The anger had melted out of Jeffray’s heart from the moment that he had
helped to lift his cousin’s body and bear it with Beaty and Wilson to
the coach. The reaction was but the recoiling of a sensitive nature from
the violence that had brought a strong man in anguish to the ground. He
stood watching the coach as it rolled along between the trees casting up
a cloud of summer dust that drifted idly over the long grass.
Wilson, understanding something of the regret that had seized upon his
friend’s mind, laid his hand upon Jeffray’s shoulder.
“It was no fault of yours, Richard,” he said, looking earnestly into
Jeffray’s face.
The younger man hung his head and sighed.
“He forced the quarrel on me, Dick.”
“And what is more, sir, he had no intention of showing you much mercy.
You cannot blame yourself for the poor devil’s fury.”
Jeffray turned at last and remembered Bess. He had almost forgotten her
in the fierce emotions of the moment, and in the vision of Lot lying
bleeding on the grass. She was still kneeling on the stone bench at the
end of the terrace, her elbows on the balustrading, her face between her
hands. Wilson’s eyes were also fixed upon this solitary figure,
suggesting in its bleak aloofness some tragic influence working silently
upon the unfolding of the play. The painter glanced inquiringly at
Jeffray, nor was the significance of the look lost upon his friend.
“I can trust you, Dick,” he said.
“I hope so, sir. I have seen something of the world.”
“Wait for me in the library.”
Wilson nodded.
“I will be with you in an hour.”
Jeffray, his shirt stained with Lancelot’s blood, passed back down the
stairway to the lawn, and took his coat from the sundial where he had
left it. Bess followed him from the terrace, wondering what had caused
the quarrel between Richard and the big man with the red face.
“Thank God, you are safe,” she said, proud of him in her woman’s way.
“Why did you fight? Tell me; I do not understand.”
Jeffray stooped and picked up the sword that lay on the grass where he
had thrown it when Lot fell.
“Do you know who that man was?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Lancelot Hardacre.”
“Sir Peter’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Why did he come to quarrel with you?”
“Because I had refused to marry his sister.”
They stood silent a moment, looking at each other, each knowing by
intuition what was passing in the other’s mind. A great weight of doubt
had been lifted from Jeffray’s heart. Life had taken a simpler meaning
for him now that Lot Hardacre’s blood had set the seal of enmity upon
the past. The action of an hour had sundered him irretrievably from
Jilian and brought him nearer to this child of the woods.
“Bess,” he said, holding his sword between his hands, “I never loved
this woman. Do you believe me when I tell you that?”
She colored, and her eyes flashed up to his.
“Yes, I believe it.”
“It is you whom I love, Bess. Now, before God, I have told you the
truth.”
He set the sword by the point in the grass, reached out and took her
hands.
“I want to do what is best for you,” he said.
“I know—I know—”
“We have come to life’s crossways, dear; give me a night to see my way.”
She looked up fearlessly into his face.
“I trust you,” she said, simply. “I trust you with all I have.”
He led her across the terrace to the house, and into the blue parlor
beyond the dining-room. There he left her by the open window with the
scent of thyme and woodbine floating in upon the air.
Crossing the hall, Jeffray went into the great salon that had been of
old the prior’s parlor, and rang the bell for Peter Gladden. The butler,
curious behind his respectful suavity, entered, to stare inquisitively
at his master’s white and determined face. The sword that had pierced
Lot’s body lay naked upon the table.
“Gladden.”
The butler bowed.
“Tell your wife to prepare the best bedroom. See that everything is in
order.”
“Your servant, sir.”
“Mrs. Elizabeth Grimshaw is to be my guest. Your wife must wait on her
in person. Let her meals be served her in her bedroom. Your wife,
Gladden, must sleep in the dressing-room that opens from Mrs. Grimshaw’s
room. Understand me in this, Gladden, that every command must be
obeyed.”
The butler, astonished, but too well disciplined to betray the feeling,
bowed again to his master and appeared all deference and submission.
“Gladden.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let one single piece of disrespect be shown to this lady, and you and
your wife are dismissed from my service instantly.”
Jeffray found Dick Wilson sitting smoking at the open window of the
library with his feet resting on the sill. He dropped his fat calves
when Richard entered, and looked at him a little uneasily over his
shoulder. Both men remembered the night of the Hardacre ball, when
Wilson had confessed the truth of his old love affair with Miss Jilian.
