Chapter III: Part 3

"I think of buying a quiet nag. I could come over and give you lessons. I know you could ride like a witch."

Her eyes looked up at him.

"How do you know that?"

"Well, I just know it. You do things--so cleanly--with your hands. One can always tell a bungler."

The milking was at an end, and Nance lifted the pail aside, and set the stool in a corner.

"Let me carry the pail for you?"

"It is quite light. Would you like to see my new garden?"

"I should."

"I must carry this in, and see to the fire. You must stay and take breakfast with us."

"That's good of you."

"Go round to the terrace. I'll join you there soon."

Nance ran up to her room, slipped into a simple white gown flowered with pink roses, and did her hair, drawing it back in two black waves from her forehead. Then she went to her father's room, and knocked, the gay mood of the moment overshadowed suddenly by the memory of the night when she had heard the voice of the stranger in that room. The incident might have proved utterly trivial, and Nance had waited for something to explain it. She had held her tongue, and asked no questions, but Anthony Durrell had offered her no confidences. His silence troubled Nance. It seemed that there might be something in his life that he did not desire her to know.

"Father----"

"Yes, child."

"Mr. Benham has ridden over."

"What?"

"Mr. Benham has ridden over. May I ask him to stay to breakfast?"

There was the sound of a chair being moved. Then Anthony Durrell's voice asked, "Where is Mr. Benham?"

"On the terrace."

"Keep him till I come. I have something to say to Mr. Benham."

"You're not cross with him, father?"

"Only fools and little people are cross, child. I shall not be ten minutes."

Nance went down, trying to reassure herself, and feeling that it was a very innocent thing that she should be glad of this young man's coming. She found Jasper standing by one of the yew-trees, looking out toward the sea. She saw by his eyes how the flowered gown became her.

"What a view you have here."

"Isn't it splendid. I have told father you are here. He says that he will be down in ten minutes."

"I am glad you have told him. I want to get to know your father."

"Yes, but that's so difficult."

Her face fell, and she looked grave. It was sufficient for Jasper to realise that Mr. Anthony Durrell had a perplexing personality. His austerity was the austerity of a fanatic. As for courtesy, it seemed to be absent. Nor did he appear to have any sympathy for this lonely, dark-eyed child.

"Your father leads a hard life."

"Yes. Often he is up half the night, reading. You should see his books. Sometimes I hate books. It has been like that since mother died."

Jasper looked at her with secret compassion.

"When was that?"

"Twelve years ago. Father has never been the same since then."

"No----"

"I can remember him laughing and making jokes and tossing me up in his arms. He grew so much older, as though something had died in him. He became more taken up with his books."

Throat, mouth, and eyes were tragic for an instant, and Jasper felt a yearning to be very tender and gentle with this girl. He would have liked to put his hands upon her shoulders, look in her eyes, and say "Nance, I know you are lonely--very often."

She smiled suddenly, and looked up at him with a flash of courage.

"We always think our own troubles so important.--I must go and get the breakfast ready. Father will be here in a minute."

Jasper watched her go, and then turned again toward the sea. The spring morning was no longer filled with the sheer joy of living. It had a sadness, an afterwards, a thinking voice beneath all the rhapsodies of its awakened birds.

"Mr. Benham----"

Jasper turned with a sharp throw-back of the head. He saw Anthony Durrell crossing the terrace toward him. The man's face was set like a hard and narrow stone. The lips looked tucked away, the nose pinched and thin.

"Good morning, sir."

"Mr. Benham, I have something of interest to show you. It is a thing that is often met with, but it is not always treated with due respect. Will you be so good as to follow me."

He stalked round the house into the shrubbery. Jasper puzzled, wondering whether Durrell had some rare herb, beetle, or bird to show him. Eccentricity challenges all manner of conjectures. A man may be as rude and sinister as he pleases if his force of character justifies these peculiarities.

Jasper found himself standing in the lane with Anthony Durrell. Devil Dick eyed them restlessly and scraped the ground with a forefoot. Durrell raised a hand, touched Jasper's shoulder, and pointed to the gate.

"You see that, sir?"

"Yes."

"It is a gate, is it not? I am not aware that I have asked you to see the inside of it. You understand me, I hope. Sometimes one has to speak plainly. Good morning."

He gave Jasper one look, re-entered the gate, closed it, and walked off under the hollies. Jasper stood like a rebuked schoolboy. He was too astonished at first by Durrell's incomprehensible rudeness to feel the anger that was rising in him. It rose none the less, with a fine head of indignation.

"What the devil--! Am I not gentleman enough----?"

He mounted Devil Dick in a rage.

"I have a mind to flout the old fool. There would be a scene. And Nance? Confound it, these things need thinking out coolly. I'm too hot in the head. I don't want to give Nance pain."

X

So often a man believes what he wishes to believe, and Anthony Durrell was no less prejudiced in this respect than the most ignorant of his neighbours. Jasper Benham's coming to Stonehanger threatened all manner of complications, and was a menace to Durrell's schemings. De Rothan's lies were exceedingly opportune and suggestive. They had worked upon Durrell's austere and Puritanical nature, and his severity never doubted its devotion. This young man was a danger, not only to Nance, but to all his secret understanding with the French.

Durrell returned to the house and found Nance busy in the parlour. She had spread a new cloth and brought out the best china. Her father, alive to these details now that they were of some significance, noticed her rose-flowered gown and an old pearl necklace she was wearing.

"That is not stuff for the day's work, Nance."

"What, father?"

"That dress. Go and change it."

