"Nance, child, the Chevalier will take tea with us."

"Yes, father."

She understood the hint and was glad to go. There was something puzzling

and unwholesome about the man.

De Rothan followed her with his eyes.

"Faith, sir, the child is charming, and so innocent."

Durrell was not pleased.

"Do not try your airs and graces here, my friend."

"Psst--I am perfectly sincere. I pay homage to beauty----"

"Curtail it. Shall we walk a little way over the common?"

He glanced at the windows of the house, crossed the terrace and

descended the steps. De Rothan followed him, staring with a certain

whimsical contempt at Durrell's back.

"Has the young squire been here again?"

"This very morning--at six o'clock."

"Youth is in a hurry!"

"I have put a bridle upon his eagerness. I sent him packing. And Nance

knows."

"Knows what?"

"That young Benham is a reprobate, and a loose liver."

"The devil she does! You told her?"

"Certainly. I did not mean the friendship to develop."

De Rothan looked half grave and half amused.

"Well, you have given me your news without miserliness. I return you

news of my own. Villeneuve has got out of Toulon."

"What!"

"And has given Nelson the slip."

Durrell's face shone with sudden exultation.

"Man, is it true?"

"True as news can be. But listen to this. He has picked up some of the

Spaniards, driven Orde's squadron out of the way, and is at sea. All

England is in a sweat, and cursing. They know nothing. They quake in the

dark."

"Yes--but Nelson?"

"Listen. This would be worth money in England. Villeneuve sails for the

West Indies. Don't breathe it. He cuts himself loose, see--disappears.

The English are left at blindman's-buff. Then the West Indies are

harried. Nelson is lured thither. Back bolts Villeneuve, drives the

blockading fleet from Brest, joins our ships there, and sails up the

Channel with close on forty sail of the line. The straits are ours.

Napoleon rushes his grenadiers across. After that--the deluge!"

Durrell stood and stared towards the sea with a look of exultation.

"And we shall help to bring in liberty."

De Rothan sneered behind the visionary's back.

"We shall show them where and how to strike. This house and hill of

yours, Durrell, will be the first point they will make safe. There will

be trenches and batteries here. The Emperor will stand upon your

terrace, sir, with all the gorgeous gentlemen of his staff. As for me, I

shall be the light-heeled Mercury. I know where the cattle and corn are

to be found. I know the powder-mills, the best wells, every road and

by-road. I shall be with the cavalry. God--these raw, red-coated

bumpkins! How we shall sabre them!"

Durrell was like a man who had heard that his great enemy was to be

overwhelmed with ruin and shame. England had made him suffer, and,

fanatic and dreamer that he was, his enthusiasm did not lack a spice of

vengeance. He wanted to see England suffer in turn, to see her purged of

the poison of privilege, of the aristocrats, the lordlings, and the rich

commoners whom he hated.

His mood came near to gaiety, if an austere and fanatical excitement can

be called gay. He forgave De Rothan his vanity, and went in holding the

arch-spy's arm as a man holds the arm of his dearest friend. De Rothan

had twinkles of cynical amusement in his eyes. What did a bookworm and a

dreamer expect from Napoleon and the French? He would be left to chant

rhapsodies in a corner, and to shout "Liberty! Liberty!" provided that

he did not turn round and shout it to the English.

De Rothan took advantage of Durrell's good humour, and prepared to enjoy

himself with Nance. The girl's silence and reserve piqued him. He loved

conquests, and would boast that no woman could withstand him.

His gallantry and his oglings worried Nance. She disliked the expression

of his quarrelsome blue eyes. He was too free, too familiar to please

her, nor was she in a mood for coquetry. Her opinion of De Rothan was

suggested by the fact that she had not changed her old stuff dress.

"Ah, Mees Nance, your hands play with the cups and the sugar and the

milk as though you played the harpsichord. Have you music here? No? Your

father should buy you a harpsichord. It would show off your pretty

fingers."

"I should not be able to play it."

"No? Why, by the honour of Louis, I would teach you myself. So many of

us exiles have become music-masters. Durrell, my good friend, buy your

daughter a harpsichord, and I will teach her to play and to sing."

Durrell gave them one of his austere smiles. He was happy, exultant, and

saw nothing sinister in De Rothan's playfulness.

"All in good time--all in good time. Nance has not had all that she

might have had."

"What, sir! And she has so much already! Most of the women would think

she had too much."

He bowed to Nance.

"One may not drink to beauty--in tea. The sparkling wine of France! I

imagine that I drink it to you, Mees Nance."

The girl was silent and irresponsive. Perhaps De Rothan felt challenged;

perhaps she pleased him more than he had expected. Before the meal was

over some of the froth had been blown from his fooling. The man was more

than half in earnest. The expression of his eyes changed. They betrayed

a subtle, gloating, admiration that is seen at times in the eyes of men.

De Rothan's leave-taking was half insolent, half tender. It had always

been his way to treat women with audacity. He attacked them with the

bold ferocity of his self-confidence.

"Mees Nance, this is the first day of spring. I kiss your hands. I

felicitate your father. Never will he produce another such poem."

His bold eyes thrust his admiration into her face. Durrell was still

living in dreams.

"Must you go, my friend? Well, well, now that you are in these parts, we

shall see you more often."

"Sir, could I help it? The sun shines at Stonehanger."

Nance was silent and thoughtful when De Rothan had gone. She cleared the

tea things away, while Anthony Durrell sat on the couch by the window

and filled the bowl of a long clay pipe.

"Who is that man, father?"

"De Rothan? An exile, a French aristocrat. He waits for the return of

King Louis."

Durrell showed the Jesuitical spirit in his belief that the end

justified the means.

"Has he been long in Sussex?"

"No, not very long. Otherwise you would have seen him before."

"Where does he live?"

"He has rented an old house away yonder over the ridge?"

It was on Nance's tongue to speak of that night when she had heard De

Rothan's voice in her father's room. But some impulse drove the words

back. She went put with the tray, leaving her father to dream impossible

dreams of an impossible future.

She was thinking of Jasper Benham, nor was it very marvellous that

Jasper could keep her in countenance in the matter of thinking. He had

ridden home in no pleasant temper, puzzled and challenged by Anthony

Durrell's blunt prejudice against him. Nor could Jasper help remembering

Parson Goffin's insinuations. Durrell might not want strangers at

Stonehanger. And yet it seemed bad policy to be so frankly churlish.

At Rush Heath Jasper found half-a-score red-coats drinking beer in the

stable-yard. Jack Bumpstead was watering their horses, and joining in

the gossip that flitted about the pewter pots.

"Capt'n Jennison be in t' parlour, Master Jasper."

And Jasper found Captain Jennison comfortably seated at breakfast,

making himself wholly at home in Squire Kit's chair.

He was a grim-mouthed, swarthy little man, with massive limbs and a big

chest. His temper was abrupt and dangerous.

"Morning to you, Benham. Time's precious, sir. Excuse me if I open my

mouth to eat and to talk. I have important orders, sir, but Captain

Curtiss was not to be found. God knows what the man has done with

himself!"

Jasper drew a chair to the table, and helped himself to cold meat-pie.

"I am at your service, captain."

"The fact is, sir, that Villeneuve has got out of Toulon. Where Nelson

is, only the devil knows. Mischief is brewing, and we are most damnably

in the dark. They say that in London men have faces as long as

lamp-posts. We are to be on the alert, sir. I have been sent out to warn

all the volunteer officers to have their men ready for any emergency."

"Then there is a chance of the French getting across?"

"A confoundedly good chance, sir, and I can't say I have much faith in

our row of dove-cots and their pop-guns. We must have every man ready

who can carry a musket. Whip up all your men, billet 'em in Battle,

somewhere handy--here, if you like. Have your wagons ready. We are

waiting in the dark. Villeneuve may be coming up the Channel for all we

know."

Jasper had the grave face of a man who took his duties very seriously.

"It shall be done, Captain Jennison. I am to act for Captain Curtiss?"

"Good Lord, sir, yes. That gentleman will be shaving himself when the

French cavalry are galloping past Tunbridge."

Captain Jennison gathered his men and rode on, while Jasper sent Jack

Bumpstead to re-saddle Devil Dick, and went to spend five minutes with

his father. He was fond of the fiery, blasphemous old curmudgeon, and

Squire Kit was proud of Jasper, and very generous in his way. He was the

sort of man who cursed because it had become a habit with him, and ill

health had not sweetened his temper.

"Well, Jasper, well, lad----?"

"Captain Jennison has been here, father. It is likely that the French

may get across."

"The French! Rot their teeth! Let 'em come, sir. What are we in such a

pest of a fear of the French for? We'll give 'em something to remember.

Let 'em come, I say."

Jasper was at the door and ready to mount when a green curricle came

swinging up the road, with Rose Benham's plain face looking out from a

big straw bonnet.

Jasper smothered a gust of impatience. Rose threw the reins to the

groom, and descended with an air of eager concern.

"Jasper, what is the news? I have heard all sorts of rumours."

"It seems likely that the French will get across."

"The wretches!"

"We have orders to bring our men together. I am off to whip them in."

A gloved hand came out, and touched Jasper's sleeve.

"O, Jasper, what will happen? I can't help being afraid."

Rose was not at her best when she was sentimental.

"Every one will be warned. You will have to go inland."

"I was not thinking of myself, Jasper. I shall be praying to God for you

and our friends. But why should I be sent away? Women may be of use."

"It may not come to that, Rose."

Her hand still touched his sleeve, and her display of tenderness

irritated him. He could not return it, and his mouth felt stiff.

"How grave you look. Does Uncle Kit know?"

"Yes."

"Poor, dear old man. I might go and comfort him."

"I shouldn't, Rose."

For Squire Kit was deep in one long, blasphemous soliloquy.

There was a short, constrained silence, Jasper avoiding his cousin's

eyes.

"Now, I know I am keeping you. Duty calls. But, O Jasper, it is

hard----"

"The French are not here yet."

"How brave and calm you look."

She had tried very hard to make the man kiss her, but Jasper's face was

obstinate and cold.

XII

A labourer came running up to Rush Heath House about eleven o'clock that

night. He hammered at the yard-door, and bawled at the servants'

windows.

"The beacon be burning, the beacon be burning."

The men of Jasper's volunteer company were quartered at Rush Heath, and

red-coats came tumbling out of barns, stable, and kitchen. The maids

could be heard screaming in their attics, till Jack Bumpstead went up to

reassure them and to tell them to dress. The men had crowded to the high

field above the orchard, and were looking toward the sea.

"Beachy Head--that's her."

"Where's Captain Jasper?"

"It be the French, sure."

Jasper had been roused. He came up to the high field, and saw the

burning beacon like a huge star, low down upon the black horizon. The

flames were flinging their message through the night. It meant that the

French had landed, or were preparing to land.

The whole household, save Squire Kit, were in the high field above the

orchard. The women were there, awed and frightened, and huddling close

for comfort.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! They'll be cutting our throats."

"Ye'll fight, lads, won't 'e? Don't let 'em terrify ye."

"O, Bob, lad, I be sure you'll get a bullet in your heart."

Jasper told the women to be quiet, and called his sergeant to him.

Captain Curtiss was still an absentee. Gossip said that he had a love

affair in London.

"That's Beachy Head, Cochrane."

"It is, sir."

"Fairlight should be lighting up. The signal will go in to Flimwell and

Crowborough. Have the men had a meal?"

"They have, sir."

Jasper reflected a moment, with confused figures and a confused murmur

of voices about him in the darkness. Some one had brought a lantern, but

it was lost in the crowd.

Squire Christopher had utterly refused to desert the house.

"What! run away from a lot of beggarly French! Damn 'em, I'm a

gentleman; I don't put my King on a chopping-block. I stay here, Jasper.

If they come into my bedroom, sir, they'll hear how an English gentleman

can swear."

Jasper had decided that Jack Bumpstead should be left to look after his

father. The maids, the cottagers, and their children were to be packed

into wagons and driven away inland.

"Jack, saddle Devil Dick. Farmer Lavender promised to come up and see

after the wagons. Let the bullocks take the red wagon. The blue wagon

and the horses must not leave here before dawn. Remember that--not

before dawn. If any one comes bringing my gold ring, they are to have

places in the blue wagon."