Jeffray felt that he could trust the painter, and he was in the spirit
to treat him as a friend. Drawing up a chair beside Dick Wilson’s, he
sat himself down before the open window.
“You saw the girl on the terrace, Dick?” he asked.
Wilson turned restlessly in his chair, his chin sunk upon his shabby
green waistcoat.
“I did,” he said, quietly.
“Do you remember where you saw her before?”
The painter shook his head and frowned as though mystified.
“You remember the day we drove to Thorney Chapel?”
Wilson cocked one shrewd blue eye at Jeffray, and removed his pipe-stem
from between his lips.
“You have set me thinking, sir,” he said, suddenly.
“The girl on the terrace—”
“And the rebellious bride—”
“You realize the identity.”
Simply and with no choosing of words, no rounding of sentences, Jeffray
told Wilson the tale of Bess of the Woods, how she had been forced to
marry Dan, and of the mystery that appeared to surround her birth. The
painter sat hunched up in his chair, sucking at his pipe, and blowing
out clouds of smoke. His rugged face was grave and sympathetically
attentive; he grunted expressively from time to time, watching Jeffray
with his keen and humorous blue eyes. The lad had developed,
strengthened marvellously in these few weeks. Wilson had not yet escaped
from the astonishment with which he had watched Lot Hardacre go down
before Jeffray’s rapid passes.
There was a short silence at the end of Jeffray’s confessional. Wilson
sat motionless in his chair, pulling at his pipe and staring out of the
window.
“Well, sir, well?” he said at last.
Jeffray sprang up and began to pace the room. The telling of Bess’s
story seemed to have rendered the past more vivid and real to him, the
passion of the present more flowing and tumultuous.
“You are wondering what I am going to do?” he asked.
“Exactly, sir, exactly,” said Wilson, bluntly, yet without cynicism.
Jeffray stayed his striding from wall to wall, and stood with one hand
gripping the back of the painter’s chair.
“The woman’s life is in danger,” he said.
Wilson nodded reflectively.
“Her husband has to be considered. She shall not go back to him.”
Dick Wilson swung himself up out of his chair, and stood staring at
Jeffray with a frown upon his face. The two men looked each other in the
eyes without flinching.
“Doubtless you think me mad, Dick,” said Jeffray, quietly.
Wilson bowed down his head and half turned towards the window. He laid
his pipe upon the sill, thrust his hands into his breeches-pockets, and
stood with sloped shoulders, the attitude of a man bowed down by
thought. He appeared almost afraid of facing Jeffray. There was so much
grimness in the dénouement that he flinched for the moment from
hazarding an opinion.
“A grave step, sir,” he said at last.
“Grave for us both, Dick.”
“How much does the girl know?”
“She knows everything.”
“Is she ready to be advised by you?”
“We have taken a night to search our hearts.”
Wilson was not one of those creatures who carry their prejudices and
opinions about with them like samples of snuff and insist on presenting
them to friends and acquaintances. He was not a moral person in the
ecclesiastical sense. A man of the world, he knew the thousand
entanglements that are cast about those who dare to depart from the
paths of propriety.
“Have you thought the matter over, sir?” he said at last, laying his
hand with a look of affection on Jeffray’s shoulder.
“I am ready to face it, Dick,” he answered.
“It is a great lottery, sir—a great lottery.”
Jeffray’s lips twitched, but his face never lost its determination.
“I love this woman, Dick,” he said, simply; “I would risk my immortal
soul for her. How can I send her back to this brute of a husband? What
have I to lose in Sussex? If poor Lot dies, I cannot rest here with his
blood upon my hands. The girl’s life, too, is in danger. They meant to
shoot her, Dick—shoot her—by Heaven, that they shall not! How can I
turn her away at such an hour?”
Wilson shook his head and stared sadly through the open window.
“It is a great lottery, lad,” he said—“a great lottery.”
Jeffray drew close to him and held out his hand.
“Then, Dick,” he said, “I can take my destiny like a brave man. Better
to stand for the truth—than shirk it for a lie. May I call you still my
friend?”
Wilson turned with something between a snort and a sigh.
“Egad, sir, I will remain your friend despite all the women in
Christendom.”
And the two men shook hands.
Jeffray, remembering what had happened at the parsonage, and realizing
that the Grimshaws of Pevensel were desperate men, determined to remain
on the watch all night with pistols and a drawn sword on the table
before him. Bess was alone in the great bedroom, sleeping in the very
bed, with its carved pillars and red silk canopy, in which Jeffray had
been born. Wilson stumped off to his room about midnight, after talking
over with Jeffray the events of the day, and listening for the twelfth
time to Richard’s passionate assertion that Bess had not come of a
peasant stock.
