IN PART.

Mr. Jordan knew more of what went on than Barbara suspected. Jane Welsh attended to him a good deal, and she took a mean delight in spying into the actions of her young mistresses, and making herself acquainted with everything that went on in the house and on the estate. In this she was encouraged by Mr. Jordan, who listened to what she told him and became excited and suspicious; and the fact of exciting his suspicions was encouragement to the maid. The vulgar mind hungers for notoriety, and the girl was flattered by finding that what she hinted stirred the crazy mind of the old man. He was a man prone to suspicion, and to suspect those nearest to him. The recent events at Morwell had made him mistrust his own children. He could not suppose that Martin Babb had escaped without their connivance. It was a triumph to the base mind of Jane to stand closer in her master’s confidence than his own children, and she used her best endeavours to thrust herself further in by aggravating his suspicions.

Barbara was not at ease in her own mind, she was particularly annoyed to hear that Martin was still in the neighbourhood, on their land; naturally frank, she was impatient of the constraint laid on her. She heartily desired that the time would come when concealments might end. She acknowledged the necessity for concealment, but resented it, and could not quite forgive Jasper for having forced it upon her. She even chilled in her manner towards him, when told that Martin was still a charge. The fact that she was obliged to think of and succour a man with whom she was not in sympathy, reacted on her relations with Jasper, and produced constraint.

That Jane watched her and Jasper, Barbara did not suspect. Honourable herself, she could not believe that another would act dishonourably. She under-valued Jane’s abilities. She knew her to be a common-minded girl, fond of talking, but she made no allowance for that natural inquisitiveness which is the seedleaf of intelligence. The savage who cannot count beyond the fingers of one hand is a master of cunning. There is this difference between men and beasts. The latter bite and destroy the weakly of their race; men attack, rend, and trample on the noblest of their species.

Mr. Jordan knew that Jasper and Eve had gone together for a long journey, and that Barbara sat up awaiting their return. He had been left unconsulted, he was uninformed by his daughters, and was very angry. He waited all next day, expecting something to be said on the subject to him, but not a word was spoken.

The weather now changed. The brilliant summer days had suffered an eclipse. The sky was overcast with grey cloud, and cold north-west winds came from the Atlantic, and made the leaves of beech and oak shiver. On the front of heaven, on the face of earth, was written Ichabod—the glory is departed. What poetry is to the mind, that the sun is to nature. The sun was withdrawn, and the hard light was colourless, prosaic. There was nowhere beauty any more. Two chilly damp days had transformed all. Mr. Jordan shivered in his room. The days seemed to have shortened by a leap.

Mr. Jordan, out of perversity, because Barbara had advised his remaining in, had walked into the garden, and after shivering there a few minutes had returned to his room, out of humour with his daughter because he felt she was in the right in the counsel she gave.

Then Jane came to him, with mischief in her eyes, breathless. ‘Please, master,’ she said in low tones, looking about her to make sure she was not overheard. ‘What do y’ think, now! Mr. Jasper have agone to the wood, carrying a blanket. What can he want that for, I’d like to know. He’s not thinking of sleeping there, I reckon.’

‘Go after him, Jane,’ said Mr. Jordan. ‘You are a good girl, more faithful than my own flesh and blood. Do not allow him to see that he is followed.’

The girl nodded knowingly, and went out.

‘Now,’ said Mr. Jordan to himself, ‘I’ll come to the bottom of this plot at last. My own children have turned against me. I will let them see that I can counter-plot. Though I be sick and feeble and old, I will show that I am master still in my own house. Who is there?’

Mr. Coyshe entered, bland and fresh, rubbing his hands. ‘Well, Jordan,’ said he—he had become familiar in his address since his engagement—’how are you? And my fairy Eve, how is she? None the worse for her junket?’

‘Junket!’ repeated the old man. ‘What junket?’

‘Bless your soul!’ said the surgeon airily. ‘Of course you think only of curdled milk. I don’t allude to that local dish—or rather bowl—I mean Eve’s expedition to Plymouth t’other night.’

‘Eve—Plymouth!’

‘Of course. Did you not know? Have I betrayed a secret? Lord bless me, why should it be kept a secret? She enjoyed herself famously. Knows no better, and thought the performance was perfection. I have seen Kemble, and Kean, and Vestris. But for a provincial theatre it was well enough.’

‘You went with her to the theatre?’

‘Yes, I and Mr. Jasper. But don’t fancy she went only out of love of amusement. She went to see the manager, a Mr. Justice Thing-a-majig.’

‘Barret?’

‘That’s the man, because he had known her mother.’

Mr. Jordan’s face changed, and his eyes stared. He put up his hands as though waving away something that hung before him.

‘And Jasper?’

‘Oh, Jasper was with her. They left me to eat my supper in comfort. I can’t afford to spoil my digestion, and I’m particularly fond of crab. You cannot eat crab in a scramble and do it justice.’

‘Did Jasper see the manager?’ Mr. Jordan’s voice was hollow. His hands, which he held deprecatingly before him, quivered. He had his elbows on the arms of his chair.

‘Oh, yes, of course he did. Don’t you understand? He went with Eve whilst I finished the crab. It was really a shame; they neither of them half cleaned out their claws, they were in such a hurry. “Preciosa” was not amiss, but I preferred crab. One can get plays better elsewhere, but crab nowhere of superior quality.’

Mr. Jordan began to pick at the horse-hair of his chair arm. There was a hole in the cover and his thin white nervous fingers plucked at the stuffing, and pulled it out and twisted it and threw it down, and plucked again.

