Thus Bess and Jeffray rode into Rodenham together, while the scent of
the wet grass floated on the warm air, and the great cedars smelled of
Lebanon. The storm shower had beaten down the grass in places, so that
in the dim light it seemed like the swirling eddies of a restless sea. A
night-jar whirred in the beechwoods above the road. Rabbits scurried
hither and thither. Jeffray could faintly see the heads of his deer
rising above the bracken on the edge of the wood.
Soon the old house, black-chimneyed, a pile of shadows, with here and
there a window gleaming, rose up before them out of the east. Bess drew
her breath in deeply, seeing that his eyes were fixed upon the place.
She was wondering whether he was sad at leaving such a home to go alone
with her into strange lands.
“Of what are you thinking?” he asked her, suddenly.
“I was thinking of that,” she said, pointing to the house.
“Yes.”
“Can you leave it all for me?”
“Why not?” he asked, with no wavering of his words.
“It is your home.”
“And will be yours.”
“Ah—”
“Some day, when the clouds are gone. We are young yet; we can take our
home with us in our hearts.”
She looked at him very dearly, yet with some sadness in her eyes.
“I am wondering,” she said.
“Yes, what are you wondering, Bess?”
“Whether I can make you happy, I who am so poor and ignorant.”
“I have no doubts,” he said, “no doubts whatsoever.”
As they rode up to the terrace with the gardens and shrubberies dim and
full of perfume under the night sky, Dick Wilson and Gladden came out
from the porch. Wilson gave Jeffray a hearty hail, running forward with
out-stretched hand, his eyes twinkling below the bandages that swathed
his head.
“Egad, sir,” he said, “I am glad to see you alive. The wilful man has
won his way.”
Jeffray had dismounted, but Bess was still on her horse looking down
half shyly, half haughtily at the painter, as though mistrusting the
good-will of her lover’s friend. Wilson, who had the instinct of
chivalry quick and warm under his ugly exterior, went to her with a
twinkle in his eyes, and, bowing in the most impressive fashion, took
her hand and kissed it.
“May I ask your pardon, madam,” he said, quaintly, “for having proved
such a dunderhead of a fellow this afternoon?”
Bess eyed him questioningly.
“You have been wounded?” she asked.
“A slight cut, a slight cut across the pate with a hanger. I am a clumsy
fool at my weapons. May I have the honor of helping you to dismount?”
Bess was down beside him before the words were half passed his lips. She
stood at her full height before the painter, the light from one of the
windows falling on her face. Wilson understood of a sudden how this
tall, proud-faced forest child had set Jeffray’s manhood in a blaze.
Jeffray, who had been speaking to Gladden, came back and laid his hand
on Wilson’s shoulder.
“This is Mrs. Elizabeth Grimshaw, Dick,” he said, with the pride of a
lover; “you have been paying your respects to her.”
“I have, sir, I have,” quoth the painter with a bow.
Bess, who had taken a liking to this ugly but honest-eyed man, smiled at
him, and held out a hand.
“I thank you for having helped us,” she said.
“Don’t thank me, madam,” retorted the painter, bluntly. “Mr. Richard
here is quite capable of fighting his own battles.”
They laughed—the three of them, Bess and Jeffray looking into each
other’s eyes. Wilson still studying with inevitable admiration the face
and figure of the woman who had changed a dreamer into a man of fire and
action. Peter Gladden was waiting at the hall-door, smirking, and
rubbing his smooth chin with his fingers. Jeffray, giving his hand to
Bess, led her with an Old-World courtliness up the steps and into the
house. The butler stood aside, bowing and fixing his eyes deferentially
upon his master’s shoes. He cast a peering, birdlike glance at Bess
after she had passed, grinned as he caught Mr. Wilson’s eye, and
smothered the smirk instantly as the painter’s stare snubbed him.
Jeffray led Bess to the dining-room where supper had been spread hastily
upon the table. He drew back a chair for her, dismissed Gladden, who
came in with a mincing shuffle, and prepared to wait on Bess in person.
“You must eat,” he said, bending slightly over her chair.
She lay back and looked at him, her eyes shining through her half-closed
lashes.
“I am not hungry.”
“No, but you must keep up your strength. I will carve you some venison,
and here is good red wine. I shall stand behind your chair till I am
satisfied with you. And then—”
“And then?” she said, smiling with her eyes.
“I shall send you above to bed. The coach will be ready for us at seven.
Come now, you must humor me; I have the guarding of your health.”
