BETRAYAL.

Barbara came out on the platform of rock. Eve stood before her trembling, with downcast eyes, conscious of having done wrong, and of being put in a position from which it was difficult to escape.

Barbara had walked fast. She was hot and excited, and her temper was roused. She loved Eve dearly, but Eve tried her.

‘Eve,’ she said sharply, ‘what is the meaning of this? Who has been here with you?’

The young girl hung her head.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ she repeated, and her tone of voice showed her irritation. Barbara had a temper.

Eve murmured an inarticulate reply.

‘What is it? I cannot understand. Jane came tearing home with a rhodomontade about a boy jumping down on her from a tree, and I saw him just now at the gate making faces at me. He put his fingers into his mouth, hooted like an owl, and dived into the bushes. What is the meaning of this?’

Eve burst into tears, and hid her face on her sister’s neck.

‘Come, come,’ said Barbara, somewhat mollified, ‘I must be told all. Your giddiness is leading you into a hobble. Who was that on the rock with you? I caught a glimpse of a man as I passed the Scotch fir, and I thought the voice I heard was that of Jasper.’

The girl still cried, cried out of confusion, because she did not know how to answer her sister. She must not tell the truth; the secret had been confided to her. Poor Martin’s safety must not be jeopardised by her. Barbara was so hot, impetuous, and frank, that she might let out about him, and so he might be arrested. What was she to say and do?

‘Come back with me,’ said Barbara, drawing her sister’s hand through her arm. ‘Now, then, Eve, there must be no secrets with me. You have no mother; I stand to you in the place of mother and sister in one. Was that Jasper?’

Eve’s hand quivered on her sister’s arm; in a faint voice she answered, ‘Yes, Barbara.’ Had Miss Jordan looked round she would have seen her sister’s face crimson with shame. But Barbara turned her eyes away to the far-off pearly range of Cornish mountains, sighed, and said nothing.

The two girls walked together through the wood without speaking till they came to the gate, and there they entered the atmosphere of honeysuckle fragrance.

‘Perhaps that boy thought he would scare me as he scared Jane,’ said Barbara. ‘He was mistaken. Who was he?’

‘Jasper’s brother,’ answered Eve in a low tone. She was full of sorrow and humiliation at having told Barbara an untruth, her poor little soul was tossed with conflicting emotions, and Barbara felt her emotion through the little hand resting on her arm. Eve had joined her hands, so that as she walked she was completely linked to her dear elder sister.

Presently Eve said timidly, ‘Bab, darling, it was not Mr. Jasper.’

‘Who was the man then?’

‘I cannot, I must not, tell.’

‘That will do,’ said Barbara decidedly; ‘say no more about it, Eve; I know that you met Jasper Babb and no one else.’

‘Well,’ whispered Eve, ‘don’t be cross with me. I did not know he was there. I had no idea.’

‘It was Mr. Babb?’ asked Barbara, suddenly turning and looking steadily at her.

Here was an opportunity offered a poor, weak creature. Eve trembled, and after a moment’s vacillation fell into the pitfall unconsciously dug for her by her sister. ‘It was Mr. Babb, dear Barbara.’

Miss Jordan said no more, her bosom was heaving. Perhaps she could not speak. She was angry, troubled, distracted; angry at the gross imposition practised by Jasper in pretending to leave the place, whilst lurking about it to hold secret meetings with her sister; troubled she was because she feared that Eve had connived at his proceedings, and had lost her heart to him—troubled also because she could not tell to what this would lead; distracted she was, because she did not know what steps to take. Before she reached home she had made up her mind, and on reaching Morwell she acted on it with promptitude, leaving Eve to go to her room or stay below as suited her best.

She went direct to her father. He was sitting up, looking worse and distressed; his pale forehead was beaded with perspiration; his shaking hand clutched the table, then relaxed its hold, then clutched again.

‘Are you feeling worse, papa?’

‘No,’ he answered, without looking at her, but with his dazed eyes directed through the window. ‘No—only for black thoughts. They come flying to me. If you stand at evening under a great rock, as soon as the sun sets you see from all quarters the ravens flying towards it, uttering doleful cries, and they enter into the clefts and disappear for the night. The whole rock all night is alive with ravens. So is it with me. As my day declines the sorrows and black thoughts come back to lodge in me, and torment me with their clawing and pecking and croaking. There is no driving them away. They come back.’

‘Dear papa,’ said Barbara, ‘I am afraid I must add to them. I have something very unpleasant to communicate.’

‘I suppose,’ said Mr. Jordan peevishly, ‘you are out of coffee, or the lemons are mouldy, or the sheets have been torn on the thorn hedge. These matters do not trouble me.’ He signed with his finger. ‘They are like black spots in the air, but instead of floating they fly, and they all fly one way—towards me.’

‘Father, I am afraid for Eve!’

‘What?’ His face was full of terror. ‘What of her? What is there to fear? Is she ill?’