‘What—what did Jasper hear?’ he asked falteringly.

‘How can I tell, Jordan? I was not with them. I tell you, I was eating my supper quietly, and chewing every mouthful. I cannot bolt my food. It is bad—unprincipled to do so.’

‘They told you nothing?’

‘I made no inquiries, and no information was volunteered.’

A slight noise behind him made Coyshe turn. Eve was in the doorway. ‘Here she is to answer for herself,’ said the surgeon. ‘Eve, my love, your father is curious about your excursion to Plymouth, and wants to know all you heard from the manager.’

‘Oh, papa! I ought to have told you!’ stammered Eve.

‘What did he say?’ asked the old man, half-impatiently, half fearfully.

‘Look here, governor,’ said the surgeon; ‘it strikes me that you are not acting straight with the girl, and as she is about to become my wife, I’ll stand up for her and say what is fitting. I cannot see the fun of forcing her to run away a day’s journey to pick up a few scraps of information about her mother, when you keep locked up in your own head all that she wants to know. I can understand and make allowance for you not liking to tell her everything, if things were not—as is reported—quite ecclesiastically square between you and the lady. But Eve is no longer a child. I intend her to become my wife, and sooner or later she must know all. Make a clean breast and tell everything.’

‘Yes,’ said Jasper entering, ‘the advice is good.’

‘You come also!’ exclaimed the old man, firing up and pointing with trembling fingers to the intruder; ‘you come—you who have led my children into disobedience? My own daughters are in league against me. As for this girl, Eve, whom I have loved, who has been to me as the apple of my eye, she is false to me.’

‘Oh, papa! dear papa!’ pleaded Eve with tears, ‘do not say this. It is not true.’

‘Not true? Why do you practise concealment from me? Why do you carry about with you a ring which Mr. Coyshe never gave you? Produce it, I have been told about it. You have left it on your table and it has been seen, a ring with a turquoise forget-me-not. Who gave you that? Answer me if you dare. What is the meaning of these runnings to and fro into the woods, to the rocks?’ The old man worked himself into wildness and want of consideration for his child, and for Coyshe to whom she was engaged. ‘Listen to me, you,’ he turned to the surgeon, holding forth his stick which he had caught up; ‘you shall judge between us. This girl, this daughter of mine, has met again and again in secret a man whom I hate, a man who robbed his own father of money that belonged to me, a man who has been a jail-bird, an escapedfelon. Is not this so? Eve, deny it if you can.’

‘Father!’ began Eve, trembling, ‘you are ill, you are excited.’

‘Answer me!’ he shouted so loud as to make all start, striking at the same time the floor with his stick, ‘have you not met him in secret?’

She hung her head and sobbed.

‘You aided that man in making his escape when he was in the hands of the police. I brought the police upon him, and you worked to deliver him. Answer me. Was it not so?’

She faintly murmured, ‘Yes.’

This had been but a conjecture of Mr. Jordan. He was emboldened to proceed, but now Jasper stood forward, grave, collected, facing the white, wild old man. ‘Mr. Jordan,’ he said, ‘that man of whom you speak is my brother. I am to blame, not Miss Eve. Actively neither I nor—most assuredly—your daughter assisted in his escape; but I will not deny that I was aware he meditated evasion, and he effected it, not through active assistance given him, but because his guards were careless, and because I did not indicate to them the means whereby he was certain to get away, and which I saw and they overlooked.’

‘Stand aside,’ shouted the angry old man. He loved Eve more than he loved anyone else, and as is so often the case when the mind is unhinged, his suspicion and wrath were chiefly directed against his best beloved. He struck at Jasper with his stick, to drive him on one side, and he shrieked with fury to Eve, who cowered and shrank from him. ‘You have met this felon, and you love him. That is why I have had such difficulty with you to get your consent to Mr. Coyshe. Is it not so? Come, answer.’

‘I like poor Martin,’ sobbed Eve. ‘I forgive him for taking my money; it was not his fault.’

‘See there! she confesses all. Who gave you that ring with the blue stones of which I have been told? It did not belong to your mother. Mr. Coyshe never gave it you. Answer me at once or I will throw my stick at you. Who gave you that ring?’

The surgeon, in his sublime self-conceit, not for a moment supposing that any other man had been preferred to himself, thinking that Mr. Jordan was off his head, turned to Eve and said in a low voice, ‘Humour him. It is safest. Say what he wishes you to say.’

‘Martin gave me the ring,’ she answered, trembling.

‘How came you one time to be without your mother’s ring? How came you at another to be possessed of it? Explain that.’

Eve threw herself on her knees with a cry.

‘Oh, papa! dear papa! ask me no more questions.’

‘Listen all to me,’ said Mr. Jordan, in a loud hard voice. He rose from his chair, resting a hand on each arm, and heaving himself into an upright position. His face was livid, his eyes burned like coals, his hair bristled on his head, as though electrified. He came forward, walking with feet wide apart, and with his hands uplifted, and stood over Eve still kneeling, gazing up at him with terror.

‘Listen to me, all of you. I know more than any of you suppose. I spy where you are secret. That man who robbed me of my money has lurked in this neighbourhood to rob me of my child. Shall I tell you who he is, this felon, who stole from his father? He is her mother’s brother, Eve’s uncle.’

Eve stared with blank eyes into his face, Martin—her uncle! She uttered a cry and covered her eyes.