In one of the valleys of the forest of Pevensel lay the hamlet of the
forest-folk, some half-dozen cottages of unhewn stone, their flagged
roofs covered with moss and lichen. There were gardens about the
scattered cottages, an orchard or two, and a few strips of cultivated
land where trees had been grubbed up, and whin and heather routed. On
the west the ground fell abruptly to the banks of a stream that flashed
and glittered under the pine-boughs.
These forest-folk mingled but little with the hinds of the neighboring
villages. They were all of Grimshaw stock, sprung from the loins of
Isaac Grimshaw and his brother. There were Dan and David, sons to Isaac;
old Ursula their aunt, and Bess, her foster-child; also Solomon, Isaac’s
brother, who had caused ten youngsters to be brought into the world.
Isaac, a white-haired septuagenarian with a lame leg and a pair of
unfathomable gray eyes, gave law and order to the clan like a patriarch
of old. Dan, Black Dan, as the others called him, upheld his father’s
word with the brute strength of his untamed body.
Rude and unlettered as were these woodlanders, they came of finer stock
than the oafs who toiled on the Sussex farms. The Grimshaws never seemed
to lack for money, for Dan would drive his wagon into Rookhurst or Lewes
thrice a year, and spend sums that a squire might have disbursed with
pride. They were considered notorious smugglers, these men of Pevensel,
though the burning of charcoal and the smelting of iron were the crafts
they practised in pretence of an honest living. They had good stuff,
solid furniture, broad beds, pewter, and fine crockery in their
cottages. The men wore the best cloth, were well-armed, and never lacked
for spirits and tobacco. The squalor and poverty of an average village
contrasted with the clean comfort of the hamlet of Pevensel.
How did the Grimshaws come by their money? That was the question the
country-folk asked of one another over their pipes and ale, a question
also that the revenue gentlemen had attempted to solve in vain. No one
knew save Isaac, old Ursula, and Dan, of the chest buried in the deeps
of the forest, stuffed with guineas, jewels, and ingots of gold. No one
knew that Bess, old Ursula’s foster-child, was a strangeling in Pevensel
from over the sea. Twenty years had passed since the _Richmond Lass_ had
been scuttled in a fog off Beachy Head, after her captain had been
murdered and certain of the crew. An English officer and his wife had
shared the same fate, paying with their lives for the treasure they
carried with them. Four sailors—two Irishmen, a Hollander, and a
Portuguese—had come ashore by night in the jolly-boat with a heavy
chest and the dead officer’s daughter, a child of three. They had
scuttled the jolly-boat, after filling her with stones, and, striking
cross-country, had disappeared with the child into the forest of
Pevensel. Only Isaac and Ursula knew the end of the tale, and John,
Isaac’s eldest son, who had died five years later. The four sailors had
lodged at the Grimshaws, bargained with Isaac, and, after drinking
heavily, had been murdered in their sleep. The treasure-chest hidden in
the forest, four skeletons buried under an old oak, the girl Bess, were
all that recalled that tragedy of the sea.
It was St. Agnes’s Eve, and snow had fallen heavily for a night and a
day. The sky had cleared towards sunset, showing the west red above the
white hills and the snow-capped trees. The moon was full that night, and
her splendor turned Pevensel into a wilderness of witchcraft and white
magic, an endless maze of tall, silent trees struck mute betwixt the
moonlight and the snow.
Old Ursula Grimshaw, Isaac’s sister, lived alone with Bess in the
cottage nearest to the woods. Pine-boughs overhung the roof, and the
allies of the forest ran black and solemn from the very walls. Whin,
whortleberry, heather, and the blown wind-rack of the trees had
conquered one-half of the little garden. Bess and old Ursula were the
pair whom Richard Jeffray had passed the day before, tending hogs in the
beechwood by the road.
It was St. Agnes’s Eve, and Bess sat before the wood-fire in the
kitchen, her chin in her palms, her elbows on her knees. Old Ursula had
gone to bed, leaving Bess to watch the flickering embers. The room was
paved with stone, a warm, snug chamber despite the deep snow gleaming
under the moon without. Herbs, bundles of onions, flitches of bacon, a
gun, sheaves of feathers, hung from the great beams. There was much
polished pewter on the shelves; a great linen-press behind the door;
several oak chairs ranged about the walls; brass candlesticks, an
hour-glass and a Dutch clock stood on the mantle-shelf, and on an iron
hook above the fire a kettle still hissed peacefully.
Bess had loosed her black hair about her shoulders so that it rippled
and shone about her face. Her bare feet were on the hearth-stone, her
gray stockings and buckled shoes lying near to dry before the fire.
Bess’s eyes were building pictures amid the embers stacked behind the
iron bars. It was St. Agnes’s Eve, and the girl’s head was packed full
of old Ursula’s superstitious lore. She was bent on trying a dream that
night. She had kissed neither man, woman, nor child all day, had fasted
since noon, and whispered a charm up the great chimney. Now that old
Ursula’s black cat had lapped up some milk, and was dozing before the
fire, Bess rose up to put herself to bed.
