpose. It struck Benham of a sudden that she must
have led a free and rather lonely life. She seemed ready to rely upon
herself, to meet responsibilities with the frank self-reliance of a girl
who has had to trust to her own hands.
"Do you think you can sit up?"
"Of course I can."
"Wait; I'll help you. Hold your arm with your other hand."
She drew herself behind him, and put her hands under his shoulders.
"Now."
He was up, with her hands still holding him, and her breath touching his
cheek.
"Can you bear it?"
"Yes."
"Draw the arm across--so."
"Phew--confound it! I'm sorry; it's nothing."
"I know how it must hurt."
The frank impulse toward sympathy in her voice sent a start of emotion
through him. He set his teeth as she bound the broken arm to his side
with the red scarf. There was a kind of pleasure in the pain.
"What gentle hands you have."
"Have I? There! How does that feel?"
"Splendid."
"Now I'll help you up."
Whatever a man's pluck may be it cannot raise him above nature, or make
him independent of the ills of the flesh. Jasper Benham scrambled to his
feet to be smothered by a sudden fog of faintness that blotted out the
moonlight and set him groping with his hands.
"I can't help it--but----"
She understood what ailed him, and was practical in her compassion.
"You're faint."
Her hands steadied him.
"Put your head down--just for a moment."
He felt the grip of her strong young hands, and the thrill of it may
have helped his heart.
"That's better."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
She picked up the lantern and, holding it high, looked at him with frank
concern.
"You can't get back to Rush Heath to-night."
"I am afraid that's the truth."
"You must come in here. I'll wake David somehow. He can go over to Rush
Heath as soon as it is light, and tell them to send a cart."
"What a friend you are."
She stood there in sudden forceful contrast to all the things feminine
that he had ever known. There was a sweet and brave directness about her
that challenged his manhood. Simple, chivalrous homage; some women win
such service with a word or a look. He bowed to her, and his heart bowed
with his body.
"You are very good to me."
"Good! What else could one do!"
Everything about the grey, upland house seemed fashioned out of stone.
The paths and yard were paved with rough stones from the quarry; the
hall and passages floored with flagstones. Jasper Benham found himself
lying on a long couch under the window in a room that might have been
part of an old religious house. It was walled and vaulted with stone,
and the fireplace was a great yawning recess with carved pillars on each
side of it.
Nance Durrell had gone to wake David Barfoot, the servant, who slept in
a room by the stable. Benham lay back with his head on the round squab,
and looked about him with the consenting curiosity of a man who dreams.
Who were the Durrells, and how had they come to Stonehanger, this grey
house, that for thirty years had been spoken of as a house of horror?
Benham was not an imaginative man, but this grey room with the huge yawn
of its fireplace filled him with a vague sense of eeriness and mystery.
He heard footsteps crossing the paved hall. Nance reappeared with an
armful of wood. Her big, brown eyes ran over with laughter, the
mischievous and sparkling laughter of perfect health.
"I have managed to wake David. We make him leave his window open,
because there is only one way of waking him."
"Throwing stones----?"
"I could only find the stable bucket--and I'm afraid I dropped it on
David's head."
She put her wood down and, kneeling, stirred the heap of grey ash in the
fireplace. Her breath roused it to redness, and the twigs that she threw
on crackled with flame. Benham watched her as though the kindling of
that fire was one of the most wonderful things that he had ever seen.
The burning wood threw a warmth upon her, and made her black hair gleam.
"Don't you love making a fire?"
"Yes, when it is not at six o'clock on a winter morning."
"Oh, I love that, too. It is so glorious to get warm."
To Benham the whole adventure had been incredibly delightful. Only by
degrees did he become conscious of himself, of his bare legs, and the
general precipitation of his dress. But somehow these things did not
seem to matter. The girl had picked up the incidents of the night as
naturally as she would have gathered wind-blown apples out of the grass.
"There's David."
Sounds came from some far-off corner of the house. Nance disappeared, to
return with a skillet full of milk, a cup, and some bread and cheese on
a plate.
"I am going to heat this milk for you."
"You are taking too much trouble."
"I should have to sit up--anyway. Father may return to-night. He was
coming by the night coach, and meant to walk from Battle."
Jasper was seized with a desire to ask questions, but his finer
instincts smothered the desire. And in another minute she was holding
out the cup of milk to him with that solemn and intent look in her eyes.
"You must get some sleep now. I shall have to keep awake by the fire,
and listen."
"For Mr. Durrell? He will have a long tramp from Battle."
"Yes. David never hears anything."
"A useful man on occasions."
"Does the arm hurt you much?"
"No, nothing to speak of."
She brought a rug from somewhere and threw it over him, and took the cup
when he had finished the milk.
"I will put out the lantern. The firelight will do for me."
She drew an arm-chair before the hearth, took some logs from the oak
log-box and piled them against the fire-back. Benham lay and watched her
out of the corners of his eyes. She sat herself down with the firelight
playing upon her black dress, and touching her throat and face. Perhaps
she had outwatched her own wakefulness, for presently she fell asleep,
her head resting against the chair back, her face turned toward the
window.
Jasper Benham could not sleep. The aching of his broken arm, and a
feeling of restlessness kept him awake. Moreover, he was very conscious
of the nearness of the girl sleeping in the chair; and the alluring
strangeness of her white face seemed sharpened by his own pain. He
became feverish and nervously alert, unable to master the thoughts and
conjectures that made a whirligig of his brain. He began to question the
history of Stonehanger as a sick man busies himself with patterns on a
wall. Was it true that Inchbold had killed his wife here fifty years
ago? Was it true that two men had fought a duel to the death in this
very room? What of the tales told of the haunting horror of the house, a
horror that had emptied it and kept it empty for twenty years? Nance
Durrell, sleeping before the fire, seemed to contradict all this. The
ebbing and flowing of her breath between the red lips of youth might
exorcise such ghost tales.
But Benham was very restless. The flicker of the firelight through the
vaulted room made a grim, fantastic shadow-play. There was a listening
silence about the house that made wakeful ears tingle with imaginary
sounds. Sometimes a log settled, and sent up a scattering of sparks.
More than once a gust of wind rattled the windows.
Suddenly Benham turned his head. He had heard, or thought he had heard,
the ring of a horse's hoofs upon the stones of the court-yard. He
wondered for the moment whether he ought to wake Nance Durrell.
Benham's eyes were turned toward the fire. He did not see something
white glide up toward the window. A face seemed to flatten itself
against the panes, and to be distorted by the crinkles in the glass. It
remained there for a few seconds, and then melted back into the night.
III
Two men were waiting in the stone porch that sheltered the yard-door at
Stonehanger. A third man crossed the yard with long, silent strides, and
joined the two who were waiting. He took one of them by the arm.
"Over here--among the shrubs."
They moved away into the moonlight, and along under the shadow of a
stone wall toward the wild tangle of the neglected garden. The man who
had spoken carried himself with a grand air that was spoilt by a
suggestion of swagger. He had restless eyes that threw rapid glances
from side to side. The man whom he held by the elbow had white hair and
a thin, sharp, eager face. The third fellow was a little tub of a
Frenchman, frog-faced, blue-chinned, and very fat.
"Here, this path will do. Anthony Durrell, what shall you say if we are
trapped?"
"What do you mean?"
"For God's sake, sir, keep that squeaky voice of yours down in your
shoes! Pardon me, I am somewhat excited. There is a red-coat officer
lying at his ease upon your couch. He had covered himself with a rug,
but I got a glimpse of his red jacket. And Mademoiselle Nance is asleep
before the fire."
The three men stood close together under the laurels and hollies,
whispering with their heads close, and speaking sometimes in French and
sometimes in English. The tall man seemed to take the lead.
"Pest on it, Durrell; I have a mind to go back and shoot the man through
the window."
"No--no--I will not countenance----"
"There, there, am I a fool! The house may be full of red-coats. We have
got to find that out. Your daughter expects you?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, you must go and knock as boldly as any corporal. Jerome and
I can stay in the shadow by the porch. If the red-coat is alone, and
means mischief, we can deal with him. If he has men with him, they will
catch nothing but a respectable scholar returning after a journey to
London. It is lucky I left the horses in the quarry."
Anthony Durrell fingered a prominent and bony chin.
"I think you are right, Chevalier."
"Tut, tut, it is plain as the moon. Jerome and I know where to bolt to
in case of trouble. Go and embrace your most charming daughter."
Nance Durrell woke with a start, and her eyes met the eyes of Jasper
Benham.
"I've been asleep!"
"There is some one knocking."
She was up instantly, and kindling a piece of stick at the fire she lit
the lantern.
"It must be father."
Nance went out, and Benham heard her shooting back the bolts of the
door. A man's cheery and exclamatory voice told of a home-coming.
"Why, child, here we are--at last."
"I am so glad you have come."
"All well, all well?"
"Yes. But we have had an adventure."
"What--what!"
"Let me take your cloak. Yes; a gentleman was shot at and wounded by
horse-thieves--in the lane. I had to help him in here. He is in the
parlour."
"Bless my soul!"
"Come in and see him."
Benham sat up, the rug falling from him, as Nance Durrell and her father
entered the room. He saw a thin, narrow-shouldered man in black
regarding him with weak and red-lidded eyes. Anthony Durrell had one of
those narrow, hungry, aspiring faces, the face of a man whose desires
would never be satisfied. He might have been a bookman, a fanatic, or a
dreamer of dreams.
He came in smiling, and the smile spoilt the dignity of his face. It
lifted the angles of the mouth too markedly, showed the gaps between the
teeth, and was too reminiscent of a snarl.
"Good evening to you, sir."
Benham had risen. He had the watchful look one sees in the eyes of a
young man who is brought into sudden contact with a personality that is
new and strange.
"Miss Durrell has told you? Yes. I must say, sir, that I am vastly
grateful----"
"Common courtesy, common kindness, Mr.----"
"Benham of Rush Heath."
"Mr. Benham. I hope you are not badly hurt."
He rubbed his hands, and smiled with a sympathy that seemed ill at ease.
"A broken arm, sir."
"Indeed! That's bad."
He looked fixedly at Benham, and then turned to Nance.
"I commend you, my dear child. I am glad that we have been able to be of
service to Mr. Benham. What does the clock say? What, gone two! It seems
to me that it will be kinder to leave Mr. Benham undisturbed. You can
get me some supper in the kitchen, Nance. And then I think bed will be
very welcome."
He stood a moment staring at the fire. The smile had died from his face
and left it cold and preoccupied. When he turned once more toward
Benham, the smile spread again over his face, unspontaneously, forced up
from within.
"Mr. Benham, sir, I will not disturb you further. Make what use you
please of this room. Shall we decide to meet again in the morning?"
He gave Jasper a stiff and constrained bow, and walked slowly from the
room. Nance followed him, but turned at the door.
"Good night. Is there anything else you would like?"
"No; only to thank you again."
Her brown eyes smiled kindly at him as she closed the door.
"Nance, dear."
"Yes, father. David is in the kitchen."
"Ah, send him to bed, and get me some supper. I have left my bag in the
porch. I had almost forgotten it."