"Sure, Master Jasper."

"Sergeant Cochrane!"

"Sir?"

"In an hour, you will march your men off on the Hastings road. I shall

rejoin you here, or else pick you up on the road. That's clear?"

The sergeant saluted.

"Clear, sir."

Jasper rode out toward Stonehanger.

"Durrell be hanged," he said to himself, "some one ought to warn them."

It was a darkish night, and the woods made the night darker. The beacon

at Beachy Head showed its ominous yellow eye whenever Jasper was on high

ground, and looked back over his right shoulder. Fairlight Down was

invisible, but he believed that he could detect a faint glow in the

eastern sky. Fairlight beacon should be well ablaze. Far hills would

catch the signal, and blaze it on into the darkness.

Stonehanger Hill appeared as a dim outline looming up against an

overcast sky. Jasper could see no light, in the house. He had to follow

the lane, since the path over the common was too uncertain by night. The

familiar yew-tree saluted him with its shadow. He left Devil Dick

fastened to the gate that Anthony Durrell had slammed so unceremoniously

in his face.

Jasper made his way round to the front of the house. From the terrace he

seemed to look right away to the distant headland where the yellow

beacon blazed between sea and sky. A light breeze played through the

straggling thorns, and a lattice that was open creaked and rattled

against its hook.

There was not a light to be seen in the house. Jasper looked for Nance's

window, and found that it was the one with the open lattice. He stood

looking up at it a moment, and then groped in one of the flower beds for

a few small stones. Stepping back across the grass he took aim at the

window, lobbing the stones up softly so as not to break the glass.

Pebble after pebble rattled against the panes. Jasper stood and

listened. Nothing happened. He picked up more stones, and tossed them up

harder, more than one entering the window and rattling on the floor

within.

Something white flickered behind the glass, and a face appeared at the

window.

"Nance--Nance."

"Who is it?"

"Jasper Benham. The beacon has been fired on Beachy Head. You can see it

from your window."

She stood at gaze, holding her hair back with one hand.

"I thought you might be asleep and I rode over to warn you. It means

that the French are coming."

Nance remained silent. Roused out of sleep to stare at that great yellow

eye out yonder, her consciousness was confused for the moment, nor did

the man's presence below her window help her toward tranquillity. The

things that her father had told her concerning him were as vivid as the

burning beacon. She felt numb and inarticulate, constrained to speak yet

knowing not what to say.

"It was good of you to think of us."

Her voice seemed to come from a distance.

"I could not help coming."

"Oh."

"I have to join my men. There is room in one of our wagons for you and

your father. I have an hour to spare. I can take you to Rush Heath."

A strange and obstinate contrariness seized her. She had a sense of a

dull and undeserved pain at the heart.

"Father will not trouble----"

"He must."

"He is not afraid."

"Is he asleep?"

"I don't know."

"For God's sake, go and wake him. You must not be left here."

"It is quite useless, Mr. Benham. I know that father will not leave the

house."

Her voice fell coldly on Jasper out of the darkness. It was not the

voice he knew.

"Nance----"

"Please don't call me Nance."

It was as though she emptied her displeasure upon him. The rebuff was

too real to be ignored.

"I shall have ridden ten miles when I ought to be with my men."

"I did not ask you to come."

Jasper was human, nor was he one of those soft fools who grovel.

"Nance, I did not come for this. What has turned you against me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Confound it, didn't your father slam the gate in my face! I'm a

man--not a dog to be hallooed off down the road!"

The passion in his voice moved her more than he imagined.

"Please don't talk like this. Father----"

"Well, what has your father against me?"

"Why will you make it so difficult?"

"Difficult! It is a new thing for a Benham to have a door slammed in his

face. Confound it. This is sheer nonsense. You must come to Rush Heath.

Every one is being sent inland. These devils of French----"

He saw her arm come out. The hook of the lattice grated. She was closing

the window.

"Nance----"

The lattice clattered to, and he was left to his own emotions.

Jasper's astonishment struck tragic attitudes. These people had been

kind to him that night when he had been shot in the arm. What had made

them change toward him? What had old Durrell told the girl that she

should treat him so unreasonably?

Parson Goffin's accusation recurred to him.

"Impossible. The parson's a gossiping toper!"

Jasper stared up at the closed window, frowning and trying to put these

detestable thoughts away.

"Either some one has been telling lies, or----"

He stood stiffly alert, like a sentinel who has heard a suspicious sound

in the darkness. Some one was moving below the terrace. Footsteps

shuffled on the rough stone steps. Jasper turned very slowly, but could

see nothing.

"Libertas--libertas!"

Jasper's muscles quivered and hardened like the muscles of a horse that

is struck with a whip. It was Anthony Durrell's voice, but Jasper could

not see him.

Away yonder shone the beacon on Beachy Head. For the moment it was a

clear and brilliantly yellow mass, the stone wall of the terrace showing

under it as a black line. Suddenly it was obscured. A black figure

interposed itself, a figure that stretched out its arms as a great bird

expands its wings.

"Libertas--libertas! The destroyer comes. He shall winnow out the chaff

to the four winds. Hail, Napoleon, man of destiny!"

Jasper stood stiff as a stone post. Durrell's black figure loomed across

his consciousness. And suddenly Jasper understood. The man was a

traitor, a spy!

He had a sense of smothering at the heart. Anger, shame, bewilderment

had hold of him. He was thinking of Nance, and all that the closing of

that window signified.

An impulse of anger drove him toward the figure outlined against the

beacon. Some other influence drove him back. He turned and began to move

away, sliding his feet cautiously over the grass.

He threw one glance at Nance's window.

"A spy, and the child of a spy!"

Then he remembered the little wicket gate that led into the passage

opening into the stable-yard. Jasper turned to look at Durrell, and once

more stood tied to the spot.

A second figure had joined the first. It was pointing with outstretched

arm toward the sea.

A rush of anger and bitterness carried Jasper away. He fled from

Stonehanger, cursing it and himself.

In two minutes he was galloping Devil Dick down the lane.

"In the pay of the French! But Nance----? I'll not believe it!"

XIII

Strong language prevailed next day, and the eloquence of disgust.

Mounted men had gone galloping along the roads and lanes, overtaking

farm wagons laden with people and household gear, and stopping at inns

to drink and spread the news.

"A false alarm. The French never showed their noses out of Boulogne."

"Then who fired the beacon?"

Angry-faced farmers asked each other this question outside the village

inns after they had returned their teams and rumbled back the way they

had come. Only fools and red-coats saw the humour of the thing.

Respectable citizens were angry. Shopkeepers who had sat up all night

behind locked doors were ironical and grieved. Women embraced their

children and scolded their husbands in the exuberance of their relief.

The whole community, like a man who has been scared out of his dignity

by boys playing "ghost" at night, flew into a rage, and tried to cover

the unseemliness of its panic by a display of valiant indignation.

A big dragoon mounted on a bay horse was emptying a pewter pot outside

the principal inn at Hurstmonceux. The dragoon's face looked fat and

round and lazy under his heavy helmet. A fair crowd had gathered about

him. Beer and admiration are equally cheap.

"How did that thur bonfire get alight?"

"Go along with you trying to tap a King's trooper."

The dragoon winked at a group of women. He was a fat, lusty, cheerful

dog, and the women giggled and were flattered.

"The sergeant knows."

"Just look at his wicked eye."

"I like a chap to be red and healthy. They do say the French be the

colour o' tallow."

"Now, sergeant, we were that terrified!"

"Sure--you'll be for telling----"

"Well, ladies, if old men will nip a little to keep out the cold! It all

came of old Daddy Tonks having a bottle of smuggled rum on him."

"What, he set her alight while he was merry?"

"That's it. Half Eastbourne went panting up to the Head when the beacon

started burning. What d'ye think they found? Old Daddy Tonks dancing

round the fire like mad and shouting that he was burning them as was

damned. The language! Some one knocked the old man's pins from under him

with the butt-end of a musket. And here were we sent galloping after all

the poor sheep as had stampeded, and all the death and glory boys

holding each other up for fear o' fainting with joy."

The people grew confidential, crowding close about the dragoon's horse.

"Do ye think t' French ull cross, sergeant?"

"They do say as Nelson 'as lost hisself."

"My ol' sow's just had a fine fam'ly. 'Taint no sense. What be a body to

do!"

"It terrifies ye from sowing seeds. I ain't going to grow peas for

Johnny Crappo to pick!"

The dragoon gazed profoundly at the bottom of the pot.

"Bone manure may be cheap--French bones, hee-hee!"

"Give me m'own mixen."

"Who wants the Bonypart!"

"Some of our fellows, too, thrown in."

The dragoon looked round scornfully.

"If there was a man here," he said, "he'd stand a King's soldier another

mug of beer."

The trooper trotted eastward toward Ashburnham, and encountered a green

curricle at the meeting of four ways. The occupant hailed him, and the

dragoon was urbane and gallant.

"A false alarm, miss. The beacon-keeper got in liquor and set the

beacon-light. We are cantering round to quiet the poor things."

Rose thought by his fat smile that his officers had chosen wisely. There

was nothing savouring of famine and sudden death about the trooper.

"Can you tell me if the Eastbourne road is clear?"

"You may overtake some of the wagons, miss, but they'll pull aside for

such as you."

And the green curricle whirled on.

Meanwhile Jasper Benham was at Hastings in the battery at the east end

of the parade. He had left his men bivouacked in a field by Halton

barracks, and had spent the night with a number of roaring,

wine-drinking officers who had waited for the crisis in the large room

of an inn in High Street. The morning was still and sunny, and to judge

by the number of people who had gathered on the sea-front, the

Hastingers had not deserted the town at the first flash of the alarm.

There was a goodly gathering on the Castle Hill, staring out to sea.

Younger women, who had not forgotten to put on gay prints and muslins,

kept to the parade by the east battery, in order to be reassured by the

red-coated gentlemen who were laughing and joking among the guns. Green

hills, red coats, blue sea, brown roofs were spread before the people

who climbed the east and west hills. There were more red coats to be

seen about the three-gun battery at White Rock. Signals were being

passed along the coast, from Fairlight Down to Galley Hill, Wall End

Pevensey, Beachy Head, and so on westward.

Jasper, leaning against a gun, stared hard at nothing in particular with

the savage intentness of a man plagued with doubts. He was sick of the

sound of the voice of his own conscience that talked so obviously about

duty and honour, and loyalty to one's King. He ought to be reporting his

suspicions to the officer commanding the troops in the neighbourhood. A

dozen troopers ought to be riding up to Stonehanger, and old Durrell

laid by the heels and his house searched.

But Jasper's decision faltered, and he fell to temporising and to making

excuses. Was he sure of his facts? Had he trusted to mere sinister

coincidences and to suspicions? He realised that if he denounced Anthony

Durrell as a French spy, the burden of proof would rest on his own

shoulders. He would have to hurt Nance; that was what bothered him. He

could not forget the touch of her hands that night. She had fired all

the mysteries of sense and spirit. How could he throw shame and ignominy

in her face?

A corporal of volunteers was leading Devil Dick up and down the parade.

Jasper roused himself, and marched out of the battery with a casual nod

to his brother officers. The volunteer companies had been ordered back

to their country quarters. The presence of the men near their own homes

would restore confidence, and help to smother panic.

"Corporal Jenner."

"Sir?"

"Go up to Halton and tell Sergeant Cochrane to march the men back to

Battle."

"Yes, sir."

"The men will parade on the green at seven o'clock."

"Yes, sir."

"I shall be there."

Jasper mounted Devil Dick and rode westward toward Bexhill. He was in a

restless mood, driven to keep step with his own urgent thoughts. The

happenings of the night were like so many thorns spread in the path of

his pilgrimage. The gloom of an inevitable choice lay over him.

He rode across the great green Level of Pevensey where kingcups were all

golden along the waterways, and the larks hovered and sang. Countryfolk

and men on horseback were gathered at Castle End, but Jasper did not

turn aside. The grey, shimmering downs swelled before him against the

blue of the sky. Yonder rose Beachy Head, its beacon a heap of ashes. An

insane hatred of the headland leapt into Jasper's heart. It was as

though love had been martyred there, and the ashes scattered over the

seas.

