Chapter IV: Part 4

"I have a little basket under the seat, Jasper. Cold chicken and a bottle of wine. We can put up the horses at some farm, and make a meal under a tree."

Such feasting in Arcady was wholly outside Jasper's mood.

"Oh, yes, we could do that."

The tiredness of his voice piqued her.

"I believe you are sorry that the French did not come. I know; you have uncorked your courage and it has gone flat."

Jasper left her to think what she pleased.

They found a farm-house set back in a little meadow, and a big chestnut-tree made them a green pavilion. The horses were left in the care of a lad who bit his thumb-nail and stared.

Jasper's attitude was one of impatient reserve. Every thought that came into his mind unrolled itself from the one word "if." If another face had been inside that bonnet. If other hands----! He had to sit there and listen to Rose Benham's thin suggestions, when love had become almost a ferocity, a tormented thing that was ready to break out into violence.

"There is only one glass, Jasper."

Her playful coyness made him feel evil.

"It doesn't matter."

When he drank he was careful to avoid the place that Rose's lips had touched. She noticed it, and her eyes registered the impression.

Her sentimental gaiety was like the buzzing of gnats in the sunshine. It intensified that other richer reality, that passion that had become akin to pain. Rose, too, had a way of asking direct questions, as exasperating a trick as pretending to tread on the toes of a gouty old man.

"You don't look very gay, Jasper. Are you sorry the French did not land?"

"Yes, I am."

"What a desperate mood! You ought to be in love."

This did not make matters flow any more pleasantly. Rose's face began to assume its set, Sabbath expression.

"I think you are very dull. I know men like to talk about themselves. You don't seem to find even yourself interesting."

"I'm not in a mood to talk. The fact is, I was up all night, and drank rather too much sherry."

"How silly you men are. You never seem to think of the to-morrow."

They packed up the basket, left the shade of the chestnut-tree, and travelled on. Rose looked somewhat grim, and Jasper was struck by a sudden amazing likeness to her mother. She appeared to have grown thinner, and her plainness cried out at him. Yet Rose, without knowing it, was to have a very subtle and delicate revenge. She was to be the cause of pain and secret reproaches and a little world of misunderstanding, for half the troubles of life come from people being at cross-purposes and refusing to speak out.

Though the road ran within two miles of Stonehanger, Jasper had no thought of a possible meeting with Nance Durrell. But meet her they did where the road ran through the oak woods in Buckhurst Hollow.

An oak wood in May is one of the most splendid of sights, with the golds and greens of the young foliage giving the effect of reflected sunlight. The lush freshness of the woods enters into the soul of a young man's dreams. Birds sing and the cuckoo calls from mysterious distances. The blue of the wild hyacinths brings visions of chaplets of flowers woven about the dark hair of some young girl.

A stream ran through Buckhurst Wood, crossing the road where a big beech-tree stood on a knoll that was covered with blue-bells. The moist murmur of the running water seemed part of the dewiness of the green and secret thickets.

Under the shade of the beech-tree sat Nance Durrell, a rush basket thrown beside her, her chin resting in the palms of her two hands. She looked intense, passionately preoccupied, her brown eyes staring into the mysterious distances of the wood. Her mouth was grave, and a little sad.

She glanced round with a certain impatient shyness when the green curricle appeared upon the road. For the moment she looked at Rose Benham and did not notice Jasper. Her thoughts had been disturbed, and waited for the disturbers to pass.

Then she recognised Jasper. Her self-consciousness became a thing of the vivid and inevitable present. It was not possible for her to shirk the clamour of her emotions.

Jasper reddened like a boy. He faltered, and then let the two horses and the curricle splash through the shallow water.

Nance had gone very white, with the whiteness of pride that resists. Why did the man thrust himself into her life? She hardened herself against him, and tried to find the impress of the repulsive things she had heard of him upon his face.

"Have you heard the news----?"

Her eyes were two shadowy circles of reticent distrust.

"What news?"

"It was a false alarm last night. The beacon was fired by mistake."

She looked at him and was silent, and her very silence was resistant. Benham had a whole flood of fierce doubts and yearnings urging him forward against her reserve.

"Nance, why did you shut your window on me last night?"

"What right had you to come?"

She soared into haughtiness, and the knoll under the beech-tree became inaccessible.

"I had a man's right."

"And what is that?"

The curricle had drawn up some fifty yards beyond the ford, and a face in a yellow bonnet looked back at them with surprised intentness.

Nance rose. There was something tantalising and repressive about her movements. Few things can surpass the bleak and uncompromising pride of a young girl.

"Your friend is waiting for you."

"It is my cousin, Rose Benham. She----"

"I do not wish to keep her waiting."

Jasper's manhood raged within him. Primitive emotions and the more complex things of the heart made a confused turmoil. He rebelled against her tacit and unexplained antagonism.

"Nance, I must know what has made you change so suddenly."

She had half turned, and she looked back at him from beyond the finality of a dismissal.

"Your cousin is waiting."

"Heaven confound my cousin! What has she to do----"

The silent, backward look of her eyes rebuffed him.

"Nance--listen. I must know why you have changed. You have changed----"

"It is courteous of you to claim it."

She was ready to show that she resented his assumption of a past sympathy.

"Damnation! You must have reasons. Is it your father?"

"It may be. I am not here to be cross-questioned."

"After you shut your window, I saw him on the terrace last night."

His passion drove him toward aggression. The girl remained stone-cold.

"Was he?"

"Yes."

"Well, what of that?"

"He had another man with him."

"Most likely it was old David."

