CALLED TO ACCOUNT.

‘Go,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘bring Eve to me.’

Barbara obeyed mechanically. She had betrayed Jasper. Her father would not spare him. The granite walls of Prince’s Town prison rose before her, in the midst of a waste as bald as any in Greenland or Siberia. She called her sister, bade her go into her father’s room, and then, standing in the hall, placed her elbows on the window ledge, and rested her brow and eyes in her palms. She was consigning Jasper back to that miserable jail. She was incensed against him. She knew that he was unworthy of her regard, that he had forfeited all right to her consideration, and yet—she pitied him. She could not bring herself to believe that he was utterly bad; to send him again to prison was to ensure his complete ruin.

‘Eve,’ said Mr. Jordan, when his youngest daughter came timidly into the room, ‘tell me, whom did you meet on the Raven Rock?’

The girl hung her head and made no reply. She stood as a culprit before a judge, conscious that his case is hopeless.

‘Eve,’ he said again, ‘I insist on knowing. Whom did you meet?’

She tried to speak, but something rose in her throat, and choked her. She raised her eyes timidly to her father, who had never, hitherto, spoken an angry word to her. Tears and entreaty were in her eyes, but the room was dark, night had fallen, and he could not see her face.

‘Eve, tell me, was it Babb?’

She burst into a storm of sobs, and threw herself on her knees. ‘O papa! sweetest, dearest papa! Do not ask me! I must not tell. I promised him not to say. It is as much as his life is worth. He says he never will be taken alive. If it were known that he was here the police would be after him. Papa dear!’ she clasped and fondled, and kissed his hand, she bathed it in her tears, ‘do not be angry with me. I can bear anything but that. I do love you so, dear, precious papa!’

‘My darling,’ he replied, ‘I am not angry. I am troubled. I am on a rock and hold you in my arms, and the black sea is rising—I can feel it. Leave me alone, I am not myself.’

An hour later Barbara came in.

‘What, papa—without a light?’

‘Yes—it is dark everywhere, within as without. The black spots have run one into another and filled me. It will be better soon. When Jasper Babb shows his face again, he shall be given up.’

‘O papa, let him escape this time. All we now want is to get him away from this place, away from Eve.’

‘All we now want!’ repeated Mr. Jordan. ‘Let the man off who has beggared Eve!’

‘Papa, Eve will be well provided for.’

‘He has robbed her.’

‘But, dear papa, consider. He has been your guest. He has worked for you, he has eaten at your table, partaken of your salt. When you were hurt, he carried you to your bed. He has been a devoted servant to you.’

‘We are quits,’ said Mr. Jordan. ‘He was nursed when he was ill. That makes up for all the good he has done me. Then there is that other account which can never be made up.’

‘I am sure, papa, he repents.’

‘And tries to snatch away Eve, as he has snatched away her fortune?’

‘Papa, there I think he may be excused. Consider how beautiful Eve is. It is quite impossible for a man to see her and not love her. I do not myself know what love is, but I have read about it, and I have fancied to myself what it is—a kind of madness that comes on one, and obscures the judgment. I do not believe that Mr. Jasper had any thought of Eve at first, but little by little she won him. You know, papa, how she has run after him, like a kitten; and so she has stolen his heart out of his breast before he knew what she was about. Then, after that, everything—honour, duty went. I dare say it is very hard for one who loves to think calmly and act conscientiously! Would you like the lights brought in, papa?’

He shook his head.

‘You must not remain up longer than you can bear,’ she said. She took a seat on a stool, and leaned her head on her hand, her elbow resting on her knee. ‘Papa, whilst I have been waiting in the hall, I have turned the whole matter over and over in my mind. Papa, I suppose that Eve’s mother was very, very beautiful?’

He sighed in the dark and put his hands together. The pale twilight through the window shone on them; they were white and ghost-like.