"I'll fetch it for you."
"No, no; get me some milk heated. I feel rather chilled."
And he left her with irritable precipitation. Durrell had no more than a
few hurried words with the two men who waited in the yard. He had closed
the door behind him, and spoke in a half-whisper.
"No danger--I hope. It's a young man who was shot in the arm while
chasing horse-thieves. I will send the girl to bed, and then come back
for you."
"Who is the man?"
"A young Benham of Rush Heath."
"Psst--damnably awkward----!"
"I mustn't stay now."
"Yes, get back."
Half an hour passed before Nance took one of the brass candlesticks from
the mantelpiece and went up to bed, yawning behind her hand. David
Barfoot had been sent back to his room, and Anthony Durrell had
Stonehanger House to himself.
The first thing he did was to take off his shoes, and go very cautiously
along the passage leading from the kitchen to the hall. A faint line of
light showed under the door of the room where Jasper Benham of Rush
Heath sat on the couch, swinging his heels. Durrell went softly to the
door and listened. The key was on the outside. He felt for it, and
turned it with the utmost caution. Yet the lock gave a faint click as
the catch shot home, and Durrell stood for three minutes, listening for
any sound in the room within.
Durrell's ears satisfied him that all was quiet, though he would have
felt far from satisfied had he been able to see through the panels of
the door. Jasper had heard the click of the lock. He was sitting on the
couch, and staring intently at the door. Presently he crossed the room,
sliding his feet silently over the stones, and tried the door, only to
find it locked.
"That's funny!" he said to himself; "it seems that the old fellow
doesn't trust me. What has he to be anxious about?"
He turned and sat down in the chair in which Nance had fallen asleep.
Anthony Durrell had opened the porch door, and was whispering to the men
in the porch.
"Go round to the kitchen entry. Don't make a noise. Nance has only just
gone to her room."
They disappeared into the darkness, and Durrell felt his way back toward
the kitchen, shutting the door that closed the passage from the hall.
Entering the kitchen, he drew the heavy stuff curtains across the
windows, and then let the two men in.
"Don't talk too loud. The old house is solid--but I don't want Nance to
hear."
Jerome the Frenchman glanced greedily at the bread and cheese on the
table, and drawing up a chair he pulled out a bottle of schnapps, and
began to eat and drink. The taller man smiled, and laid his cloak and
hat on a dresser. He stood six feet, held himself arrogantly, and looked
down at Durrell out of a pair of hard, brown, closely set eyes. He was
clean-shaven, and the skin of his face was harsh and red. His long,
straight nose had a curiously drooping tip, and two deep, vertical
furrows where it joined his forehead. The man had the air of an
aristocrat, and the easy and contemptuous manner of one who has seen too
much of life.
"Durrell, I don't like this interlude. What's the fellow's tale?"
"He says that he was chasing horse-thieves, and that one of them shot
him down yonder in the lane. Nance found him and brought him in."
"A plague on the women! Pity is the devil! Where was he hit?"
"In the arm."
"Sure?"
"It was bound up with a scarf, De Rothan."
The Chevalier straightened himself, and gave a toss of the head.
"I tell you what I think, Durrell--the man's a spy. I know young Benham.
He is just the man they would choose to play a bluff, downright part.
They may have suspicions. Who tied up the arm?"
"Nance."
"The devil! There you are! What do you mean by having a pretty daughter!
Even if this is no spying trick, the booby may give us trouble. David
should have had the job. You never know what a pair of soft eyes and
hands will do."
Durrell looked troubled.
"But, Chevalier----"
"Yes, yes; it is accursedly awkward whichever way we look."
Jerome, his mouth full of bread, threw a suggestion into the air.
"Shoot the dog."
De Rothan laughed, sat on the edge of the table, and reached for
Jerome's bottle of schnapps.
"You are a wise fellow, Jerome, always loading up against emergencies.
But you are a little too rough in your methods. Strategy does it. I
shall have my eyes on Mr. Benham."
"A snap of the fingers for him, then," said the Frenchman with a grin.
Durrell brooded, staring at the fire.
"The boat will not come ashore till to-morrow after dark, and then only
if we give the signal."
"Yes; you will have to pack us in the attics, and get that fellow out of
the house."
"Early."
"And take a ramble to the quarry."
"Yes, yes; no doubt."
Durrell answered irritably, like a man oppressed by a crowd of cares.
"The girl must be asleep by now."
"Very well. Away to the rookery. Bring that bread and cheese along with
you, Jerome. I have only talked as yet."
Durrell took the lantern and went out into the passage. He was away for
about five minutes. Then they saw him standing in the doorway,
beckoning.
The two men drew off their boots and gathered their belongings. They
followed Anthony Durrell up the oak stairs to the attic story of
Stonehanger House.
IV
Jasper Benham lay on the couch under the window and watched the dawn
come up over the sea.
It was a stealthy creeping of tawny light into the sky, a rising of blue
hills and headlands, dim, huge, and distant against the broadening East.
The vague grey sea became a sheet of amethyst crossed by a band of gold.
Birds were piping in the ragged thorn-trees upon Stonehanger Hill. A
sense of wonder seemed to sweep across the land, touching the hills with
splendour, and leaving the valleys full of a shadowy awe.
The breaking of the day was a relief to Jasper after a restless and
pain-haunted night. He had come by odd snatches of sleep, but the
starting of the broken arm had always awakened him, and left him at the
mercy of his thoughts. The great, grey room, lit by the faint glow of
the dying fire, had filled him with restless and unreasoning distrust.
He raised himself slowly on the couch, and his head swam with the fall
of the previous night when Devil Dick had thrown him in the lane. Yet
faint and dizzy as he was, the view from the window astonished him. From
the Stonehanger uplands, wild, furze-clad slopes melted into the
green-tinged browns of the April woods. Nearly the whole coast from
Hastings to Beachy Head was visible. Pevensey Bay was a great half-moon
of silver cutting into the green flats of the Level. The dim blue sky
met the dim blue sea. Along the rim of Pevensey Bay were dotted little
round pillars, the distant martello towers with the black mouths of
their twenty-four-pounders waiting for Napoleon and the French.
Benham knelt on the couch and gazed. He had heard vague movements about
the house. A door had opened somewhere, and footsteps descended the
stairs.
Then a girl's voice sounded out yonder amid the furze.
"Coop--coop--come along."
Jasper saw her drifting against the dawn, her black hair doubly black,
her forearms bare to the elbow, her short skirt showing her feet and
ankles. A kind of rough terrace garden, half grass, half paved path, ran
along the front of the house. There were rose-beds in the grass, and the
two old yews rose blackly above the parapet of the terrace wall. Nance
was on the furze-land beyond, where the ground fell away toward the
south.
A brown cow came into view. It passed Nance, and, like a creature of
habit, followed a path that led to the yard. The girl had turned, and
was looking at the windows of Stonehanger. A flight of rough steps went
up to the terrace. She mounted them, and crossed the grass toward the
windows of the parlour.
Benham, kneeling there, unfastened the lattice and thrust it open. Nance
Durrell was quite close, and a kind of warmth went over her face. Her
eyes had the dewiness of the dawn.
"You are awake."
"The morning is worth it."
She rested her hands on the window-ledge, and looked in at him with
frank intentness.
"I'm sorry."
"Sorry!"
"You have had a bad night of it. I can see that. The arm has been
hurting you."
"A little."
"More than a little. Perhaps I did not bind it up tightly enough."
To Jasper Benham her compassion seemed very wonderful. What did it
matter to her that he had suffered.
"You could not have done more for me. To tell the truth, I am glad that
fellow shot me under the yew."
"How do you manage to be glad?"
"Well--otherwise, I should not have spent a night at Stonehanger, and
come by such a friend."
Her red mouth smiled at him, and her eyes were the eyes of a tease.
"If you set out to make all your friends by being shot at--or getting
hurt----!"
"I should not go as far as that--for most people."
He laughed, to carry off his rush of earnestness.
"You see, some things are worth bearing. I am not a fool. I say what I
mean."
Nance looked at him as though she were puzzled. She dropped her hands
from the window-ledge, but her eyes did not avoid Benham's.
"We have sent David off to Rush Heath. I must go and milk Jenny."
He was about to ask her to let him join her when he remembered the
locked door. The memory jarred the impulsive delight of the moment.
Nance had turned, and he saw her clear profile against the sky. He could
find nothing to say to her, and that short silence seemed the fatal
break between an enchanted dawn and the prosaic day.
Overhead the lattice of an attic window had been opened noiselessly, and
a man's head thrust out. He had been listening to Nance Durrell and
Jasper talking at the window below. Nor had the incident pleased him, to
judge by the stiff and cynical smile upon his face.
Jasper Benham was still kneeling on the couch when he heard footsteps in
the hall, and the sound of the key being turned cautiously in the lock.
The door opened, and Anthony Durrell's white head and thin, visionary
face appeared in the opening.
"Good morning, Mr. Benham."
Jasper had turned with a queer feeling of distaste.
"Good morning, sir."
Durrell moved in, glancing about the room, and rubbing his hands
together.
"I hope that you have had a passable night?"
"I am obliged by all your kindness."
"Do not speak of it, Mr. Benham. In half an hour we will bring you some
breakfast. My man has gone off to Rush Heath. If you will excuse me, I
will light the fire."
He disappeared, and returned with a bundle of wood, a lighted candle,
and some paper. Benham sat on the edge of the couch and watched him. He
had grown intensely curious about Mr. Anthony Durrell. The man seemed
part and parcel of Stonehanger, with his restless reserve and his
sidelong glances.
Durrell knelt down by the hearth.
"A scholar, Mr. Benham, has to do many things with his hands. We who are
wedded to knowledge have to serve as menials, not only as priests."
Jasper eyed him reflectively.
"You find Stonehanger a quiet place?"
Durrell glanced over his shoulder, and his pointed chin looked sharp and
forbidding.
"Exquisitely quiet, sir, for me and my books. And the rent is low, a
matter of consideration to a scholar. I have tried many places in my
time--towns, villages, watering-places. Pah! Distractions everywhere.
One of the most difficult things in the world, sir, is to get away from
noise and from fools."
He had lit the fire when Nance came in carrying a tray full of breakfast
things. Anthony Durrell looked at her with a morose hardening of the
face.
"Nance, I will set the table. Go and look after the milk and eggs."
He wanted Nance and Jasper Benham apart. The Chevalier de Rothan's hint
had been sufficient.
It was nine o'clock when Jack Bumpstead brought the light wagon into
Stonehanger yard, with two of Farmer Crowhurst's horses borrowed for the
morning. David Barfoot climbed out. The bottom of the wagon was littered
with straw.
When Jasper appeared in the yard, with Durrell walking beside him, Jack
Bumpstead joggled his hat, and grinned like a man who had had the best
of a bargain.
"Mornin', master; glad I be to see ye alive!"
They had helped Benham into the wagon when Nance came into the yard,
carrying a faded, chintz-covered cushion. Jack Bumpstead's blue eyes
fixed her with the true Sussex stare.
"You must take this cushion. You can put it under your head when you are
lying down."