"But, father, breakfast is ready, and Mr. Benham----"

"Mr. Benham has gone, child."

"Gone?"

"Yes. There will be no setting of caps this morning."

Nance flushed with surprise and resentment, for to youth sarcasm is the most hateful of all the methods of coercion, especially when it is petty and unjust.

"You should not speak to me like that, father."

"What? Am I to choose my own words to please a foolish child? I shall have more to say to you on this matter presently."

Nance was humiliated, hurt, and angry. To generous and sensitive natures cynicism seems a vulgar, shallow thing, like a coarse lout mocking at what he does not understand. Nance went to her room and changed her flowered gown for an old stuff dress. Her father had begun breakfast when she returned. He had a book open beside his plate, and he seemed absorbed in it, and disinclined to notice the girl.

Nance watched him, and her pride rose in revolt. Her father had spoken vulgar words, and thrown a contemptible accusation in her face. What shame was there in her discovering pleasure in the pleasure with which she inspired a man? She liked Jasper Benham, trusted him, and felt that her instincts were not at fault. Was her life so full of sympathy that she should be forbidden to make friends?

Yet for the while she said nothing to Anthony Durrell. His face was the colour of the pages of his book. And for once Nance noticed how narrow, thin, and harsh he looked.

She could not help remembering the night when he had brought some strange man secretly to the house, and the thought of his secretiveness and his dry reserve made her impatient. If he was to be tyrannical and unsympathetic, had she not a right to be trusted? She was living this lonely life for his sake, and yet when youth came to share with her the glamour of a spring morning, he raised forbidding hands.

Nance looked at her father, and felt compelled to speak to him.

"Why did you send Mr. Benham away?"

Durrell pushed the book aside.

"Do not catch at conclusions, child."

Nance was not to be put aside so easily.

"Then, why did he go?"

"Possibly because of something I said to him."

"What did you say to him?"

"Nance, I am not minded to be cross-questioned by my child."

She flushed, and showed a frank impatience.

"Am I to have no friends? What harm is there? You know, father, it is dangerous, sometimes, to try and smother all that is in us."

Durrell glanced at her sharply. He was man enough to be struck by the undeniable truth that challenged him out of the mouth of this young girl.

"Nance, what I do I do because it is right."

"But, have I no right to know?"

His face hardened.

"Very well, you shall know. I sent Mr. Benham away because he is not the man I would admit into my house."

"But why?"

"Nance, you have seen very little of the world of men. This young man is of bad repute. He is without honour, without morality."

Nance sat very straight in her chair, her hands moving restlessly in her lap.

"You mean to say, father----?"

"This Jasper Benham is a young man who lives a bad life. He is engaged to marry his cousin, a Miss Benham. That has not prevented him from dishonouring----"

Nance had gone very white. Her eyes were the eyes of one who recoils from something with sudden disgust.

"Father!"

"I tell you this for your own good, child. What do you know of Mr. Jasper Benham? Nothing save that he seemed grateful to you--because you were good to him, that he has a plausible tongue and an assumption of honesty."

She sat rigid, staring at the opposite wall.

"Who told you this?"

"Does that alter the truth? I will not have this young man in my house. He shall work no treachery here."

Nance was dumb. Something seemed to have been taken from life. The breath of the morning was tainted.

Durrell looked at her, not unkindly.

"Now you can understand me, child. I have seen something of the world. I do not want you to suffer pain."

Nance tried to finish her meal, but she had no heart for it, and soon left the table. She wanted to be alone, to set her little world in order. Something had jarred it into momentary confusion. Yet surely it was foolish that she should care at all.

Nance went to her room and saw the flowered gown lying across a chair. The sight of it woke a rush of anger in her. Was he that kind of man? Had he thought her a vain fool who would dance to his piping?

A voice within her cried out in denial:

"An hour ago you trusted him! Are these things true?"

A second voice replied:

"Even if they are true, what does it matter to you? You have seen the man only three times."

She put the dress away, and looked at herself haughtily in the mirror. What manner of woman was she to be so moved by a breath of scandal? If true--well--there was an end of it. She would neither bend her head to listen, nor open her mouth to speak. She had enough pride to carry her past such an incident that had been enlarged by her own loneliness, and touched with the delight of youth and of spring.

Nance had work to keep her busy, though old David Barfoot took the heavy jobs, and washed the crockery, and scrubbed the floors. At the midday meal Nance and her father hardly spoke. She meant to spend the afternoon in her piece of garden upon the terrace, planting out a few seedlings and plucking up assertive weeds. David had promised to come round with his scythe and cut the grass that was growing rank and long.

But though her hands were busy, Nance could not win her thoughts away from the revelation of the morning. She felt sore, mistrustful, incredulous. What did she know of Jasper Benham? Was it true that he was pledged to marry his cousin? She, Nance, had spoken of friendliness. Perhaps he had thought of nothing but friendliness? Her heart told her that it was not so.

Anthony Durrell came out with a book in his hand, and began to pace up and down the terrace. Sometimes he would break out into declamation, waving the book, and throwing his head back like an orator sending words to a distance.

Nance planted her seedlings one by one, kneeling on an old sack, her head bowed over the brown soil.

"Salve, Domine. How go the elegiacs?"

Nance looked up with a start. It was another voice, not her father's, that had spoken, and the voice was the voice she had heard that night in her father's room.

XI

Nance glanced over her shoulder as she knelt. A man had appeared round the corner of the house and was walking toward her along the stone-paved path. He was a tall man, dressed in black, with roguish, sinister eyes, an arrogant mouth, and a haughty way of carrying his head and shoulders.

