It was on the night of Tuesday that Isaac came to Ursula’s cottage and
seated himself on the oak settle before the fire. Old Ursula was in the
ingle-nook with a pile of stockings in her lap, Bess on a stool beside
the fender, her hands clasped about her knees, her eyes full of the
thought of Jeffray. She had opened the door to the patriarch, greeted
him somewhat sullenly, and shot the bolts after him for fear that Dan
should be lurking outside the cottage. Isaac Grimshaw’s smooth face
suggested that he was in the most sociable of moods. He persuaded his
sister to brew a bowl of rum punch, and, drawing out a short pipe and a
tobacco-box from the tail-pocket of his coat, sat smoking before the
fire. Bess, on her stool, was watching the old man suspiciously, and
wondering what thoughts were passing in his mind. She always distrusted
Isaac’s good-humor, and preferred a frown from him to a smile.
Isaac began to prattle on all manner of matters, poking fun at old
Ursula and looking as simple and jolly an old fellow as ever sniffed the
odors of lemon and rum, cloves and cinnamon. He talked of Rookhurst
Fair, and promised to buy a bunch of ribbons for Ursula, and a pair of
red shoes for her to wear on May-day.
Bess grew very mistrustful of the old man’s mood as he sat there shaking
his silvery hair in the firelight, thrusting out his lower lip, and
watching her with his keen, gray eyes. She would take none of his punch,
though he pressed her often, noticing that Ursula was growing drowsy
after she had drunk of it more than once. She felt instinctively that
there was something false in the old man’s hilarity. Often Bess fancied
that Isaac was listening for some sound he intended that she should not
hear. She concealed her suspicions from him, humored his gayety, and
kept her wits alert lest there might be treachery afoot against herself.
Isaac still ladled out the punch, winking at Bess as old Ursula waxed
sleepy in the ingle-nook. He began to tell the women of Rookhurst Fair
in the old days, when he could handle a cudgel with any youngster in the
country. His shrill yet melodious voice flowed on without ceasing, as
though he were endeavoring to drown the silence with a perpetual plash
of words.
“Ah, dame,” he said, “I can remember when Jeremy brought ye your
wedding-ribbons and a ring at Rookhurst. You were a merry bit of mutton
then. Do you call to mind old Stumpy Job, the Jew who used to have his
stall in the corner of the market before Surgeon Stott’s door? It was
John Stott in those days, and, deuce take me, he was a rough devil; he’d
bleed you half dead and blister your back till there wasn’t a sound bit
of skin over your kidneys. Well, Stumpy Job, he was about the cleverest
knave as ever I knew. Half the smugglers in the Channel had dealings
with him, and if ‘my lady’ wanted French lace or silks, she had but to
let Stumpy know, and a pack load of finery would drop over the
garden-wall one quiet night. Yes, Stumpy was a neat rogue, but too
greedy on the main chance, and they stretched his neck for him at the
end of it. They hanged him on Dardan Heath for shooting an exciseman,
and he showed the white-feather terrible at the end. I did hear that he
promised to pay ’em all a powerful lot of money if they’d let him run
and cross the water. His guineas were buried somewhere down Chichester
way, and they do say that a flash dame who kept an inn there had it, for
Stumpy was always hot on the women.”
Bess had been sitting motionless all through the old man’s monologue,
her brows contracted, and an expression of alertness on her face. Her
eyes were fixed upon the door opening upon the stairs, though she cast
rapid glances ever and again at Isaac’s countenance shining in the
firelight under his silvery hair. Ursula was half asleep in the
ingle-nook, nodding her head mechanically over her brother’s
reminiscences. Bess had caught a vague and indefinite sound that had
quickened her pulses and deepened her distrust. She rose up very quietly
from her stool, yawned, and reached for the brass candlestick upon the
mantle-shelf.
Old Isaac, wide-awake on the instant, turned on the settle and looked at
her suspiciously.
“What’s amiss, lass?” he asked her, with a smile.