She tossed it into the wagon, and Jasper caught a glimpse of her
father's sulky face.
"I'll take the cushion, and return it."
"It's not very new."
"A piece of rubbish, sir. Never waste a man's time sending it back to
Stonehanger."
"I may bring it back myself, some day; and this scarf, too."
Durrell looked at him with a grim twinkle.
"I am a bit of a character, Mr. Benham. When I am among my books I
sometimes stay among them for days. I have a prejudice against being
interrupted, nor can I promise you my company if you call."
It was a blunt hint, bluntly given. Durrell was not fool enough to
pretend that a young man would ride five miles to chop logic with a
scholar. Nor was Benham fool enough to miss the elder man's meaning.
Jack Bumpstead turned the horses, and the wagon jolted over the stones
of the yard. Benham leaned forward as he sat in the straw, and looked at
Nance over the lowered tail-board of the wagon. Her eyes seemed to
follow his, and she was smiling.
"Good-bye. I shall always be grateful."
He could say no more, because of the sour face of her father.
A dormer window projected from the northern slope of the roof of
Stonehanger, and at the window, whose dusty glass rendered anything
inside it invisible from without, stood the Chevalier de Rothan. He had
cleansed one diamond pane with the tip of a long forefinger, and was
looking down with cynical amusement at the scene in the yard. He watched
Nance Durrell and he watched Benham, and the ends of his mouth lifted
contemptuously.
"Good-day, Mr. Jasper Benham. It may be an unlucky chance that brought
you to Stonehanger. Well, we shall see!"
He took a silver snuff-box from his pocket, lifted the lid, and took
snuff with elaborate unction, flickering his fingers under his nose.
"If young fools get in a great man's way, they must suffer. Stuck like a
lark on a spit, eh! Be damned to you, my Sussex squireling! My pretty
Nance, too! I had my eyes on her long before you, my friend. You know
me, and yet you do not know me. You may know me better some day, not far
hence!"
The man Jerome rose from the edge of a truckle-bed, and came yawning to
the window.
"I wonder when the old philosopher will be able to smuggle us up some
breakfast. What's all the talk about, monsieur?"
"Jerome, you are a greedy animal. One seldom has a chance to talk to a
genius in this world. That is why I so often talk to myself."
"What's that? A wagon going out of the gate."
The Frenchman had spat upon the window, and was cleaning a peep-hole
with his thumb.
"Yes; taking a calf home. Do you like veal, Jerome? I have an idea that
the calf yonder will never make good beef!"
V
Parson Goffin and old Christopher Benham had dined together, and sat
facing each other on either side of the fire.
Kit Benham was past sixty, and had drunk himself into premature dotage.
A pursy, ponderous, florid man, he could do little more than sit in his
padded chair, smoke interminable pipes, and drink perpetual beer. He was
a gross man, who could hardly speak without uttering all manner of
quaint and ingenious oaths. Already his legs were swollen with dropsy,
and they were propped on a joint stool as he fumed and pulled at his
pipe.
"Four horses, Parson; four blazing, burning, heaven-forsaken beasts
pinched by eternally accursed, skunk-livered, black-mouthed thieves! My
lad shot in the arm, too, and abed, with old Blister of Battle running
up a bill! Tell me to be an addle-brained, pond-waterweed of a
Christian! Grrrh!"
The great thing about Parson Goffin was his gout. He was a knobbly man,
the colour of leather, and he always sat with his knees drawn up and his
bumpy feet tucked away under his chair as though he dreaded having them
trodden on. Goffin might have been in the habit of using Cayenne pepper
in place of snuff, for his nose looked so angry. Gout had made him
explosive, yet this explosiveness suited the neighbourhood. It threw him
into sympathy with his surroundings, and made him popular with the
hot-tongued squires and farmers. Goffin was the very man for a
grievance. He took it as a dog takes a rat, crunched it, shook it to and
fro, not indeed to kill, but out of sympathy for the aggrieved friend.
"They will catch the rogues, sir; catch them and hang them."
Kit Benham flourished his pipe.
"By old Nick's bones, Parson, that's just what they won't do. We are
driven clear crazy by these infernal French. All the oafs in the county
are standing and gaping all day at the sea. And all the flea-bitten
scoundrels in the county rob and do just as they please."
"Yes, sir; perhaps in this world, sir. But think how they will burn in
the next!"
"I should like to see it, Goffin, by all the lies of Ananias--I should
like to see it!"
"They'll all sizzle, sir--just like apples."
Christopher Benham expanded his nostrils.
"To smell 'm singeing! Dear heart--I'd be ready to go there myself,
surely! Thank God, sir, there is a hell."
"Thank God, sir, indeed. Think of all the thieves there ever were going
up in glorious black smoke."
"Don't, sir--don't--Goffin! The thought of it makes me too infernally
excited."
"Happy, you mean, sir. Hallo now, I hear wheels on the drive."
A green curricle had swept up past the cedars on the lawn, and drawn up
outside the house. Jack Bumpstead came running from somewhere, pulling
an eager forelock. A young woman with a rather sallow face, and a short,
upturned nose, threw Jack the reins. She had blue eyes that stared, and
a quick, masterful manner. A prim little bonnet caressed the neat plaits
of her reddish hair.
"Lucky there are any springs left to the carriage, Jack! These
by-roads!"
"Ah, miss, you oughtn't to take her off t' main road, sure-ly!"
"Squire Christopher in? And Master Jasper? Yes, I have heard all about
it, Jack--all, thank you."
"Parson Goffin be with the squire in the oak parlour."
"Oh, is he! I thought I saw flames coming out of the chimney!"
Into the oak parlour marched this brisk and urgent young woman with her
queer blending of piety and worldliness. Parson Goffin rose stiffly and
made her a formal bow. Mr. Christopher Benham pointed with his pipe stem
at the legs reposing on the stool.
"Laid up, see. Can't move. Goffin can do the bowing. Well, young woman,
you look too fat."
"Mr. Goffin, do you agree with my uncle?"
"I never interfere between relatives, Miss Benham."
"Oh, don't you! So Jasper has been getting into the wars. Four horses,
was it? Lucky that Devil Dick came back. I hear some people at
Stonehanger took pity on Jasper. Durrell or Darrell or Barrell or
something. Who are they?"
Christopher Benham looked at her irritably.
"Just like her mother; talks like a water-wheel. Don't ask me, girl, how
should I know? Ask the parson, he knows everybody's business."
Mr. Goffin grinned, and showed his tobacco-blackened teeth.
"Durrell is the name, Miss Benham. They are queer folk, I hear. The man
is a bookworm, deist, encyclopædist, atheist, anything you like. I
don't know much about them. No one does. This Durrell put it about that
he wanted to be left alone. He is."
Mr. Goffin took snuff and sneezed, turning his angry nose toward the
fire.
"Then it was the girl who picked Jasper out of the road?"
"The girl! Thunder and cabbages, the lad never told us that."
Kit Benham heaved with laughter.
"A girl, was there? Oh, the rogue! I know nothing about it. You had
better ask Jasper. May old Nick boil my marrow-bones----"
Rose Benham had her Methodist face--for the moment.
"Uncle Christopher, when will you learn to be clean in your speech?"
"What!"
"It is contemptible, at your age."
"Thunder and lightning, can't I swear in my own house? Here's Goffin,
too; he's a good judge of language. You go and see Jasper. He's in bed."
"I will."
She left Parson Goffin and her uncle staring at each other. Then Squire
Kit spluttered:
"If that girl hadn't got a thousand a year of her own, hang, draw, and
quarter me if I'd----"
"Ssh, sir; ssh! She is your brother's daughter."
"Bah, she's not! She's his cat-faced wife's cat-clawed daughter! They
killed poor Nat between 'em with their little goody books and their
snuffle."
Rose Benham had climbed the broad stairs, noticing a number of trivial
things, such as dust on the bannister rail, and cobwebs in some of the
corners. Jasper was lying asleep in the oak four-poster when his cousin
knocked at the door.
He woke out of the thick of a dream, to hear Rose's metallic voice
calling:
"Jasper, can I come in?"
They had been children together, but no such thing as false modesty
would have kept Rose Benham out of her cousin's room. She entered
breezily, without a fleck of colour on her cheeks, her blue eyes full of
a frank, intimate interest. Three years older than Jasper, she still
treated him as a boy.
"This is a nice affair! Getting shot when you are wanted to drill your
volunteers on the green of a Sunday. Not that I can call them anything
but a lot of waddling ducks. And you have had old Blister Doddington,
have you? I hope he was sober. And you are sure he has set your arm
properly?"
Her pale-blue eyes and her reddish hair seemed to tone with her brisk
self-confidence. Rose Benham knew what she expected of life, and she
meant life to satisfy her expectations. Whisking a rush-bottomed chair
from a corner, she sat down beside the bed, talking the whole time. She
was one of those women who overwhelm the world with words.
"Well, what an adventure! And how does it feel to be picked up out of
the road by a young woman? Yes, I have heard all about it."
She laughed her quick, harsh laugh.
"Don't look at me as if such things happened every day! You men, you
take everything for granted. And here am I dying to hear all about it.
Cousin Rose has a right to know, hasn't she?"
There was a subtle suggestion of ownership in the way she put out a hand
and smoothed the pillow. Jasper was not wholly the boy cousin to her. He
was the man she had determined to marry.
Jasper looked bothered. Rose had such a way of driving people into a
corner.
"There is nothing to tell. One of the rogues waited for me in the dark,
and shot me in Stonehanger Lane. They just helped me into the house, and
I spent the night there. Jack fetched me in the wagon yesterday
morning."
She grew caressing, and a caressing mood never suited her. She was too
thin, too hard about the eyes.
"Now, Jasper, you know----"
"What do you want me to tell you, Rose?"
"Why, everything. Dear lad, do you think it is nothing?"
"I'm not dead, or likely to be."
Their eyes met. There was something in Jasper's that repulsed the girl.
She stiffened, and withdrew her hand.
"You know, Jasper, these things sometimes come to us from above. They
are messages, divine warnings."
It was her doctrinal phase, and she had inherited it from her mother.
Jasper glanced at her uneasily, and then stared at the window. He had
never realised it so vividly before that Rose talked to him as though he
belonged to her.
"It pulls a man up, and makes him think."
"Yes; only men will put off the thinking. Though I don't believe you are
that sort of man, Jasper. You are steady, and sensible, and I know you
read your Bible."
Jasper turned restlessly on the pillow. Her cool way of discussing him
to himself, of approving and disapproving as though she had a kind of
authority, had always rather amused him. Whether some new intelligence
had come to him in the course of two days, he could not tell. One thing
he did know. He had discovered a sudden new significance in his cousin's
attitude toward himself.
"I'm afraid I'm a stupid fool, Rose. I still have a head from that bump
in the road."
"Poor Jasper!"
Her hand came out, and for the moment there was something very like
repulsion in Jasper's eyes.
"Now, I won't chatter any longer. Go to sleep. I will draw the curtains.
There, lad. And now I will go and have a talk with Uncle Christopher."