Anthony Durrell turned and seemed nonplussed for the moment.

"It is you, Chevalier----"

De Rothan was a magnificent fool when a pretty woman held the stage. He gave Nance one of his French-Irish bows, hat over his heart, the heels of his shoes together. De Rothan had the reddish, raddled skin, and the angry blue eyes of the Irishman. The refinements were French, the cleverness, the subtlety, the love of intrigue.

"Mr. Durrell, present a poor exile to your daughter."

Nance had risen from her piece of sacking. Her hands were stained with soil, and stooping had flushed her face. The stranger's magnificent manners seemed out of place. She believed that the man was quizzing her.

Durrell closed his book with a snap, courteous under compulsion.

"Nance, this is the Chevalier de Rothan; an old friend of mine. I knew him in France many years ago."

De Rothan laughed, with his eyes on Nance.

"Mees Durrell, your father would make me out an old man! But it is not so. I can run and leap against any lad of twenty."

There are some men whose vanity cannot be controlled when they are brought into the presence of women. De Rothan was such a man. He was the peacock on the instant, strutting, swaggering, not content unless he outshone all other men.

"Though an exile, the English women have almost made me forget my France. Why is it, Mees Durrell, that the English women have such beautiful skins? Roses and milk, roses and milk."

Nance said nothing. The man's voice had driven her into a confusion of conjectures. If he were an old friend of her father's, how was it she had never heard of him before? And why all this midnight mystery, the stealthy coming by night?

She realised that both De Rothan and her father were watching her. It was imperative that she should speak to him, or seem like a _gauche_ child.

"I am glad to see an old friend of my father's."

"Mees Durrell, will you make me old!"

"I don't think you are very young!"

He laughed and bowed.

"Mam'selle, your father is the cleverest of men. But to have such a daughter! That was a stroke of genius."

Nance smiled, but there was no pleasure in her smile. She supposed these were French manners, but they made her feel foolish and ill at ease.

"I am afraid father has never spoken to me of you."

She noticed that the men exchanged glances. Durrell intervened.

"Nance, child, the Chevalier will take tea with us."

"Yes, father."

She understood the hint and was glad to go. There was something puzzling and unwholesome about the man.

De Rothan followed her with his eyes.

"Faith, sir, the child is charming, and so innocent."

Durrell was not pleased.

"Do not try your airs and graces here, my friend."

"Psst--I am perfectly sincere. I pay homage to beauty----"

"Curtail it. Shall we walk a little way over the common?"

He glanced at the windows of the house, crossed the terrace and descended the steps. De Rothan followed him, staring with a certain whimsical contempt at Durrell's back.

"Has the young squire been here again?"

"This very morning--at six o'clock."

"Youth is in a hurry!"

"I have put a bridle upon his eagerness. I sent him packing. And Nance knows."

"Knows what?"

"That young Benham is a reprobate, and a loose liver."

"The devil she does! You told her?"

"Certainly. I did not mean the friendship to develop."

De Rothan looked half grave and half amused.

"Well, you have given me your news without miserliness. I return you news of my own. Villeneuve has got out of Toulon."

"What!"

"And has given Nelson the slip."

Durrell's face shone with sudden exultation.

"Man, is it true?"

"True as news can be. But listen to this. He has picked up some of the Spaniards, driven Orde's squadron out of the way, and is at sea. All England is in a sweat, and cursing. They know nothing. They quake in the dark."

"Yes--but Nelson?"

"Listen. This would be worth money in England. Villeneuve sails for the West Indies. Don't breathe it. He cuts himself loose, see--disappears. The English are left at blindman's-buff. Then the West Indies are harried. Nelson is lured thither. Back bolts Villeneuve, drives the blockading fleet from Brest, joins our ships there, and sails up the Channel with close on forty sail of the line. The straits are ours. Napoleon rushes his grenadiers across. After that--the deluge!"

Durrell stood and stared towards the sea with a look of exultation.

"And we shall help to bring in liberty."

De Rothan sneered behind the visionary's back.

"We shall show them where and how to strike. This house and hill of yours, Durrell, will be the first point they will make safe. There will be trenches and batteries here. The Emperor will stand upon your terrace, sir, with all the gorgeous gentlemen of his staff. As for me, I shall be the light-heeled Mercury. I know where the cattle and corn are to be found. I know the powder-mills, the best wells, every road and by-road. I shall be with the cavalry. God--these raw, red-coated bumpkins! How we shall sabre them!"

Durrell was like a man who had heard that his great enemy was to be overwhelmed with ruin and shame. England had made him suffer, and, fanatic and dreamer that he was, his enthusiasm did not lack a spice of vengeance. He wanted to see England suffer in turn, to see her purged of the poison of privilege, of the aristocrats, the lordlings, and the rich commoners whom he hated.

His mood came near to gaiety, if an austere and fanatical excitement can be called gay. He forgave De Rothan his vanity, and went in holding the arch-spy's arm as a man holds the arm of his dearest friend. De Rothan had twinkles of cynical amusement in his eyes. What did a bookworm and a dreamer expect from Napoleon and the French? He would be left to chant rhapsodies in a corner, and to shout "Liberty! Liberty!" provided that he did not turn round and shout it to the English.

De Rothan took advantage of Durrell's good humour, and prepared to enjoy himself with Nance. The girl's silence and reserve piqued him. He loved conquests, and would boast that no woman could withstand him.