Bess lit the candle, steadied herself, betraying nothing of the dread
that was in her heart.
“I am tired, and it is growing late.”
“Tut, tut, lass, stay with us a little longer. Have you listened too
much to an old man’s tales?”
Bess yawned behind her hand, laughed, and walked towards the stairs.
“Ursula will sit and listen to you, uncle,” she said. “There is hot
water in the kettle if you want more punch.”
She opened the stair door, and, shutting it quickly after her, shot the
bolt on the inside. Isaac had started up from the settle, and limped
across the room with an impatient grin upon his face. Bess heard him try
the door and go back balked to the fire when he found it bolted. Holding
the candle above her head she climbed the stairs slowly, step by step,
frowning when the bare boards creaked, and halting continually to
listen. She had drawn one of Jeffray’s pistols from her bosom, and the
steel barrel quivered a little as her fingers strained nervously about
the stock.
Coming to the narrow landing at the top of the stairs, she stood
listening, with her head bent forward, the candle shaded behind her
hand. The two doors that opened upon the landing were shut, and Bess
knew not what their black panelling might hide. Putting her ear close to
the door of her own bedroom, she heard the casement rattling from time
to time, and a sound as of some one at work on the iron bars closing the
window. The candle shook a little in her hand. Setting it down on an old
chest by the wall, she gathered her courage, and, lifting the latch,
threw the door open at arm’s-length.
Outlined against the dark square of the window, Bess saw the head and
shoulders of a man. He appeared to be half kneeling on the window-ledge
without, working at the clamps that held the iron bars in their sockets.
The casement frame was open, and for the moment Bess could not see his
face.
He looked up suddenly on hearing the door open, swore, and hung there
staring at Bess as she stood in the doorway with the candle behind her.
She had recognized Dan, and understood with a flash of fury why he was
loosening the bars of the window. There was a short ladder leaning
against the cottage wall under Dan’s feet. He let himself half drop from
the window-sill as Bess came forward into the room hiding her pistol
behind her back.
“Dan, you devil—”
She stood, pointing at him, her face ablaze, her eyes hard and cruel.
Dan was feeling the bar warily with his hand, grinning and showing his
yellow fangs, and looking at Bess like a hungry animal.
“Let me in, wench,” he said.
Bess eyed him and fingered her pistol.
“Let you in, Dan! The stair door’s bolted and the bar is up. Come at
me—if you can—you coward.”
There was a sudden splintering of wood as the bar was forced in by the
man’s powerful arm. He lifted his chest to the sill, and hung there
straining and panting, working with his knees and feet against the wall.
Bess could hear Isaac beating upon the door that closed the staircase.
She moved quite close to Dan, and pointed her pistol at his head.
“Stop, or I’ll kill ye!”
Dan gave a great heave and brought his knees up on the sill. Bess fired
at him on the instant, and sprang back towards the door. The ball
whipped off the lobe of Dan’s right ear, the charge blackening and
scorching his face. The shock lost him his balance. Bess saw him clutch
at the casement frame, and go tumbling down, tearing the lattice with
him as he fell. Awed for the moment, she stepped to the window and saw
Dan lying in a black heap under the ladder that had toppled down on him.
From below came old Ursula’s cries and Isaac’s cursing. Bess heard the
cottage door open. Footsteps came through the garden under the trees.
Isaac’s white head gleamed in the moonlight as he ran forward and pulled
the ladder from off Dan’s body.
Bess turned to the cupboard in the corner of the room, and took out the
second pistol Jeffray had given her. She went to the window again and
looked out. Isaac had his arms under Dan’s shoulders; the old man was
kneeling and supporting his son’s body, questioning him in a shrill,
fierce voice as to whether he was badly hurt. Dan was little the worse
save for a strained back and a torn ear. He scrambled up stupidly with
his hand to his head, and stood looking up at Bess with savage spite in
his eyes.
“Thank the Lord, you she-dog,” shouted old Isaac, his mouth working like
the mouth of a man in pain, “the shot went wide of the lad’s head.”