Devil Dick carried Jasper into Eastbourne, urged thither by a vague

restlessness rather than by any desire to get anywhere in particular.

The town had soon recovered from the night's scare, and being a gay

place it laughed and made fun of the whole affair. Eastbourne had a

certain fashionable reputation, and by the Sea Houses where the London

coach started, and where the great circular redoubt had been thrown up,

idlers enjoyed the sunshine and aired their little genteel vanities as

though there were no such thing as war.

Jasper rode Devil Dick to the edge of this little world of

valetudinarianism, gossip, and dissipation. Blue sea and sky and the

grey gloom of Beachy Head formed the background, while the space between

the houses and the redoubt was stippled over with the little coloured

figures that idled to and fro. Here were leering old men, foppishly

dressed, yet unable to hide their tainted bodies behind the craft of

valet and tailor. There were women to keep these old men in countenance,

mature, sly, scandalous old women who still triumphed, and rouged, and

tattled. It was a quick-witted, gay, cynical crowd, vicious according to

the conceptions of the moralists, but having the laugh of the moralists

in the matter of enjoyment.

Jasper drew rein, the serious gloom of youthful romanticism refusing to

mingle with this mature frivolity. He had turned Devil Dick, and was

walking the horse away from the Sea Houses and the redoubt when he heard

some one calling him by name.

"Meester Benham, Meester Benham."

Jasper became aware of a group close on his left, one tall and stately

cypress in the midst of a smother of flowering shrubs. The cypress bowed

and swept a hat. The flowering shrubs exhaled perfumes, and delighted

the eyes with colour.

It was the Chevalier de Rothan, and with him four or five gay ladies in

Empire gowns and bonnets, very seductive, very merry, very frail. They

were classic in more than the mere incidents of dress. One had black

hair, huge dark "orbs," and a melancholy mouth. Another was a little,

red-haired woman, wonderfully dainty, with china-blue eyes, and every

feminine impertinence for the provoking of men. They were looking at

Jasper with the eyes of connoisseurs. A somewhat elderly charmer had

levelled an ebony-handled lorgnette.

De Rothan had a way of enveloping people and entangling their activities

in the net of his magnificent manners.

"Meester Benham, our friends were in ecstasy over your horse. I thought

I knew both the horse and the rider. It is a splendid animal, ladies,

and splendidly ridden, eh?"

He included them all in one sweeping gesture.

"Mr. Benham, let me present you to my friends. Mrs. Juno, Mrs. Venus,

Mrs. Impertinence, Mrs. Pallas. We are very young, sir, although so

ancient. I myself am Mr. Paris of Troy."

They laughed, and looked with friendly interest at Jasper, who had

responded with a rather perfunctory bow.

"Mr. Benham looks disappointed about something," said the little

red-haired woman with a provocative glance.

"Mars cheated of a battle, eh! Meester Benham, pardon me, but I have

been delighted by your droll people."

"Oh!"

"A little, old man drinks too much--goddesses, forgive me--and a whole

county is in consternation. You call the French excitable, sir, but, by

St. Louis, you run us close. I was disappointed in the stolidity of the

English."

Jasper suspected the presence of malicious raillery. De Rothan's figure

filled his consciousness. He felt ready to quarrel with the man and

quite ready to forget the ladies.

"What did you expect, sir?"

"Less scuffling into clothes, and the pulling on of stockings inside

out. Little things--but significant."

"We were prompt in getting the people away."

"Prompt! Excellent word! Dear goddesses, your good countrymen were

prompt at running away."

He gave Jasper an exasperatingly roguish look.

"I have heard of no running away. There seem plenty of people in

Eastbourne."

"The panic was soon put out here, Meester Benham. But I rode fifteen

miles before I came to Eastbourne this morning. You should have seen the

roads, sir. People running away with their pans and kettles and

cash-boxes on their backs. It was like the rout of an army."

"They had been ordered to go inland. The French would have found the

stem stuff ready for them, even if they had survived the _mal de mer._"

"You are facetious, Meester Benham."

"I echo you, Chevalier."

"It is my privilege to amuse the ladies."

"We have often amused ourselves at the expense of the French."

De Rothan drew himself up dramatically.

"Meester Benham, I do not permit myself or others to pass beyond mere

jesting words."

"Very good, sir, then keep clear of the facts. You have thrashed us, and

we have thrashed you. Though I think we can count three Blenheims to one

Fontenoy."

De Rothan made a gesture as though he would lay a hand on a sword.

"I do not quarrel, Meester Benham, when ladies are present. Insult me

some other day."

"With pleasure," said Jasper, and rode on in a black rage.

He had not gone more than a hundred yards when two smart horses drawing

a green curricle came into view. A whip was held slantingly at a

professional angle. The sea-breeze played with the reddish curls under

the big bonnet.

Jasper blasphemed under his breath. Cousin Rose was the very last

creature he desired to meet that morning.

She drew up, with a heightened colour and a shallow glitter of the eyes.

The woman had dash, and a certain audacity in her methods of attack.

"You see, Jasper, I had not run away. What a reprieve for us all. We

should thank God from our hearts."

She eyed him steadily, noticing his morose, inward look.

"The responsibility has been heavy on you, lad. Do you know I prayed for

you last night. I felt that you were not alone. I was with you--in the

spirit."

"You are always very good, Rose."

"Am I? I think we always understood each other, Jasper, even when we

were children."

XIV

Rose Benham's sentimentality was part of the guile of the huntress.

Ordinarily she was a hard and very shrewd young woman, capable of

managing most men and horses, and sincere enough when her egotistical

piety was on the prowl. She knew that there were other women who desired

to marry Jasper Benham. Her determination to marry him herself was made

up of the lust to possess, and the desire to defeat rivals.

"Jasper, you will see me back to Beech Hill."

She was on the edge of an appealing simper, and detestable as most plain

and hard young women are when they ape passions that they do not

possess. Rose went about such matters as though she were selling pots

and pans in a shop. Cleverness cannot take the place of instinct. That

is why clever people are often such wearisome fools.

"Do you want to go back at once?"

They had driven and ridden a little way along the Sea Road, and Miss

Benham was looking with some of her provincial scorn at the gay folk who

idled there. To a certain type of woman all fashionable people are

profligates. Most women have a secret desire to dazzle and to devastate.

It is the utter inability of the majority to do anything of the kind

that gives such a feline viciousness to their morality.

"I do not think that there is much to see in Eastbourne, Jasper. What

absurd creatures there are here. Look at that thing yonder, like a

lettuce tied up at the top with bass."

"Shall we turn back?"

"Such women always make me cross. As if men were worth all the trouble!"

Courtesy, not necessity, put Jasper in the position of outrider. Rose

was perfectly capable of driving alone across England, but when a

thin-natured woman tries to be melting, she muddles the mingling of the

wine and honey.

"I have a little basket under the seat, Jasper. Cold chicken and a

bottle of wine. We can put up the horses at some farm, and make a meal

under a tree."

Such feasting in Arcady was wholly outside Jasper's mood.

"Oh, yes, we could do that."

The tiredness of his voice piqued her.

"I believe you are sorry that the French did not come. I know; you have

uncorked your courage and it has gone flat."

Jasper left her to think what she pleased.

They found a farm-house set back in a little meadow, and a big

chestnut-tree made them a green pavilion. The horses were left in the

care of a lad who bit his thumb-nail and stared.

Jasper's attitude was one of impatient reserve. Every thought that came

into his mind unrolled itself from the one word "if." If another face

had been inside that bonnet. If other hands----! He had to sit there and

listen to Rose Benham's thin suggestions, when love had become almost a

ferocity, a tormented thing that was ready to break out into violence.

"There is only one glass, Jasper."

Her playful coyness made him feel evil.

"It doesn't matter."

When he drank he was careful to avoid the place that Rose's lips had

touched. She noticed it, and her eyes registered the impression.

Her sentimental gaiety was like the buzzing of gnats in the sunshine. It

intensified that other richer reality, that passion that had become akin

to pain. Rose, too, had a way of asking direct questions, as

exasperating a trick as pretending to tread on the toes of a gouty old

man.

"You don't look very gay, Jasper. Are you sorry the French did not

land?"

"Yes, I am."

"What a desperate mood! You ought to be in love."

This did not make matters flow any more pleasantly. Rose's face began to

assume its set, Sabbath expression.

"I think you are very dull. I know men like to talk about themselves.

You don't seem to find even yourself interesting."

"I'm not in a mood to talk. The fact is, I was up all night, and drank

rather too much sherry."

"How silly you men are. You never seem to think of the to-morrow."

They packed up the basket, left the shade of the chestnut-tree, and

travelled on. Rose looked somewhat grim, and Jasper was struck by a

sudden amazing likeness to her mother. She appeared to have grown

thinner, and her plainness cried out at him. Yet Rose, without knowing

it, was to have a very subtle and delicate revenge. She was to be the

cause of pain and secret reproaches and a little world of

misunderstanding, for half the troubles of life come from people being

at cross-purposes and refusing to speak out.

Though the road ran within two miles of Stonehanger, Jasper had no

thought of a possible meeting with Nance Durrell. But meet her they did

where the road ran through the oak woods in Buckhurst Hollow.

An oak wood in May is one of the most splendid of sights, with the golds

and greens of the young foliage giving the effect of reflected sunlight.

The lush freshness of the woods enters into the soul of a young man's

dreams. Birds sing and the cuckoo calls from mysterious distances. The

blue of the wild hyacinths brings visions of chaplets of flowers woven

about the dark hair of some young girl.

A stream ran through Buckhurst Wood, crossing the road where a big

beech-tree stood on a knoll that was covered with blue-bells. The moist

murmur of the running water seemed part of the dewiness of the green and

secret thickets.

Under the shade of the beech-tree sat Nance Durrell, a rush basket

thrown beside her, her chin resting in the palms of her two hands. She

looked intense, passionately preoccupied, her brown eyes staring into

the mysterious distances of the wood. Her mouth was grave, and a little

sad.

She glanced round with a certain impatient shyness when the green

curricle appeared upon the road. For the moment she looked at Rose

Benham and did not notice Jasper. Her thoughts had been disturbed, and

waited for the disturbers to pass.

Then she recognised Jasper. Her self-consciousness became a thing of the

vivid and inevitable present. It was not possible for her to shirk the

clamour of her emotions.

Jasper reddened like a boy. He faltered, and then let the two horses and

the curricle splash through the shallow water.

Nance had gone very white, with the whiteness of pride that resists. Why

did the man thrust himself into her life? She hardened herself against

him, and tried to find the impress of the repulsive things she had heard

of him upon his face.

"Have you heard the news----?"

Her eyes were two shadowy circles of reticent distrust.

"What news?"

"It was a false alarm last night. The beacon was fired by mistake."

She looked at him and was silent, and her very silence was resistant.

Benham had a whole flood of fierce doubts and yearnings urging him

forward against her reserve.

"Nance, why did you shut your window on me last night?"

"What right had you to come?"

She soared into haughtiness, and the knoll under the beech-tree became

inaccessible.

"I had a man's right."

"And what is that?"

The curricle had drawn up some fifty yards beyond the ford, and a face

in a yellow bonnet looked back at them with surprised intentness.

Nance rose. There was something tantalising and repressive about her

movements. Few things can surpass the bleak and uncompromising pride of

a young girl.

"Your friend is waiting for you."

"It is my cousin, Rose Benham. She----"

"I do not wish to keep her waiting."

Jasper's manhood raged within him. Primitive emotions and the more

complex things of the heart made a confused turmoil. He rebelled against

her tacit and unexplained antagonism.

"Nance, I must know what has made you change so suddenly."

She had half turned, and she looked back at him from beyond the finality

of a dismissal.

"Your cousin is waiting."

"Heaven confound my cousin! What has she to do----"

The silent, backward look of her eyes rebuffed him.

"Nance--listen. I must know why you have changed. You have changed----"

"It is courteous of you to claim it."

