LEAH AND RACHEL.

Sunday was a quiet day at Morwell. As the Jordans were Catholics they did not attend their parish church, which was Tavistock, some four miles distant. The servants went, or pretended to go. Morwell was quiet on all days, it was most quiet of all on a bright Sunday, for then there were fewest people about the old house.

Jasper Babb had not run away, offended at Barbara’s rudeness. He went about his work as usual, was as little seen of the sisters as might be, and silent when in their company.

On Sunday evening Barbara and Eve strolled out together; it was their wont to do so on that day, when the weather permitted. Jane, the housemaid, was at home with their father.

They directed their steps as usual to the Raven Rock, which commanded so splendid a view to the west, was so airy, and so sunny a spot that they liked to sit there and talk. It was not often that Barbara had the leisure for such a ramble; on Sundays she made a point of it. As the two girls emerged from the wood, and came out on the platform of rock, they were surprised to see Jasper seated there with a book on his knee. He rose at once on hearing their voices and seeing them. If he had wished to escape, escape was impossible, for the rock descends on all sides sheer to great depths, except where the path leads to it.

‘Do not let us disturb you,’ said Barbara; ‘we will withdraw if we interrupt your studies.’

‘What is the book?’ asked Eve. ‘If it be poetry, read us something from it.’

He hesitated a moment, then with a smile said, ‘It contains the noblest poetry—it is my Bible.’

‘The Bible!’ exclaimed Barbara. She was pleased. He certainly was sincere in his repentance. He would not have gone away to a private spot to read the sacred volume unless he were in earnest.

‘Let us sit down, Barbie!’ said Eve. ‘Don’t run away, Mr. Jasper.’

‘As Mr. Jasper was reading, and you asked him to give you something from the book, I will join in the request.’

‘I thought it was perhaps—Byron,’ said Eve.

‘As it is not Byron, but something better, we shall be all the better satisfied to have it read to us,’ said Barbara.

‘Well, then, some of the story part, please,’ asked Eve, screwing up her mouth, ‘and not much of it.’

‘I should prefer a Psalm,’ said Barbara; ‘or a chapter from one of the Epistles.’

‘I do not know what to read,’ Jasper said smiling, ‘as each of you asks for something different.’

‘I have an idea,’ exclaimed Eve. ‘He shall hold the book shut. I will close my eyes and open the volume at hap-hazard, and point with my finger. He shall read that, and we can conjure from it, or guess our characters, or read our fate. Then you shall do the same. Will that please you?’

‘I do not know about guessing characters and reading our fate; our characters we know by introspection, and the future is hidden from our eyes by the same Hand that sent the book. But if you wish Mr. Jasper to be guided by this method what to read, I do not object.’

‘Very well,’ said Eve, in glee; ‘that will be fun! You will promise, Barbie, to shut your eyes when you open and put your finger on a page? And, Mr. Jasper, you promise to read exactly what my sister and I select?’

‘Yes,’ answered both to whom she appealed.

‘But mind this,’ pursued the lively girl; ‘you must stop as soon as I am tired.’

Then first, eager in all she did that promised entertainment or diversion, she took the Bible from Mr. Babb’s hands, and closed her eyes; a pretty smile played about her flexible lips as she sat groping with her finger among the pages. Then she opened the book and her blue orbs together.

‘There!’ she exclaimed, ‘I have made my choice; yet—wait! I will mark my place, and then pass the book to Bab—I mean, Barbie.’ She had a wild summer rose in her bosom. She pulled off a petal, touched it with her tongue, and put the leaf at the spot she had selected.

Then she shut the Bible with a snap, laughed, and handed it to her sister.

‘I need not shut my eyes,’ said Barbara; ‘I will look you full in the face, Eve.’ Then she took the book and felt for the end pages that she might light on an Epistle; just as she saw that Eve had groped for an early part of the book that she might have a story from the times of the patriarchs. She did not know that Eve in handing her the book had not turned it; consequently she held the Bible reversed. Barbara held a buttercup in her hand. She was so accustomed to use her fingers, that it was strange to her to have nothing to employ them. As they came through the meadows she had picked a few flowers, broken the stalks and thrown them away. There remained in her hand but one buttercup.

Barbara placed the Bible on her lap; she, like Eve, had seated herself on the rocky ledge. Then she opened near what she believed to be the end of the book, and laid the golden cup on a page.

Eve leaned towards her and looked, and uttered an exclamation.

‘What is it?’ asked Barbara, and looked also.

Behold! the golden flower of Barbara was shining on the pink petal of Eve’s rose.

‘We have chosen the same place. Now, Barbie, what do you say to this? Is it a chance, or are we going to learn our fate, which is bound up together, from the passage Mr. Jasper is about to read?’

‘There is no mystery in the matter,’ said Barbara quietly; ‘you did not turn the book when you gave it to me, and it naturally opened where your flower lay.’

‘Go on, Mr. Jasper,’ exhorted Eve. But the young man seemed ill-disposed to obey.

‘Yes,’ said Barbara; ‘begin. We are ready.’

Then Jasper began to read:—

‘Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east. And he looked, and behold a well in a field, and, lo, there were flocks of sheep lying by it.’

‘I am glad we are going to have this story,’ said Eve; ‘I like it. It is a pretty one. Jacob came to that house of Laban just as you, Mr. Babb, have come to Morwell.’

Jasper read on:—

‘And Laban had two daughters: now the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well-favoured.’