His gallantry and his oglings worried Nance. She disliked the expression of his quarrelsome blue eyes. He was too free, too familiar to please her, nor was she in a mood for coquetry. Her opinion of De Rothan was suggested by the fact that she had not changed her old stuff dress.

"Ah, Mees Nance, your hands play with the cups and the sugar and the milk as though you played the harpsichord. Have you music here? No? Your father should buy you a harpsichord. It would show off your pretty fingers."

"I should not be able to play it."

"No? Why, by the honour of Louis, I would teach you myself. So many of us exiles have become music-masters. Durrell, my good friend, buy your daughter a harpsichord, and I will teach her to play and to sing."

Durrell gave them one of his austere smiles. He was happy, exultant, and saw nothing sinister in De Rothan's playfulness.

"All in good time--all in good time. Nance has not had all that she might have had."

"What, sir! And she has so much already! Most of the women would think she had too much."

He bowed to Nance.

"One may not drink to beauty--in tea. The sparkling wine of France! I imagine that I drink it to you, Mees Nance."

The girl was silent and irresponsive. Perhaps De Rothan felt challenged; perhaps she pleased him more than he had expected. Before the meal was over some of the froth had been blown from his fooling. The man was more than half in earnest. The expression of his eyes changed. They betrayed a subtle, gloating, admiration that is seen at times in the eyes of men.

De Rothan's leave-taking was half insolent, half tender. It had always been his way to treat women with audacity. He attacked them with the bold ferocity of his self-confidence.

"Mees Nance, this is the first day of spring. I kiss your hands. I felicitate your father. Never will he produce another such poem."

His bold eyes thrust his admiration into her face. Durrell was still living in dreams.

"Must you go, my friend? Well, well, now that you are in these parts, we shall see you more often."

"Sir, could I help it? The sun shines at Stonehanger."

Nance was silent and thoughtful when De Rothan had gone. She cleared the tea things away, while Anthony Durrell sat on the couch by the window and filled the bowl of a long clay pipe.

"Who is that man, father?"

"De Rothan? An exile, a French aristocrat. He waits for the return of King Louis."

Durrell showed the Jesuitical spirit in his belief that the end justified the means.

"Has he been long in Sussex?"

"No, not very long. Otherwise you would have seen him before."

"Where does he live?"

"He has rented an old house away yonder over the ridge?"

It was on Nance's tongue to speak of that night when she had heard De Rothan's voice in her father's room. But some impulse drove the words back. She went put with the tray, leaving her father to dream impossible dreams of an impossible future.

She was thinking of Jasper Benham, nor was it very marvellous that Jasper could keep her in countenance in the matter of thinking. He had ridden home in no pleasant temper, puzzled and challenged by Anthony Durrell's blunt prejudice against him. Nor could Jasper help remembering Parson Goffin's insinuations. Durrell might not want strangers at Stonehanger. And yet it seemed bad policy to be so frankly churlish.

At Rush Heath Jasper found half-a-score red-coats drinking beer in the stable-yard. Jack Bumpstead was watering their horses, and joining in the gossip that flitted about the pewter pots.

"Capt'n Jennison be in t' parlour, Master Jasper."

And Jasper found Captain Jennison comfortably seated at breakfast, making himself wholly at home in Squire Kit's chair.

He was a grim-mouthed, swarthy little man, with massive limbs and a big chest. His temper was abrupt and dangerous.

"Morning to you, Benham. Time's precious, sir. Excuse me if I open my mouth to eat and to talk. I have important orders, sir, but Captain Curtiss was not to be found. God knows what the man has done with himself!"

Jasper drew a chair to the table, and helped himself to cold meat-pie.

"I am at your service, captain."

"The fact is, sir, that Villeneuve has got out of Toulon. Where Nelson is, only the devil knows. Mischief is brewing, and we are most damnably in the dark. They say that in London men have faces as long as lamp-posts. We are to be on the alert, sir. I have been sent out to warn all the volunteer officers to have their men ready for any emergency."

"Then there is a chance of the French getting across?"

"A confoundedly good chance, sir, and I can't say I have much faith in our row of dove-cots and their pop-guns. We must have every man ready who can carry a musket. Whip up all your men, billet 'em in Battle, somewhere handy--here, if you like. Have your wagons ready. We are waiting in the dark. Villeneuve may be coming up the Channel for all we know."

Jasper had the grave face of a man who took his duties very seriously.

"It shall be done, Captain Jennison. I am to act for Captain Curtiss?"

"Good Lord, sir, yes. That gentleman will be shaving himself when the French cavalry are galloping past Tunbridge."

Captain Jennison gathered his men and rode on, while Jasper sent Jack Bumpstead to re-saddle Devil Dick, and went to spend five minutes with his father. He was fond of the fiery, blasphemous old curmudgeon, and Squire Kit was proud of Jasper, and very generous in his way. He was the sort of man who cursed because it had become a habit with him, and ill health had not sweetened his temper.

"Well, Jasper, well, lad----?"

"Captain Jennison has been here, father. It is likely that the French may get across."

"The French! Rot their teeth! Let 'em come, sir. What are we in such a pest of a fear of the French for? We'll give 'em something to remember. Let 'em come, I say."

Jasper was at the door and ready to mount when a green curricle came swinging up the road, with Rose Benham's plain face looking out from a big straw bonnet.

Jasper smothered a gust of impatience. Rose threw the reins to the groom, and descended with an air of eager concern.

"Jasper, what is the news? I have heard all sorts of rumours."