Said Squire Christopher to the parson when the green curricle had driven
off along the road across the paddock: "There's a hell-cat for you,
Goffin; preach at you or scratch your face--whichever you please. The
image of her dear mother. She means to marry lad Jasper."
The parson refilled his pipe.
"What have you to say to that, sir?"
"If Jasper cares to be caught, I shan't meddle. What's more, one woman's
very like another. I don't believe in a man marrying the woman he's in
love with."
"But, Mr. Benham--sir!"
"What! You don't see how it works? Why, sir, marry a woman you dislike
and you will always be in love with some charmer who won't nag your head
off. A man ought to go out loving as he goes out hunting; it's a sour,
dull sport in your own yard. Poor Nat was ruled by his wife. But
Jasper's got grit. Maybe he'd tame Miss Rose. And don't you see, Goffin,
there's something in a thousand a year and more to come! You don't
expect good looks and a sweet temper when you get so much cash."
As for the two people under discussion, Rose had driven off with a
tightly shut mouth and three lines of thought across her forehead, while
Jasper lay abed with a chafed and uneasy conscience. Generous men are
always inclined to be severe upon themselves, when some unforeseen clash
of the emotions makes them look at life very seriously. Jasper was
puzzled with regard to Rose, and angry with himself. Had he been blind,
and missed seeing things that had been very visible to others?
One thing he did know. He was haunted perpetually by the face and voice
of Nance Durrell.
As for Nance herself, the sun shone on her as she sat on the stone
parapet of the terrace garden at Stonehanger, and looked toward the sea.
Nance had developed a passion for gardening, and had adventurously set
herself to grow flowers in that wind-swept upland garden. She had made
old David dig her a broad border at the edge of the stone path, and she
had searched the overrun garden at the back of the house for stray
plants that had managed to survive the weeds. Old David had bought her a
few roots from some of the cottages at Rookhurst, and Nance had pansies,
sweetwilliams, pinks, foxgloves, lavender, and a few roses ready to
bloom in the coming summer. Several clumps of daffodils waved their
golden heads in the wind. A rake, a trowel, and a wooden trug lay on the
grass beside her. Her hands were brown with soil, and she sat and forgot
for a moment that such things as flowers existed.
She was thinking of Jasper Benham, and wondering how he did with his
broken arm. His brown face, square jaw, and steady blue eyes had seemed
very pleasant to her. Something in him had called to her own youth.
Her father's voice startled her from her reverie. He was looking out of
an upper window, the window of his study, the wind blowing his white
hair over his forehead.
"Nance."
"Yes, father."
"What are you idling there for, child?"
"I wasn't idling--I was thinking."
"Oh, and what may these most serious thoughts be?"
His morose and peering curiosity puzzled her, but she was quite frank in
her answering.
"I was wondering how Mr. Benham is?"
"Tssh--do you call that thinking! Go in and brew me some tea."
VI
Jasper Benham grew very restless those April days, though he moved in a
cool, green world, and saw the primroses starring the banks of the
paddock, and Squire Kit's Dutch tulips opening their cups of crimson and
gold. The "cuckoo's mate" had come, and called plaintively in the
oak-trees. The grass in the orchard was the colour of emeralds, and the
fruit-buds were opening against the blue.
Jasper was restless, adventurous, obstinate, and Surgeon Doddington
protested. He was a little, purplish man with a huge, bald head, who
talked very fast and spluttered as he talked. A wag had once watched
Surgeon Doddington with extreme attention for fully five minutes, and
then explained that he had been waiting to see him blow up.
"Stuff and nonsense, Mr. Benham, I'll not be responsible, not for a
moment, not for a moment. Ride that beast of a horse of yours, indeed!
Captain Curtiss can drill the men. Your arm's more important than the
way twenty bumpkins turn their toes out."
"You are not a patriot, Mr. Doddington!"
"Yes I am, sir--yes I am, sir; but I'm a surgeon, too, sir," and he
ended with a sizzle.
It was of no avail. Possibly Jasper needed an excuse, and meant to have
one at all costs. Sunday saw him on Devil Dick's back, his arm slung in
a red sash, bound for Battle town and the Sabbath parade.
There was quite a gay gathering on the green close to the Abbey gate.
The gentry were there, fresh from their pews in church; the "regulars"
quartered in the town were there; Captain Curtiss was there on his big
white horse. For with Napoleon's great army of invasion camped ready at
Boulogne, all Sussex was dotted with red-coats. Each town and townlet
had its gallant fellows ready with pikes and firelocks. There were the
camps at Brighton and at Eastbourne, and guns gaping everywhere, black
muzzles toward the sea. Red-coats were quartered at Hastings, Battle,
Pevensey, Hailsham, Lewes, Seaford, Worthing, Arundel, Chichester, and
at many places more. Hanoverians had held Bexhill. There were the
Yeomanry, the Sea Fencibles, the Fencible Cavalry, the Volunteer corps,
and in the west the Duke of Richmond's Volunteer Horse Artillery. All
eyes were on the Channel, and many people's hearts were in their mouths.
That April Sunday the volunteers of Battle town and the neighbouring
villages were drawn up on the green facing the Abbey gate. An old
sergeant of regulars with a lame leg and a peppery red face was limping
to and fro. Captain Curtiss sat silently superb upon his big white
horse. The gentry chatted and looked important. The lesser folk bunched
together in groups and enjoyed themselves in a stolid, staring way.
Near the old-timbered guest-house Rose Benham sat in her green curricle.
Dick Mumfit had drawn up his nag beside the curricle, and was showing
his teeth, which meant that he was making idiotic puns, and marching out
all the stale jokes that had lived a vagrant life for years in the
county of Sussex.
"'Tention. Shoulder arms."
Up went the muskets, one of them topped by a disreputable beaver hat.
"Damn 'ee, Sam Mepham, this be t' second time yuv scraped m' noddle wid
yer musket. Sergeant! He'll be for shootin' me, sure-ly!"
"Silence in the ranks!"
"He fetched her under m' jaw time afore."
"Silence! Lower that hat. Private Mepham, you're a dashed, flat-footed,
camel-backed clod, sir. D'yer hear? Now. Satan help me--did I say
'ground arms'? Of all the----! Now, what are ye all staring at?
Lieutenant Benham wid his arm in a sash? Hi, some one bring me a rattle,
to keep the poor babies to attention. Just look at the 'reg'lars.'
They're laughin' their belts undone."
Patriotism or no patriotism, every one appeared to be laughing save the
much-tried sergeant and the stately Curtiss on his white horse. Jasper
caught Rose Benham's eyes. She beckoned him to come to her.
"You wicked lad, how dare you be so rash----!"
"Well, I was sick of Rush Heath."
She challenged him with her shallow eyes.
"Now--I know why you came."
"Do you?"
"Yes; but I shall not confess. Me--oh, no. Wouldn't you like to let one
of the men hold your horse, and come and rest in the carriage. You won't
have to drill the boobies. Look at Jeremy Curtiss. All he has to do is
to look grand. Poor old cock-a-doodle-do, there, with the lame foot,
does everything."
Jasper was posed. He had no desire to place himself conspicuously beside
Cousin Rose.
"I can see better here. I want to see how the men handle their muskets."
"Oh you wicked deceiver. You want all the women to say: 'There's Jasper
Benham with his broken arm. Doesn't he look handsome?' I caught Kitty
Lavender--you know, the pretty, dark one--simply languishing at you just
now."
Jasper said: "Confound Kitty Lavender!"
Then some one intervened. A big bay horse drew up on the other side of
the curricle, and a man in black saluted Cousin Rose.
"All the sunshine to you, Mees Benham."
"Why, Chevalier, is it you? What a man for being here, there, and
everywhere. Jasper, you know the Chevalier de Rothan."
The two men stared at each other. They had met before in a casual way.
"Mr. Benham--a broken arm, I hear."
His hard, handsome, insolent face had a look of amused tolerance.
"I come to see your brave men drill. And to think that it is against my
France! Poor France. Some day I shall return to her. But picture my
château; a black shell in mourning. Yes; rightly in black."
He looked grave and melancholy. Rose's eyes wandered over him.
"Still in black, Chevalier?"
"Ah, mam'selle, did I not put on black the day our King was butchered? I
wear it still. I shall wear it till the white flag of the Bourbons
returns to France. No bastard, upstart emperor for me. I know that even
now I might return to France. Honour and pride keep me here, an exile,
among charming Englishwomen."
Jasper watched the man, and disliked him in the vague yet vigorous way
that one man may dislike another. De Rothan had the casual soaring air
that puts other men under his feet. He could be courteous, but there was
a taint about his courtesy. You could see the lines about mouth and
nostrils that muttered: "These boors of English!" Rose became even more
animated.
"I think you are a wonderful man, Chevalier. And do you really wish us
to conquer France?"
"Mam'selle, not to conquer, but to free her."
"There is a difference."
"I pray each day of my life that I may see King Louis at Versailles,
before I grow too old."
"Too old?"
"Ah, one is not the same at Court."
The sergeant's voice became the dominating sound for the moment.
"You tail-wagging lot of ducks! Stand up! Hup! Bay'nets? Dash me, I
wouldn't trust ye with a set of skewers. It 'ud be a bloody business.
Wanton damaging o' uniforms. Now we'll charge our pieces. Put some
pipe-clay into it."
And so it went on, Captain Curtiss sitting his white horse like a great
soldier in a battle-picture, looking whole campaigns, and uttering never
a word.
When Jasper took leave of Rose, the Chevalier de Rothan was still in
attendance.
"Jasper--now--be careful. Do send us a word. Or come yourself in a few
days. I'll give Devil Dick lots of sugar."
"It is very good of you, Rose."
"Silly boy!"
Her eyes flashed at him as he turned his horse.
The Chevalier woke from a studied reverie.
"Mr. Benham, sir, I ride a little your way."
"You do?"
"I will take the charm of your company. Mees Benham, your most devoted
servant."
They had ridden no further than Battle church, grey in the midst of its
green grass and great elms, when De Rothan glanced significantly at
Jasper.
"Mr. Benham, sir, you are a most fortunate young man. A most exquisite
lady, your cousin. I offer you my felicitations."
"Sir?"
"Ah, you think me too forward. We French, sir, are less difficult, less
reticent. Now in France, Mr. Benham----"
"I don't know what you mean, Chevalier."
"Ah--my good young man!"
He shrugged, and smiled like a grandee.
"These Sussex villages delight me, Mr. Benham. Such red brick, such
maturity. They live in the landscape. I assure you I never tire of
riding everywhere, and seeing your sweet villages."
Jasper grunted, which was bad manners.
Before long they parted company. And to part company with the Chevalier
de Rothan was a considerable event. It justified, even glorified, a
whole day's existence.
"Mr. Benham, your very good friend. Au revoir, au revoir."
There was a queer glint in his eyes. It puzzled Jasper like the subtle
flash of a clever enemy's sword.
No sooner was he alone than De Rothan allowed himself to seem
desperately amused.
"What a world of fools it is! They have swallowed me as the whale
swallowed Jonah. 'Ah, Chevalier, sweet Chevalier!' How the tradesmen run
after a title."