Jasper had come to the very citadel of her reserve. To press further would mean the giving of a final and forlorn assault. Her whole attitude seemed to him to be a beating back of inopportune and dangerous curiosity.

"Shall I say that there are things that you do not wish me to know?"

"What do you mean?"

She stood to attack in turn, alert, and a little haughty.

"Mr. Durrell may have reason for not wishing me to come to Stonehanger."

"You suspect that?"

"You drive me to it."

Her face flushed under her dark hair.

"You are bold to press so far. Are you so sure of yourself? My father has reasons. You might not thank me for telling you them."

"I should thank you--from my heart."

"Not if you have any sense of--pride. Miss Benham must think this conduct of yours as curious as it appears to me."

She turned her back on him, and walked away into the thick of the wood. Jasper could not follow her there without leaving his horse, and Nance knew it. He did not attempt to follow her, but sat staring half vacantly into the green depths, a man staggered in the full stride of his impetuous sincerity.

It cost Jasper something of an effort to ride on and overtake the green curricle. Rose Benham's sharp profile had a very exasperating effect on him. There was something dangerously watchful about her eyes.

They made an elaborate show of ignoring the events of the last five minutes. Jasper might have hung behind to talk to a farm bailiff, to judge by the way they treated the matter.

But Rose's shrewd brain was busy enough behind the forced facility of her chattering. She felt that it was not only absurd, but impolitic to ignore the incident. It had to be touched on lightly and without prejudice.

"You haven't yet told me the name of your friend, Jasper."

"What friend?"

"Why, the damsel among the blue-bells, stupid. You know--I felt horribly guilty. It occurred to me that I had put myself in the way of being an awkward third."

"That was Miss Nance Durrell."

Cousin Rose appeared immensely excited.

"Jasper--the heroine of your night adventure! Think of that now! I thought she would have been prettier. You ought to have made us known to each other. I might have driven her home in the curricle."

Jasper glanced at Rose mistrustfully. Nance had driven him into a world of cross-purposes and suspicions.

"Miss Durrell goes very much her own way."

"Proud, is she?"

"Call it that if you like."

"O, Jasper, Jasper, if only you would let me teach you a little about women."

The cynical yet motherly touch was excellent. Rose could be masterly, directly a little malice gave her practical shrewdness an opportunity. She could preach to a man, if she could not make love to him.

"What do you know about women, Rose?"

"La, now, listen to the lad! Jasper, half you men are nothing but great big boys. You think we are so much finer, and purer, and sweeter than you are, until we poor women show the true human stuff in us, and then you make a frightful to-do, and turn into cynics. Don't we want the men sometimes, just as much as the men want the women? And don't we plan and scheme to get them, playing all sorts of tricks with pride and coldness and smiles and relentings. Don't start away, Jasper, with thinking each girl a sweet fool of an angel."

He was caught by her words, and was angry with himself for being influenced.

"Sometimes people are what we wish them to be."

"Yes, especially if they are clever. The girl realises that. She puts on the clothes and the airs that please the man."

"You are a little cynic, Rose."

"Not a bit of it. I'm honest. I don't cover things up."

They said no more on the matter, but Rose had learnt something that made the lips of her soul curl maliciously.

"Always the pretty face!" she thought. "Fools! And we plain women have to look on, while a man squanders himself on a thing with soft eyes and an artful mouth. I'm plain, but am I going to be ousted by some treacle-and-honey chit with eyes like blackberries? This nonsense----!"

Rose had a sense of her limitations. That is what made her bitter.

XV

Nance made her way through Buckhurst Wood, pushing aside the fresh green hazel boughs till she reached a ride that ran eastward under the overhanging branches of the oaks. It was a woodland gallery hung with arras of green and gold, the sunlight streaming in through innumerable windows. The rank grass about the hazel stubs was threaded with wild flowers. Patches of blue sky showed between the golden branches of the oaks.

Nance was both angry and perplexed, an astonishment to herself in the contradictory discontent that mocked her pride. She had not pitied Jasper Benham when they had been face to face. She had resented his pertinacity. It had been easier to believe that he was playing the part that he had played with other women.

Yet something within her spoke up for Jasper now that he could not defend himself in person. Nance had had but a glimpse of Rose Benham, but it had been enough to challenge her dislike. She was sorry for the man, having an instinctive foreknowledge of how such a woman would shape in the middle ways of life. Yet Nance caught herself up in the thick of these thoughts, and refused to be lured into possible justifications. Nance was a little hard, as girls are apt to be. She liked her beliefs and convictions carved in ivory, immutable and flawless. There were so many things she did not know, so many things she did not understand. She believed in a kind of superhuman honour that could never change, never be bent into the making of crooked excuses.

But she did feel bitter and lonely, in spite of her pride. Something had been awakened in her that spring, a richness of thought and of feeling, a going-out of her spirit toward mystery and joy. She remembered days when she had thought of this man with a swift, shy thrill of tenderness. There had seemed a strength about him, a brave, brown-faced kindness that had compelled her to muse and to remember. That was why she felt bitter and resentful. She would smile peevishly over the thought of the red scarf and the cunning use he had made of it. Now and again she had found herself doubting the truth of her father's words, but she could find no reason for his wishing to mislead her. The smart of the thing remained, the raw consciousness that this man had been treating her as one adventure in a succession of adventures. She resented this bitterly. It was the one emotion that had made her determine to thrust the whole affair out of her life.