Ursula, who had hobbled round, laid a hand on her brother’s shoulder.
“Don’t vex the girl further, Isaac,” she whimpered.
Old Grimshaw shook her hand away, and cursed Bess to her face.
“By Heaven, you shall be tamed,” he said. “Dan shall have you yet. Who
gave you your shooting-irons, eh? I’ll come round and make ’em safe
to-morrow; you shall give ’em up, or I’ll know why. Come, lad, pick up
the ladder; we must see to your burned face.”
They took the ladder between them, and marched away in the moonlight
towards the hamlet. Ursula, who had barred the door again, came up to
Bess in her bedroom, querulous and frightened. The girl told her the
whole truth, how Dan had loosened the window-bars in their sockets while
Isaac was talking to them in the kitchen. Ursula shook her head over the
treachery, cursed Dan, and tottered off to bed.
Bess did not sleep that night, but, wrapping herself in her cloak, lay
down to think. The moon was sinking towards the west, flooding the
little room with silvery light, and making the girl’s face seem white
and wistful in the gloom. From the bed, Bess could see the towering
woods melting away into dreamlands of mist and magic. All Pevensel
seemed asleep, with no wind stirring. The pines about the cottage stood
black and motionless under the stars. From below Bess could catch the
quiet laughter of the stream in the valley running under the moonlight
amid the trees.
She lay there a long while in a stupor of fierce and rebellious thought,
the sense of her own loneliness deepened by the vast silence of the
night. Despite her woman’s fury against Dan, she shivered and felt cold,
and even the shadowy magic of Pevensel seemed full of treachery and
whispering horror. Not till another morrow would she meet Jeffray at
Holy Cross, and she had much to fear from Isaac and his son.
As she lay on the bed with the moonlight flooding in, the sudden, shrill
cry of a bird taken by a weasel in the woods trembled up out of the
silence. Bess shuddered and started up from the pillow. She caught a
warning in this wild thing’s cry, an omen vouchsafed to her by savage
Pevensel. White and cold about the lips, she rose up suddenly, went to
the window, and looked out. She could see the broken lattice lying at
the foot of the wall, and even imagined that the stains of Dan’s blood
were visible upon the grass. How she hated and feared the man! The
thought of his coarse face and great, heavy hands strengthened her in
her passion to escape from the forest.
Turning back into the room, she put one of Jeffray’s pistols into her
bosom and hid the other under the mattress of the bed. Then she buckled
on her best shoes, hooked up her cloak, and drew the hood forward over
her face. Very softly she crept down the stairs into the kitchen, and
listened for a moment outside Ursula’s door to discover whether the old
woman was awake or no. She heard the sound of deep and regular breathing
within, and knew that the dame was fast asleep. The embers of the fire
still glowed on the hearth, and the kitchen reeked of Isaac’s tobacco.
Creeping to the cottage door, she took down the bar noiselessly and shot
back the bolts. Without the world seemed built up of magic, the
moonlight flooding down upon the orchards and the woods. Bess shut the
door gently, passed through the garden, and half ran across the open
grass-land betwixt the cottage and the forest. She took the path leading
up towards the heath about the Beacon Rock, and, gathering her cloak
round her, fled away into the moon-streaked shadows.
It was early in the morning when Bess, who had asked her way of a
laborer trimming the hedges by the road, came down from the high lands
and saw Rodenham village with its red-and-white walls and thatched roofs
in the valley. The smoke ascended from the chimneys in purple threads
towards the blue, and a haze of gold hung over the woods and meadows,
dimming the grand outlines of the distant downs. Bess saw the priory
standing apart from the village amid the green billows of its park and
the shadows of its mighty trees. The place looked very solemn and
stately in the morning light, and almost forbidding to her in the
autocracy of its solitude. She felt much like a beggar-woman as she
slipped through the lodge gates and passed under the yews that stood
there in massive and shadowy repose.
