AN IMP OF DARKNESS.

Jasper went immediately to Mr. Jordan. He found Eve with her father. Jane, the housemaid, had exhibited signs of restlessness and impatience to be off. Joseph Woodman, the policeman from Tavistock, a young and sleepy man who was paying her his addresses, had appeared at the kitchen window and coughed. He was off duty, and Jane thought it hard that she should be on when he was off. So Eve had let her depart with her lover.

‘Well,’ said Mr. Jordan, who was still in bed, ‘what is it? Do you want me?’

‘I have come to ask your permission to leave for a few days. I must go to my father, who is dying. I will return as soon as I can.’

Eve’s great blue eyes opened with amazement. ‘You said nothing about this ten minutes ago.’

‘I did not know it then.’

‘What!’ exclaimed Mr. Jordan, trying to rise on his elbow, and his eyes brightening, ‘Ezekiel Babb dying! Is justice overtaking him at last?’

‘I hear that he is dying,’ said Jasper; ‘it is my duty to go to him.’

‘If he dies,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘to whom will his property go?’

‘Probably to me; but it is premature to inquire.’

‘Not at all. My Eve has been robbed——’

‘Sir!’ said Jasper gravely, ‘I undertook to repay that sum as soon as it should be in my power to do so, principal and interest. I have your permission, sir?’ He bowed and withdrew.

At supper Barbara looked round, and noticed the absence of Jasper Babb, but she said nothing.

‘You need not look at that empty chair,’ said Eve; ‘Mr. Jasper will not be here. He is gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘Called away suddenly. His father is dying.’

Barbara raised her eyebrows. She was greatly puzzled. She sat playing with her fork, and presently said, ‘This is very odd—who brought the news?’

‘I saw no one. He came in almost directly after we left him on the Raven Rock.’

‘But no one came up to the house.’

‘Oh, yes—Joseph Woodman, Jane’s sweetheart, the policeman.’

‘He cannot have brought the news.’

‘I do not think Mr. Jasper saw him, but I cannot say.’

‘I cannot understand it, Eve,’ mused Barbara. ‘What is more, I do not believe it.’

Barbara was more puzzled and disturbed than she chose to show. How could Jasper have received news of his father? If the old man had sent a messenger, that messenger would have come to the house and rested there, and been refreshed with a glass of cider and cake and cold beef. No one had been to the house but the policeman, and a policeman was not likely to be made the vehicle of communication between old Babb and his son, living in concealment. More probably Jasper had noticed that a policeman was hovering about Morwell, had taken alarm, and absented himself.

Then that story of Jacob serving for Rachel and being given Leah came back on her. Was it not being in part enacted before her eyes? Was not Jasper there acting as steward to her father, likely to remain there for some years, and all the time with the love of Eve consuming his heart? ‘And the seven years seemed unto him but a few days for the love that he had to her.’ What of Eve? Would she come to care for him, and in her wilfulness insist on having him? It could not be. It must not be. Please God, now that Jasper was gone, he would not return. Then, again, her mind swung back to the perplexing question of the reason of Jasper’s departure. He could not go home. It was out of the question his showing his face again at Buckfastleigh. He would be recognised and taken immediately. Why did he invent and pass off on her father such a falsehood as an excuse for his disappearance? If he were made uneasy by the arrival of the Tavistock policeman at the house, he might have found some other excuse, but to deliberately say that his father was dying and that he must attend his deathbed, this was monstrous.

Eve remained till late, sitting in the parlour without a light. The servant maids were all out. Their eagerness to attend places of worship on Sunday—especially Sunday evenings—showed a strong spirit of devotion; and the lateness of the hour to which those acts of worship detained them proved also that their piety was of stubborn and enduring quality. Generally, one of the maids remained at home, but on this occasion Barbara and Eve had allowed Jane to go out when she had laid the table for supper, because her policeman had come, and there was to be a love-feast at the little dissenting chapel which Jane attended. The lover having turned up, the love-feast must follow.

As the servants had not returned, Barbara remained below, waiting till she heard their voices. Her father was dozing. She looked in at him and then returned to her place by the latticed window. The room was dark, but there was silvery light in the summer sky, becoming very white towards the north. Outside the window was a jessamine; the scent it exhaled at night was too strong. Barbara shut the window to exclude the fragrance. It made her head ache. A light air played with the jessamine, and brushed some of the white flowers against the glass. Barbara was usually sharp with the servants when they returned from their revivals, and love-feasts, and missionary meetings, late; but this evening she felt no impatience. She had plenty to occupy her mind, and the time passed quickly with her. All at once she heard a loud prolonged hoot of an owl, so near and so loud that she felt sure the bird must be in the house. Next moment she heard her father’s voice calling repeatedly and excitedly. She ran to him and found him alarmed and agitated. His window had been left open, as the evening was warm.

‘I heard an owl!’ he said. ‘It was at my ear; it called, and roused me from my sleep. It was not an owl—I do not know what it was. I saw something, I am not sure what.’

‘Papa dear, I heard the bird. You know there are several about. They have their nests in the barn and old empty pigeon-house. One came by the window hooting. I heard it also.’

‘I saw something,’ he said.

She took his hand. It was cold and trembling.

‘You were dreaming, papa. The owl roused you, and dreams mixed with your waking impressions, so that you cannot distinguish one from another.’