Nance made her way homeward by a number of familiar lanes and field-paths, for she had wandered extensively since Anthony Durrell had taken Stonehanger. It was when she was following the path that led from the direction of Rookhurst over Stonehanger Common, that De Rothan overtook her and dismounted to walk at her side. He had seen the girl's figure moving along the field-paths as he had ridden along the road.

"My homage to you, Mees Nance. It may be that I shall find your father at Stonehanger. I hope the beacon-fire did not keep you awake last night."

He walked along beside her with an air of fascinating frankness. He had found it serve with women. As for Nance, she was so near home that it did not seem worth while to question De Rothan's company.

"We saw the beacon burning."

"And you were very frightened, eh?"

"No, not very."

"You should have seen the country people! Frightened sheep! I fear that if the French had landed the English red-coats would have followed the women."

Nance had none of her father's political discontent. She had her British beliefs and convictions, and wore her patriotism in her bosom.

"English soldiers do not run away, Chevalier."

"Eh! Assuredly--I ask your pardon. One's own soldiers never run away; they are forced to retreat in the face of overwhelming numbers. We all know that."

The man puzzled her. Usually she could get clear impressions of people, but De Rothan's was a figure that flickered and changed. His vanity and his grand air were definite details, yet they seemed to her like clothes worn at a masked ball. De Rothan was a cynic and an adventurer, a mature and very flexible man of the world. Nothing was absolutely right or absolutely wrong to him. A certain intenseness made Nance incapable of understanding the multifarious selfishnesses that go to the making of such a man.

Anthony Durrell was walking the terrace when these two reached Stonehanger. De Rothan had said, "I give myself the pleasure of seeing your father." He was out of the saddle, and making a great business of offering to hand Nance up the steps.

She was not a gallant's woman, nor did she desire to be touched by De Rothan. Her instincts were fastidious in such matters.

He smiled at her roguishly.

"What a proud young gentlewoman. But you have the right. Beauty is privileged. Pride in a plain woman is like fine wine in a pewter pot."

Her aloofness pleased him. He followed her up the steps, scanning her figure, and noticing the comely way her neck curved where it rose from between her shoulders.

"Mr. Durrell, your daughter is a very great lady. She is too proud to touch my fingers."

He laughed and swaggered, and it was in his swagger that the vulgar blood of the Irish adventurer showed itself. Durrell had a sullen, preoccupied look. He had been disappointed of great events.

"Where have you been, Nance?"

"For a ramble."

"Ah."

His eyes searched her face, and Nance caught a questioning distrust. Youth resents suspiciousness. That momentary glance was seized on and remembered.

"You will stay and drink tea with us, Chevalier."

"I am to be persuaded, sir, I assure you."

"Nance, get the things ready, child."

She answered perfunctorily and passed on toward the house.

De Rothan returned to his horse that was standing quietly at the bottom of the terrace steps.

"Show me the way to your stable, Durrell."

"You know it."

"I don't, sir, so long as there are eyes about. Besides----"

Durrell joined him, and they walked round by the field gate into the yard. David Barfoot met them, and Durrell signed him to take De Rothan's horse.

They turned into the shrubbery, and took to pacing one of the wild, overgrown paths. Laurels and hollies hedged them in, and arched out the sunlight. The thick canopy of leaves had smothered the grass and weeds. The soil was black and bare under the dark stems of the laurels.

De Rothan appeared cynically merry. He talked to Durrell about the happenings of the previous night.

"The whole countryside broke away like sheep. What? You are disappointed? No, no, the scare was of value. It showed how jumpy and unsteady these stolid folk are. They tell me that the troops were out of hand in several places. Whole companies made off and had to be chased and brought back by cavalry. It's a fact, sir, a fact."

Durrell showed a morose surface.

"It may have done them good."

"Steadied them, eh, helped them to get used to it? Bah! I should like to see a beacon fired by mistake every other night. The country's courage would be in tatters. Troops--raw troops--are not improved by being worried and fretted."

"I was too happy last night. I thought the time had come."

De Rothan looked at him intently.

"You are on edge, sir, too much on edge."

"No, no; I long for the great change."

A hand-bell rang, and the two men returned to the house. Nance had set tea in the Gothic parlour. De Rothan was floridly officious in arranging a chair for her.

"You should have been at Eastbourne this morning, Mees Nance. A crowd of gay people, all in the best of tempers from being saved from invasion. They had all got ready to run away in their best clothes. Do you ever take your daughter to the watering-places, Mr. Anthony?"

Durrell grunted, and gloomed over his tea.

"I don't."

"You dislike gay people."

"I detest them."

"Ah--ah, and they are always saying that my poor France is so gay. Why should not one be gay, sir, why should we pull long faces? The good God did not mean us to be miserable. What do you think, Mees Nance?"

His deference bowed her into the conversation.

"Sometimes one can not be gay, Chevalier."

"Not always, not always. But then, when a woman is young and adorable! Cloudy days; beauty all silver and grey, charm, subtlety. Now, come--do you not love fine clothes?"

She smiled.

"As much as women always love them."

"There, that is honest. I would not give a fig for a woman who hadn't a little vanity."

Durrell struck in, jerking his shoulders irritably.

"There is enough nonsense in a girl's head, De Rothan, without stuffing any more into it."

"My dear friend, I disagree with you. There are gentlewomen and gentlewomen. Parents, too, are often the blindest of wiseacres. Now if I were in your place, Mr. Anthony----"

"But you are not, sir. Let us keep to impersonal matters."

De Rothan threw a whimsical and conspiring look at Nance.