There was as much Irish blood in him as there was French. In fact, his
great grandfather had been as boastful and swaggering a rogue as had
ever sailed from Ireland to use his wits and his tongue in France. The
Sussex folk knew him as the Chevalier de Rothan, aristocrat and
_émigré_, a wild partisan of the Bourbons, and a wearer of the white
cockade. He had taken the Brick House between the villages of Westfield
and Sedlescombe, ridden to hounds, entertained the notables, and served
them off plate marked with the De Rothan arms. The man seemed to have
money.
"Ah, gentlemen," he would say, "I was more fortunate than many of my
friends. I not only saved my head, but my plate and my jewels. It is
also something to have money in English companies. But I am poor. I make
what show I can."
And De Rothan was popular. He could be gay, quaint, and witty. He rode
here, there, and everywhere, a man who should have been mistrusted, and
yet was not. His French-Irish cleverness carried him along. He could
speak English perfectly when he chose, but for effect he played
picturesquely with the language, and out-Frenchified the vulgar notion
of a Frenchman when he was dealing with half-educated people. A little
quixotry was useful. He made much of his ostentation of wearing black,
and of his passionate devotion to the Royalist cause. Once he had been
seen to weep. He was ready to fight any man who had a good word for
Napoleon.
On the outbreak of the war, and especially when the scare of an invasion
gripped the country, the French exiles had been compelled to live a
certain distance from the sea-coast. But the Chevalier de Rothan had
planted himself boldly within four miles of the sea, and no one had
interfered with him. He was on excellent terms with the gentlemen who
wore the King's uniform, dined with them, betted with them, abused
Bonaparte with them, and was allowed to ride in and out of camps and
barracks very much as he pleased.
The Brick House lay in a lonely hollow where a stream wound through oak
woods, and narrow, secret meadows. A lane led to the house from a
by-road. It was a solid, Jacobean house with a brick-walled garden, a
big porch, and a stone horse-block at the gate. Two yews, clipped in the
shape of peacocks, grew on each side of the main path. De Rothan had
settled here with three French servants. He kept two horses, and devoted
himself to gardening. He was always ready to talk of his great garden
and his orangery in France.
When he returned that Sunday, he left his horse in the stable-yard, and
entered the house by the back door.
"Gaston--Gaston----!"
A short, square man appeared in the passage. He had a solid, thundery
face, the nose flattened, a black patch over one eye. A red handkerchief
tied round his head, and a belt with pistols stuck in it, would have
made him an admirable buccaneer.
"Monsieur?"
"I shall sleep lightly to-night, Gaston. Be ready if I should want you."
"I shall be ready."
"Good. I will dine immediately."
When he had dined De Rothan climbed the Jacobean staircase and passed
along a gallery to a room at the southern end of the house. It was a big
room with an undulating, oak-planked floor, great beams and struts
showing in the walls. There were books upon shelves, a reading-lamp and
writing-materials on an oak table, and a black wainscot chair with a red
cushion to soften the seat.
De Rothan locked the door, and then went to the fireplace where the
bricked chimney stood out in the room like a great oven. He took off his
coat and laid it on the chair, rolled up the right sleeve of his shirt,
and, stooping, thrust his arm well up into the chimney. He took out a
brick, laid it on the hearth, wiped the soot from his hand, and groped
again. This time he brought out a little metal case. He opened it, and
drew out a roll of papers.
Here, in cipher, were the results of his popularity, his wanderings to
and fro from village to village. The Chevalier was interested in farming
and in the breeding of cattle! Listed here were most of the larger farms
in the rapes of Pevensey and Hastings, with a rough estimate of the
stock, and of the corn that might be found in the barns. Here were maps,
elaborate in detail, showing every road and lane, and points that might
have military importance. The number of troops stationed in each town
was recorded, and the number of guns in the various forts and batteries
along the coast.
De Rothan glanced through these papers, making an alteration or an
addition here and there. He sat back in the chair, and smiled.
"Nelson fooled, and a day's fog in the Channel! So little--and yet so
much!"
VII
It was stormy weather. The golden-budded oaks shook their branches
against a hurrying grey sky. Primroses shivered on the banks, and cold
glimmers of wind-swept over the bent grass. A few early swallows skimmed
against the stiff south-wester. Everywhere the woods looked gloomy and
black.
Up at Stonehanger the furze rolled like a sea as Jasper and Devil Dick
climbed out of the valley. Jasper came slantwise up the hill, so that he
had a raking view of the terrace and the grey house with its bluff,
stern chimneys. The casements shook and glittered. One thin stream of
smoke was blown like a pennon from the nearest chimney.
Jasper saw a figure on the terrace, outlined against the sky. It stood
there visible between two clumps of thorn-trees, and tossed its arms as
though they were blown about by the wind. Its gestures were so wild and
passionate that Jasper drew in under the shelter of a furze-covered
bank, and watched the distant figure over the tops of the bushes.
It was Anthony Durrell. Benham could tell that by his thin, black figure
and white hair. The old man was like a mad poet in a frenzy, or a
prophet drunk with the spirit of prophecy. He strode up and down between
the thorn-trees, waving his arms, shaking his fists, pointing toward the
sea. The fragments of a voice were carried down to Jasper against the
blustering of the wind.
"The man's mad!"
He reconsidered the exclamation, out of respect to Nance.
"A bit queer in the head, perhaps! Too much hanging over books. I wonder
what he is shouting about? Just like Mad George, the Methodist!"
He rode on, drawing a little toward the left, so that the thorn-trees
were between him and Anthony Durrell. For Jasper had not ridden to
Stonehanger to waste time on a dry-as-dust scholar. He wanted to make
sure of seeing somebody before Anthony Durrell could interfere.
Jasper found a five-barred gate closing the stable-yard from the common.
The gate was padlocked, but Jasper put Devil Dick at it, and was over in
style. In fact, the horse nearly trampled on old David Barfoot, who
bobbed out suddenly from the door of an outbuilding.
"Where be ye a-coming to?"
"Hallo! Good-day to you, Mr. Barfoot. Is your mistress at home?"
David stared, and Benham remembered the old man's deafness. He felt in a
pocket, produced the red scarf, and also a silver crown.
He spoke slowly, showed David the scarf, and pointed to the house. David
displayed utter stupidity. He held out a brown paw for the scarf.
"No, you old fool! Do you think I have ridden five miles to hand this
over to you!"
He pointed toward the house, and then gave David the silver crown.
The man stared at it, scratched his chin, and then pocketed the money.
He threw up his hairy face suddenly, and shouted:
"It's Miss Nance you be wanting?"
"All right, all right, don't tell the whole county!" and he nodded.
"She be'unt in."
"Oh?"
"She be gone over yonder, down to the oak wood for primroses."
David was not such a cross-grained old fool, after all.
"You'd better go round by t' lane. It'll take ye out on t' common."
Jasper smiled at him, leapt Devil Dick over the gate again, struck round
by the grey wall of the garden at the back of the house, and found a gap
in the hedge leading through into the lane.
"I am in David's debt," thought he. "Mr. Durrell can play the windmill
yonder so long as he pleases."
The lane brought Jasper out on to the common where he could see the oak
wood as a brown and purplish mass beyond the tumbling green of the
wind-swept furze. Something red was moving along the edge of the wood
like a spark creeping along tinder. It was the red hood that covered
Nance's black curls.
Jasper thrilled on the edge of an adventure. He rode down the hill, and
met Nance in a winding grass-way between the furze bushes. She was
carrying a rush basket full of primroses, with a bunch of purple orchids
thrust into one corner.
"Mr. Benham!"
The exclamation was as obvious as Jasper's satisfaction at seeing her.
"David told me you were down in the wood."
"David! How did you make him understand."
"Oh, somehow. I have brought you back your scarf."
He dismounted, looped Devil Dick's bridle over his sound arm, and set
himself beside Nance. Her eyes sent a hovering glance over his face. An
immense seriousness seemed to possess him. His square jaw, firm mouth,
and blue eyes might, have belonged to a man who was about to lead a
forlorn hope. Yet the whole truth of it was that he had been attacked by
violent and absurd shyness.
"How is the arm?"
"Mending. Surgeon Doddington admired the way you had bound it up."
"Did he?"
"Yes. By the way, I have forgotten that cushion. I must bring it back
some other time."
He glanced at Nance, and the frank flash of laughter in her eyes helped
him to climb out of the slough of his own shy seriousness.
"It sounds very simple, doesn't it?"
"What?"
"To make a cushion an excuse."
"An excuse for what?"
They looked at each other again, and laughed, with the incipient mystery
of the thing creeping into their blood. The wind blew the
golden-flowered furze against the grey sky. Even this stormy day seemed
glorious.
"I wanted to come to Stonehanger."
"Did you! Well, why not?"
"Yes, why not! And just for the same reason I'm going to call
you--Nance."
She looked straight before her with a sudden self-conscious stiffening
of the face. It was as though some strange new thought had touched her,
and startled her into introspective silence.
"Is this your horse--Devil Dick?"
"Yes."
"And the other horses? Were the thieves caught?"
"No. They got clean away. It is a rogue's country."
"What a shame!"
She looked past Benham toward the sea where faint white smudges showed
up against the greyness of the horizon. They were the sails of ships in
the Channel. The boom of a distant gun came to them on the wind.
Nance stood at gaze.
"Is anything happening out there?"
"Only a signal-gun from somewhere."
"I wonder if the French will ever come?"
"I wonder!"
They moved on again toward Stonehanger, Nance looking at Jasper a little
shyly.
"You are a soldier, are you not?"
"A lieutenant of volunteers. Nearly all the gentry are serving in one
way or another."
"You wore a soldier's red-coat that night. If the French land it will be
a terrible thing for us all."
"It may be more terrible for the French."
"But Napoleon! Who have we to put against him? And they say the French
are such ruffians; think of having them quartered on us, and doing just
as they please. I sometimes start awake at night and think I hear the
sound of guns."
"Do you?"
"Stonehanger is such a windy old place. It is the sound of the wind in
the chimneys."
Jasper looked at her gravely.
"I can promise you and your father an early warning should the French
land. All the country folk will be hurried away inland with the cattle
and the corn."
"I don't think I should be afraid when the danger actually came."
"No, I know you wouldn't."
"But it is the waiting, a tense feeling in the air like there is before
a thunderstorm."
They came in sight of the terrace of Stonehanger. Anthony Durrell was
still there, pacing up and down, and waving his arms. Nance watched him
a moment, and then glanced at Jasper.
"Father has his restless moods."
"The times worry him?"
"No, I don't think it is that. He just stares when I speak of Napoleon
and the French, as though I were telling him some absurd tale. He often
walks up and down the terrace and makes long speeches in Greek or in
Latin. I think the words are to him what music is to other people."
Jasper's presence did not seem to trouble her. She took the path that
ran along the foot of the terrace, and Benham had no choice but to
follow her. He was too honest a man to think of shirking Anthony
Durrell. The scholar was standing by one of the yew-trees, one arm
raised, head thrown back, when he caught sight of Nance and Benham. He
remained thus for a moment, mouth open, eyes set in a stare. Then his
arm fell abruptly, and an irritable frown wiped the finer fervour from
his face.