"It seems likely that the French will get across."

"The wretches!"

"We have orders to bring our men together. I am off to whip them in."

A gloved hand came out, and touched Jasper's sleeve.

"O, Jasper, what will happen? I can't help being afraid."

Rose was not at her best when she was sentimental.

"Every one will be warned. You will have to go inland."

"I was not thinking of myself, Jasper. I shall be praying to God for you and our friends. But why should I be sent away? Women may be of use."

"It may not come to that, Rose."

Her hand still touched his sleeve, and her display of tenderness irritated him. He could not return it, and his mouth felt stiff.

"How grave you look. Does Uncle Kit know?"

"Yes."

"Poor, dear old man. I might go and comfort him."

"I shouldn't, Rose."

For Squire Kit was deep in one long, blasphemous soliloquy.

There was a short, constrained silence, Jasper avoiding his cousin's eyes.

"Now, I know I am keeping you. Duty calls. But, O Jasper, it is hard----"

"The French are not here yet."

"How brave and calm you look."

She had tried very hard to make the man kiss her, but Jasper's face was obstinate and cold.

XII

A labourer came running up to Rush Heath House about eleven o'clock that night. He hammered at the yard-door, and bawled at the servants' windows.

"The beacon be burning, the beacon be burning."

The men of Jasper's volunteer company were quartered at Rush Heath, and red-coats came tumbling out of barns, stable, and kitchen. The maids could be heard screaming in their attics, till Jack Bumpstead went up to reassure them and to tell them to dress. The men had crowded to the high field above the orchard, and were looking toward the sea.

"Beachy Head--that's her."

"Where's Captain Jasper?"

"It be the French, sure."

Jasper had been roused. He came up to the high field, and saw the burning beacon like a huge star, low down upon the black horizon. The flames were flinging their message through the night. It meant that the French had landed, or were preparing to land.

The whole household, save Squire Kit, were in the high field above the orchard. The women were there, awed and frightened, and huddling close for comfort.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! They'll be cutting our throats."

"Ye'll fight, lads, won't 'e? Don't let 'em terrify ye."

"O, Bob, lad, I be sure you'll get a bullet in your heart."

Jasper told the women to be quiet, and called his sergeant to him. Captain Curtiss was still an absentee. Gossip said that he had a love affair in London.

"That's Beachy Head, Cochrane."

"It is, sir."

"Fairlight should be lighting up. The signal will go in to Flimwell and Crowborough. Have the men had a meal?"

"They have, sir."

Jasper reflected a moment, with confused figures and a confused murmur of voices about him in the darkness. Some one had brought a lantern, but it was lost in the crowd.

Squire Christopher had utterly refused to desert the house.

"What! run away from a lot of beggarly French! Damn 'em, I'm a gentleman; I don't put my King on a chopping-block. I stay here, Jasper. If they come into my bedroom, sir, they'll hear how an English gentleman can swear."

Jasper had decided that Jack Bumpstead should be left to look after his father. The maids, the cottagers, and their children were to be packed into wagons and driven away inland.

"Jack, saddle Devil Dick. Farmer Lavender promised to come up and see after the wagons. Let the bullocks take the red wagon. The blue wagon and the horses must not leave here before dawn. Remember that--not before dawn. If any one comes bringing my gold ring, they are to have places in the blue wagon."

"Sure, Master Jasper."

"Sergeant Cochrane!"

"Sir?"

"In an hour, you will march your men off on the Hastings road. I shall rejoin you here, or else pick you up on the road. That's clear?"

The sergeant saluted.

"Clear, sir."

Jasper rode out toward Stonehanger.

"Durrell be hanged," he said to himself, "some one ought to warn them."

It was a darkish night, and the woods made the night darker. The beacon at Beachy Head showed its ominous yellow eye whenever Jasper was on high ground, and looked back over his right shoulder. Fairlight Down was invisible, but he believed that he could detect a faint glow in the eastern sky. Fairlight beacon should be well ablaze. Far hills would catch the signal, and blaze it on into the darkness.

Stonehanger Hill appeared as a dim outline looming up against an overcast sky. Jasper could see no light, in the house. He had to follow the lane, since the path over the common was too uncertain by night. The familiar yew-tree saluted him with its shadow. He left Devil Dick fastened to the gate that Anthony Durrell had slammed so unceremoniously in his face.

Jasper made his way round to the front of the house. From the terrace he seemed to look right away to the distant headland where the yellow beacon blazed between sea and sky. A light breeze played through the straggling thorns, and a lattice that was open creaked and rattled against its hook.

There was not a light to be seen in the house. Jasper looked for Nance's window, and found that it was the one with the open lattice. He stood looking up at it a moment, and then groped in one of the flower beds for a few small stones. Stepping back across the grass he took aim at the window, lobbing the stones up softly so as not to break the glass.

Pebble after pebble rattled against the panes. Jasper stood and listened. Nothing happened. He picked up more stones, and tossed them up harder, more than one entering the window and rattling on the floor within.

Something white flickered behind the glass, and a face appeared at the window.

"Nance--Nance."

"Who is it?"

"Jasper Benham. The beacon has been fired on Beachy Head. You can see it from your window."

She stood at gaze, holding her hair back with one hand.

"I thought you might be asleep and I rode over to warn you. It means that the French are coming."

Nance remained silent. Roused out of sleep to stare at that great yellow eye out yonder, her consciousness was confused for the moment, nor did the man's presence below her window help her toward tranquillity. The things that her father had told her concerning him were as vivid as the burning beacon. She felt numb and inarticulate, constrained to speak yet knowing not what to say.