‘It is, dearest papa, as I foresaw. She has set her heart on Mr. Jasper, and she meets him secretly. He asked leave of you yesterday to go home to Buckfastleigh; but he has not gone there. He has not left this neighbourhood. He is secreting himself somewhere, and this evening he met darling Eve on the Raven Rock, when he knew you were here ill, and I was in the house with you.’

‘I cannot believe it,’ said Mr. Jordan, with every token of distress, wiping his wet brow with his thin hands, clasping his hands, plucking at his waistcoat, biting his quivering lips.

‘It is true, dearest papa. Eve took Jane with her as far as the gate, and there an ugly boy, who, Eve tells me, is Jasper’s brother, scared the girl away. I hurried off to the Rock as soon as told of this, and I saw through an opening of the trees someone with Eve, and heard a voice like that of Mr. Jasper. When I charged Eve with having met him, she could not deny it.’

‘What does he want? Why did he ask to leave?’

‘I can put but one interpretation on his conduct. I have for some time suspected a growing attachment between him and Eve. I suppose he knows that you never would consent——’

‘Never, never!’ He clenched his hands, raised them over his head, uttered a cry, and dropped them.

‘Do be careful, dear papa,’ said Barbara. ‘You forget your wound; you must not raise your right arm.’

‘It cannot be! It cannot be! Never, never!’ He was intensely moved, and paid no heed to his daughter’s caution. She caught his right hand, held it between her own firmly, and kissed it. ‘My God!’ cried the unhappy man. ‘Spare me this! It cannot be! The black spots come thick as rain.’ He waved his left hand as though warding off something. ‘Not as rain—as bullets.’

‘No, papa, as you say, it never, never can be.’

‘Never!’ he said eagerly, his wild eyes kindling with a lambent terror. ‘There stands between them a barrier that must cut them off the one from the other for ever. But of that you know nothing.’

‘It is so,’ said Barbara; ‘there does stand an impassable barrier between them. I know more than you suppose, dear papa. Knowing what I do I have wondered at your permitting his presence in this house.’

‘You know?’ He looked at her, and pressed his brow. ‘And Eve, does she know?’

‘She knows nothing,’ answered Barbara; ‘I alone—that is, you and I together—alone know all about him. I found out when he first came here, and was ill.’

‘From anything he said?’

‘No—I found a bundle of his clothes.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘It came about this way. There was a roll on the saddle of his horse, and when I came to undo it, that I might put it away, I found that it was a convict suit.’ Mr. Jordan stared. ‘Yes!’ continued Barbara, speaking quickly, anxious to get the miserable tale told. ‘Yes, papa, I found the garments which betrayed him. When he came to himself I showed them to him, and asked if they were his. Afterwards I heard all the particulars: how he had robbed his own father of the money laid by to repay you an old loan, how his father had prosecuted him, and how he had been sent to prison; how also he had escaped from prison. It was as he was flying to the Tamar to cross it, and get as far as he could from pursuit, that he met with his accident, and remained here.’

‘Merciful heaven!’ exclaimed Mr. Jordan; ‘you knew all this, and never told me!’

‘I told no one,’ answered Barbara, ‘because I promised him that I would not betray him, and even now I would have said nothing about it but that you tell me that you know it as well as I. No,’ she added, after having drawn a long breath, ‘no, not even after all the provocation he has given would I betray him.’

Mr. Jordan looked as one dazed.

‘Where then are these clothes—this convict suit?’

‘In the garret. I hid them there.’

‘Let me see them. I cannot yet understand.’

Barbara left the room, and shortly returned with the bundle. She unfolded it, and spread the garments before her father. He rubbed his eyes, pressed his knuckles against his temples, and stared at them with astonishment.

‘So, then, it was he—Jasper Babb—who stole Eve’s money?’

‘Yes, papa.’

‘And he was taken and locked up for doing so—where?’

‘In Prince’s Town prison.’

‘And he escaped?’

‘Yes, papa. As I was on my way to Ashburton, I passed through Prince’s Town, and thus heard of it.’

‘Barbara! why did you keep this secret from me? If I had known it, I would have run and taken the news myself to the police and the warders, and have had him recaptured whilst he was ill in bed, unable to escape.’

It was now Barbara’s turn to express surprise.

‘But, dear papa, what do you mean? You have told me yourself that you knew all about Mr. Jasper.’

‘I knew nothing of this. My God! How thick the black spots are, and how big and pointed!’

‘Papa dear, what do you mean? You assured me you knew everything.’

‘I knew nothing of this. I had not the least suspicion.’

‘But, papa’—Barbara was sick with terror—’you told me that this stood as a bar between him and Eve?’

‘No—Barbara. I said that there was a barrier, but not this. Of this I was ignorant.’

The room swam round with Barbara. She uttered a faint cry, and put the back of her clenched hands against her mouth to choke another rising cry. ‘I have betrayed him! My God! My God! What have I done?’