Jasper raised his hat to the old man.
"Good day to you, Mr. Durrell."
"Good day to you, sir."
His face seemed to narrow with sharp severity, and with scorn. He stared
at Jasper as an eagle might eye a jay.
"I rode over to return the scarf Miss Durrell lent me."
"You might as well have kept the rubbish, Mr. Benham. Nance, I have been
waiting for you. There are several papers of notes to be copied into the
manuscript book."
Nance looked at him questioningly.
"Perhaps--Mr. Benham----"
"Mr. Benham is waiting to be off. We must not keep him. It will rain in
half an hour; the wind is dropping."
Nance went up the steps to the terrace, and turned to glance,
half-humourously, at Jasper.
"It is one of father's whims," her eyes said to him.
Jasper mounted his horse. He was angry, and a little puzzled.
"Mr. Durrell, sir, I need hardly speak to you of the danger that
threatens all of us. As a friend I can promise you an early warning, and
a place in our wagons if the French should land."
The elder man stared, and seemed to breathe through scornful nostrils.
"Mr. Benham, I am obliged to you. But I have always managed my own
affairs. I wish you good day."
He turned and followed Nance who was walking toward the house. Jasper
watched him, and saw his narrow, black figure disappear round the grey
angle of the house. Nor was he in the sweetest of tempers as he rode on
through the waving furze.
The wind dropped somewhat toward nightfall, and howled less in the
Stonehanger chimneys. Nance went to bed early, her face troubled and a
little sad. Her father had been morose, reticent, and strange, and she
had caught him watching her from his chair beside the fire.
It was near midnight when Anthony Durrell put down the book he was
reading, listened a moment, and then went to the porch door. He rapped
on it gently with his knuckles. The rap was answered from without.
Durrell opened the door, and the Chevalier de Rothan stepped into the
hall.
"Well, sir, any news?"
"Only that young Benham has been here."
"The devil! There will be trouble between me and that young man."
VIII
Anthony Durrell had brought the candle from the parlour. That stately
person De Rothan lowered his dignity to the cautious level of drawing
off his boots before following Durrell up the stairs.
Nance's room was at the western end of the long upper gallery. De Rothan
and the scholar had to pass the door of the girl's room, for the
stairhead lay close to it. They were within three steps of the landing
when Durrell heard the lifting of a latch.
Instantly he blew out the candle, and, reaching back in the darkness,
thrust De Rothan gently backward.
"Is that you, father?"
Nance had opened her door an inch or two, but no light showed.
"Yes, child. Some one must have left the window open at the end of the
gallery. The draught has blown out my candle."
"I thought I heard voices, and the sound of some one moving."
"Rubbish! You ought to be asleep. I was reciting Virgil to myself. Go to
bed, child."
"Shall I get you a light?"
"No, no--go to bed. I know the house as well in the dark as I do in the
daylight. I can go downstairs if necessary, and get a light at the
fire."
"Good night, father."
"Good night, child."
Nance's door closed, and the two men passed along the gallery, Durrell
holding De Rothan by the arm. The scholar's study was at the eastern end
of the house. There were three rooms between it and Nance's, all of them
empty and unfurnished, the keys rusting in the locks.
Durrell opened the door of his study, and led De Rothan in.
"What possessed the girl----?"
"Lucky you blew out the light. It would have been uncommonly awkward.
Explanations--to women--always are awkward."
They spoke in whispers, and Durrell closed the door.
"I have a tinder-box on my table."
"Good."
There was the sound of some one moving cautiously about the room, and
the thud of books falling to the floor. The flint and steel rang against
each other, and sparks dropped on to the scorched linen in the
tinder-box. A minute passed before Durrell got one of the sulphur
matches alight. He shaded it with his hand, and carried the flame to the
candle.
"That's better, Durrell. What a howling, wind-swept hell this house of
yours is! I suppose Miss Nance will play us no tricks? She suspects
nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Wakefulness! Shall we put it down to Mr. Benham?"
Anthony Durrell's room was crowded with books. A truckle-bed stood in
one corner, looking meagre, thin, and austere. A mahogany washstand and
a Dutch high-boy were squeezed in between the bookcases. The brown
volumes possessed the place. They were laid like stepping-stones upon
the carpetless floor, massed like buttresses against the walls, even
stacked beneath the bed and table. Black curtains were drawn across the
window, and hung by two straps from the narrow sill was a seaman's
telescope.
The Chevalier caught his toe against a huge brown rock of a book.
"Pardon, fat fellow!--Have you read them all, Durrell? Books, books,
books! Heaven help us! What did a man ever get out of a book? Has any
book ever helped me to swagger, handle a sword, spend money, live
gallantly, love a woman? Books, sir, are for the poltroons. They are the
broken meats thrown to the wretches who stand outside the gate of life
and beg."
Durrell gave one of his grim looks.
"It is strange that such a chatterbox should be trusted with such
secrets."
"Good--good for you.--What's the time?"
He pulled out a watch and scanned it by the light of the candle.
"Psst, Durrell; we are due to show our first flash in five minutes.
Where's the lamp? Hurry, hurry!"
Durrell went to a cupboard in the wall, and brought out a brass lamp
fitted with an Argand burner. He set it on the table, lit it, and turned
the wick up cautiously.
"Will they be out to-night? It's rough."
"So much the better. Jerome is no fair-weather smuggler. You had better
put two or three of your precious books under the lamp. I will work the
curtain."
Durrell busied himself with the lamp, and De Rothan walked to the
window. He kept his watch in one hand, and held the bottom of one of the
black curtains with the other.
There was a short silence. Then De Rothan glanced sharply at the
scholar.
"Ready?"
"Yes."
De Rothan drew the curtain aside, and left the window uncovered for
about twenty seconds.
"Jerome will have been on the lookout for that. We must wait half an
hour for the next. No one is likely to pick up our signals when a window
happens to be lighted for twenty seconds at intervals of half an hour."
"A mere casual flash of light. I have let people know that I work late
into the night."
De Rothan looked round for a chair, and found a rush-bottomed stool by
one of the bookcases.
"So Master Benham has been here? Dissolute young dog."
Anthony Durrell lifted a scornful head.
"Dissolute?"
"One of the most profligate young rogues in the county. I hear all the
gossip. There's hardly a pretty wench--well, you know, Durrell. Engaged
to marry his cousin, too!"
"Poor young woman."
"She is no fool. Has a thousand a year of her own, and a mouth like a
man-trap. She will lead Mr. Benham a godly, straight-up-and-down life.
Meanwhile the youngster must not be allowed to hang round here."
Durrell picked up a book, glanced at it, and then threw it back upon the
table. His austere face had a kind of hard pride.
"A scholar need not be an owl, De Rothan."
"My good sir, did I suggest it? But sweet Nance has a lonely life here.
Not much youth comes her way. And these young rakes, Durrell, have an
honest, stage-hero way with them."
"I shall see to Mr. Benham."
"You may need me, sir. Faith, it seems strange that I should be here in
this house once a week, and Miss Nance know nothing of it. Look you,
Durrell, I'm an old friend of yours; I might pay a few open and friendly
calls. I have a fatherly way with young women."
Durrell looked at him ironically. De Rothan met his eyes, and laughed.
"You think I might be as bad as young Benham? Tssh! Nance is a girl for
a man to marry, and to think himself a lucky dog. I tell you, Durrell, I
will pay a state call next week. Come now; we must keep an eye on the
time. Jerome should have news for us. I have a packet of cipher to give
him."
Anthony Durrell appeared restless and preoccupied. He began sorting and
arranging some of the books that were piled against the wall. De Rothan
watched him with just the faintest glimmer of contempt. This fanatic,
filled with visions of a regenerated world state, was something of an
enigma to the Frenchman. Durrell was a man of Miltonic dreams, austere,
fervid, morose. In Bonaparte he saw a foredestined Angel of Wrath who
should smite the crowns from the heads of tyrants. His work done, the
man Napoleon would disappear. Liberty would stand among the peoples,
holding her fiery sword aloft, her mouth full of prophetic and noble
words. The world would become a new world. Kings and princelings would
cease to strut and bully. The golden age of brotherhood and equality was
at hand. Anthony Durrell believed all this, and yearned so fervently for
its consummation that he was ready to whisper with spies in a corner.
For himself he desired nothing but the right to live, and speak and
write as he pleased. This disinterestedness of his made De Rothan
despise him a little. The Chevalier saw visions, but they were the
visions of a man who valued such material things as titles, and orders,
palaces, estates, the pride and pomp of power. Durrell's fanaticism was
useful to him. As for these broad English lands, he might find himself
choosing which he should own and enjoy. The earth for the
people--indeed! De Rothan knew better. He had no intention of sitting
down on the same bench with half a score born fools.
De Rothan glanced at his watch, and returned to the window.
"It is time for the second signal."
The black curtain did its work once more.
"Cover up the lamp--now, Durrell. I will see if I can catch Jerome's
answer."
Durrell carried the lamp to the cupboard, turned the wick low, and shut
the door. De Rothan had opened the lattice, and was looking out into the
night, the wind blowing in and tossing the black curtains behind him.
He spoke in a whisper.
"He's yonder."
"At sea?"
"I caught the two flashes. Jerome will land when we show him a third
light. This smuggling game is accursedly useful."
"A means to an end."
"It makes half the county our dupes. Think of it, sir, all these greedy,
spirit-swindling fools helping us to bring in the French bayonets."
Both men stood at the window and stared out into the windy darkness.
Intent upon watching the black horizon they had not heard the soft,
gliding tread of bare feet along the gallery. Nance had been standing
for some minutes outside her father's door, a dim, white figure that
faltered on the edge of a discovery.
Once she had raised her hand to knock, but the sound of that other voice
had paralysed her. Who was the man who talked to her father? Why was he
there? How had he come into the house? The voice seemed vaguely
familiar. She had heard it before, but she could not remember where.
Perplexed, and a little afraid, she crept back to her room, closed the
door gently, and, slipping back into bed, drew the clothes up over her
knees. For a while she sat there in the darkness, listening. The wind
blustered in the chimneys, and to Nance the grey house had become eerie
and cold. Questions that she could not answer importuned her in the
darkness. Her father was concealing something from her, and the thought
hurt her and filled her with vague unrest.
Presently she lay down, and drew the clothes over, for she was beginning
to shiver with cold. As for sleep, it eluded her. She lay there in the
darkness, listening, till the old house became full of a hundred
imaginary sounds.
At Rush Heath Mr. Christopher Benham snored in his great Dutch chair
before the fire. Parson Goffin had talked the squire to sleep, and was
still cocking his long clay pipe alertly and holding forth to Jasper
Benham. His nose seemed to glow more angrily when he was in the heat of
an argument, or venting a grievance. He would sit forward with his feet
tucked under his chair, and emphasise each point with prodding movements
of the stem of his pipe.
"I tell you, sir, the hangman is not kept busy enough in England.
Freethinkers, atheists,--what! I'd string up the whole lot! They should
have begun with Tom Paine, sir, and all scoundrels of that colour."