‘I do not know,’ he said, vacantly, and put his hand to his head. ‘I do see and hear strange things. Do not leave me alone, Barbara. Kindle a light, and read me one of Challoner’s Meditations. It may compose me.’

Eve was upstairs, amusing herself with unfolding and trying on the yellow and crimson dress she had found in the garret. She knew that Barbara would not come upstairs yet. She would have been afraid to masquerade before her. She put her looking-glass on a chair, so that she might see herself better in it. Then she took the timbrel, and poised herself on one foot, and held the instrument over her head, and lightly tingled the little bells. She had put on the blue turquoise ring. She looked at it, kissed it, waved that hand, and rattled the tambourine, but not so loud that Barbara might hear. Eve was quite happy thus amusing herself. Her only disappointment was that she had not more such dresses to try on.

All at once she started, stood still, turned and uttered a cry of terror. She had been posturing hitherto with her back to the window. A noise at it made her look round. She saw, seated in it, with his short legs inside, and his hands grasping the stone mullions—a small dark figure.

‘Well done, Eve! Well done, Zerlina!

LÀ ci darem la mano,
LÀ mi dirai di si!’

Then the boy laughed maliciously; he enjoyed her confusion and alarm.

‘The weak-eyed Leah is away, quieting Laban,’ he said; ‘Leah shall have her Jacob, but Rachel shall get Esau, the gay, the handsome, whose hand is against every man, or rather one against whom every man’s hand is raised. I am going to jump into your room.’

‘Keep away!’ cried Eve in the greatest alarm.

‘If you cry out, if you rouse Leah and bring her here, I will make such a hooting and howling as will kill the old man downstairs with fear.’

‘In pity go. What do you want?’ asked Eve, backing from the window to the farthest wall.

‘Take care! Do not run out of the room. If you attempt it, I will jump in, and make my fiddle squeal, and caper about, till even the sober Barbara—Leah I mean—will believe that devils have taken possession, and as for the old man, he will give up his ghost to them without a protest.’

‘I entreat you—I implore you—go!’ pleaded Eve, with tears of alarm in her eyes, cowering back against the wall, too frightened even to think of the costume she wore.

‘Ah!’ jeered the impish boy. ‘Run along down into the room where your sister is reading and praying with the old man, and what will they suppose but that a crazy opera-dancer has broken loose from her caravan and is rambling over the country.’

He chuckled, he enjoyed her terror.

‘Do you know how I have managed to get this little talk with you uninterrupted? I hooted in at the window of your father, and when he woke made faces at him. Then he screamed for help, and Barbara went to him. Now here am I; I scrambled up the old pear-tree trained against the wall. What is it, a Chaumontel or a Jargonelle? It can’t be a Bon ChrÉtien, or it would not have borne me.’

Eve’s face was white, her eyes were wide with terror, her hands behind her scrabbled at the wall, and tore the paper. ‘Oh, what do you want? Pray, pray go!’

‘I will come in at the window, I will caper and whistle, and scream and fiddle. I will jump on the bed and kick all the clothes this way, that way. I will throw your Sunday frock out of the window; I will smash the basin and water-bottle, and glass and jug. I will throw the mirror against the wall; I will tear down the blinds and curtains, and drive the curtain-pole through the windows; I will throw your candle into the heap of clothes and linen and curtain, and make a blaze which will burn the room and set the house flaming, unless you make me a solemn promise. I have a message for you from poor Martin. Poor Martin! his heart is breaking. He can think only of lovely Eve. As soon as the sun sets be on the Raven Rock to-morrow.’

‘I cannot. Do leave the window.’

‘Very well,’ said the boy, ‘in ten minutes the house will be on fire. I am coming in; you run away. I shall lock you out, and before you have got help together the room will be in a blaze.’

‘What do you want? I will promise anything to be rid of you.’

‘Promise to be on the Raven Rock to-morrow evening.’

‘Why must I be there?’

‘Because I have a message to give you there.’

‘Give it me now.’

‘I cannot; it is too long. That sister of yours will come tumbling in on us with a Roley-poley, gammon and spinach, Heigh-ho! says Anthony Roley, oh!’

‘Yes, yes! I will promise.’

Instantly he slipped his leg out, she saw only the hands on the bottom of the window. Then up came the boy’s queer face again, that he might make grimaces at her and shake his fist, and point to candle, and bed, and garments, and curtains: and then, in a moment, he was gone.

Some minutes elapsed before Eve recovered courage to leave her place, shut her window, and take off the tawdry dress in which she had disguised herself.

She heard the voices of the servant maids returning along the lane. Soon after Barbara came upstairs. She found her sister sitting on the bed.

‘What is it, Eve? You look white and frightened.’

Eve did not answer.

‘What is the matter, dear? Have you been alarmed at anything?’

‘Yes, Bab,’ in a faint voice.

‘Did you see anything from your window?’

‘I think so.’

‘I cannot understand,’ said Barbara. ‘I also fancied I saw a dark figure dart across the garden and leap the wall whilst I was reading to papa. I can’t say, because there was a candle in our room.’

‘Don’t you think,’ said Eve, in a faltering voice, ‘it may have been Joseph Woodman parting with Jane?’ Eve’s cheeks coloured as she said this; she was false with her sister.

Barbara shook her head, and went into her own room. ‘He has gone,’ she thought, ‘because the house is watched, his whereabouts has been discovered. I am glad he is gone. It is best for himself, for Eve’—after a pause—’and for me.’