An hour later Bess was lying under the crimson canopy in the great bed
above, her limbs between the white sheets, her black hair in a love
tangle on the pillow. Jeffray had called Gladden to him in the
dining-room, and given him his orders. Poor Gladden imagined that the
family dignity must be sinking very deep into the mire. He met the
amazing foolhardiness of it all with melancholy stoicism, finished the
contents of a half-emptied wine-bottle when his master had gone, and
confessed to himself that time and women can wreck empires.
Jeffray found Dick Wilson in the library, lighting his pipe at one of
the candles, sucking in his cheeks, and looking as solemn over the
ceremony as though the truth of immortality hung upon the proper
kindling of the weed. He cocked one eye at Jeffray, smiled, and set
himself with his back to the mantle-shelf, one white cotton stocking in
wrinkles half way down his leg, his waistcoat fastened by two solitary
buttons, the folds of the bandage slipping over his left eyebrow. He
puffed away at his pipe, while Jeffray turned to the bureau, unlocked
it, and took out the letters he had written the previous morning.
“You will see these delivered, Dick,” he said, “after I am gone?”
Wilson looked at his friend keenly.
“So you are going, sir?” he said.
“Yes, I have ordered the coach at seven. We have no time to be married
in England.”
Wilson screwed up his lips and blew forth an expressive stream of smoke.
“What, you are going to be married!”
“Yes. The girl’s husband is dead.”
“The devil he is!”
“There has been a tussle between Garston’s smugglers and the King’s men;
the fellow Grimshaw was shot in the scrimmage.”
A look of most unchristian satisfaction spread itself over the painter’s
face. He stepped forward and held out his hand.
“I congratulate you, sir—I congratulate you.”
“Thanks, Dick.”
“The stumbling-block is removed out of the path of propriety. And why,
if I may ask you, must you be in such an infatuated hurry to be gone?”
“There are reasons, Dick, that I cannot divulge to you.”
“Snub me, sir, snub me if I seem too forward. You can come by a license
in a few days; there must be some obliging surrogate in the
neighborhood. At the worst you can travel up to London, march to
Doctors’ Commons, and secure a proper passport to the seventh heaven.”
Jeffray, pacing to and fro with his shoulders squared and the heels of
his shoes coming down squarely on the polished floor, shook his head,
and refused the suggestion.
“I have my reasons, Dick,” he said, “and I have thought the whole thing
through for myself. Some years ago old Sugg could have married us here
in my own house, and for my sake I should like to see Lord Hardwicke and
his grandmotherly legislation damned. I want to get the girl away from
all the pother that will be brewing, to save her from the tongues of our
most Christian friends. To-morrow we drive to Lewes; the next day to the
sea.”
Wilson rammed down the tobacco in his pipe with the end of his little
finger, relit it at the candle, and puffed on reflectively.
“Well, sir,” he said, “I should like to know how you rescued the lady.”
And Jeffray told him, all save the way in which Dan Grimshaw met his
death.
It was well after midnight when Peter Gladden lighted Jeffray to his
room. Portmanteaus and valises were scattered about, some half filled,
others yawning for the white linen, breeches, silk stockings, and
clothes that covered the floor in confusion. Jeffray insisted on Gladden
completing the packing before he went to bed. He had already discovered
a polite and voiceless antagonism in the old man’s manner, as though
Gladden persisted in believing that the romance was but the madness of
an hour. He helped the butler to fill and strap the valises, and then
dismissed him, ordering him to wake him at five.
The candles were still burning in the library when the dawn came
creeping into the east. Wilson, rubbing his eyes as he woke from a short
sleep, heard the rumbling of wheels as the great coach was drawn out of
the coach-house into the stable-yard. There was the jingling of harness
being cleaned, the sound of rough voices gossiping together, an
occasional coarse laugh bursting out upon the misty air. The grooms were
discussing their master’s love affair. Wilson yawned and stretched his
limbs, climbed up out of his chair, snuffed the candles, and went out
into the hall.
He met Jeffray coming down the oak stairs, a cloak over one arm, his
sword under the other. As the men shook hands there was the sound of a
door opening in the gallery above. Light footsteps came down the
stairway; Bess, with her gray cloak over her shoulders, descended slowly
towards the hall. She looked fresh and pure after her night’s rest, her
eyes soft and dewy, her red lips parted in a smile. Jeffray waited for
her at the foot of the stairs. He took her hand and kissed it, and led
her into the dining-room, looking into her eyes.
“You are rested?” he asked her, with a pressure of the hand.
“Yes—quite.”