‘Papa dear, I suppose that you saw her when she was ill every day, and got to love her. I dare say you struggled against the feeling, but your heart was too strong for your head and carried your resolutions away, just as I have seen a flood on the Tamar against the dam at Abbotswear; it has burst through all obstructions, and in a moment every trace of the dam has disappeared. You were under the same roof with her. Then there came a great ache here’—she touched her heart—’allowing you no rest. Well, dear papa, I think it must have been so with Mr. Babb, he saw our dear sweet Eve daily, and love for her swelled in his heart; he formed the strongest resolutions, and platted them with the toughest considerations, and stamped and wedged them in with vigorous effort, but all was of no avail—the flood rose and burst over it and carried all away.’

Mr. Jordan was touched by the allusion to his dead or lost wife, but not in the manner Barbara intended.

‘I have heard,’ continued Barbara, ‘that Eve’s mother was brought to this house very ill, and that you cared for her till she was recovered. Was it in this room? Was it in this bed?’

She heard a low moan, and saw the white hands raised in deprecation, or in prayer.

‘Then you sat here and watched her; and when she was in fever you suffered; when her breath came so faint that you thought she was dying, your very soul stood on tiptoe, agonised. When her eyes opened with reason in them, your heart leaped. When she slept, you sat here with your eyes on her face and could not withdraw them. Perhaps you took her hand in the night, when she was vexed with horrible dreams, and the pulse of your heart sent its waves against her hot, tossing, troubled heart, and little by little cooled that fire, and brought peace to that unrest. Papa, I dare say that somehow thus it came about that Eve got interested in Mr. Jasper and grew to love him. I often let her take my place when he was ill. You must excuse dearest Eve. It was my fault. I should have been more cautious. But I thought nothing of it then. I knew nothing of how love is sown, and throws up its leaves, and spreads and fills the whole heart with a tangle of roots.’

In this last half hour Barbara had drawn nearer to her father than in all her previous life. For once she had entered into his thoughts, roused old recollections, both sweet and bitter—inexpressibly sweet, unutterably bitter—and his heart was full of tears.

‘Was Eve’s mother as beautiful as our darling?’

‘O yes, Barbara!’ His voice shook, and he raised his white hands to cover his eyes. ‘Even more beautiful.’

‘And you loved her with all your heart?’

‘I have never ceased to love her. It is that, Barbara, which’—he put his hands to his head, and she understood him—which disturbed his brain.

‘But,’ he said, suddenly as waking from a dream, ‘Barbara, how do you know all this? Who told you?’

She did not answer him, but she rose, knelt on the stool, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him. Her cheeks were wet.

‘You are crying, Barbara.’

‘I am thinking of your sorrows, dear papa.’

She was still kneeling on one knee, with her arms round her father. ‘Poor papa! I want to know really what became of Eve’s mother.’

The door was thrown open.

‘Yes; that is what I have come to ask,’ said Jasper, entering the room, holding a wax candle in each hand. He had intercepted the maid, Jane, with the candles, taken them from her, and as she opened the door entered, to hear Barbara’s question. The girl turned, dropped one arm, but clung with the other to her father, who had just placed one of his hands on her head. Her eyes, from having been so long in the dark, were very large. She was pale, and her cheeks glistened with tears.

She was too astonished to recover herself at once, dazzled by the strong light; she could not see Jasper but she knew his voice.

He put the candlesticks—they were of silver—on the table, shut the door behind him, and standing before Mr. Jordan with bowed head, his earnest eyes fixed on the old man’s face, he said again, ‘Yes, that is what I have come to ask. Where is Eve’s mother?’

No one spoke. Barbara recovered herself first; she rose from the stool, and stepped between her father and the steward.

‘It is not you,’ she said, ‘who have a right to ask questions. It is we who have to call you to account.’

‘For what, Miss Jordan?’ He spoke to her with deference—a certain tone of reverence which never left him when addressing her.

‘You must give an account of yourself,’ she said.