The girl’s room lay on the upper floor at the back of the cottage, its
single window looking out over the valley. Bess, after raking out the
fire and seeing that the door was fast, lighted her candle, and climbed
the wooden stairs to her room under the roof. A clean shift was laid out
on the bed, and the sheets had been put on fresh that morning, for St.
Agnes, it was said, loved to find a wench in spotless gear. There were
fresh pulled bays strewn upon the pillow, a couple of red apples, and a
new shoe.
The room being cold, and Bess propitiously sleepy, she disrobed briskly,
drew on the clean shift, laid the bay sprigs, apples, and shoe on the
chair by the bed, and slipped in between the sheets. Lying straight and
on her back, after old Ursula’s orders, she put her right hand beneath
her head, saying:
“Now the God of Love send me my desire.” Then, since it was deemed
discreet to make sure of sleep with all speed, Bess rolled the clothes
about her, blew out the candle, and flung her black hair away from her
over the pillow.
Whether it was a mere trick of the brain or no, or whether the good
saint tripped down from heaven on the girl’s behalf, Bess dreamed a
dream that night as she lay in her attic with the pine-boughs swaying
snow-ladened without her window. It seemed to her that she was gathering
herbs for old Ursula amid the ruins of the Abbey of Holy Cross in the
woods beside the river. The sun was at full noon, since the roofless
refectory was ablaze with light. By the doorway Bess dreamed that she
came upon a plant with green and lustrous leaves and a great red bloom
shooting up upon a tall, straight stalk. The flower was so fair and
strange that she stooped to pluck it, and in the plucking found the
petals change to blood. Drawing back in fear, and looking at her red
hand, she saw the figure of a man darken the arched doorway. He stood
there looking at Bess in silence, with a peculiar expression of pain
upon his brown and boyish face. Bess took notice even in her dream that
he was dressed in black and had white ruffles at his wrists. As she
wondered where she had seen the face before, the man vanished away from
her without a word, and St. Agnes’s dreamer awoke in her bed.
She lay still, yet shivering a little, the vision still playing before
her eyes. A low wind had risen, and she could hear it moving in the
boughs of the trees without. Beams of moonlight came slanting through
the casement to shine upon the polished panelling of an old cupboard
that stood against the wall. The cottage seemed utterly still and dark.
Bess started up in bed on her elbow of a sudden, her hair falling down
upon the pillow, her eyes shining even in the dusk of the room.
Surely she had heard a shower of pebbles rattling against her window.
The pine-boughs had been lopped but a week ago by Dan because they smote
the glass when the wind blew. She sat up with the bedclothes looped
about her waist, and her shift showing her big white arms and full round
throat. As she listened there came a second pattering of stones against
the casement. Bess, slipping out of bed and pulling on her stockings,
threw her red cloak over her shoulders and crept across the room to the
window.
Slipping the catch, she thrust open the frame and peered out, with her
head on a level with the swaying boughs. The carpeting of snow stretched
clear and brilliant under the moon to end in the murk where the woods
thickened, and there was no sound save the soughing of the wind in the
trees. Bess’s eyes hardened as she leaned over the sill. She gave a
short, sharp cry, and drew back as though to close the casement.
“Bess,” came a gruff whisper up the wall.
There was trampled snow under the window. A man was standing there in
the moonlight, the upper part of his face shadowed by the brim of his
hat. A dwarfed and exaggerated silhouette of his broad and burly figure
was thrown by the moon’s light upon the snow. He was standing with one
arm against the wall, while his head was but six feet or less below the
ledge of the low window.
“Bess.”
The girl leaned out again, and looked down into the man’s face.
“Is that you, Dan?”
“Yes. Old Ursula’s snoring, eh?”
“What are you meddling here at midnight for?”
She could see the man’s hairy face straining up towards her, the lips
parted in an insinuating grin, the moonlight shining in his eyes.
“I’ve had a dream of you, Bess,” he said.
She frowned, and stared down at him almost fiercely from her
vantage-point.
“Well, what of that?”
“It’s the saint’s night, lass. I reckon you’d rather see a man of blood
and muscle under your window than lie dreaming of that sheep-faced fool
of a David.”
Bess’s mouth curled in the moonlight. She drew her red cloak about her
throat, and laughed at the man beneath her on the snow.
“Go home to bed, you great fool,” she said. “Do you think I shall thank
you for being dragged up in the cold to see your ugly face?”
Dan Grimshaw stood back from the window and looked up at her with his
teeth showing above his beard.
“Steady, Bess!” he growled—“steady!”
She made as though to close the window, her bare arm gleaming in the
moonlight as she reached for the catch.
“You are not my man, Dan Grimshaw,” she said, curling her lips over the
words.
“Maybe young David would have had a kiss thrown him,” he retorted,
hotly.
“Maybe—he would.”
“I’ll break the young fool’s back if I catch him dangling at your
heels.”
“Take care of your own business, Dan,” she said, clapping to the
casement and creeping back to bed.