"Impersonal matters! As if life could go on with all our desires carefully tied up in silk handkerchiefs and put away in cupboards. Mr. Durrell, you are one of the most learned of men, but----"

He shrugged his shoulders expressively and looked sympathetically at Nance.

"Well, to be impersonal. I saw all kinds of your good English people strutting to and fro on the parade. You look so good, you English, that a well-dressed woman seems scandalous. You are such barbarians. Some one wears a new sort of hat, and all your raw louts and lasses are giggling and nudging with elbows. Some of you try to be fashionable and also pious. I am thinking of Mees Rose Benham, who was there in her curricle. Doubtless, Mees Nance, you have made the lady's acquaintance?"

"No."

"A character--a character. She had Mr. Benham, her cousin, hanging on her eyebrows. They are to be married soon, they say. A case of when Greek meets Greek. Mees Benham is a plain young woman, but she is one who provokes. Impudence, eh, is that what you call it? A turned-up button of a nose, sharp mouth, naughty eyes. Such women sting some of us into passion. Mr. Benham is in the toils."

He talked lightly, easily, observing Nance without betraying his curiosity. Durrell moved uneasily in his chair, and looked irritably austere.

"You need not talk of Mr. Benham here, Chevalier."

De Rothan glanced at him with pretended surprise.

"A young man with a bad reputation."

"Sir, I beg your pardon. I know the man is a little riotous; it is an impersonal matter, surely? Madam, his cousin, will take care of his morals."

For the rest of his stay De Rothan was very gallant to Nance, talking to her and at her with an air of admiring deference. No man could be more picturesquely charming than De Rothan. He had the mellowness of long experience, and could ape the chivalrous and dignified tenderness of an old beau.

"Turn the young thing's head, eh! She's confoundedly alluring. Durrell's a fool."

Nance longed to be away. She escaped when her father went to the mantel-shelf for his pipe, and fled away to her room.

It had been flashed upon her mind that De Rothan was the friend who had told her father these things concerning Jasper Benham. Anthony Durrell saw so few people, and there appeared to be a curious intimacy between these two.

She stood and looked at herself in the glass as though she were questioning her own reflection.

Why were De Rothan and her father friends? Had De Rothan brought these vile tales to Stonehanger? If he was responsible for them, did that alter her impressions?

Yes, but she herself had seen Jasper with his cousin. That part of it seemed true.

And yet she distrusted De Rothan greatly.

XVI

Meanwhile Jasper Benham was at the end of his patience, and a creature of moods and savage bewilderment. Nance's strange hostility had not helped him toward decision. He was too much in love with the girl to seek to be revenged upon her because there was something that he could not understand. Even supposing that Anthony Durrell was a French spy, and that Nance knew it and wished to safeguard her father, what had she to fear from him; what reason had she for treating him with suspicion?

Well, what was to be done?

Jasper had spent two morose, vacillating days, and the moral quandary seemed all the deeper. What a scolding shrew was this thing called Duty! He was to denounce Durrell, was he--send red-coats to turn Stonehanger upside down, and lose, perhaps forever, his chance of Nance! No, Duty be cursed; he would do no such thing. If this clumsy meddling were the only means that Duty could suggest, he would throw Duty aside and stand by his own more magnanimous instincts.

Jasper was riding Devil Dick over Rush Heath farm when he came cheek-by-jowl with this decision. Restlessness had set him in the saddle, and it was still early in the afternoon when he found himself looking over a thorn hedge into a big turnip field that sloped southward toward the edge of a wood. A solitary, lean, brown figure showed up against the green of the young growth, a figure that moved its arms with the monotonous action of a man hoeing.

Jasper rode through the gateway into the turnip field and remained watching the man with the hoe. The labourer drew near with his back turned, chopping away sedulously at the young weeds. Jasper knew him for Tom Stook of Bramble End, an odd hand who was taken on by the Benhams' bailiff when there was a press of work, or hay and corn to be gathered in.

Tom Stook was a very tall man with great bony limbs that seemed loosely slung at the joint sockets. He had a hawk's beak of a nose, a little tufted beard at the chin, and deep-set, cautious eyes. He kept on hoeing, as though he had not so much as glimpsed Jasper out of the corner of an eye.

"Well, Tom, Webster has found you a job, has he?"

Stook straightened his back, drew in his hoe, leant upon it, and regarded Jasper with a sort of cautious respect.

"Mornin', Master Jasper."

"Weeds bad?"

"Pretty tarrifyin'. Be'unt so bad down yon end."

Now Tom Stook was one of the most garrulous of rogues when gossip did not press too tenderly upon such personal matters as poaching and smuggling. He was a bit of a ruffian, sly, shrewd, and immensely strong. Folk had tales to tell about him and his lonely hovel of a cottage down by Bramble End.

Tom Stook hoed and talked, wagging his tuft of a beard, and throwing queer, spying glances at Jasper.

"No more beacons afire, sir?"

"Not yet, Tom."

"That did tarrify the folk. I seed ut begin a'glimmering just afore midnight."

"You keep late hours, Tom."

"I doan't knows as I do."

He hoed on in silence for some moments.

"T 'rabbits be tarrible thick down our way. They'd be for eatin' all the green stuff, if I didn't snare 'em. Maybe I keeps late hours now and agen. A man sees some funny things of a night, surely."

"What sort of things, Tom?"

"Lights, and men wid dark lanterns. Smugglers and Frenchies."

"Oh, come, Tom!"

"Sure, I be tellin' the truth."

"Where do you see the lights?"