She was ready to show that she resented his assumption of a past

sympathy.

"Damnation! You must have reasons. Is it your father?"

"It may be. I am not here to be cross-questioned."

"After you shut your window, I saw him on the terrace last night."

His passion drove him toward aggression. The girl remained stone-cold.

"Was he?"

"Yes."

"Well, what of that?"

"He had another man with him."

"Most likely it was old David."

Jasper had come to the very citadel of her reserve. To press further

would mean the giving of a final and forlorn assault. Her whole attitude

seemed to him to be a beating back of inopportune and dangerous

curiosity.

"Shall I say that there are things that you do not wish me to know?"

"What do you mean?"

She stood to attack in turn, alert, and a little haughty.

"Mr. Durrell may have reason for not wishing me to come to Stonehanger."

"You suspect that?"

"You drive me to it."

Her face flushed under her dark hair.

"You are bold to press so far. Are you so sure of yourself? My father

has reasons. You might not thank me for telling you them."

"I should thank you--from my heart."

"Not if you have any sense of--pride. Miss Benham must think this

conduct of yours as curious as it appears to me."

She turned her back on him, and walked away into the thick of the wood.

Jasper could not follow her there without leaving his horse, and Nance

knew it. He did not attempt to follow her, but sat staring half vacantly

into the green depths, a man staggered in the full stride of his

impetuous sincerity.

It cost Jasper something of an effort to ride on and overtake the green

curricle. Rose Benham's sharp profile had a very exasperating effect on

him. There was something dangerously watchful about her eyes.

They made an elaborate show of ignoring the events of the last five

minutes. Jasper might have hung behind to talk to a farm bailiff, to

judge by the way they treated the matter.

But Rose's shrewd brain was busy enough behind the forced facility of

her chattering. She felt that it was not only absurd, but impolitic to

ignore the incident. It had to be touched on lightly and without

prejudice.

"You haven't yet told me the name of your friend, Jasper."

"What friend?"

"Why, the damsel among the blue-bells, stupid. You know--I felt horribly

guilty. It occurred to me that I had put myself in the way of being an

awkward third."

"That was Miss Nance Durrell."

Cousin Rose appeared immensely excited.

"Jasper--the heroine of your night adventure! Think of that now! I

thought she would have been prettier. You ought to have made us known to

each other. I might have driven her home in the curricle."

Jasper glanced at Rose mistrustfully. Nance had driven him into a world

of cross-purposes and suspicions.

"Miss Durrell goes very much her own way."

"Proud, is she?"

"Call it that if you like."

"O, Jasper, Jasper, if only you would let me teach you a little about

women."

The cynical yet motherly touch was excellent. Rose could be masterly,

directly a little malice gave her practical shrewdness an opportunity.

She could preach to a man, if she could not make love to him.

"What do you know about women, Rose?"

"La, now, listen to the lad! Jasper, half you men are nothing but great

big boys. You think we are so much finer, and purer, and sweeter than

you are, until we poor women show the true human stuff in us, and then

you make a frightful to-do, and turn into cynics. Don't we want the men

sometimes, just as much as the men want the women? And don't we plan and

scheme to get them, playing all sorts of tricks with pride and coldness

and smiles and relentings. Don't start away, Jasper, with thinking each

girl a sweet fool of an angel."

He was caught by her words, and was angry with himself for being

influenced.

"Sometimes people are what we wish them to be."

"Yes, especially if they are clever. The girl realises that. She puts on

the clothes and the airs that please the man."

"You are a little cynic, Rose."

"Not a bit of it. I'm honest. I don't cover things up."

They said no more on the matter, but Rose had learnt something that made

the lips of her soul curl maliciously.

"Always the pretty face!" she thought. "Fools! And we plain women have

to look on, while a man squanders himself on a thing with soft eyes and

an artful mouth. I'm plain, but am I going to be ousted by some

treacle-and-honey chit with eyes like blackberries? This nonsense----!"

Rose had a sense of her limitations. That is what made her bitter.

XV

Nance made her way through Buckhurst Wood, pushing aside the fresh green

hazel boughs till she reached a ride that ran eastward under the

overhanging branches of the oaks. It was a woodland gallery hung with

arras of green and gold, the sunlight streaming in through innumerable

windows. The rank grass about the hazel stubs was threaded with wild

flowers. Patches of blue sky showed between the golden branches of the

oaks.

Nance was both angry and perplexed, an astonishment to herself in the

contradictory discontent that mocked her pride. She had not pitied

Jasper Benham when they had been face to face. She had resented his

pertinacity. It had been easier to believe that he was playing the part

that he had played with other women.

Yet something within her spoke up for Jasper now that he could not

defend himself in person. Nance had had but a glimpse of Rose Benham,

but it had been enough to challenge her dislike. She was sorry for the

man, having an instinctive foreknowledge of how such a woman would shape

in the middle ways of life. Yet Nance caught herself up in the thick of

these thoughts, and refused to be lured into possible justifications.

Nance was a little hard, as girls are apt to be. She liked her beliefs

and convictions carved in ivory, immutable and flawless. There were so

many things she did not know, so many things she did not understand. She

believed in a kind of superhuman honour that could never change, never

be bent into the making of crooked excuses.

But she did feel bitter and lonely, in spite of her pride. Something had

been awakened in her that spring, a richness of thought and of feeling,

a going-out of her spirit toward mystery and joy. She remembered days

when she had thought of this man with a swift, shy thrill of tenderness.

There had seemed a strength about him, a brave, brown-faced kindness

that had compelled her to muse and to remember. That was why she felt

bitter and resentful. She would smile peevishly over the thought of the

red scarf and the cunning use he had made of it. Now and again she had

found herself doubting the truth of her father's words, but she could

find no reason for his wishing to mislead her. The smart of the thing

remained, the raw consciousness that this man had been treating her as

one adventure in a succession of adventures. She resented this bitterly.

It was the one emotion that had made her determine to thrust the whole

affair out of her life.

Nance made her way homeward by a number of familiar lanes and

field-paths, for she had wandered extensively since Anthony Durrell had

taken Stonehanger. It was when she was following the path that led from

the direction of Rookhurst over Stonehanger Common, that De Rothan

overtook her and dismounted to walk at her side. He had seen the girl's

figure moving along the field-paths as he had ridden along the road.

"My homage to you, Mees Nance. It may be that I shall find your father

at Stonehanger. I hope the beacon-fire did not keep you awake last

night."

He walked along beside her with an air of fascinating frankness. He had

found it serve with women. As for Nance, she was so near home that it

did not seem worth while to question De Rothan's company.

"We saw the beacon burning."

"And you were very frightened, eh?"

"No, not very."

"You should have seen the country people! Frightened sheep! I fear that

if the French had landed the English red-coats would have followed the

women."

Nance had none of her father's political discontent. She had her British

beliefs and convictions, and wore her patriotism in her bosom.

"English soldiers do not run away, Chevalier."

"Eh! Assuredly--I ask your pardon. One's own soldiers never run away;

they are forced to retreat in the face of overwhelming numbers. We all

know that."

The man puzzled her. Usually she could get clear impressions of people,

but De Rothan's was a figure that flickered and changed. His vanity and

his grand air were definite details, yet they seemed to her like clothes

worn at a masked ball. De Rothan was a cynic and an adventurer, a mature

and very flexible man of the world. Nothing was absolutely right or

absolutely wrong to him. A certain intenseness made Nance incapable of

understanding the multifarious selfishnesses that go to the making of

such a man.

Anthony Durrell was walking the terrace when these two reached

Stonehanger. De Rothan had said, "I give myself the pleasure of seeing

your father." He was out of the saddle, and making a great business of

offering to hand Nance up the steps.

She was not a gallant's woman, nor did she desire to be touched by De

Rothan. Her instincts were fastidious in such matters.

He smiled at her roguishly.

"What a proud young gentlewoman. But you have the right. Beauty is

privileged. Pride in a plain woman is like fine wine in a pewter pot."

Her aloofness pleased him. He followed her up the steps, scanning her

figure, and noticing the comely way her neck curved where it rose from

between her shoulders.

"Mr. Durrell, your daughter is a very great lady. She is too proud to

touch my fingers."

He laughed and swaggered, and it was in his swagger that the vulgar

blood of the Irish adventurer showed itself. Durrell had a sullen,

preoccupied look. He had been disappointed of great events.

"Where have you been, Nance?"

"For a ramble."

"Ah."

His eyes searched her face, and Nance caught a questioning distrust.

Youth resents suspiciousness. That momentary glance was seized on and

remembered.

"You will stay and drink tea with us, Chevalier."

"I am to be persuaded, sir, I assure you."

"Nance, get the things ready, child."

She answered perfunctorily and passed on toward the house.

De Rothan returned to his horse that was standing quietly at the bottom

of the terrace steps.

"Show me the way to your stable, Durrell."

"You know it."

"I don't, sir, so long as there are eyes about. Besides----"

Durrell joined him, and they walked round by the field gate into the

yard. David Barfoot met them, and Durrell signed him to take De Rothan's

horse.

They turned into the shrubbery, and took to pacing one of the wild,

overgrown paths. Laurels and hollies hedged them in, and arched out the

sunlight. The thick canopy of leaves had smothered the grass and weeds.

The soil was black and bare under the dark stems of the laurels.

De Rothan appeared cynically merry. He talked to Durrell about the

happenings of the previous night.

"The whole countryside broke away like sheep. What? You are

disappointed? No, no, the scare was of value. It showed how jumpy and

unsteady these stolid folk are. They tell me that the troops were out of

hand in several places. Whole companies made off and had to be chased

and brought back by cavalry. It's a fact, sir, a fact."

Durrell showed a morose surface.

"It may have done them good."

"Steadied them, eh, helped them to get used to it? Bah! I should like to

see a beacon fired by mistake every other night. The country's courage

would be in tatters. Troops--raw troops--are not improved by being

worried and fretted."

"I was too happy last night. I thought the time had come."

De Rothan looked at him intently.

"You are on edge, sir, too much on edge."

"No, no; I long for the great change."

A hand-bell rang, and the two men returned to the house. Nance had set

tea in the Gothic parlour. De Rothan was floridly officious in arranging

a chair for her.

"You should have been at Eastbourne this morning, Mees Nance. A crowd of

gay people, all in the best of tempers from being saved from invasion.

They had all got ready to run away in their best clothes. Do you ever

take your daughter to the watering-places, Mr. Anthony?"

Durrell grunted, and gloomed over his tea.

"I don't."

"You dislike gay people."

"I detest them."

"Ah--ah, and they are always saying that my poor France is so gay. Why

should not one be gay, sir, why should we pull long faces? The good God

did not mean us to be miserable. What do you think, Mees Nance?"

His deference bowed her into the conversation.

"Sometimes one can not be gay, Chevalier."

"Not always, not always. But then, when a woman is young and adorable!

Cloudy days; beauty all silver and grey, charm, subtlety. Now, come--do

you not love fine clothes?"

She smiled.

"As much as women always love them."

"There, that is honest. I would not give a fig for a woman who hadn't a

little vanity."

Durrell struck in, jerking his shoulders irritably.

"There is enough nonsense in a girl's head, De Rothan, without stuffing

any more into it."

"My dear friend, I disagree with you. There are gentlewomen and

gentlewomen. Parents, too, are often the blindest of wiseacres. Now if I

were in your place, Mr. Anthony----"

"But you are not, sir. Let us keep to impersonal matters."

De Rothan threw a whimsical and conspiring look at Nance.

"Impersonal matters! As if life could go on with all our desires

carefully tied up in silk handkerchiefs and put away in cupboards. Mr.

Durrell, you are one of the most learned of men, but----"

He shrugged his shoulders expressively and looked sympathetically at

Nance.

"Well, to be impersonal. I saw all kinds of your good English people

strutting to and fro on the parade. You look so good, you English, that

a well-dressed woman seems scandalous. You are such barbarians. Some one

wears a new sort of hat, and all your raw louts and lasses are giggling

and nudging with elbows. Some of you try to be fashionable and also

pious. I am thinking of Mees Rose Benham, who was there in her curricle.