Jasper was stifling yawns, and glancing at the clock.
"Liberty indeed! Faugh, license, that's what liberty means. Right of
Man! Bosh, sir,--bosh. The right of the pig to be swinish! There are men
within ten miles of us who need hanging. Traitors, blasphemous
scoundrels. Take that man Durrell, now, of Stonehanger."
Jasper straightened in his chair.
"Durrell----?"
"A Jacobin, sir, or I'm no parson. Tainted with all the sins of the
Revolution. The justices ought to order the house to be surprised and
searched. I warrant they would find seditious stuff enough at
Stonehanger."
"What makes you think that, Parson?"
Goffin looked shrewdly along the stem of his pipe.
"Have I nose for a fox, sir! Not a few seditious pamphlets have come out
of Stonehanger House. I'd have that man in gaol, and his daughter too."
"Nonsense, Goffin. Why, what harm can a girl do?"
"Harm, sir, harm! Have you read your Bible,--or your history?"
"You mean to say that Durrell may be a spy in the French service?"
"I do, sir, I do. And the girl is as bad as her father."
"It's a lie, Goffin, a damned lie."
"Sir, you are the son of your father."
The parson chuckled.
"A hard head, and a soft heart. No offence, Master Jasper. But facts are
facts."
The clock struck eleven, and Jasper proceeded to send Mr. Goffin home
with his lantern, and to get his father to bed. Squire Kit had to be
carried by the servants to his room on the ground floor. He would groan
and curse all the while Jack Bumpstead was undressing him, for Jack
acted as valet as well as groom. He would blow all the time while his
master was swearing, much to Squire Christopher's indignation.
"Jack, you mud-faced, cockle-headed calf, do ye think you're rubbing
down a horse? Don't blow, I say! You make enough draught to give a man a
chill."
These matters attended to, Jasper went to his own room, a frown on his
face and anger within him.
"Nance Durrell a spy's daughter!"
He refused to believe such a thing. Parson Goffin had been in his cups.
IX
Jasper woke very early, just as the day was breaking. A thrush was
singing on the topmost spires of one of the cedars. The woods beyond the
paddock thrilled with the orisons of the birds.
Jasper left his bed, opened the lattice wide, and took in the dawn. A
mysterious ecstasy was in the air. A hundred bird voices were calling,
and, with the dew upon the grass, the world was still half asleep. There
were little golden rifts in the eastern sky. Here and there a cloud
nearer the zenith would burst suddenly into flame.
Jasper's heart was stirred in him. The mystery of the dawn seemed for
him alone. Not a soul was stirring. The earth belonged to him and to the
birds.
He could use his arm now a little, and he dressed with the haste of a
boy eager for a plunge in some still pool. The old house itself seemed
full of secrecy, and quiet charm. He went out noiselessly, though the
hinges of the stable door filled the court-yard with their creakings.
Devil Dick was alert as a dog. Jasper saddled and bridled him, and rode
out.
"Which way shall I go?"
The hypocrite. His heart laughed joyously at its own guile.
"She will not be up at this hour. Yes, but they are early folk. Even a
glimpse of her! Why, Jasper, my man, you have seen her only twice."
Parson Goffin's bibulous scepticism staggered like a dreary toper across
the stealthy joy of the morning. Jasper touched Devil Dick with his
switch.
"Out--old crow!"
He put his hand on the place where Nance's red scarf lay folded. And
immediately some perverse suggestion gave him the picture of Rose
Benham.
"Faith! I never knew the woman was so plain. Jasper Benham, you are a
beast, sir. But her eyes, and that tart talkative mouth. Dick, my lad,
gallop; for God's sake, let's gallop."
They swung through a green world, with the gold of the dawn above the
soft blues and greys of the horizon. Rabbits scuttled here and there.
Blackbirds sung deep-throated, and skimmed along the hedgerows. The
golden buds of the oaks were turning to green spray. Ash-trees,
black-tipped, stood straight and stiff in the thickets. The bloom was
waiting on the May trees, and blue-bells coloured the woods.
Jasper saw Stonehanger Common dark against the dawn. His heart beat to
the rhythm of Devil Dick's hoofs. Nance might be standing and looking in
her mirror, and Jasper envied the mirror the reflection of her eyes.
He came to the furze lands and had a glimpse of the sea. The
yellow-flowered furze was very still with grey gossamer upon it. Here
and there brown earth showed where rabbits had been scratching.
Two hundred yards away a plover rose, crying plaintively, and circling
on heavy wings. Some one was down yonder among the furze. Jasper drew in
and stood in the stirrups. A black shape seemed to dodge down suddenly
behind a bank.
"Some gipsy."
He loitered a moment, and then rode on, not troubling to look behind
him. The furze swayed slightly as though something were pushing through
it. A man's head appeared for an instant, like the head of a swimmer
seen above the crest of a wave. The muzzle of a pistol was raised,
pointed, and held meaningly. But the man thought better of it.
"Too great a risk. Some fool of a labourer may be about. And I might
have missed him."
He dropped back amid the furze.
Jasper rode on, ignorant of the fact that death had threatened him. The
sunlight struck the windows of Stonehanger. One of the lattices opened,
and a white arm showed for a moment.
Jasper turned into the lane, passed the yew-tree where the horse-thief
had shot at him, pulled up at the gate, and left Devil Dick there with
the bridle over a post. Jasper went in through the gate, and was given a
choice of paths in the dark wilderness of the shrubbery. The path that
he chose brought him into the stable-yard and face to face with a
red-brown cow that was steering for the stable door.
The cow stopped to stare, and then walked on. Jasper took off his hat to
her.
"Good morning, madam."
And it was Nance who caught the salutation.
She had appeared in a side passage between two grass-grown walls, a
hazel stick in her hand, her hair tied up with ribbons, a red petticoat
showing her ankles. Frank astonishment was the mood of the moment. A
girl, surprised at such an hour, may look a sloven, but Nance seemed
part of the fresh life of the morning.
For an instant she looked anxious.
"You! Have you brought bad news?"
"No. An early ride, nothing more."
"I thought the French must have landed."
"I have not heard of it. The other day, you know, I forgot to give you
that scarf."
Her face and eyes lit up with amusement.
"Oh, that scarf! It seems to lie heavily upon your conscience!"
"It does."
"Leave it--or keep it."
"Then I'll keep it."
"As you like."
They stood and looked at each other, trembling upon the edge of laughter
that was part of the exquisite joy of the morning. Nance's eyes looked
dewy, her mouth alluring. She was the figure of May.
"Do you often visit your friends so early?"
"Sometimes."
"You must often catch them before they are up."
"I saw your window open as I came up the hill."
"Did you?"
"The end one toward the west. I woke early. Do you know how a spring
morning gets into one's blood? Devil Dick wanted a gallop and so did I."
The horse's, and his own, impulses had carried him up to Stonehanger.
That was where youth, and the joy of it, led. The knowledge of it came
to Nance like wind from over the hills. It seemed to beat about her with
sudden emotion, making a strange, mysterious stir in all the ways of her
lonely life.
"I have to milk Jenny."
"Jenny and I said good morning to each other."
"One has to do so many things in the country. I made David teach me."
"May I come and watch?"
"If you like."
"Jenny won't object?"
"You had better ask her."
"It would be more polite!"
Ironically serious he walked into the stable and took off his hat to the
cow.
"Madam, may I be present at the ceremony?"
Jenny turned a slow head and stared with solemn, violet eyes. Then she
gave a flick of the tail.
"Jenny is agreeable. We shall be friends."
Stool and milk-pail stood in the stall where the early sunlight streamed
through the doorway and fell upon the yellow straw. Nance set her stool
and sat down with one cheek against Jenny's flank. The white milk
frothed into the pail, the cow standing placid and trustful under the
girl's hands.
Jasper Benham leant against the door-post, content to look at Nance as a
man may look at a girl.
"Do you find it lonely here?"
"Lonely? Well--sometimes. Father and I have always had a lonely life.
I'm used to it. Though I don't say that I might not be
discontented--if----"
She glanced up and smiled.
"If----"
"If--I--had ever known gayer people. A girl likes to enjoy things just
as much as a man does. I love a new dress."
"I don't know that I'm not proud of a new coat! Do you ever go to
Hastings, or Eastbourne, or Brighton?"
"Hardly ever. We lived at Hastings for a while, in rooms under the
cliff. I used to like the sea and the fishing-boats, and the people. But
the house--! It was detestable. One long squabble with the woman, who
was always cheating us."
"Yes, they are beasts. I had a season at Tunbridge Wells with the
squire. It made me quarrelsome. Are you fond of the country?"
"I love it. I love finding the birds in their nests and watching
everything. There is so much to watch. But then--the winter----!"
"The dull days. That is why we hunt and shoot and play cards, and why
some of us drink too much. Can you ride?"
"A very little."
"I should like to teach you to ride."
"Should you! But I have no horse."
"I think of buying a quiet nag. I could come over and give you lessons.
I know you could ride like a witch."
Her eyes looked up at him.
"How do you know that?"
"Well, I just know it. You do things--so cleanly--with your hands. One
can always tell a bungler."
The milking was at an end, and Nance lifted the pail aside, and set the
stool in a corner.
"Let me carry the pail for you?"
"It is quite light. Would you like to see my new garden?"
"I should."
"I must carry this in, and see to the fire. You must stay and take
breakfast with us."
"That's good of you."
"Go round to the terrace. I'll join you there soon."
Nance ran up to her room, slipped into a simple white gown flowered with
pink roses, and did her hair, drawing it back in two black waves from
her forehead. Then she went to her father's room, and knocked, the gay
mood of the moment overshadowed suddenly by the memory of the night when
she had heard the voice of the stranger in that room. The incident might
have proved utterly trivial, and Nance had waited for something to
explain it. She had held her tongue, and asked no questions, but Anthony
Durrell had offered her no confidences. His silence troubled Nance. It
seemed that there might be something in his life that he did not desire
her to know.
"Father----"
"Yes, child."
"Mr. Benham has ridden over."
"What?"
"Mr. Benham has ridden over. May I ask him to stay to breakfast?"
There was the sound of a chair being moved. Then Anthony Durrell's voice
asked, "Where is Mr. Benham?"
"On the terrace."
"Keep him till I come. I have something to say to Mr. Benham."
"You're not cross with him, father?"
"Only fools and little people are cross, child. I shall not be ten
minutes."
Nance went down, trying to reassure herself, and feeling that it was a
very innocent thing that she should be glad of this young man's coming.
She found Jasper standing by one of the yew-trees, looking out toward
the sea. She saw by his eyes how the flowered gown became her.
"What a view you have here."
"Isn't it splendid. I have told father you are here. He says that he
will be down in ten minutes."
"I am glad you have told him. I want to get to know your father."
"Yes, but that's so difficult."
Her face fell, and she looked grave. It was sufficient for Jasper to
realise that Mr. Anthony Durrell had a perplexing personality. His
austerity was the austerity of a fanatic. As for courtesy, it seemed to
be absent. Nor did he appear to have any sympathy for this lonely,
dark-eyed child.