"Up yonder, at Stonehanger. It be'unt no sort of a light, but a sort of a glare fur the while you count ten. I doan't say nothing to nobody. We be'unt none of us so tarrible honest, Master Jasper, as we can pull other folks' clothes off their beds. But I've seed strange men go over Stonehanger Common at midnight."

Jasper kept a grave and rather sceptical face.

"When you go out rabbiting, Tom?"

Stook grunted.

"I doan't know nothing 'bout that."

"Nor do I, Tom. If the men didn't have a few rabbits, we shouldn't have any crops."

"Sure, Master Jasper, I always said you be a young man o' sense."

"The squire likes his punch, Tom. We don't ask too many questions in Sussex. I'll wager we have stuff in our cellar that never paid duty."

Stook went on hoeing methodically.

"Do y' know that thur furriner, sir? That black chap as rides about on a black horse?"

"Who do you mean, Tom?"

"Frenchy gentleman."

"Do you mean the Chevalier de Rothan?"

"It may be him, Master Jasper. I've seed the man I mean up at Stonehanger."

"The devil you have!"

"I've seed him come over t' common just afore daylight. You know t' old quarry 'twixt Bramble End and Stonehanger?"

"Yes."

"I've knowed him leave his nag thur all night. I've seed him, too, with Durrell's girl."

"What d' you mean, Tom?"

"No harm, master. Why, I seed 'em two days ago going over t' common. I was down under yonder cutting a bit o' furze to thatch m' wood lodge with."

"What day was it--Tuesday?"

"It ud be Tuesday."

Jasper sat and stared across the turnip field with the level stare of grim preoccupation. Tom Stook's lean figure had faced about, and was receding, with rhythmical strokes of the hoe.

"Have you told any one about this, Tom?"

"Sure, no, I ain't, Master Jasper. I be'unt one for tongue-wagging 'bout other folks's business. Guess, though, I've been puzzled. I be'unt no baby."

"No."

"I knows t' lads, and t' rabbit runs, and t' warrens."

"I reckon you do, Tom. But Stonehanger? Mr. Durrell's not hiding the stuff, is he?"

"That be what mizzles me."

"He isn't one of the gang?"

Tom grew reticent of a sudden.

"Don't you be for askin' me, Master Jasper."

"Well, about the foreigner. Are you sure you know him?"

"Maybe I be wrong, master."

"He and Durrell are something of a size."

"That be true."

"I'm glad you've told me this, Tom. You'll find half a side of bacon waiting to be given away up at the Hall."

Tom jogged his hat.

"Thank ye, Master Jasper. I doan't drop no words into t' old women's laps. I keep t' spigot in, sir, 'cept when a gentleman o' sense be about."

Jasper turned Devil Dick and rode out of the field in a very different temper from that in which he had entered it.

Hot blood is jealous blood, and Jasper was no bloodless saint. Tom Stook had sprung a surprise on him, and let fly with a blunderbuss into the thick of Jasper's perplexities. He had owned to a healthy if casual hatred of De Rothan, but personal, prejudiced hatred is a very different thing from vague antagonism. Good lovers are good haters, and Jasper was hating De Rothan at full gallop.

"Seems to me Stonehanger is a nest of spies! Deuce take it, how did we miss knowing De Rothan for a rogue! He and the girl are friends, are they? Oh, my innocent, sweet child! Oh, you besotted fool, Jasper Benham. Have it out with them, have it out."

Jasper rode straight for Stonehanger in about as black a temper as a man can boast. He had no very definite ideas as to what he meant to do. Feeling violent, savage, and very much befooled, he just rode toward Stonehanger, letting the impulse of his jealousy urge him thither.

The track he chose came from the south over the common, leaving Bramble End lying half a mile to the south-east. Jasper passed the quarry where Tom Stook said that De Rothan had sometimes left his horse. Jasper peered into it, and found the quarry a mere pit full of broom and brambles, its entrance half choked by a big elder-tree. But there were trampled places here and there, and a rough path that led out on to the common.

Any one approaching Stonehanger from the south had all but the roof and chimneys of the house hidden from him by a heave of the ground. Then one came into full and sudden view of the place with its grey terrace and wind-blown trees. Such a passion as jealousy often provokes the opposites of a man's normal nature, and Benham developed a spirit of wariness and cunning. He dismounted as soon as he saw the chimneys of the house, found a spot amid the furze where he could fasten Devil Dick to the tough stem of a furze-bush, and went on foot.

The windows and terrace rose into view, with the wind-blown yews and thorns, and then the stretch of grassland immediately below the terrace. It was here that Jasper dodged down behind the furze like a stalker sighting a stag. The lines of his face grew hard and keen. He took off his hat, and, thrusting it into the furze, made a sort of loophole between the boughs through which he could watch Stonehanger unobserved.

A man was walking to and fro on the grassland below the terrace, flourishing a stick as though he were trying the suppleness of his wrist for sword-play. Sometimes he would pause and draw imaginary patterns on the ground with the point of the stick. Or he would stride as if measuring the ground, look about him critically, and scan the surrounding country. There appeared to be some purpose in this pacing to and fro. The man might have been an engineer surveying the ground for the throwing up of earthworks and the placing of guns.

The man was De Rothan. Jasper knew him by his height, by his black clothes, and his haughty, swaggering walk. Only De Rothan could have flourished a stick with such gusto.

Jasper looked grim.

"Hallo, so it's you, is it! Tom Stook was right. What the devil do you think you are doing marching about up there?"

He watched De Rothan jealously, thoughtfully.

"Measuring the ground? Trenches and redoubts? By George, that's it! Why did I never think of that before? Stonehanger would make one of the strongest positions for ten miles round. A landing party might seize it and hold on----. Hallo!"