Doubtless, Mees Nance, you have made the lady's acquaintance?"

"No."

"A character--a character. She had Mr. Benham, her cousin, hanging on

her eyebrows. They are to be married soon, they say. A case of when

Greek meets Greek. Mees Benham is a plain young woman, but she is one

who provokes. Impudence, eh, is that what you call it? A turned-up

button of a nose, sharp mouth, naughty eyes. Such women sting some of us

into passion. Mr. Benham is in the toils."

He talked lightly, easily, observing Nance without betraying his

curiosity. Durrell moved uneasily in his chair, and looked irritably

austere.

"You need not talk of Mr. Benham here, Chevalier."

De Rothan glanced at him with pretended surprise.

"A young man with a bad reputation."

"Sir, I beg your pardon. I know the man is a little riotous; it is an

impersonal matter, surely? Madam, his cousin, will take care of his

morals."

For the rest of his stay De Rothan was very gallant to Nance, talking to

her and at her with an air of admiring deference. No man could be more

picturesquely charming than De Rothan. He had the mellowness of long

experience, and could ape the chivalrous and dignified tenderness of an

old beau.

"Turn the young thing's head, eh! She's confoundedly alluring. Durrell's

a fool."

Nance longed to be away. She escaped when her father went to the

mantel-shelf for his pipe, and fled away to her room.

It had been flashed upon her mind that De Rothan was the friend who had

told her father these things concerning Jasper Benham. Anthony Durrell

saw so few people, and there appeared to be a curious intimacy between

these two.

She stood and looked at herself in the glass as though she were

questioning her own reflection.

Why were De Rothan and her father friends? Had De Rothan brought these

vile tales to Stonehanger? If he was responsible for them, did that

alter her impressions?

Yes, but she herself had seen Jasper with his cousin. That part of it

seemed true.

And yet she distrusted De Rothan greatly.

XVI

Meanwhile Jasper Benham was at the end of his patience, and a creature

of moods and savage bewilderment. Nance's strange hostility had not

helped him toward decision. He was too much in love with the girl to

seek to be revenged upon her because there was something that he could

not understand. Even supposing that Anthony Durrell was a French spy,

and that Nance knew it and wished to safeguard her father, what had she

to fear from him; what reason had she for treating him with suspicion?

Well, what was to be done?

Jasper had spent two morose, vacillating days, and the moral quandary

seemed all the deeper. What a scolding shrew was this thing called Duty!

He was to denounce Durrell, was he--send red-coats to turn Stonehanger

upside down, and lose, perhaps forever, his chance of Nance! No, Duty be

cursed; he would do no such thing. If this clumsy meddling were the only

means that Duty could suggest, he would throw Duty aside and stand by

his own more magnanimous instincts.

Jasper was riding Devil Dick over Rush Heath farm when he came

cheek-by-jowl with this decision. Restlessness had set him in the

saddle, and it was still early in the afternoon when he found himself

looking over a thorn hedge into a big turnip field that sloped southward

toward the edge of a wood. A solitary, lean, brown figure showed up

against the green of the young growth, a figure that moved its arms with

the monotonous action of a man hoeing.

Jasper rode through the gateway into the turnip field and remained

watching the man with the hoe. The labourer drew near with his back

turned, chopping away sedulously at the young weeds. Jasper knew him for

Tom Stook of Bramble End, an odd hand who was taken on by the Benhams'

bailiff when there was a press of work, or hay and corn to be gathered

in.

Tom Stook was a very tall man with great bony limbs that seemed loosely

slung at the joint sockets. He had a hawk's beak of a nose, a little

tufted beard at the chin, and deep-set, cautious eyes. He kept on

hoeing, as though he had not so much as glimpsed Jasper out of the

corner of an eye.

"Well, Tom, Webster has found you a job, has he?"

Stook straightened his back, drew in his hoe, leant upon it, and

regarded Jasper with a sort of cautious respect.

"Mornin', Master Jasper."

"Weeds bad?"

"Pretty tarrifyin'. Be'unt so bad down yon end."

Now Tom Stook was one of the most garrulous of rogues when gossip did

not press too tenderly upon such personal matters as poaching and

smuggling. He was a bit of a ruffian, sly, shrewd, and immensely strong.

Folk had tales to tell about him and his lonely hovel of a cottage down

by Bramble End.

Tom Stook hoed and talked, wagging his tuft of a beard, and throwing

queer, spying glances at Jasper.

"No more beacons afire, sir?"

"Not yet, Tom."

"That did tarrify the folk. I seed ut begin a'glimmering just afore

midnight."

"You keep late hours, Tom."

"I doan't knows as I do."

He hoed on in silence for some moments.

"T 'rabbits be tarrible thick down our way. They'd be for eatin' all the

green stuff, if I didn't snare 'em. Maybe I keeps late hours now and

agen. A man sees some funny things of a night, surely."

"What sort of things, Tom?"

"Lights, and men wid dark lanterns. Smugglers and Frenchies."

"Oh, come, Tom!"

"Sure, I be tellin' the truth."

"Where do you see the lights?"

"Up yonder, at Stonehanger. It be'unt no sort of a light, but a sort of

a glare fur the while you count ten. I doan't say nothing to nobody. We

be'unt none of us so tarrible honest, Master Jasper, as we can pull

other folks' clothes off their beds. But I've seed strange men go over

Stonehanger Common at midnight."

Jasper kept a grave and rather sceptical face.

"When you go out rabbiting, Tom?"

Stook grunted.

"I doan't know nothing 'bout that."

"Nor do I, Tom. If the men didn't have a few rabbits, we shouldn't have

any crops."

"Sure, Master Jasper, I always said you be a young man o' sense."

"The squire likes his punch, Tom. We don't ask too many questions in

Sussex. I'll wager we have stuff in our cellar that never paid duty."

Stook went on hoeing methodically.

"Do y' know that thur furriner, sir? That black chap as rides about on a

black horse?"

"Who do you mean, Tom?"

"Frenchy gentleman."

"Do you mean the Chevalier de Rothan?"

"It may be him, Master Jasper. I've seed the man I mean up at

Stonehanger."

"The devil you have!"

"I've seed him come over t' common just afore daylight. You know t' old

quarry 'twixt Bramble End and Stonehanger?"

"Yes."

"I've knowed him leave his nag thur all night. I've seed him, too, with

Durrell's girl."

"What d' you mean, Tom?"

"No harm, master. Why, I seed 'em two days ago going over t' common. I

was down under yonder cutting a bit o' furze to thatch m' wood lodge

with."

"What day was it--Tuesday?"

"It ud be Tuesday."

Jasper sat and stared across the turnip field with the level stare of

grim preoccupation. Tom Stook's lean figure had faced about, and was

receding, with rhythmical strokes of the hoe.

"Have you told any one about this, Tom?"

"Sure, no, I ain't, Master Jasper. I be'unt one for tongue-wagging 'bout

other folks's business. Guess, though, I've been puzzled. I be'unt no

baby."

"No."

"I knows t' lads, and t' rabbit runs, and t' warrens."

"I reckon you do, Tom. But Stonehanger? Mr. Durrell's not hiding the

stuff, is he?"

"That be what mizzles me."

"He isn't one of the gang?"

Tom grew reticent of a sudden.

"Don't you be for askin' me, Master Jasper."

"Well, about the foreigner. Are you sure you know him?"

"Maybe I be wrong, master."

"He and Durrell are something of a size."

"That be true."

"I'm glad you've told me this, Tom. You'll find half a side of bacon

waiting to be given away up at the Hall."

Tom jogged his hat.

"Thank ye, Master Jasper. I doan't drop no words into t' old women's

laps. I keep t' spigot in, sir, 'cept when a gentleman o' sense be

about."

Jasper turned Devil Dick and rode out of the field in a very different

temper from that in which he had entered it.

Hot blood is jealous blood, and Jasper was no bloodless saint. Tom Stook

had sprung a surprise on him, and let fly with a blunderbuss into the

thick of Jasper's perplexities. He had owned to a healthy if casual

hatred of De Rothan, but personal, prejudiced hatred is a very different

thing from vague antagonism. Good lovers are good haters, and Jasper was

hating De Rothan at full gallop.

"Seems to me Stonehanger is a nest of spies! Deuce take it, how did we

miss knowing De Rothan for a rogue! He and the girl are friends, are

they? Oh, my innocent, sweet child! Oh, you besotted fool, Jasper

Benham. Have it out with them, have it out."

Jasper rode straight for Stonehanger in about as black a temper as a man

can boast. He had no very definite ideas as to what he meant to do.

Feeling violent, savage, and very much befooled, he just rode toward

Stonehanger, letting the impulse of his jealousy urge him thither.

The track he chose came from the south over the common, leaving Bramble

End lying half a mile to the south-east. Jasper passed the quarry where

Tom Stook said that De Rothan had sometimes left his horse. Jasper

peered into it, and found the quarry a mere pit full of broom and

brambles, its entrance half choked by a big elder-tree. But there were

trampled places here and there, and a rough path that led out on to the

common.

Any one approaching Stonehanger from the south had all but the roof and

chimneys of the house hidden from him by a heave of the ground. Then one

came into full and sudden view of the place with its grey terrace and

wind-blown trees. Such a passion as jealousy often provokes the

opposites of a man's normal nature, and Benham developed a spirit of

wariness and cunning. He dismounted as soon as he saw the chimneys of

the house, found a spot amid the furze where he could fasten Devil Dick

to the tough stem of a furze-bush, and went on foot.

The windows and terrace rose into view, with the wind-blown yews and

thorns, and then the stretch of grassland immediately below the terrace.

It was here that Jasper dodged down behind the furze like a stalker

sighting a stag. The lines of his face grew hard and keen. He took off

his hat, and, thrusting it into the furze, made a sort of loophole

between the boughs through which he could watch Stonehanger unobserved.

A man was walking to and fro on the grassland below the terrace,

flourishing a stick as though he were trying the suppleness of his wrist

for sword-play. Sometimes he would pause and draw imaginary patterns on

the ground with the point of the stick. Or he would stride as if

measuring the ground, look about him critically, and scan the

surrounding country. There appeared to be some purpose in this pacing to

and fro. The man might have been an engineer surveying the ground for

the throwing up of earthworks and the placing of guns.

The man was De Rothan. Jasper knew him by his height, by his black

clothes, and his haughty, swaggering walk. Only De Rothan could have

flourished a stick with such gusto.

Jasper looked grim.

"Hallo, so it's you, is it! Tom Stook was right. What the devil do you

think you are doing marching about up there?"

He watched De Rothan jealously, thoughtfully.

"Measuring the ground? Trenches and redoubts? By George, that's it! Why

did I never think of that before? Stonehanger would make one of the

strongest positions for ten miles round. A landing party might seize it

and hold on----. Hallo!"

He was all eyes for the moment, for another figure had appeared upon the

terrace. Jasper could see only the head and shoulders behind the low

wall. It was Nance Durrell, a white sun-bonnet covering her black hair.

He saw her come to the edge of the terrace and look over. The white

strings of her sun-bonnet were over her shoulders. She rested her hands

on the parapet and watched De Rothan pacing to and fro below.

Jasper became for the moment the most violent of cynics. A sense of his

own ineptitude tormented him. He believed that he understood all that

was happening up yonder.

De Rothan turned and caught sight of Nance. He gave her a magnificent

bow, sweeping hat and stick with splendid expressiveness. As for Benham,

the toe of his boot alone could have expressed his emotions.

"Coxcomb--dog of a spy!"

They were talking together up yonder, and Jasper could hear the faint

sound of their voices. Nance appeared to lean forward over the parapet

with an intimate friendliness that did not ease Jasper's jealousy.

De Rothan approached the steps. He mounted them, turned to the right and

sat himself down on the parapet within a yard of Nance. He laid his hat

beside him and tapped one of the coping stones with his stick. Nance did

not edge away. She perched herself facing him. It was evident that they

were talking together.

Jasper imagined all manner of intimate confidences passing between them.

Confound De Rothan, he seemed on excellent terms with the girl! No doubt

that was why the Frenchman had looked him over with such amused

insolence when they had met.

