Jeffray stood gripping his pistols in the cottage room, driven by
strange stress of circumstances to fight for a peasant girl against a
crowd of cursing and sweating smugglers. He had never stood forward as a
hero among his peers, those blue-eyed, plump-bellied worthies who
preached or swore in the pulpit and at the dining-table. Slim,
sensitive, yet strong now as a band of steel, he waited, watching the
door heave and creak beneath the weight of Dan’s great body. Bess,
kneeling behind her chair, was plying the ramrod. Her eyes met Jeffray’s
for a moment, the gleam in them speaking for her woman’s heart.
Men were massing outside the cottage, brown handed, brown faced,
redolent of liquor and of the sweat of action. Bess heard old Isaac’s
treble, warning the fellows to keep clear of the window, and calling for
a beam to break down the door. Jeffray saw the hole that he had blown in
the lock with the musket darkened by the shadow of a man’s head. The
glittering white of an eyeball showed through the rent. He stepped aside
from the stretch of floor that the hole commanded, knowing that a
pistol’s snout might take the place of a man’s eye. Nor was he too swift
in the conclusion. There was a brisk report, a belching of smoke into
the room, and a ball flattened itself against the opposite wall. Bess’s
eyes flashed round to see whether Jeffray were hurt or no. He shook his
head at her, smiled, and pointed to the window.
A lull followed. Then there was much shouting and a stamping of feet
along the pathway to the cottage. They were bringing up a wagon-pole to
beat in the door, and the oaken barrier shook and quivered at the first
charge. A second shout like the shout of sailors heaving at a rope, a
second swing of the pole, and the door split in the centre. Jeffray
levelled a pistol and fired. He saw a contorted face sink back out of
sight, heard a cry of pain, and a volley of curses. Turning quietly to
the table he began recharging the empty pistol. Bess was crouching
behind her chair, the musket resting on the rail, its muzzle covering
the window.
She gave a sudden sharp cry, and pressed her cheek close to the stock.
Jeffray, who was watching her, saw her eyes gleam out, the white crook
of her forefinger tightening on the trigger. An echoing roar filled the
room. Smoke swirled about the beams, wreathed and drifted into the
corners. Jeffray, looking towards the window, saw nothing but a
shattered lattice and blue vapor curling out into the sunlight. He gazed
hard at Bess as he rammed home the bullet and sprinkled the powder on
the pan. She seemed unconscious for the moment of his presence, a
strange smile playing about her mouth.
“Who was it?” he asked her.
She did not move or look at Jeffray.
“A man. He was pointing a pistol at you through the window.”
“Is he down?”
“I saw him fall.”
The shots from the cottage seemed to have sobered the gentry for the
moment. Jeffray heard old Isaac screaming and cursing, urging on the men
to break in the door. Gathering together in a bunch, they lunged at it
again with the wagon-pole, the door splitting from floor to lintel and
the pole starting fully three feet into the room. Jeffray had a confused
vision of tanned throats and fierce faces, a brandished cutlass, an
upraised arm. He fired once, saw a red blotch show on one sun-tanned
cheek, and the men hesitate and edge back from the broken door. The pole
sank and wedged itself between the rent planking; the shifting figures
melted away towards the garden-gate.
Loud cries had risen on the outskirts of the forest.
“Look out, lads, the redcoats; gather, gather!”
There was a scattering of pistol-shots, a confused trampling of feet,
the clear-ringing voice of a man shouting orders. A bullet came crashing
through the cottage window to bury itself in one of the great beams of
the ceiling. Frightened horses were screaming and cantering about the
clearing.
Bess was standing by the table reloading the musket. Jeffray, with the
empty pistol still smoking in his hand, went to the window and looked
out. He saw a man crawling down the path on his hands and knees,
coughing and spitting blood, his head lolling from side to side. The
open space between the trees seemed a-swirl for the moment with swords
and plunging horses, a tangle of redcoats and of blurred and dusky
figures. The smuggling folk and the troopers were stabbing and cutting
at one another amid the plunging pack-horses. From the southern end of
the clearing Jeffray saw a mounted excise-officer cantering up with some
twenty revenue men at his heels. They had tracked the smuggling folk up
from Thorney Chapel, while the cornet of Light-Horse, led by a spy, had
brought his troopers through the woods from Rodenham. Soon the
struggling knot of fustian and scarlet broke and spread into scattering
eddies. Figures went scudding from the woods, some dropping and
grovelling before they reached the cover. The fight was over. The
foresters and the smuggling folk, such as were left of them, scattered
and fled for the sanctuary of the forest.
Jeffray felt that Bess was near him, and turning sharply he found her
standing at his elbow.
“The revenue men,” she said, in her husky voice, putting her hands upon
the sill and looking out through the broken lattice.
Jeffray, conscious of the white and desirable face that dreamed up at
him out of a cloud of hair, thrilled to the wild charm of it all, the
uprushing of romance into his brain.
“Bess,” he said, smiling, “what are we to do?”
She looked at him half puzzled, smiling a little for the sheer sweetness
of having her head resting upon his arm.
“We are free now, are we not, Richard?”
Jeffray pursed up his mouth grimly, and pointed to the broken door.
“I have spilled blood,” he said, “and kept a man from the charge of his
own wife. The law takes knowledge of these things. Tell me, Bess, who
was the man you fired at through the window?”
She drew closer to Jeffray as though afraid.
“I do not know,” she answered.
“Was it Dan?”
“I don’t know—I don’t know. Take me away,” and she clung to Jeffray
like a frightened child.
Jeffray wrenched the two halves of the broken door apart and thrust back
the wagon-pole, so that there was room for them to pass. He sheathed his
sword, buckled on the belt with the powder-flask and hunting-knife, and,
picking up the pistols, looked round for Bess. She had climbed the
stairs, and Jeffray could hear her moving to and fro in the room above,
while the clock on the kitchen mantle-shelf ticked on as though death
and desire were of no account.
The redcoats were securing such prisoners as they had taken, while the
revenue men gathered the pack-horses together and broke into the
cottages and out-houses to ransack them to the very rafters. Jeffray
watched them at work through the broken door. Soon he heard Bess
descending the stairs. She had tidied her clothes and bound up her hair,
and thrown an old cloak over her shoulders. He held the broken halves of
the door apart from Bess, and followed her down the garden path. The
dusk was fast falling, but there was enough light to show the
blood-stains on the bricks. Bess shivered a little, drew up her
petticoats and picked her way towards the gate. Jeffray swung it back
for her, and they passed out into the open land that was still lit by
the slanting sunlight.
Bess came to a dead halt suddenly some ten paces from the palings. She
seized Jeffray’s wrist, and stood pointing to the body of a man lying in
the long grass. Her eyes had dilated, the pupils swimming black, and
awed under the long lashes.
“Look!”
Jeffray went a step nearer and gazed down at the man lying in the grass.
His head was twisted to one side, the upper lip drawn up over the teeth
in a snarling grin. There was blood on the black beard, blood on the
hairy chest and on the shirt that flapped open from the massive throat.
It was Dan who lay dead with a musket-bullet through his chest.
Bess and Jeffray stood and looked into each other’s eyes. Her hand still
gripped his wrist spasmodically. He saw her lips move, saw the unuttered
question in her eyes.
“He is dead,” he said, solemnly.
“Who, who?”
“Dan, your husband.”
She tottered and clung to him, struggling for her breath, yet still
staring at the dead man in the grass. Jeffray had one arm about her
body. He was as white as Bess, yet the master of his own manhood. A
shout came to him across the clearing. Several red-coats were
approaching the cottage, led by an officer with his sword drawn.