"It was good of you to think of us."

Her voice seemed to come from a distance.

"I could not help coming."

"Oh."

"I have to join my men. There is room in one of our wagons for you and your father. I have an hour to spare. I can take you to Rush Heath."

A strange and obstinate contrariness seized her. She had a sense of a dull and undeserved pain at the heart.

"Father will not trouble----"

"He must."

"He is not afraid."

"Is he asleep?"

"I don't know."

"For God's sake, go and wake him. You must not be left here."

"It is quite useless, Mr. Benham. I know that father will not leave the house."

Her voice fell coldly on Jasper out of the darkness. It was not the voice he knew.

"Nance----"

"Please don't call me Nance."

It was as though she emptied her displeasure upon him. The rebuff was too real to be ignored.

"I shall have ridden ten miles when I ought to be with my men."

"I did not ask you to come."

Jasper was human, nor was he one of those soft fools who grovel.

"Nance, I did not come for this. What has turned you against me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Confound it, didn't your father slam the gate in my face! I'm a man--not a dog to be hallooed off down the road!"

The passion in his voice moved her more than he imagined.

"Please don't talk like this. Father----"

"Well, what has your father against me?"

"Why will you make it so difficult?"

"Difficult! It is a new thing for a Benham to have a door slammed in his face. Confound it. This is sheer nonsense. You must come to Rush Heath. Every one is being sent inland. These devils of French----"

He saw her arm come out. The hook of the lattice grated. She was closing the window.

"Nance----"

The lattice clattered to, and he was left to his own emotions.

Jasper's astonishment struck tragic attitudes. These people had been kind to him that night when he had been shot in the arm. What had made them change toward him? What had old Durrell told the girl that she should treat him so unreasonably?

Parson Goffin's accusation recurred to him.

"Impossible. The parson's a gossiping toper!"

Jasper stared up at the closed window, frowning and trying to put these detestable thoughts away.

"Either some one has been telling lies, or----"

He stood stiffly alert, like a sentinel who has heard a suspicious sound in the darkness. Some one was moving below the terrace. Footsteps shuffled on the rough stone steps. Jasper turned very slowly, but could see nothing.

"Libertas--libertas!"

Jasper's muscles quivered and hardened like the muscles of a horse that is struck with a whip. It was Anthony Durrell's voice, but Jasper could not see him.

Away yonder shone the beacon on Beachy Head. For the moment it was a clear and brilliantly yellow mass, the stone wall of the terrace showing under it as a black line. Suddenly it was obscured. A black figure interposed itself, a figure that stretched out its arms as a great bird expands its wings.

"Libertas--libertas! The destroyer comes. He shall winnow out the chaff to the four winds. Hail, Napoleon, man of destiny!"

Jasper stood stiff as a stone post. Durrell's black figure loomed across his consciousness. And suddenly Jasper understood. The man was a traitor, a spy!

He had a sense of smothering at the heart. Anger, shame, bewilderment had hold of him. He was thinking of Nance, and all that the closing of that window signified.

An impulse of anger drove him toward the figure outlined against the beacon. Some other influence drove him back. He turned and began to move away, sliding his feet cautiously over the grass.

He threw one glance at Nance's window.

"A spy, and the child of a spy!"

Then he remembered the little wicket gate that led into the passage opening into the stable-yard. Jasper turned to look at Durrell, and once more stood tied to the spot.

A second figure had joined the first. It was pointing with outstretched arm toward the sea.

A rush of anger and bitterness carried Jasper away. He fled from Stonehanger, cursing it and himself.

In two minutes he was galloping Devil Dick down the lane.

"In the pay of the French! But Nance----? I'll not believe it!"

XIII

Strong language prevailed next day, and the eloquence of disgust. Mounted men had gone galloping along the roads and lanes, overtaking farm wagons laden with people and household gear, and stopping at inns to drink and spread the news.

"A false alarm. The French never showed their noses out of Boulogne."

"Then who fired the beacon?"

Angry-faced farmers asked each other this question outside the village inns after they had returned their teams and rumbled back the way they had come. Only fools and red-coats saw the humour of the thing. Respectable citizens were angry. Shopkeepers who had sat up all night behind locked doors were ironical and grieved. Women embraced their children and scolded their husbands in the exuberance of their relief. The whole community, like a man who has been scared out of his dignity by boys playing "ghost" at night, flew into a rage, and tried to cover the unseemliness of its panic by a display of valiant indignation.

A big dragoon mounted on a bay horse was emptying a pewter pot outside the principal inn at Hurstmonceux. The dragoon's face looked fat and round and lazy under his heavy helmet. A fair crowd had gathered about him. Beer and admiration are equally cheap.

"How did that thur bonfire get alight?"

"Go along with you trying to tap a King's trooper."

The dragoon winked at a group of women. He was a fat, lusty, cheerful dog, and the women giggled and were flattered.

"The sergeant knows."

"Just look at his wicked eye."

"I like a chap to be red and healthy. They do say the French be the colour o' tallow."

"Now, sergeant, we were that terrified!"

"Sure--you'll be for telling----"

"Well, ladies, if old men will nip a little to keep out the cold! It all came of old Daddy Tonks having a bottle of smuggled rum on him."

"What, he set her alight while he was merry?"