Jasper knelt awhile behind the furze, gripping his coat collar with one

hand, and staring hard at the green gorse. He was ready to believe that

De Rothan was Nance's lover, and a passion of repulsion held him for the

moment. The anger in his blood was a cold and ugly anger. A man feels

the more bitter when he has reason to despise himself.

Then a thought struck him.

"Yes, by George! That's it! I'll make sure of the man. Tom Stook shall

have a look at him."

He started up, and, keeping his body bent, made his way back toward his

horse.

"I'll make sure that Monsieur de Rothan is Tom Stook's man. Then, by

George! I'll call him to account."

XVII

In half an hour Jasper Benham was back in the turnip field on the Rush

Heath land where Tom Stook was still wielding his hoe.

"Tom, can you trot four miles at a stretch?"

"Lord, sur, what for?"

Jasper told him as much as he could tell such a man as Tom Stook.

"I'd take you up behind me, but you're such a big fellow, Tom. Leave

your hoe in the hedge, and hold on to my stirrup. I'll tell you more as

we go along."

And so they set out for Stonehanger.

They went by way of Bramble End, Jasper leaving Devil Dick tethered in

Stook's little cow-lodge. Rogue Tom had come by a pretty shrewd notion

of what Jasper Benham expected of him. He took the lead as they made

their way over the common.

"No nag in t' old quarry, sir?"

"No."

"T' crossways at Dudden's Oak, that be the spot, then, Master Jasper."

"Sure?"

"Mounseer has to cross t' ridge. Let him take what track he will, he'll

come to t' crossways at Dudden's Oak, unless he goes by t' woods and

ditches."

Jasper agreed. Stook was a fox who knew the country.

They skirted the upper part of the common, and took a farm track that

led to the crossways at Dudden's Oak. The old tree, a huge shell with

its boughs half dead, stood in the centre of a triangular piece of

grass. There was a wood between two of the converging roads, and Jasper

laid Tom Stook in ambush in this wood.

"You'll get your glimpse of the gentleman, Tom, if he comes this way."

"I'd be glad to get a sound o' t' furriner's voice."

"You'd know him by the voice?"

"I've heard him speak in t' dark. If I see him and sound him I'll know

'em all for t' same man."

Jasper leaned against the trunk of the old oak with his face toward the

two ways that led south-east and south-west. De Rothan might come by

either road. Nor had Jasper been there fifteen minutes before he saw a

mounted man appear far down under the oak boughs on the Rookhurst track.

It was De Rothan himself, jogging along at a comfortable trot, yet

sitting very straight and stiff in the saddle, like some grand seigneur

riding over his estate. Jasper waited for him on the green point of

grass between the two roads. He had seen Tom Stook's brown face thrust

itself momentarily between the hazel boughs like the face of a satyr. He

was on the alert.

De Rothan recognised Jasper when he was within thirty yards of Dudden's

Oak. A slight knitting of the brows betrayed his impatience. But he came

on with all the fine and unembarrassed confidence of a grandee.

Jasper stood forward with a sweep of the hat.

"I must ask you to stop, sir."

De Rothan pulled up, and gave Jasper a stiff bow. He was high in the

stirrups of his dignity, and ready to play the grand monarch.

"Good day to you, Meester Benham."

"Good day to you, Chevalier. Will you be so good as to tell me whence

you come, and where you are going?"

De Rothan looked haughty.

"Indeed, sir, by what right do you ask these questions?"

"By a right that it is not yours to question. I am a King's officer and

we have our orders. You will be so good as to answer me."

"I take it as a reflection on my honour."

"Take it as you please. We have to supervise the comings and goings,

even of our guests."

"Meester Benham, do you suggest----?"

"I ask you to answer my question."

"Your way of asking it is insolent."

"I stand by my orders. We are neither of us here to question them."

De Rothan appeared to do some rapid thinking. Then he gave an irritable

shrug of the shoulders.

"I suppose an exile has to suffer suspicion. If you would know it, sir,

I have been riding to exercise myself and my horse. I rode from my house

to Stonehanger Common; I ride back again to my house. Is that what you

require?"

"I take your answer at its value, sir. You may pass on."

De Rothan looked at Jasper as though he were half-minded to ride him

down. He appeared to swallow something. He was a man who preferred to

make very sure of success before he struck.

"I am deeply beholden to you, Meester Benham, for your serene patronage.

There are things that we do not forget."

"Remember them when you please, Chevalier."

"I choose my own time, Meester Benham. I do not chastise insolence until

the occasion suits me."

Jasper gave him a vicious smile.

"Do not postpone it too long, sir. We do not live so very far apart.

Good day to you."

De Rothan rode on.

Then Tom Stook's brown face appeared. It was one broad grin.

"T' same furriner--all over. I've seen him meet t' smuggling

Frenchy--Jerome. That be him, Master Jasper."

"Well, he's a liar, Tom."

"Liar! All Frenchies be liars. Good for you, Master Jasper."

Jasper sent Tom Stook home with a silver crown in his pocket, and rode

back alone to Rush Heath. He wanted to worry this matter out, to think

out his plans for dealing with Durrell and De Rothan. Jasper had no

desire to drag the whole neighbourhood into the adventure. In a way it

was his own affair, and he meant to carry it on his own shoulders. His

motives and emotions were jumbled together. The one outstanding fact was

his determination to break De Rothan. He would outwit the man, corner

him, fight him, if need be, and get up early one morning to see him

hanged. It was a question of duty; and it was not. Jasper loved and

hated. These things are sufficient without a man dragging in duty and

religion, and trying to cover up the essential and elemental passions

with sentimental affectations, and platitudes about patriotism.

Jasper had been away from Rush Heath since the morning. Jack Bumpstead

was not to be found, and Jasper, going in to stable Devil Dick, found a

strange nag in one of the stalls. Old Mrs. Ditch, the housekeeper, met

him in the passage, her grey curls very much in order, and a ribbon in

her cap.

"La, Master Jasper, Mr. Winter came two hours ago. I had dinner kept

back awhile. There be some cold victuals laid out for you."

"What--Mr. Jeremy?"

Mrs. Ditch looked coy. Mr. Jeremy was a gentleman who forever caused a

tender fluttering among all sorts and conditions of women.

Jasper made for the dining-room. In the Chippendale arm-chair by the

window sat a shortish, thickset, hard-headed man in black, smoking a

long pipe, and looking out on life with steel-black, whimsical eyes. He

had one of those Roman heads, with harsh strong features, power in every

line, and a cynical kindliness about the mouth.

"Why, Jeremy----!"

"Jeremy it is, lad. Come over and kiss me."

They laughed, and came together to grip hands with the impulsiveness of

two men who have learned to love each other as men can.

"What are you doing down here?"

"Filling a chair and a bed."

"Good, by George! It's a year since we've seen you. Where's Squire Kit?

Have you seen him?"

Jeremy settled the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with the end of his

little finger.

"Having a nap upstairs, Jasper. Curse me, lad, it's good to see you.

Brown and lusty, eh, though you had a broken arm in the spring. What,

Jack Bumpstead's no gossip. And how's that old blackguard, Goffin? I've

brought him down a pound of snuff."

Jeremy Winter had been a gentleman of many adventures, and his

picturesque career had culminated in the founding of a fencing school in

a quiet street near St. James's. Jeremy and Jasper's mother had been

cousins, and for twenty years Mr. Winter had descended at spasmodic

intervals upon Rush Heath, never with much money in his pocket, but with

plenty of audacity and cheerfulness in his eyes. He would have tales to

tell of Canada, or the East Indies, or of service in the Austrian army,

or of bronzed and ragged adventures in Spain. There was something

lovable about the man. He was tough, capable, humorous, warm-hearted, a

master of the small sword and the sabre, imperturbable and smiling in

the face of odds.

Jasper sat himself down at the table with a resentful and freshly

remembered hunger. Jeremy Winter's coming struck him as the most welcome

of coincidences. One could tell things to Jeremy that a man would not

tell to any other living creature.

They talked hard, touching on a dozen familiar memories, and filling in

the gaps between the now and the then. Jeremy had made a success of his

fencing school, but as he put it--"London's a sort of howling wilderness

just now. Every blessed soul seems to have gone off somewhere into the

country to help to drill bumpkins, and stand ready for the French. I

shut up the school for a month. There were only a few raw youngsters to

teach."

When Jasper had dined they strolled out into the garden with the

elbow-to-elbow air of men well pleased to be together. Jeremy had taught

Jasper to fence as a boy. He had taken some pride in the lad, for their

temperaments were much alike. Jasper had much of the elder man's nerve

and courage and imperturbable toughness.

"Well, lad, how's the sword-arm?"

"Out of practice. I have an idea, Jeremy, that you are the very man I

want."

"What, getting ready for a quarrel--woman--and all that?"

"More than that. I'll tell you."

In the long walk Bob the gardener had thrown down half a dozen hazel

fagots, for sticking the rows of sweet peas. Jeremy brought out a knife,

chose two hazel boughs, sliced off the twigs and shaped them to the

length of two foils.

"Let's try you, Jasper."

They stood in the grass walk and fenced together, the sunlight shining

on the brown hazel stocks and on their intent faces. Jeremy Winter was

extraordinarily quick and supple for a man of fifty. He had the wrist of

a blacksmith and the cunning of a player on the spinet. Jasper was slow

and out of practice. Jeremy touched him five times in as many minutes.

"Stiff. Is the business serious?"

They began to pace up and down the grass walk while Jasper told Jeremy

Winter the truth about Stonehanger. Jeremy was a good listener, shrewd,

attentive, and ready to compare new facts with the gleanings of a very

varied experience. He was an easy man to confide in, because he was so

full of a sage understanding. Jeremy had led a picturesque and rather

dissipated life between the twenties and forties, and it is the man who

has been a man who is of most use to his brother men.

"So you fell in love with the girl, lad. What! I'm old dog enough to

know that! Heaven help me, it happened to me every month when I was a

youngster. But I was only in love--once--you know; the great splash; and

she left me to drown."

"That's all done with, Jeremy."

"Twenty years ago, sir."

"No, I mean my small incident. It was just an inclination; no more than

that."

Jeremy regarded him with an affectionate twinkle.

"Just so--just so."

"I have got to pull this nest of spies to pieces. The girl mustn't blame

me. I've got to do my duty."

"Duty! You be very careful of that word, Jasper. It's a fool's word. I

don't trust men who talk about their duty. Why not send a file of

soldiers in?"

Jasper stared at the chimneys of the house that rose against the stately

gloom of the cedars.

"I have a mind to carry the thing through myself."

"Out of consideration for the lady!"

"No. This Frenchman and I have a score to settle."

Jeremy stroked a firm and shiny chin.

"Who is he? An _émigré?_"

"Pretends to be. He calls himself the Chevalier de Rothan."

"What?"

"De Rothan."

Jeremy said something under his breath.

"Tall, dark rogue, is he, with the airs of a grandee, drooping tip to

his nose, wears black, and talks about St. Louis?"

"That's the man! Do you know him, Jeremy?"

Winter looked thoughtful.

"I've met him in London."

"Where?"

"At my school. He came in to fence; Jack Sidebotham brought him. He was

all over my best men."

They paused, and looked each other in the eyes.

"Jasper, the fellow is one of the best swordsmen in the country. I had a

turn with him."

He smiled a grim little smile.

"Vanity, that's his weak point, too much flourish. I had him pinked,

but--"

Jasper threw up his chin.

"All right, Jeremy. I'd tackle him--curse him!--even if he were a better

man than you."

"You wait a bit, my lad."

"You had better call me a coward!"

Jeremy laid a hand on Jasper's shoulder.

"Stop that. Do you think I don't love you, lad? Do you think I want to

have you run through by a swaggering blackguard like De Rothan? He's a

good shot, too, mind you. You wait a bit, till we have had a week with

the foils."

As men they knew each other, and Jasper was touched.

"I'm a hot-headed fool, Jeremy. I'll do what you wish."

XVIII

Had Jasper Benham been able to see into Nance's heart he would have felt

a man's pity for her, that richer tenderness that dissolves away the

pettier and more selfish thoughts.