“We shall start in an hour or two. We have much to do at Lewes.”
Bess looked at her clothes, her short skirt and green petticoat, and
then glanced at Jeffray.
“I have thought of all that,” he said, smiling.
“Ah—”
“You shall look as fine a lady as any in Sussex. Silks and brocades,
Bess, you shall have them all.”
In the midst of all the bustle of preparation, a trooper of the
Light-Horse Regiment came cantering through the park with a letter for
Richard Jeffray tucked under his white belt. Wilson saw the speck of
scarlet from the terrace, and, walking down the drive, met the man as he
reined up before the iron gates closing the garden. The trooper produced
his letter and explained that he had been told, to deliver it into Mr.
Jeffray’s hands. Jeffray himself appeared on the terrace at the same
moment, and the painter, beckoning to him, turned back with the soldier.
“A letter for you, sir,” he said, as Jeffray came up to them.
The trooper saluted, and delivered the despatch. Jeffray ordered him to
ride round to the stable and have his horse watered, and rubbed down
with straw.
“From your cornet, I presume?” he asked.
The man nodded and rode on in the direction of the stables.
Jeffray and the painter went back to the terrace and leaned against the
balustrade. There was an anxious frown on Jeffray’s face as he broke the
seal, and spread the letter on the stone coping before him. He ran his
eyes over the straggling and ill-formed sentences, his face clearing as
he neared the end.
“SIR,—Having promised to obtain for you any information bearing
upon Mrs. Elizabeth Grimshaw’s past, I send you a rough copy of
an extraordinary confession made to me by an old woman we found
tied to a chair in one of the cottages. I cannot promise you how
much truth there is in her tale, but on searching the place
called the Monk’s Grave, we discovered that the turf some twenty
paces from the old tree that grows on the mound there, had been
trampled down quite recently. On digging we found the earth very
loose, as though it had been lately turned, also a ragged piece
of sail cloth, but no treasure. It is probable that the money
has been taken up and hidden elsewhere, and the suspicion is
strengthened by the fact that the old man, Isaac Grimshaw, is
still at large. The man whom we found dead in the grass has been
sworn to as Mrs. Elizabeth Grimshaw’s husband.
“I trust that these facts will be of interest to you.
“Unfortunately my duties here prevent me from dining with you
to-day. I take the liberty of postponing the pleasure till
to-morrow.
“JAMES JELLICOE,
“Cornet in his Majesty’s—Regiment of Horse.”
Enclosed within the letter, Jeffray found a page torn from a
pocket-book, and covered with the cornet’s boyish writing. He held it
towards Wilson, and they spelled it out together, experiencing some
difficulty in deciphering the sentences that seemed to have been written
in the dusk.
Statement made by Mrs. Ursula Grimshaw this 1st day of July,
17—:
“I am Isaac Grimshaw’s sister. The girl Bess, my nephew’s wife,
is not of our blood. Twenty years ago come Michaelmas, four
sailor men came into the forest with a treasure chest, arms, and
a young child. They lodged in my brother Isaac’s cottage, and he
and they talked much together. The chest contained much money
and precious things. My brother Isaac and his son John, who has
been dead these fifteen years, murdered these four sailors when
they were drunk, and buried their bodies in the forest. We kept
the child as one of us, and called her Bess, and hid the
treasure in the woods.
“My brother Isaac told me that the four sailors had murdered the
captain and crew of their ship, also a King’s officer and his
wife who were passengers. Bess, who was the lady’s child, they
saved out of pity, and because she was scarcely three years old.
The ship, whose name I never knew, was scuttled in a fog off
Beachy Head, the four sailor men coming ashore in the jolly-boat
with the treasure and the child. The chest was buried in the
forest near a place known as the Monk’s Grave. This, God help
me! is all I know. I have kept this secret twenty years.”
Jeffray and the painter looked hard into each other’s eyes when they had
read the confession through. There was a slight flush as of triumph on
Jeffray’s face, as he held out his hand exultantly to Wilson.
“We go to Lewes after all,” he said.
“Sir!”
“I shall send a letter back by the trooper to Cornet Jellicoe, thanking
him, and saying that I have gone to Lewes on legal business. We will
cross the water to-morrow, God helping us!”
Wilson gave his friend a keen look, and tapped the letter with his
finger.
“There is still a mystery here, sir,” he said.
“What does it matter, Dick—what does it matter?”
“If this be true—”
“True! Why, damn it, Dick, I have always believed it true. Do you think
that girl was born in a hovel?”