Iron gates swinging on stone pillars, each topped with a carved dragon,
opened upon the terrace and garden. Bess pushed in and passed on bravely
towards the Tudor porch, with its massive timbers, and roses and acorns
carved in oak. Each tall window of the house seemed to stare at her
superciliously, and the peacocks strutting on the terrace in the sun
were like so many gaudy lackeys ruffling it about her. She climbed the
three steps, and laid her hand on the iron bell-pull with a fluttering
feeling at the heart. How the rusty thing creaked and resisted her! Then
the rod slid so vigorously in its rusty sockets that the loud and
insistent clangor of the bell made Bess fancy that the whole house was
startled by her boldness.
An elderly woman in a mob-cap, her hair in curl papers, opened the door
to Bess. The servants had fled the house, and Peter Gladden and his wife
alone remained to minister to Jeffray in his sickness. The butler was
sitting by the open window of Richard’s room, watching for Surgeon Stott
and listening to his master’s delirious mutterings. It was Mrs. Barbara
who opened the door to Bess that morning and stared at her in some
surprise. Mrs. Barbara was a sour-tempered person, very sure of her own
importance; nor had the flight of her maids tended to sanctify her
resentful soul.
“Well, what d’you want, eh?”
Bess colored under the woman’s curious stare. There was nothing
suggestive of courtesy in Mrs. Gladden’s manner.
“I have come to see Mr. Jeffray.”
The woman’s eyes studied the girl’s person with impertinent composure.
She looked at Bess’s handsome face, considered her clothes, and prepared
for circumspection in her dealings with so gypsyish a wench.
“What’s your name?”
“Bess Grimshaw.”
“Grimshaw?”
“Yes.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Pevensel.”
“And what’s your business?”
Bess’s eyes smouldered at such cross-questioning. Mrs. Barbara’s
attitude was brusque and insolent. She was in the habit of bullying the
girls under her, and, like an underling intrusted with some authority,
she made the most of it, and mistook impertinence for dignity.
“I want to see Mr. Jeffray,” quoth Bess, quietly.
“You do, do you?”
“Mr. Jeffray knows my name.”
Mrs. Barbara’s brows contracted, and there was an unpleasant glint in
her brown eyes.
“And what may your business with the squire be?” she asked,
suspiciously.
Bess reddened and began to look fierce.
“My business is not yours,” she retorted. “If you will tell Mr. Jeffray
that I am here he will see me.”
Mrs. Gladden drew herself up, and expressed amazement that a gypsy wench
should give herself such mighty airs.
“Highty-tighty!” she exclaimed, with elevated nostrils; “are we on
visiting terms at the priory? You Grimshaws may have broken Mr.
Jeffray’s head, but you are not of the quality the young master
receives. Come. What d’you want? Money, eh? The back door is the place
for beggars.”
Bess’s natural dignity appeared to lift her out of the squabble and to
set her immeasurably above Mrs. Barbara’s papered head.
“I have come to speak with Mr. Jeffray, that is all,” she said, looking
very haughtily into the elder woman’s face. “I have not come to beg or
to wrangle with Mr. Jeffray’s servants.”
“Servants! The impertinence of it!”
“I will bide here—till you have taken my name to your master, madam.”
Mrs. Gladden’s nose suggested the presence of some very unpleasant odor.
She thrust her hands under her dirty apron, and strove to look as
portentous as her fat and frowsy person would permit.
“Don’t let me have any more of your impertinence, young woman,” she
said. “Mr. Jeffray’s in bed with the small-pox. There’s the long and
short of it. I reckon you had better be moving.”
Bess’s face had softened of a sudden, and there was a pathetic drooping
of her mouth.
“Mr. Jeffray—ill!”
“Didn’t I say so, saucy! The poor young gentleman’s quite out of his
senses. Here is Mr. Gladden coming down the stairs; he’s good at
persuading them as are not wanted, to go.”
But Bess did not wait for Peter Gladden’s advent. She turned away
suddenly from Mrs. Barbara, and went down out of the porch with a look
as of pain upon her face.