For Nance was very lonely, and perplexed amid her loneliness. Things had

happened that had troubled her beyond measure. In the first place, she

had overheard some talk that had passed between De Rothan and her

father, a few, disjointed sentences, nothing more, and yet the words had

caught her ear and set her musing upon their meaning. Moreover, De

Rothan himself had become suddenly and ominously real. He had swaggered

out of a vague and questionable past into an urgent and audacious

present. He had kissed her hand, and he had tried to touch her with the

touch of a lover.

A woman can judge a man by his eyes, and his way of looking. The

Frenchman was infinitely courteous, but he had no reverence. His

admiration was a complacent and self-confident emotion. It bent, half

patronisingly, and touched what it admired, as though a woman's charm

was a mere flower to be plucked and held to the nostrils.

De Rothan had made Nance's spirit creep. She had become suddenly afraid

of him, and shy of being alone.

Queerly enough her loneliness and her craving for comradeship and

sympathy found her thoughts turning toward Jasper Benham. It was a pure

impulse and it surprised her new self-consciousness. There seemed

something inevitable about it, something that claimed spontaneous

justification. Nance found herself questioning the meaning of this

impulse. If she distrusted one man and felt drawn toward the other, did

not this spiritual phenomenon suggest some deep and instinctive truth?

It contradicted the things that she had been told about Jasper. If he

was a bad man why should she think of him now that she needed help?

It was in a mood of doubt and unrest that she idled round her terrace

garden, looking at the faces of the pansies, pulling up weeds, and

putting a stick here and there to a head-heavy flower. The sound of

footsteps made her start self-consciously. A figure of Time came

striding over the grass--old David Barfoot--scythe on shoulder, a brown

straw hat shading his lean, tanned face.

Nance smiled at the old man, a smile of relief. There had been rain in

the night, and the moist grass was ripe for scything. It would cling to

the edge of the blade and make the work easier.

"I like the grass short, David."

He had a way of hearing Nance's words as he heard no one else's.

"I'll shave it close; trust me."

He carried the stone in a queer little leather case fastened to his belt

at the back. Getting an edge was a great business. The stone rang along

the blade of the scythe. Presently he began to mow with steady, purring

strokes, and the swinging movement of his arms and shoulders was not

without a kind of grace.

Nance sat herself on the terrace and watched him. There was something

restful in the level, swinging rhythm.

David was not a talkative man, but he had his moments of illumined

loquacity.

"Fine weather for the crops. They'll be making hay afore the end o'

June. Maybe the French won't tarrify us at all."

Nance had the look of a contented listener. It was pure coincidence that

sent David drifting toward matters that were vital to her needs. He

began to talk about his relatives and their affairs, which were mostly

of a sordid, poverty-stricken, and child-bearing order.

"Maybe you've heard speak of my sister, Sue Barton. Thirteen brats, and

her man down with t' ague. Bad times, too. I don't say as the gentry

can't be kind."

"Thirteen children, David!"

He stopped to sharpen his scythe.

"Pig's meal, they be glad to get it! Jim sick, and Sue expectin' as

usual. It was lucky for Jim Barton as he had worked on and off for t'

Benhams. They be good gentlefolk, t' Benhams, though t' old squire has

the mouth of hell on him."

Nance said "Oh!"--a non-committal exclamation.

"Master Jasper, he be a good young gentleman."

"The Mr. Benham who was shot in the lane?"

"Sure. There be gentry and gentry. Some of 'em doan't care; some of 'em

gives for what they gets. Master Jasper's a soft heart, but he be'unt no

fool, neither. A tough gentleman when a man be a rogue and a beggar."

Nance had a moment's perplexity. Then she said:

"I have heard bad things about Mr. Benham, David."

She spoke softly, but David was watching her mouth. He picked up the

words and answered them.

"Have ye now! Well, I've heard different. Be man, woman, or child sick

down Rush Heath way, the young squire he be for knowing about it. Better

than the parson, he be. Not pious-like; can do his cussing. Clean about

t' wenches, too. Though I shouldn't be saying such a thing afore you,

Miss Nance."

Nance reddened, not wholly because of David's words.

"You appear to know a great deal about Mr. Benham, David."

"Sure--we knows this and that in t' country. I likes a fine, upstanding

gentleman. I wishes him good luck in the shoes of his father."

"Is it true that Mr. Benham is to marry his cousin, David?"

"She? You be meaning Miss Benham o' Beech Hill?"

"I don't know."

"Sure, Mr. Benham be'unt no fool! Marry she! 'Tain't no sense."

"Well, it isn't our business, is it, David?"

The old man grunted. He was thinking of things that it was not his

business to utter.

But his words had had their effect on Nance. For days she had been

striving against a growing sense of resentment. Doubt and mental

suffering have some kinship to physical pain; they torment the mind

until it breaks out into passionate rebellion. Nance left David to his

scything and went straight into the house. She knew that her father was

in his study, and her very doubts drove her to demand some answer to the

questions that were troubling her heart. Durrell's secretiveness, De

Rothan's mysterious presence about the place, the slandering of Jasper

Benham, all these things combined to form a distorting glass that threw

the reflections of life back at her with perplexing vagueness.

Nance climbed the stairs slowly, stiffening her courage against this

colloquy with her father. The house seemed very still as she passed down

the long brown gallery and knocked at her father's door.

"Yes?"

"May I come in, father?"

"Yes, come in."

He was wrapped in an old dressing-gown, and sitting at his table, books

open before him, a quill in his hand. It might have been some austere

Milton inditing polemics against the Church of Rome.

Durrell had the look of a preoccupied man who suffered interruption

grudgingly.

"Well, what is it?"

She closed the door.

"I want to speak to you, father."

He frowned, and laid his pen in the trough of an open book.

"What is it? About the food--or the pots and pans?"

"No. It is about things that have been worrying me."

"Things--things? How loosely you express yourself!"

His impatience stiffened her courage.

"This Chevalier De Rothan--why does he come to the house?"

Durrell leaned back in his chair, pushing his feet out under the table.

"What has that to do with you, Nance?"

"I want to know why you have him to the house."

"Indeed!"

"I don't like him. I don't trust him. I have a kind of feeling that we

are in his power."

Durrell looked at her with frowning intentness.

"Little fool!"

She flushed, sensitively.

"Father, I feel that things are happening here about which you have

suffered me to know nothing. It is wrong to me, unfair----"

"Tssh! Don't let us have this nonsense, this tragedy queening."

"Can you swear that----"

"Nance, you are a fool. Am I to be catechised by a silly girl! Stuff and

nonsense!"

"Then why does this man come here in the middle of the night? Why does

he spend hours with you, here, in this room? Oh, I may know more than

you think, father. One cannot help having ears and eyes."

"Girl--what do you mean?"

"I have a right to know----"

"Right? You talk to me about your rights!"

Durrell was a quick-tempered and a scornful man, but Nance had never

seen him look so evil.

"Let me tell you, Nance, that I am not a man who thinks it necessary to

explain things to a child."

"But you explained away Jasper Benham's character--to me."

He pushed his chair back violently, and rose.

"I told you some truths for your own good."

"Did the man De Rothan tell you these things?"

"Silence!"

"I have a right----"

"Silence, I say!"

Durrell's face had lost all scholarly repose and refinement. It was

harsh, flushed, and threatening.

"Go to your room, girl. Never let me have more of this interference."

"I am not a child any longer. If you drive me to it, father, I shall

rebel----"

He broke out in a way that amazed her, with a scolding fury that threw

aside all self-control. Durrell was not capable of the blind, physical

violence of the ordinary male, and his unreasoning wrath ran into a

torrent of outrageous taunts and sarcasms. We are the creatures of

savage littlenesses in our rages, those nerve-storms that rise out of

nothing, and end in nothing.

Durrell's fury of words had a numbing effect upon the girl. She stood

mute, staring, astonished by the unreasoning violence of the man who had

given his life to accumulating wisdom out of books. Then she drew back

toward the door, opened it, and escaped.

She went to her own room, realising in a numb way that her father had

spoken words to her that could never be forgotten. The very violence of

his anger had been an outrage, its arbitrariness an answer to her

suspicions.

Then she heard De Rothan's voice on the terrace below. He was talking to

David Barfoot, but David would never consent to understand him.

The voice sent a shiver of repulsion through Nance. She turned and

locked the door.

"Mees Nance, Mees Nance, where is the sunlight?"

He was calling up at her window, and she hated him for not being another

man.

Durrell's footsteps came down the gallery, and he joined De Rothan on

the terrace. The Frenchman could have done with other company, but he

was drawn sharply toward sterner issues.

Durrell took him into one of the dark paths through the shrubbery.

"The girl has begun to suspect us."

"What, sweet Nance?"

"She challenged me to a confession, as though I owe any confession to a

child!"

"And you scolded her! You men of letters lose your tempers as badly as

tipplers at an inn. Poor Nance; you scorched her with that infernal

tongue of yours."

Durrell gave him a sneering look.

"You need not pity the girl. She seems to hate the very sound of your

name."

"Come, come, that is promising."

"You had better hold away from her."

De Rothan laughed.

"Mr. Benham, too, suspects us. I have decided how to deal with that

gentleman. But sweet Nance hates me! That is good news."

"What do you mean, sir?"

"Do you see your daughter, Durrell, as one of the beauties of Napoleon's

court? It is not impossible, sir, not impossible. Where hate is, there

love shall be gathered in."

XIX

Bob, the gardener, scything grass in the Rush Heath garden, saw Jasper

and Mr. Jeremy Winter come out of the house while the dew still lay upon

the grass. Jasper had a pair of foils under his arm. The two gentlemen

stripped off their coats in the long walk, rolled up their shirt-sleeves

and began to fence. They were at it for an hour or more in short, sharp

bursts, Jeremy pulling the younger man up from time to time, and making

him repeat some series of parries and passes. The clinking of the foils

made a thin and constant tingle of sound, broken now and again by

Jeremy's deep and imperturbable voice. There was no blood in the battle,

but the great poppies in the borders were the colour of blood.

Jeremy was not ill-pleased with these practise bouts.

"You will soon have a quick point again. The man behind the sword's the

thing. Nerve, and a devilish sharp eye."

"You will warrant me sound in a week, Jeremy?"

"Not far off, not far off. Don't forget the pistols, though. And look

you, lad, the game is to play up to the vanity of a man like De Rothan.

Fencing's a subtle art. 'Tain't all wrist and sinew. There's mind in it,

personality, soul. It's a picking to bits of human nature. You don't

fight a man's sword alone, but his grit, or his conceit, and his damned

flourishes."

"You are a cunning master, Jeremy."

"Why, confound me, half life is acting. Act when you fight, lad. I could

play a man like De Rothan the veriest clown's game, make him think me a

bungler, and run him through before he had the sense to take me

seriously. That's what fighting should be, brain as well as beef."

They went in to breakfast, a silent meal so far as Jasper was concerned.

Jeremy Winter watched him with affectionate amusement. A man of fifty

renews his youth in seeing a young man in love.

"I have it, Jeremy!"

"What, lad?"

"An idea."

It did not unfold itself, for there was a sudden violent hammering on

the floor of the room above. Mr. Christopher Benham was using the heel

of his shoe to attract attention.

"Hallo, the squire's awake."

"I'll go up and see what he wants. I say, Jeremy, not a word about

this."

"Not a word. He'd curse me out of the country for egging you on to take

risks."

"Besides, there's Rose. You remember Rose?"

Jeremy drew in his lips.

"Remember her, by gad! We always quarrelled, Rose and I. So he wants you

to marry her?"

"I don't know. Rose can twist him round her finger. I don't want her

meddling in my affairs."

"The less a woman knows the better."

Jasper spent the morning practising with his pistols in the little

meadow by Ten Acre Wood. He chose the meadow because it was a mile or

more from the house, and the oaks of the wood smothered the reports of

the pistol. He did not wish the sound to come to Mr. Christopher's ears,

for he was in an intensely irritable state, and very feeble. The most

trivial thing would send him into a gouty rage, and his rages left him

breathless and inarticulate.