He was all eyes for the moment, for another figure had appeared upon the terrace. Jasper could see only the head and shoulders behind the low wall. It was Nance Durrell, a white sun-bonnet covering her black hair.

He saw her come to the edge of the terrace and look over. The white strings of her sun-bonnet were over her shoulders. She rested her hands on the parapet and watched De Rothan pacing to and fro below.

Jasper became for the moment the most violent of cynics. A sense of his own ineptitude tormented him. He believed that he understood all that was happening up yonder.

De Rothan turned and caught sight of Nance. He gave her a magnificent bow, sweeping hat and stick with splendid expressiveness. As for Benham, the toe of his boot alone could have expressed his emotions.

"Coxcomb--dog of a spy!"

They were talking together up yonder, and Jasper could hear the faint sound of their voices. Nance appeared to lean forward over the parapet with an intimate friendliness that did not ease Jasper's jealousy.

De Rothan approached the steps. He mounted them, turned to the right and sat himself down on the parapet within a yard of Nance. He laid his hat beside him and tapped one of the coping stones with his stick. Nance did not edge away. She perched herself facing him. It was evident that they were talking together.

Jasper imagined all manner of intimate confidences passing between them. Confound De Rothan, he seemed on excellent terms with the girl! No doubt that was why the Frenchman had looked him over with such amused insolence when they had met.

Jasper knelt awhile behind the furze, gripping his coat collar with one hand, and staring hard at the green gorse. He was ready to believe that De Rothan was Nance's lover, and a passion of repulsion held him for the moment. The anger in his blood was a cold and ugly anger. A man feels the more bitter when he has reason to despise himself.

Then a thought struck him.

"Yes, by George! That's it! I'll make sure of the man. Tom Stook shall have a look at him."

He started up, and, keeping his body bent, made his way back toward his horse.

"I'll make sure that Monsieur de Rothan is Tom Stook's man. Then, by George! I'll call him to account."

XVII

In half an hour Jasper Benham was back in the turnip field on the Rush Heath land where Tom Stook was still wielding his hoe.

"Tom, can you trot four miles at a stretch?"

"Lord, sur, what for?"

Jasper told him as much as he could tell such a man as Tom Stook.

"I'd take you up behind me, but you're such a big fellow, Tom. Leave your hoe in the hedge, and hold on to my stirrup. I'll tell you more as we go along."

And so they set out for Stonehanger.

They went by way of Bramble End, Jasper leaving Devil Dick tethered in Stook's little cow-lodge. Rogue Tom had come by a pretty shrewd notion of what Jasper Benham expected of him. He took the lead as they made their way over the common.

"No nag in t' old quarry, sir?"

"No."

"T' crossways at Dudden's Oak, that be the spot, then, Master Jasper."

"Sure?"

"Mounseer has to cross t' ridge. Let him take what track he will, he'll come to t' crossways at Dudden's Oak, unless he goes by t' woods and ditches."

Jasper agreed. Stook was a fox who knew the country.

They skirted the upper part of the common, and took a farm track that led to the crossways at Dudden's Oak. The old tree, a huge shell with its boughs half dead, stood in the centre of a triangular piece of grass. There was a wood between two of the converging roads, and Jasper laid Tom Stook in ambush in this wood.

"You'll get your glimpse of the gentleman, Tom, if he comes this way."

"I'd be glad to get a sound o' t' furriner's voice."

"You'd know him by the voice?"

"I've heard him speak in t' dark. If I see him and sound him I'll know 'em all for t' same man."

Jasper leaned against the trunk of the old oak with his face toward the two ways that led south-east and south-west. De Rothan might come by either road. Nor had Jasper been there fifteen minutes before he saw a mounted man appear far down under the oak boughs on the Rookhurst track. It was De Rothan himself, jogging along at a comfortable trot, yet sitting very straight and stiff in the saddle, like some grand seigneur riding over his estate. Jasper waited for him on the green point of grass between the two roads. He had seen Tom Stook's brown face thrust itself momentarily between the hazel boughs like the face of a satyr. He was on the alert.

De Rothan recognised Jasper when he was within thirty yards of Dudden's Oak. A slight knitting of the brows betrayed his impatience. But he came on with all the fine and unembarrassed confidence of a grandee.

Jasper stood forward with a sweep of the hat.

"I must ask you to stop, sir."

De Rothan pulled up, and gave Jasper a stiff bow. He was high in the stirrups of his dignity, and ready to play the grand monarch.

"Good day to you, Meester Benham."

"Good day to you, Chevalier. Will you be so good as to tell me whence you come, and where you are going?"

De Rothan looked haughty.

"Indeed, sir, by what right do you ask these questions?"

"By a right that it is not yours to question. I am a King's officer and we have our orders. You will be so good as to answer me."

"I take it as a reflection on my honour."

"Take it as you please. We have to supervise the comings and goings, even of our guests."

"Meester Benham, do you suggest----?"

"I ask you to answer my question."

"Your way of asking it is insolent."

"I stand by my orders. We are neither of us here to question them."

De Rothan appeared to do some rapid thinking. Then he gave an irritable shrug of the shoulders.

"I suppose an exile has to suffer suspicion. If you would know it, sir, I have been riding to exercise myself and my horse. I rode from my house to Stonehanger Common; I ride back again to my house. Is that what you require?"

"I take your answer at its value, sir. You may pass on."

De Rothan looked at Jasper as though he were half-minded to ride him down. He appeared to swallow something. He was a man who preferred to make very sure of success before he struck.