‘I am just returned from Buckfastleigh,’ he answered.

‘And, pray, how is your father who was dying?’ she asked, with a curl of her lip and a quiver of contempt in her voice.

‘He is well,’ replied Jasper. ‘I was deceived about his sickness. He has not been ill. I was sent on a fool’s errand.’

‘Then,’ said Mr. Jordan, who had recovered himself, ‘what about the money?’

‘The recovery of that is as distant as ever, but also as certain.’

‘Mr. Jasper Babb,’ exclaimed Ignatius Jordan, ‘you have not been to Buckfastleigh at all. You have not seen your father; you have deceived me with——’

Barbara hastily interrupted him, saying with beating heart, and with colour rising to her pale checks, ‘I pray you, I pray you, say no more. We know very well that you have not left this neighbourhood.’

‘I do not understand you, Miss Jordan. I am but just returned. My horse is not yet unsaddled.’

‘Not another word,’ exclaimed the girl, with pain in her voice. ‘Not another word if you wish us to retain a particle of regard for you. I have pitied you, I have excused you but if you lie—I have said the word, I cannot withdraw it—I give you up.’ Fire was in her heart, tears in her throat.

‘I will speak,’ said Jasper. ‘I value your regard, Miss Jordan, above everything that the world contains. I cannot tamely lose that. There has been a misapprehension. How it has arisen I do not know, but arisen it has, and dissipated it shall be. It is true, as I said, that I was deceived about my father’s condition, wilfully, maliciously deceived. I rode yesterday to Buckfastleigh, and have but just returned. If my father had been dying you would not have seen me here so soon.’

‘We cannot listen to this. We cannot endure this,’ cried Barbara. ‘Will you madden me, after all that has been done for you? It is cruel, cruel!’ Then, unable to control the flood of tears that rose to her eyes, she left the room and the glare of candles.

Jasper approached Mr. Jordan. He had not lost his self-restraint. ‘I do not comprehend this charge of falsehood brought against me. I can bring you a token that I have seen my father, a token you will not dispute. He has told me who your second wife was. She was my sister. Will you do me the justice to say that you believe me?’

‘Yes,’ answered the old man, faintly.

‘May I recall Miss Jordan? I cannot endure that she should suppose me false.’

‘If you will.’

‘One word more. Do you wish our kinship to be known to her, or is it to be kept a secret, at least for a while?’

‘Do not tell her.’

Then Jasper went out into the hall. Barbara was there, in the window, looking out into the dusk through the dull old glass of the lattice.

‘Miss Jordan,’ said he, ‘I have ventured to ask you to return to your father, and receive his assurance that I spoke the truth.’

‘But,’ exclaimed Barbara, turning roughly upon him, ‘you were on the Raven Rock with my sister at sunset, and had your brother planted at the gate to watch against intruders.’

‘My brother?’

‘Yes, a boy.’

‘I do not understand you.’

‘It is true. I saw him, I saw you. Eve confessed it. What do you say to that?’

Jasper bit his thumb.

Barbara laughed bitterly.

‘I know why you pretended to go away—because a policeman was here on Sunday, and you were afraid. Take care! I have betrayed you. Your secret is known. You are not safe here.’

‘Miss Jordan,’ said the young man quietly, ‘you are mistaken. I did not meet your sister. I would not deceive you for all the world contains. I warn you that Miss Eve is menaced, and I was sent out of the way lest I should be here to protect her.’

Barbara gave a little contemptuous gasp.

‘I cannot listen to you any longer,’ she said angrily. ‘Take my warning. Leave this place. It is no longer safe. I tell you—I, yes, I have betrayed you.’

‘I will not go,’ said Jasper, ‘I dare not. I have the interest of your family too near my heart to leave.’

‘You will not go!’ exclaimed Barbara, trembling with anger and scorn. ‘I neither believe you, nor trust you. I’—she set her teeth and said through them, with her heart in her mouth—’Jasper, I hate you!’