After dinner Jasper ordered Jack Bumpstead to saddle Devil Dick. Jeremy

Winter stood smoking a pipe in the porch, and watched him mount and ride

out.

Jasper headed straight toward Stonehanger. His face had a set and very

determined look. He was out on a grave business, and on his guard

against sentiment and romance.

It was still and sultry, and there was a fog at sea. Grey haze covered

the hills, and the long grass in the fields hardly so much as stirred.

Stonehanger Common lay in the full, thundery glare of the afternoon

sunlight. Warm, dry perfumes rose from it, and the gorse looked a dusty

green. Jasper followed the lane, and, pushing Devil Dick through a gap

in the hedge, approached Stonehanger from the western side. His plan of

campaign promised to adapt itself to the identity of the person who

chanced to meet the first attack.

As it happened, he came upon David Barfoot by the gate that led into the

rough meadow where Jenny the cow was turned out to grass. The

coincidence faced Jasper with two alternatives. He made a sign to David,

and the old man came and stood by Devil Dick's right shoulder.

"Is Miss Nance at home?"

David watched Jasper's lips.

"She be out, Master Benham."

"And Mr. Durrell?"

"Would you be wanting to see him?"

David's sceptical sincerity stirred Jasper's inclinations. He discovered

a very human desire to set eyes on Nance. Durrell! Barfoot was right.

Anthony Durrell could go to the devil.

He was surprised to find David Barfoot so ready to help him.

"Do you know where she is?"

"She be gone down t' sea lane."

"Straight on?"

"Sure."

"I might meet her if I rode on down the lane." Barfoot grinned

approvingly.

"I'm telling ye," he said.

The lane went winding down between furze-clad banks, a green way

powdered with wild flowers. About half a mile from Stonehanger House the

lane broadened out into a kind of grassy stream that meandered as it

pleased. Jasper reined in on a piece of rising ground, and scanned the

land ahead of him. Two furlongs to the south stood a group of may-trees.

They were smothered in blossom, and their massed floweriness made them

look like a great heap of white wool or of snow.

Jasper caught sight of a figure moving on the outskirts of these trees,

a figure that loitered, and reached up to break off the flowering

sprays. He had ridden to Stonehanger convinced that he could hold

himself well in hand and that he could talk to Nance as dispassionately

as he would have talked to his cowman's grandmother. But when he saw

that figure down by the may-trees, Jasper knew why he hated De Rothan,

and why he was trying to compromise with Nance.

He rode on, rather slowly, stiffening his upper lip as though he were in

for a life-and-death tussle and not for a scene with a mere girl. Jasper

had planned out what he would say, and how he would say it. He had

stalked up and down the Rush Heath rose-walk, putting his emotions in

order, and choosing his texts.

Something spoiled all that. It was his own sincerity, and the face and

figure of the girl leaning through the foliage of a may-tree, and

looking at him with widely opened eyes. This particular tree grew

hollowed out on the inside, its lower branches lying like so many ledges

with bands of shadow in between them. The long grass was all white and

gold with buttercups and moon-faced daisies.

Jasper lifted his hat.

"David Barfoot told me I might find you down the lane."

His sudden appearing had thrown Nance's thoughts into confusion. She had

been thinking about him, and he had startled the intimate inwardness of

her thoughts. She was too conscious of their last meeting and the way

she had rebuffed him.

She came out from amid the may boughs with a troubled shadowiness of the

eyes. A sheaf of the white blossom lay in the hollow of her left arm.

Perplexity is apt to simulate coldness and pride. She looked cold and

white and upon the defensive.

The silence irked them both. They took refuge in vague superficialities.

"Fine trees, these. They looked like a pile of snow in the distance."

"Yes. I love the smell of may blossom."

"Scents carry one back to all sorts of memories."

"I know. I always like a bowl of wild flowers in my room."

"Are you going back to Stonehanger?"

She threw a quick and watchful look at him.

"Yes."

"Then I will turn back with you."

She seemed uneasy and perplexed. The half-scared look in her dark eyes

touched him. What was she afraid of, and why did she glance at him in

that queer, disturbing way? He began to relent, to lose himself in the

world of her presence.

"You know that--my father----"

"I know that he does not want me at Stonehanger."

He dismounted, and set himself at her side.

"Then, if you know that----"

"Yes, but if you forbid a thing, it drives a man to do it. Besides----"

He found himself looking into her eyes, searching them with sudden

impetuous passion. She glanced away, reddening, the bunch of may blossom

crushed against her bosom. A thorn pricked her arm, but it was part of

the pain of her perplexity.

She seemed to cast about for words.

"We lead such a lonely life, and father does not like strangers."

"Is that why you were so hard on me?"

"When?"

"Oh, you remember."

He was driving her into a corner, and it was impossible for him not to

see her too palpable distress. It both troubled and angered him,

pointing toward two possible explanations.

"You remember the night you rescued me out of the lane?"

"Yes."

"Well, you were very good to me--then. What made all this difference?"

"Father does not like strangers."

"But is that enough to make you treat a man as though----"

She broke in upon him, white and hurried.

"Mr. Benham, don't----"

"Nance, why won't you tell me the reason?"

"I can't."

"I'll take it well. It might help something pretty serious that I have

to say to you."

She gave him a startled look, as though suspecting some other method of

attack.

"You are so masterful!"

"No, no. You won't help me--whereas I have ridden over to help you."

"What do you mean?"

"Tell me what made you treat me as you did."

She lifted her chin, and showed him a clear and obstinate profile.

"No, I will not."

"You won't help me!"

"If you have come to strike bargains----"

"Nance, you drive a man into being angry."

"What right have you to be angry?"

"My own right."

"Who gave it you?"

"A man seizes it. Do you think I don't hold myself as good as that

French fellow De Rothan?"

She paused, and looked at him half-warningly.

"You try to seize too much. The Chevalier de Rothan is my father's

friend. I----"

"You----"

"I have nothing more to say."

"I have. It is what I came for. And it concerns your good friend De

Rothan."

She flashed her eyes at him, mistaking his grim sarcasm. They were on

the edge of a quarrel, and very near to those bitter words that rise to

the lips of passion.

[Illustration]

"I think that you and I are better apart."

"As you please. But I have not had my say--yet."

"Oh, you are unbearable!"

"One is not thanked for telling the truth. I came here to warn you that

the whole business is discovered."

She swung round and faced him, holding up an impatient and restive head.

"Do all men talk behind each other's backs? What are you hinting at?"

Jasper looked at her stubbornly.

"How much do you know, Nance? By George, you look innocent enough!"

"What do you mean?"

"The Chevalier de Rothan is a French spy."

"Mr. Benham!"

"You have said that your father is his friend."

"Oh!"

"I will not use the word 'spy' when speaking of your father."

XX

Nothing could have more clearly proved Nance Durrell's innocence than

the indignation that leapt up in her like a white flame out of a fire.

It was the anger of youth, swift, generous, and impulsive.

"You call Anthony Durrell a spy!"

"I called De Rothan a spy."

"How do you know? How do you know?"

He was more busy with her face and gestures than with her words. It was

a wonderful love-play to him, with its quick kindlings, its red,

passionate lips, its eyes that flashed out melodramatic scorn. The very

way she breathed, and held her head, was sheer revelation.

The sincerity of her anger challenged him.

"How dared you come to me with this tale?"

"Because it is true."

"How do you know?"

"I have seen and heard things."

"Well, then, you, too, are something of a spy."

"I could not help seeing and hearing what I did. I am not the only man

who has suspected your father of French sympathies. As for De Rothan, we

ought to have known him for a rogue. We English are such easy-going

fools."

She walked on, head in air, eyes looking into the distance.

"I will not believe it."

"I am sorry."

"Oh, don't talk of sorrow!"

"Nance, do you think I came here to taunt and bully you?"

"Perhaps----"

"What the devil do you think I came for?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"To be rough--and quarrelsome?"

She was falling a little from the serenity of her indignation. Her anger

had been a thing of the moment, and now that it was passing she knew

that she had suspected her father, and her own suspicions went out to

clasp hands with Jasper's accusations.

She looked slantwise at him, and a glimpse of his clean-cut mouth and

steady eyes made her think of a strength and courage that waited. Of a

sudden she felt desperately helpless, and desperately lonely. Why were

they at cross-purposes, and quarrelling like boy and girl? It would be

better if she spoke out.

"Well, what are you going to do? You seem so sure about it all. I

suppose you will denounce us?"

"You knew nothing about it, Nance."

"You think that?"

His eyes studied hers.

"You are not made to tell lies. Are you going to let me help you?"

"Am I to accept all this on your authority?"

He nodded with an air of grave and imperturbable magnanimity.

"I believe, Nance, that you knew nothing. But have you never been

brought to wonder what your father's life was, and what the Frenchman De

Rothan meant to him?"

She looked at the ground before her, intent and thoughtful.

"Things have happened that have troubled me."

"Your father is not a man to talk."

"No. There have been things that I could not understand. Oh, it is

hard!"

"I know."

Jasper's eyes softened. He stroked Devil Dick's neck as the horse walked

quietly beside him.

"Nance?"

"Well, what now?"

Her voice was forlorn, and a little impatient.

"I understand why your father did not want me at Stonehanger."

"Oh, but then----"

She caught herself up, and reddened.

"Go on."

"He gave me a reason."

"Tell it me."

"Won't you let me keep it to myself? I don't know that I believe it any

longer."

Jasper had a flare of understanding.

"Oh--that! It was about my cousin, Rose Benham?"

"Yes and no."

"What, more than that?"

"Don't ask me any more."

She glanced at him half pleadingly, and his square jaw and strong,

confident head showed up convincingly against a cloud of slander.

"I don't think I believe it. Don't ask me to say more."

He gave her a full, frank look.

"Have it so, Nance. I'm here in my own shoes, a free man, with nothing

to hide under my coat. But I'll tell you one thing: I have a good,

fierce grudge against De Rothan."

Her face expressed the searching of her thoughts.

"Because he is a spy? Or has he offended you?"

"Because I hate the man."

"Then you are not--not disinterested?"

He smiled grimly.

"Nance, I'm not."

She hid her eyes under black lashes, and her lips trembled perceptibly.

"But I must trust some one."

"Trust me."

"Yes, but----"

He bent toward her with intense earnestness.

"Nance--listen. I believe in my heart that your father is in very great

danger. Spy he may not be; it is a low word and should not live near

you. But he is a Revolutionist, a Jacobin, a sympathiser with the

French. God knows what he hopes to get out of Napoleon! This fellow De

Rothan is the danger. The country's mad and scared; they'd show no

pity."

She was white and serious and a little frightened.

"Oh, I know--I know! But father----!"

"I know the kind of man he is, an enthusiast, ready to be martyred.

There are people who suspect him, but I don't think a living soul knows

as much of the affair as I do."

Nance's eyes were supplicating and eager.

"Yes--but can you help me?"

"We must rid Stonehanger of this fellow De Rothan."

"But how?"

"That will be my business."

"But it may be dangerous for you."

"Confound it, who cares! You've got to trust me, Nance, and by Heaven,

I'll not fail you."

Her face and eyes warmed to him. His strength and confidence were giving

her comfort.

"What strange creatures we are! A few minutes ago, I almost hated you,

because you forced things on me; but now I feel that I must have your

help."

"That is what I came to offer you. I have nothing to complain of."

They had been following the lane back to Stonehanger, when Nance, who

seemed more restlessly alert than Jasper, saw a man on horseback appear

between the furze-clad banks. He was a hundred yards away, but Nance

knew him for De Rothan. She touched Jasper's arm.

"Look!"

"De Rothan?"

Her eyes met his with a new meaning. She was putting her trust in him,

waiting to be guided by what he would say and do.

"Nance, pretend to be angry with me."

"Must I?"

"It was not so very difficult a little while ago."

She gave him a glimmering of the eyes.

"Must I be very proud?"

"Yes, freeze me for being too forward, or scorch me with scorn!"

A woman loves humour and some degree of subtlety in a man. Nance looked

at De Rothan, and then turned to her dissembling.

"I wish you would not vex me with your attentions--I mean presence"--she

blushed into a moment's laughter--"I very much resent it."