Barbara was listening, but as she listened she looked away into the blue distance over the vast gulf of the Tamar valley towards the Cornish moors, the colour of cobalt, with a salmon sky above them. Something must at that moment have struck the mind of Jasper, for he paused in his reading, and his eyes sought hers.

She said in a hard tone, ‘Go on.’

Then he continued in a low voice, ‘And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel, thy younger daughter. And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man: abide with me. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.’

The reader again paused; and again with a hard voice Barbara bade him proceed.

‘And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled. And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to Jacob.’

‘That will do,’ said Eve, ‘I am tired.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Barbara, in a subdued tone, ‘that Leah was a despicable woman, a woman without self-respect. She took the man, though she knew his heart was set on Rachel, and that he did not care a rush for her. No!—I do not like the story. It is odious.’ She stood up and, beckoning to Eve, left the platform of rock.

Jasper remained where he had been, without closing the book, without reading further, lost in thought. Then a small head appeared above the side of the rock where it jutted out of the bank of underwood, also a pair of hands that clutched at the projecting points of stone; and in another moment a boy had pulled himself on to the platform, and lay on it with his feet dangling over the edge, his head and breast raised on his hands. He was laughing.

‘What! dreaming, Master Jasper Jacob? Of which? Of the weak-eyed Leah or the blue-orbed Rachel?’

The young man started as if he had been stung.

‘What has brought you here, Watt? No good, I fear.’

‘O my dear Jasper, there you are out. Goodness personified has brought me here—even your own pious self, sitting Bible-reading to two pretty girls. How happy could I be with either! Eh, Jasper?’

‘What do you want with me?’ asked Jasper, reddening; ‘I detest your fun.’

‘Which is it?’ taunted the mischievous boy. ‘Which—the elder, plain and dark; or the younger, beautiful as dawn? or—like the patriarch Jacob—both?’

‘Enough of this, Watt. What has brought you here?’

‘To see you, of course. I know you think me void of all Christianity, but I have that in me yet, I like to know the whereabouts of my brother, and how he is getting on. I am still with Martin—ever on the move, like the sun, like the winds, like the streams, like everything that does not stagnate.’

‘It is a hard thing for me to say,’ said Jasper, ‘but it is true. Poor Martin would be better without you. He would be another man, and his life not blighted, had it not been for your profane and mocking tongue. He was a generous-hearted fellow, thoughtless, but not wicked; you, however, have gained complete power over him, and have used it for evil. Your advice is for the bad, your sneers for what is good.’

‘I do not know good from bad,’ said the boy, with a contemptuous grin.

‘Watt, you have scoffed at every good impulse in Martin’s heart, you have drowned the voice of his conscience by your gibes. It is you who have driven him with your waspish tongue along the road of ruin.’

‘Not at all, Jasper; there you wrong me. It was you who had the undoing of Martin. You have loved him and screened him since he was a child. You have taken the punishment and blame on you which he deserved by his misconduct. Of course he is a giddypate. It is you who have let him grow up without dread of the consequences of wrong-doing, because the punishment always fell on you. You, Jasper, have spoiled Martin, not I.’

‘Well, Watt, this may be so. Father was unduly harsh. I had no one else to love at home but my brother Martin. You were such a babe as to be no companion. And Martin I did—I do love. Such a noble, handsome, frank-hearted brother! All sunshine and laughter! My childhood had been charged with grief and shadow, and I did my best to screen him. One must love something in this world, or the heart dies. I loved my brother.’

‘Love, love!’ laughed Watt. ‘Now you have that heart so full that it is overflowing towards two nice girls. I suppose that, enthralled between blue eyes and brown, you have no thought left for Martin, none for father—who, by the way, is dying.’

‘Dying!’ exclaimed Jasper, springing to his feet.

‘There, now!’ said the boy; ‘don’t in your astonishment topple over the edge of the precipice into kingdom come.’

‘How do you know this, Watt?’ asked Jasper in great agitation.

‘Because I have been to Buckfastleigh and seen the beastly old hole, and the factory, and the grey rat in his hole, curled up, gnawing his nails and squealing with pain.’

‘For shame of you, Watt! you have no reverence even for your father.’

‘Reverence, Jasper! none in the world for anybody or anything. Everything like reverence was killed out of me by my training.’

‘What is the matter with father?’

‘How should I tell? I saw him making contortions and yowling. I did not approach too near lest he should bite.’

‘I shall go at once,’ said Jasper earnestly.

‘Of course you will. You are the heir. Eh! Jasper! When you come in for the house and cloth mill, you will extend to us the helping hand. O you saint! Why don’t you dance as I do? Am I taken in by your long face? Ain’t I sure that your heart is beating because now at last you will come in for the daddy’s collected money? Poor Martin! He can’t come and share. You won’t be mean, but divide, Jasper? I’ll be the go-between.’

‘Be silent, you wicked boy!’ said Jasper angrily; ‘I cannot endure your talk. It is repugnant to me.’

‘Because I talk of sharing. You, the saint! He sniffs filthy mammon and away he flies like a crow to carrion. Good-bye, Jasper! Away you go like an arrow from the bow. Don’t let that old housekeeper rummage the stockings stuffed with guineas out of the chimney before you get to Buckfastleigh!’

Jasper left the rock and strode hastily towards Morwell, troubled at heart at the news given him. Had he looked behind him as he entered the wood, he would have seen the boy making grimaces, capering, clapping his hands and knees, whistling, screaming snatches of operatic tunes, laughing, and shouting ‘Which is it to be, Rachel or Leah?’