"Your father leads a hard life."
"Yes. Often he is up half the night, reading. You should see his books.
Sometimes I hate books. It has been like that since mother died."
Jasper looked at her with secret compassion.
"When was that?"
"Twelve years ago. Father has never been the same since then."
"No----"
"I can remember him laughing and making jokes and tossing me up in his
arms. He grew so much older, as though something had died in him. He
became more taken up with his books."
Throat, mouth, and eyes were tragic for an instant, and Jasper felt a
yearning to be very tender and gentle with this girl. He would have
liked to put his hands upon her shoulders, look in her eyes, and say
"Nance, I know you are lonely--very often."
She smiled suddenly, and looked up at him with a flash of courage.
"We always think our own troubles so important.--I must go and get the
breakfast ready. Father will be here in a minute."
Jasper watched her go, and then turned again toward the sea. The spring
morning was no longer filled with the sheer joy of living. It had a
sadness, an afterwards, a thinking voice beneath all the rhapsodies of
its awakened birds.
"Mr. Benham----"
Jasper turned with a sharp throw-back of the head. He saw Anthony
Durrell crossing the terrace toward him. The man's face was set like a
hard and narrow stone. The lips looked tucked away, the nose pinched and
thin.
"Good morning, sir."
"Mr. Benham, I have something of interest to show you. It is a thing
that is often met with, but it is not always treated with due respect.
Will you be so good as to follow me."
He stalked round the house into the shrubbery. Jasper puzzled, wondering
whether Durrell had some rare herb, beetle, or bird to show him.
Eccentricity challenges all manner of conjectures. A man may be as rude
and sinister as he pleases if his force of character justifies these
peculiarities.
Jasper found himself standing in the lane with Anthony Durrell. Devil
Dick eyed them restlessly and scraped the ground with a forefoot.
Durrell raised a hand, touched Jasper's shoulder, and pointed to the
gate.
"You see that, sir?"
"Yes."
"It is a gate, is it not? I am not aware that I have asked you to see
the inside of it. You understand me, I hope. Sometimes one has to speak
plainly. Good morning."
He gave Jasper one look, re-entered the gate, closed it, and walked off
under the hollies. Jasper stood like a rebuked schoolboy. He was too
astonished at first by Durrell's incomprehensible rudeness to feel the
anger that was rising in him. It rose none the less, with a fine head of
indignation.
"What the devil--! Am I not gentleman enough----?"
He mounted Devil Dick in a rage.
"I have a mind to flout the old fool. There would be a scene. And Nance?
Confound it, these things need thinking out coolly. I'm too hot in the
head. I don't want to give Nance pain."
X
So often a man believes what he wishes to believe, and Anthony Durrell
was no less prejudiced in this respect than the most ignorant of his
neighbours. Jasper Benham's coming to Stonehanger threatened all manner
of complications, and was a menace to Durrell's schemings. De Rothan's
lies were exceedingly opportune and suggestive. They had worked upon
Durrell's austere and Puritanical nature, and his severity never doubted
its devotion. This young man was a danger, not only to Nance, but to all
his secret understanding with the French.
Durrell returned to the house and found Nance busy in the parlour. She
had spread a new cloth and brought out the best china. Her father, alive
to these details now that they were of some significance, noticed her
rose-flowered gown and an old pearl necklace she was wearing.
"That is not stuff for the day's work, Nance."
"What, father?"
"That dress. Go and change it."
"But, father, breakfast is ready, and Mr. Benham----"
"Mr. Benham has gone, child."
"Gone?"
"Yes. There will be no setting of caps this morning."
Nance flushed with surprise and resentment, for to youth sarcasm is the
most hateful of all the methods of coercion, especially when it is petty
and unjust.
"You should not speak to me like that, father."
"What? Am I to choose my own words to please a foolish child? I shall
have more to say to you on this matter presently."
Nance was humiliated, hurt, and angry. To generous and sensitive natures
cynicism seems a vulgar, shallow thing, like a coarse lout mocking at
what he does not understand. Nance went to her room and changed her
flowered gown for an old stuff dress. Her father had begun breakfast
when she returned. He had a book open beside his plate, and he seemed
absorbed in it, and disinclined to notice the girl.
Nance watched him, and her pride rose in revolt. Her father had spoken
vulgar words, and thrown a contemptible accusation in her face. What
shame was there in her discovering pleasure in the pleasure with which
she inspired a man? She liked Jasper Benham, trusted him, and felt that
her instincts were not at fault. Was her life so full of sympathy that
she should be forbidden to make friends?
Yet for the while she said nothing to Anthony Durrell. His face was the
colour of the pages of his book. And for once Nance noticed how narrow,
thin, and harsh he looked.
She could not help remembering the night when he had brought some
strange man secretly to the house, and the thought of his secretiveness
and his dry reserve made her impatient. If he was to be tyrannical and
unsympathetic, had she not a right to be trusted? She was living this
lonely life for his sake, and yet when youth came to share with her the
glamour of a spring morning, he raised forbidding hands.
Nance looked at her father, and felt compelled to speak to him.
"Why did you send Mr. Benham away?"
Durrell pushed the book aside.
"Do not catch at conclusions, child."
Nance was not to be put aside so easily.
"Then, why did he go?"
"Possibly because of something I said to him."
"What did you say to him?"
"Nance, I am not minded to be cross-questioned by my child."
She flushed, and showed a frank impatience.
"Am I to have no friends? What harm is there? You know, father, it is
dangerous, sometimes, to try and smother all that is in us."
Durrell glanced at her sharply. He was man enough to be struck by the
undeniable truth that challenged him out of the mouth of this young
girl.
"Nance, what I do I do because it is right."
"But, have I no right to know?"
His face hardened.
"Very well, you shall know. I sent Mr. Benham away because he is not the
man I would admit into my house."
"But why?"
"Nance, you have seen very little of the world of men. This young man is
of bad repute. He is without honour, without morality."
Nance sat very straight in her chair, her hands moving restlessly in her
lap.
"You mean to say, father----?"
"This Jasper Benham is a young man who lives a bad life. He is engaged
to marry his cousin, a Miss Benham. That has not prevented him from
dishonouring----"
Nance had gone very white. Her eyes were the eyes of one who recoils
from something with sudden disgust.
"Father!"
"I tell you this for your own good, child. What do you know of Mr.
Jasper Benham? Nothing save that he seemed grateful to you--because you
were good to him, that he has a plausible tongue and an assumption of
honesty."
She sat rigid, staring at the opposite wall.
"Who told you this?"
"Does that alter the truth? I will not have this young man in my house.
He shall work no treachery here."
Nance was dumb. Something seemed to have been taken from life. The
breath of the morning was tainted.
Durrell looked at her, not unkindly.
"Now you can understand me, child. I have seen something of the world. I
do not want you to suffer pain."
Nance tried to finish her meal, but she had no heart for it, and soon
left the table. She wanted to be alone, to set her little world in
order. Something had jarred it into momentary confusion. Yet surely it
was foolish that she should care at all.
Nance went to her room and saw the flowered gown lying across a chair.
The sight of it woke a rush of anger in her. Was he that kind of man?
Had he thought her a vain fool who would dance to his piping?
A voice within her cried out in denial:
"An hour ago you trusted him! Are these things true?"
A second voice replied:
"Even if they are true, what does it matter to you? You have seen the
man only three times."
She put the dress away, and looked at herself haughtily in the mirror.
What manner of woman was she to be so moved by a breath of scandal? If
true--well--there was an end of it. She would neither bend her head to
listen, nor open her mouth to speak. She had enough pride to carry her
past such an incident that had been enlarged by her own loneliness, and
touched with the delight of youth and of spring.
Nance had work to keep her busy, though old David Barfoot took the heavy
jobs, and washed the crockery, and scrubbed the floors. At the midday
meal Nance and her father hardly spoke. She meant to spend the afternoon
in her piece of garden upon the terrace, planting out a few seedlings
and plucking up assertive weeds. David had promised to come round with
his scythe and cut the grass that was growing rank and long.
But though her hands were busy, Nance could not win her thoughts away
from the revelation of the morning. She felt sore, mistrustful,
incredulous. What did she know of Jasper Benham? Was it true that he was
pledged to marry his cousin? She, Nance, had spoken of friendliness.
Perhaps he had thought of nothing but friendliness? Her heart told her
that it was not so.
Anthony Durrell came out with a book in his hand, and began to pace up
and down the terrace. Sometimes he would break out into declamation,
waving the book, and throwing his head back like an orator sending words
to a distance.
Nance planted her seedlings one by one, kneeling on an old sack, her
head bowed over the brown soil.
"Salve, Domine. How go the elegiacs?"
Nance looked up with a start. It was another voice, not her father's,
that had spoken, and the voice was the voice she had heard that night in
her father's room.
XI
Nance glanced over her shoulder as she knelt. A man had appeared round
the corner of the house and was walking toward her along the stone-paved
path. He was a tall man, dressed in black, with roguish, sinister eyes,
an arrogant mouth, and a haughty way of carrying his head and shoulders.
Anthony Durrell turned and seemed nonplussed for the moment.
"It is you, Chevalier----"
De Rothan was a magnificent fool when a pretty woman held the stage. He
gave Nance one of his French-Irish bows, hat over his heart, the heels
of his shoes together. De Rothan had the reddish, raddled skin, and the
angry blue eyes of the Irishman. The refinements were French, the
cleverness, the subtlety, the love of intrigue.
"Mr. Durrell, present a poor exile to your daughter."
Nance had risen from her piece of sacking. Her hands were stained with
soil, and stooping had flushed her face. The stranger's magnificent
manners seemed out of place. She believed that the man was quizzing her.
Durrell closed his book with a snap, courteous under compulsion.
"Nance, this is the Chevalier de Rothan; an old friend of mine. I knew
him in France many years ago."
De Rothan laughed, with his eyes on Nance.
"Mees Durrell, your father would make me out an old man! But it is not
so. I can run and leap against any lad of twenty."
There are some men whose vanity cannot be controlled when they are
brought into the presence of women. De Rothan was such a man. He was the
peacock on the instant, strutting, swaggering, not content unless he
outshone all other men.
"Though an exile, the English women have almost made me forget my
France. Why is it, Mees Durrell, that the English women have such
beautiful skins? Roses and milk, roses and milk."
Nance said nothing. The man's voice had driven her into a confusion of
conjectures. If he were an old friend of her father's, how was it she
had never heard of him before? And why all this midnight mystery, the
stealthy coming by night?
She realised that both De Rothan and her father were watching her. It
was imperative that she should speak to him, or seem like a _gauche_
child.
"I am glad to see an old friend of my father's."
"Mees Durrell, will you make me old!"
"I don't think you are very young!"
He laughed and bowed.
"Mam'selle, your father is the cleverest of men. But to have such a
daughter! That was a stroke of genius."
Nance smiled, but there was no pleasure in her smile. She supposed these
were French manners, but they made her feel foolish and ill at ease.
"I am afraid father has never spoken to me of you."
She noticed that the men exchanged glances. Durrell intervened.