"That's it. Half Eastbourne went panting up to the Head when the beacon started burning. What d'ye think they found? Old Daddy Tonks dancing round the fire like mad and shouting that he was burning them as was damned. The language! Some one knocked the old man's pins from under him with the butt-end of a musket. And here were we sent galloping after all the poor sheep as had stampeded, and all the death and glory boys holding each other up for fear o' fainting with joy."

The people grew confidential, crowding close about the dragoon's horse.

"Do ye think t' French ull cross, sergeant?"

"They do say as Nelson 'as lost hisself."

"My ol' sow's just had a fine fam'ly. 'Taint no sense. What be a body to do!"

"It terrifies ye from sowing seeds. I ain't going to grow peas for Johnny Crappo to pick!"

The dragoon gazed profoundly at the bottom of the pot.

"Bone manure may be cheap--French bones, hee-hee!"

"Give me m'own mixen."

"Who wants the Bonypart!"

"Some of our fellows, too, thrown in."

The dragoon looked round scornfully.

"If there was a man here," he said, "he'd stand a King's soldier another mug of beer."

The trooper trotted eastward toward Ashburnham, and encountered a green curricle at the meeting of four ways. The occupant hailed him, and the dragoon was urbane and gallant.

"A false alarm, miss. The beacon-keeper got in liquor and set the beacon-light. We are cantering round to quiet the poor things."

Rose thought by his fat smile that his officers had chosen wisely. There was nothing savouring of famine and sudden death about the trooper.

"Can you tell me if the Eastbourne road is clear?"

"You may overtake some of the wagons, miss, but they'll pull aside for such as you."

And the green curricle whirled on.

Meanwhile Jasper Benham was at Hastings in the battery at the east end of the parade. He had left his men bivouacked in a field by Halton barracks, and had spent the night with a number of roaring, wine-drinking officers who had waited for the crisis in the large room of an inn in High Street. The morning was still and sunny, and to judge by the number of people who had gathered on the sea-front, the Hastingers had not deserted the town at the first flash of the alarm. There was a goodly gathering on the Castle Hill, staring out to sea. Younger women, who had not forgotten to put on gay prints and muslins, kept to the parade by the east battery, in order to be reassured by the red-coated gentlemen who were laughing and joking among the guns. Green hills, red coats, blue sea, brown roofs were spread before the people who climbed the east and west hills. There were more red coats to be seen about the three-gun battery at White Rock. Signals were being passed along the coast, from Fairlight Down to Galley Hill, Wall End Pevensey, Beachy Head, and so on westward.

Jasper, leaning against a gun, stared hard at nothing in particular with the savage intentness of a man plagued with doubts. He was sick of the sound of the voice of his own conscience that talked so obviously about duty and honour, and loyalty to one's King. He ought to be reporting his suspicions to the officer commanding the troops in the neighbourhood. A dozen troopers ought to be riding up to Stonehanger, and old Durrell laid by the heels and his house searched.

But Jasper's decision faltered, and he fell to temporising and to making excuses. Was he sure of his facts? Had he trusted to mere sinister coincidences and to suspicions? He realised that if he denounced Anthony Durrell as a French spy, the burden of proof would rest on his own shoulders. He would have to hurt Nance; that was what bothered him. He could not forget the touch of her hands that night. She had fired all the mysteries of sense and spirit. How could he throw shame and ignominy in her face?

A corporal of volunteers was leading Devil Dick up and down the parade. Jasper roused himself, and marched out of the battery with a casual nod to his brother officers. The volunteer companies had been ordered back to their country quarters. The presence of the men near their own homes would restore confidence, and help to smother panic.

"Corporal Jenner."

"Sir?"

"Go up to Halton and tell Sergeant Cochrane to march the men back to Battle."

"Yes, sir."

"The men will parade on the green at seven o'clock."

"Yes, sir."

"I shall be there."

Jasper mounted Devil Dick and rode westward toward Bexhill. He was in a restless mood, driven to keep step with his own urgent thoughts. The happenings of the night were like so many thorns spread in the path of his pilgrimage. The gloom of an inevitable choice lay over him.

He rode across the great green Level of Pevensey where kingcups were all golden along the waterways, and the larks hovered and sang. Countryfolk and men on horseback were gathered at Castle End, but Jasper did not turn aside. The grey, shimmering downs swelled before him against the blue of the sky. Yonder rose Beachy Head, its beacon a heap of ashes. An insane hatred of the headland leapt into Jasper's heart. It was as though love had been martyred there, and the ashes scattered over the seas.

Devil Dick carried Jasper into Eastbourne, urged thither by a vague restlessness rather than by any desire to get anywhere in particular. The town had soon recovered from the night's scare, and being a gay place it laughed and made fun of the whole affair. Eastbourne had a certain fashionable reputation, and by the Sea Houses where the London coach started, and where the great circular redoubt had been thrown up, idlers enjoyed the sunshine and aired their little genteel vanities as though there were no such thing as war.

Jasper rode Devil Dick to the edge of this little world of valetudinarianism, gossip, and dissipation. Blue sea and sky and the grey gloom of Beachy Head formed the background, while the space between the houses and the redoubt was stippled over with the little coloured figures that idled to and fro. Here were leering old men, foppishly dressed, yet unable to hide their tainted bodies behind the craft of valet and tailor. There were women to keep these old men in countenance, mature, sly, scandalous old women who still triumphed, and rouged, and tattled. It was a quick-witted, gay, cynical crowd, vicious according to the conceptions of the moralists, but having the laugh of the moralists in the matter of enjoyment.