"I am deeply beholden to you, Meester Benham, for your serene patronage. There are things that we do not forget."

"Remember them when you please, Chevalier."

"I choose my own time, Meester Benham. I do not chastise insolence until the occasion suits me."

Jasper gave him a vicious smile.

"Do not postpone it too long, sir. We do not live so very far apart. Good day to you."

De Rothan rode on.

Then Tom Stook's brown face appeared. It was one broad grin.

"T' same furriner--all over. I've seen him meet t' smuggling Frenchy--Jerome. That be him, Master Jasper."

"Well, he's a liar, Tom."

"Liar! All Frenchies be liars. Good for you, Master Jasper."

Jasper sent Tom Stook home with a silver crown in his pocket, and rode back alone to Rush Heath. He wanted to worry this matter out, to think out his plans for dealing with Durrell and De Rothan. Jasper had no desire to drag the whole neighbourhood into the adventure. In a way it was his own affair, and he meant to carry it on his own shoulders. His motives and emotions were jumbled together. The one outstanding fact was his determination to break De Rothan. He would outwit the man, corner him, fight him, if need be, and get up early one morning to see him hanged. It was a question of duty; and it was not. Jasper loved and hated. These things are sufficient without a man dragging in duty and religion, and trying to cover up the essential and elemental passions with sentimental affectations, and platitudes about patriotism.

Jasper had been away from Rush Heath since the morning. Jack Bumpstead was not to be found, and Jasper, going in to stable Devil Dick, found a strange nag in one of the stalls. Old Mrs. Ditch, the housekeeper, met him in the passage, her grey curls very much in order, and a ribbon in her cap.

"La, Master Jasper, Mr. Winter came two hours ago. I had dinner kept back awhile. There be some cold victuals laid out for you."

"What--Mr. Jeremy?"

Mrs. Ditch looked coy. Mr. Jeremy was a gentleman who forever caused a tender fluttering among all sorts and conditions of women.

Jasper made for the dining-room. In the Chippendale arm-chair by the window sat a shortish, thickset, hard-headed man in black, smoking a long pipe, and looking out on life with steel-black, whimsical eyes. He had one of those Roman heads, with harsh strong features, power in every line, and a cynical kindliness about the mouth.

"Why, Jeremy----!"

"Jeremy it is, lad. Come over and kiss me."

They laughed, and came together to grip hands with the impulsiveness of two men who have learned to love each other as men can.

"What are you doing down here?"

"Filling a chair and a bed."

"Good, by George! It's a year since we've seen you. Where's Squire Kit? Have you seen him?"

Jeremy settled the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with the end of his little finger.

"Having a nap upstairs, Jasper. Curse me, lad, it's good to see you. Brown and lusty, eh, though you had a broken arm in the spring. What, Jack Bumpstead's no gossip. And how's that old blackguard, Goffin? I've brought him down a pound of snuff."

Jeremy Winter had been a gentleman of many adventures, and his picturesque career had culminated in the founding of a fencing school in a quiet street near St. James's. Jeremy and Jasper's mother had been cousins, and for twenty years Mr. Winter had descended at spasmodic intervals upon Rush Heath, never with much money in his pocket, but with plenty of audacity and cheerfulness in his eyes. He would have tales to tell of Canada, or the East Indies, or of service in the Austrian army, or of bronzed and ragged adventures in Spain. There was something lovable about the man. He was tough, capable, humorous, warm-hearted, a master of the small sword and the sabre, imperturbable and smiling in the face of odds.

Jasper sat himself down at the table with a resentful and freshly remembered hunger. Jeremy Winter's coming struck him as the most welcome of coincidences. One could tell things to Jeremy that a man would not tell to any other living creature.

They talked hard, touching on a dozen familiar memories, and filling in the gaps between the now and the then. Jeremy had made a success of his fencing school, but as he put it--"London's a sort of howling wilderness just now. Every blessed soul seems to have gone off somewhere into the country to help to drill bumpkins, and stand ready for the French. I shut up the school for a month. There were only a few raw youngsters to teach."

When Jasper had dined they strolled out into the garden with the elbow-to-elbow air of men well pleased to be together. Jeremy had taught Jasper to fence as a boy. He had taken some pride in the lad, for their temperaments were much alike. Jasper had much of the elder man's nerve and courage and imperturbable toughness.

"Well, lad, how's the sword-arm?"

"Out of practice. I have an idea, Jeremy, that you are the very man I want."

"What, getting ready for a quarrel--woman--and all that?"

"More than that. I'll tell you."

In the long walk Bob the gardener had thrown down half a dozen hazel fagots, for sticking the rows of sweet peas. Jeremy brought out a knife, chose two hazel boughs, sliced off the twigs and shaped them to the length of two foils.

"Let's try you, Jasper."

They stood in the grass walk and fenced together, the sunlight shining on the brown hazel stocks and on their intent faces. Jeremy Winter was extraordinarily quick and supple for a man of fifty. He had the wrist of a blacksmith and the cunning of a player on the spinet. Jasper was slow and out of practice. Jeremy touched him five times in as many minutes.

"Stiff. Is the business serious?"

They began to pace up and down the grass walk while Jasper told Jeremy Winter the truth about Stonehanger. Jeremy was a good listener, shrewd, attentive, and ready to compare new facts with the gleanings of a very varied experience. He was an easy man to confide in, because he was so full of a sage understanding. Jeremy had led a picturesque and rather dissipated life between the twenties and forties, and it is the man who has been a man who is of most use to his brother men.