When Wilson had taken his candle and gone to bed, Jeffray settled
himself in the library, unlocked the bureau, and prepared for the
composing of several letters. He wrote to the Lady Letitia at The Wells,
informing her of the result of his quarrel with the Hardacres. He wrote
also to Jilian a single letter, expressing his sorrow that he should
have spilled her brother’s blood.
Feverish with the ever-flowing current of his thoughts, he went and
seated himself before the open window of the library. The night was calm
and windless, blessed by the faces of a thousand stars. The trees
slumbered about the house; the scent of roses and of honeysuckle hung
heavy on the air.
Jeffray turned and looked round the shadowy room. The candles on the
table where the pistols lay were burning steadily towards their silver
sockets. The books ranged close along the walls seemed to recall
unnumbered memories of the past. There were the books he had loved and
leaned over as a boy—Mandeville’s travels, old Froissart, Chaucer’s
tales, Shakespeare, Milton, and _The Book of Martyrs_. There on the
bureau lay the brown-covered Thomas à Kempis that had been daily in his
dead father’s hands. Jeffray seemed to see the old man’s figure moving
dimly in the dusk, with Roger, his black spaniel, at his heels. Poor
Roger lay in the rose garden under a red rose-tree. The bent but stately
figure in its black coat, white ruffles, and cravat, with the heavy
peruke falling on either side of the pale and courtly face, had vanished
hardly a year ago from the old house. Jeffray wondered like a child
whether his father could see him still, whether he was grieved by his
son’s madness.
As Jeffray watched on the dawn began to creep up into the eastern sky.
The trees about the house, still wrapped in the mystery of the night,
stood outlined against a broadening sheet of gold. The chanting of birds
flooded up from the thickets; wild life began to wake; the stars sank
back behind the deepening blue of day. Rabbits scurried over the
dew-drenched grass-land of the park and came and went amid the bracken.
Blackbirds bustled and chattered in the garden. The woods flashed and
kindled. Vapors of rose flushed the opalescent bosoms of the clouds.
Jeffray leaned his elbows on the window-sill and watched the deepening
of the dawn. It was mysteriously strange to him, instinct with a new and
prophetic beauty. How still the whole world seemed save for the singing
of the birds! The garden, with its many colors of gold and scarlet,
azure, purple, and white, spread itself like some rich tapestry for the
coming of the daughters of the dawn. The great cedars still seemed
asleep. The cypresses and yews were webbed with gold.
Jeffray started suddenly, and half turned in his chair. Some one was
stirring in the silent house; he heard a door open, swift footsteps upon
the stairs. They came down and down into the half darkness of the hall
like light descending into some ancient tower. Jeffray sprang up and
went towards the door. A flood of light streamed down through one of the
traceried windows of the hall. It fell upon the stairway and the
polished woodwork of the floor, making the black timber seem like
glistening water.
Down the stairs came Bess. Her black hair was gathered up in masses
about her pale and wistful face. Her eyes, that looked like the eyes of
one who had been long awake, were turned yearningly towards him.
“Bess.”
She came more slowly down the last few steps, the sunlight falling on
her face, her lips apart, her eyes shining.
“I could not sleep.”
She stood before him, breathing deeply, and gazing in his face.
“I could not sleep, and I felt that I must come to you. You told me that
you would watch till the morning.”
Jeffray’s face was in the shadow, but there was no mistaking the
expression thereon.
“I have made up my mind, Bess,” he said.
She looked at him, gave a low cry, and stretched out her hands.
“You will not send me back to him!”
“No.”
“Let me be your servant—anything; do not send me away. I will go with
you anywhere. I will go with you to the end of the world.”
So the dawn came for them, while in Pevensel Dan and old Isaac had been
toiling through the night. They had taken the treasure-chest from the
Monk’s Grave and buried it deep in the woods towards Holy Cross. They
knew that Bess had fled to Rodenham, for Solomon had followed her
through the woods, and had met a carter on the road who had passed the
girl on the heath. A laborer had seen a woman climb the palings of the
park, and Solomon had tramped home to his brother with the news. Isaac
had sworn that Dan’s wife should be recovered, but first they had buried
the treasure in a place unknown to Bess.