Jasper drew rein, the serious gloom of youthful romanticism refusing to mingle with this mature frivolity. He had turned Devil Dick, and was walking the horse away from the Sea Houses and the redoubt when he heard some one calling him by name.

"Meester Benham, Meester Benham."

Jasper became aware of a group close on his left, one tall and stately cypress in the midst of a smother of flowering shrubs. The cypress bowed and swept a hat. The flowering shrubs exhaled perfumes, and delighted the eyes with colour.

It was the Chevalier de Rothan, and with him four or five gay ladies in Empire gowns and bonnets, very seductive, very merry, very frail. They were classic in more than the mere incidents of dress. One had black hair, huge dark "orbs," and a melancholy mouth. Another was a little, red-haired woman, wonderfully dainty, with china-blue eyes, and every feminine impertinence for the provoking of men. They were looking at Jasper with the eyes of connoisseurs. A somewhat elderly charmer had levelled an ebony-handled lorgnette.

De Rothan had a way of enveloping people and entangling their activities in the net of his magnificent manners.

"Meester Benham, our friends were in ecstasy over your horse. I thought I knew both the horse and the rider. It is a splendid animal, ladies, and splendidly ridden, eh?"

He included them all in one sweeping gesture.

"Mr. Benham, let me present you to my friends. Mrs. Juno, Mrs. Venus, Mrs. Impertinence, Mrs. Pallas. We are very young, sir, although so ancient. I myself am Mr. Paris of Troy."

They laughed, and looked with friendly interest at Jasper, who had responded with a rather perfunctory bow.

"Mr. Benham looks disappointed about something," said the little red-haired woman with a provocative glance.

"Mars cheated of a battle, eh! Meester Benham, pardon me, but I have been delighted by your droll people."

"Oh!"

"A little, old man drinks too much--goddesses, forgive me--and a whole county is in consternation. You call the French excitable, sir, but, by St. Louis, you run us close. I was disappointed in the stolidity of the English."

Jasper suspected the presence of malicious raillery. De Rothan's figure filled his consciousness. He felt ready to quarrel with the man and quite ready to forget the ladies.

"What did you expect, sir?"

"Less scuffling into clothes, and the pulling on of stockings inside out. Little things--but significant."

"We were prompt in getting the people away."

"Prompt! Excellent word! Dear goddesses, your good countrymen were prompt at running away."

He gave Jasper an exasperatingly roguish look.

"I have heard of no running away. There seem plenty of people in Eastbourne."

"The panic was soon put out here, Meester Benham. But I rode fifteen miles before I came to Eastbourne this morning. You should have seen the roads, sir. People running away with their pans and kettles and cash-boxes on their backs. It was like the rout of an army."

"They had been ordered to go inland. The French would have found the stem stuff ready for them, even if they had survived the _mal de mer._"

"You are facetious, Meester Benham."

"I echo you, Chevalier."

"It is my privilege to amuse the ladies."

"We have often amused ourselves at the expense of the French."

De Rothan drew himself up dramatically.

"Meester Benham, I do not permit myself or others to pass beyond mere jesting words."

"Very good, sir, then keep clear of the facts. You have thrashed us, and we have thrashed you. Though I think we can count three Blenheims to one Fontenoy."

De Rothan made a gesture as though he would lay a hand on a sword.

"I do not quarrel, Meester Benham, when ladies are present. Insult me some other day."

"With pleasure," said Jasper, and rode on in a black rage.

He had not gone more than a hundred yards when two smart horses drawing a green curricle came into view. A whip was held slantingly at a professional angle. The sea-breeze played with the reddish curls under the big bonnet.

Jasper blasphemed under his breath. Cousin Rose was the very last creature he desired to meet that morning.

She drew up, with a heightened colour and a shallow glitter of the eyes. The woman had dash, and a certain audacity in her methods of attack.

"You see, Jasper, I had not run away. What a reprieve for us all. We should thank God from our hearts."

She eyed him steadily, noticing his morose, inward look.

"The responsibility has been heavy on you, lad. Do you know I prayed for you last night. I felt that you were not alone. I was with you--in the spirit."

"You are always very good, Rose."

"Am I? I think we always understood each other, Jasper, even when we were children."

XIV

Rose Benham's sentimentality was part of the guile of the huntress. Ordinarily she was a hard and very shrewd young woman, capable of managing most men and horses, and sincere enough when her egotistical piety was on the prowl. She knew that there were other women who desired to marry Jasper Benham. Her determination to marry him herself was made up of the lust to possess, and the desire to defeat rivals.

"Jasper, you will see me back to Beech Hill."

She was on the edge of an appealing simper, and detestable as most plain and hard young women are when they ape passions that they do not possess. Rose went about such matters as though she were selling pots and pans in a shop. Cleverness cannot take the place of instinct. That is why clever people are often such wearisome fools.

"Do you want to go back at once?"

They had driven and ridden a little way along the Sea Road, and Miss Benham was looking with some of her provincial scorn at the gay folk who idled there. To a certain type of woman all fashionable people are profligates. Most women have a secret desire to dazzle and to devastate. It is the utter inability of the majority to do anything of the kind that gives such a feline viciousness to their morality.

"I do not think that there is much to see in Eastbourne, Jasper. What absurd creatures there are here. Look at that thing yonder, like a lettuce tied up at the top with bass."

"Shall we turn back?"

"Such women always make me cross. As if men were worth all the trouble!"

Courtesy, not necessity, put Jasper in the position of outrider. Rose was perfectly capable of driving alone across England, but when a thin-natured woman tries to be melting, she muddles the mingling of the wine and honey.