"So you fell in love with the girl, lad. What! I'm old dog enough to know that! Heaven help me, it happened to me every month when I was a youngster. But I was only in love--once--you know; the great splash; and she left me to drown."

"That's all done with, Jeremy."

"Twenty years ago, sir."

"No, I mean my small incident. It was just an inclination; no more than that."

Jeremy regarded him with an affectionate twinkle.

"Just so--just so."

"I have got to pull this nest of spies to pieces. The girl mustn't blame me. I've got to do my duty."

"Duty! You be very careful of that word, Jasper. It's a fool's word. I don't trust men who talk about their duty. Why not send a file of soldiers in?"

Jasper stared at the chimneys of the house that rose against the stately gloom of the cedars.

"I have a mind to carry the thing through myself."

"Out of consideration for the lady!"

"No. This Frenchman and I have a score to settle."

Jeremy stroked a firm and shiny chin.

"Who is he? An _émigré?_"

"Pretends to be. He calls himself the Chevalier de Rothan."

"What?"

"De Rothan."

Jeremy said something under his breath.

"Tall, dark rogue, is he, with the airs of a grandee, drooping tip to his nose, wears black, and talks about St. Louis?"

"That's the man! Do you know him, Jeremy?"

Winter looked thoughtful.

"I've met him in London."

"Where?"

"At my school. He came in to fence; Jack Sidebotham brought him. He was all over my best men."

They paused, and looked each other in the eyes.

"Jasper, the fellow is one of the best swordsmen in the country. I had a turn with him."

He smiled a grim little smile.

"Vanity, that's his weak point, too much flourish. I had him pinked, but--"

Jasper threw up his chin.

"All right, Jeremy. I'd tackle him--curse him!--even if he were a better man than you."

"You wait a bit, my lad."

"You had better call me a coward!"

Jeremy laid a hand on Jasper's shoulder.

"Stop that. Do you think I don't love you, lad? Do you think I want to have you run through by a swaggering blackguard like De Rothan? He's a good shot, too, mind you. You wait a bit, till we have had a week with the foils."

As men they knew each other, and Jasper was touched.

"I'm a hot-headed fool, Jeremy. I'll do what you wish."

XVIII

Had Jasper Benham been able to see into Nance's heart he would have felt a man's pity for her, that richer tenderness that dissolves away the pettier and more selfish thoughts.

For Nance was very lonely, and perplexed amid her loneliness. Things had happened that had troubled her beyond measure. In the first place, she had overheard some talk that had passed between De Rothan and her father, a few, disjointed sentences, nothing more, and yet the words had caught her ear and set her musing upon their meaning. Moreover, De Rothan himself had become suddenly and ominously real. He had swaggered out of a vague and questionable past into an urgent and audacious present. He had kissed her hand, and he had tried to touch her with the touch of a lover.

A woman can judge a man by his eyes, and his way of looking. The Frenchman was infinitely courteous, but he had no reverence. His admiration was a complacent and self-confident emotion. It bent, half patronisingly, and touched what it admired, as though a woman's charm was a mere flower to be plucked and held to the nostrils.

De Rothan had made Nance's spirit creep. She had become suddenly afraid of him, and shy of being alone.

Queerly enough her loneliness and her craving for comradeship and sympathy found her thoughts turning toward Jasper Benham. It was a pure impulse and it surprised her new self-consciousness. There seemed something inevitable about it, something that claimed spontaneous justification. Nance found herself questioning the meaning of this impulse. If she distrusted one man and felt drawn toward the other, did not this spiritual phenomenon suggest some deep and instinctive truth? It contradicted the things that she had been told about Jasper. If he was a bad man why should she think of him now that she needed help?

It was in a mood of doubt and unrest that she idled round her terrace garden, looking at the faces of the pansies, pulling up weeds, and putting a stick here and there to a head-heavy flower. The sound of footsteps made her start self-consciously. A figure of Time came striding over the grass--old David Barfoot--scythe on shoulder, a brown straw hat shading his lean, tanned face.

Nance smiled at the old man, a smile of relief. There had been rain in the night, and the moist grass was ripe for scything. It would cling to the edge of the blade and make the work easier.

"I like the grass short, David."

He had a way of hearing Nance's words as he heard no one else's.

"I'll shave it close; trust me."

He carried the stone in a queer little leather case fastened to his belt at the back. Getting an edge was a great business. The stone rang along the blade of the scythe. Presently he began to mow with steady, purring strokes, and the swinging movement of his arms and shoulders was not without a kind of grace.

Nance sat herself on the terrace and watched him. There was something restful in the level, swinging rhythm.

David was not a talkative man, but he had his moments of illumined loquacity.

"Fine weather for the crops. They'll be making hay afore the end o' June. Maybe the French won't tarrify us at all."

Nance had the look of a contented listener. It was pure coincidence that sent David drifting toward matters that were vital to her needs. He began to talk about his relatives and their affairs, which were mostly of a sordid, poverty-stricken, and child-bearing order.

"Maybe you've heard speak of my sister, Sue Barton. Thirteen brats, and her man down with t' ague. Bad times, too. I don't say as the gentry can't be kind."

"Thirteen children, David!"

He stopped to sharpen his scythe.

"Pig's meal, they be glad to get it! Jim sick, and Sue expectin' as usual. It was lucky for Jim Barton as he had worked on and off for t' Benhams. They be good gentlefolk, t' Benhams, though t' old squire has the mouth of hell on him."

Nance said "Oh!"--a non-committal exclamation.

"Master Jasper, he be a good young gentleman."