THE DOVES.

Barbara had no thought of going to bed. She could not have slept had she gone. There was a clock in the tower, a noisy clock that made its pulsations heard through the quadrangle, and this clock struck twelve. By this time Jane had roused the young policeman, and he was collecting men to assist him in the capture. Perhaps they were already on their way,—or were they waiting for the arrival of warders from Prince’s Town? Those warders were more dangerous men than the constables, for they were armed with short guns, and prepared to fire should their game attempt to break away.

She looked across the court at Jasper’s window. No light was in it. Was he there, asleep? or had he taken her advice and gone? She could not endure the thought of his capture, the self-reproach of having betrayed him was more than she could bear. Barbara, usually so collected and cool, was now nervous and hot.

More light was in the sky than had been when she was on the down. The moon was rising over the roof. She could not see it, but she saw the reflection in Jasper’s window, like flakes of silver.

What should she do? Her distress became insupportable, and she felt she must be doing something to relieve her mind. The only thing open to her was to make another attempt to recover the prison suit. If she could destroy that, it would be putting out of the way one piece of evidence against him—a poor piece, still a piece. She was not sure that it would avail him anything, but it was worth risking her father’s anger on the chance.

She descended the stairs once more to her father’s room. The door was ajar, with a feeble yellow streak issuing from it. She looked in cautiously. Then with the tread of a thief she entered and passed through a maze of quivering bezants of dull light. She stooped, but, as she touched the garments, heard her father’s voice, and started upright. He was speaking in his sleep—’De profundis clamavi ad te;’ then he tossed and moaned, and put up his hand and held it shaking in the air. ‘Si iniquitates’—he seemed troubled in his sleep, unable to catch the sequence of words, and repeated ‘Si iniquitates observaveris,’ and lay still on his pillow again; whilst Barbara stood watching him, with her finger to her lip, afraid to move, afraid of the consequences, should he wake and see her in her disobedience.

Then he mumbled, and she heard him pulling at his sheet. ‘Out of love, out of the deeps of love, I have sinned.’ Then suddenly he cried out, ‘Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine, quis sustinebit?’—he had the sentence complete, or nearly so, and it appeased him. Barbara heard him sigh, she stole to his side, bowed over his ear, and said, ‘Apud te propitiatio est: speravit anima mea in Domino.’ Whether he heard or not she did not know; he breathed thenceforth evenly in sleep, and the expression of distress left his face.

Then Barbara took up the bundle of clothes and softly withdrew. She was risking something for Jasper—the loss of her father’s regard. She had recently drawn nearer to his heart than ever before, and he had allowed her to cling round his neck and kiss him. Yet now she deliberately disobeyed him. He would be very angry next morning.

When she was in the hall she turned over in her mind what was best to be done with the clothes. She could not hide them in the house. Her father would insist on their reproduction. They must be destroyed. She could not burn them: the fire in the kitchen was out. The only way she could think of getting rid of them was to carry them to the Raven Rock and throw them over the precipice. This, accordingly, she did. She left the house, and in the moonlight walked through the fields and wood to the crag and hurled the bundle over the edge.

Now that this piece of evidence against Jasper was removed, it was expedient that he should escape without further delay—if he were still at Morwell.

Barbara had a little money of her own. When she unlocked her desk and looked at the withered flowers, she drew from it her purse, that contained her savings. There were several pounds in it. She drew the knitted silk purse from her pocket, and, standing in the moonlight, counted the sovereigns in her hand. She was standing before the gatehouse near the old trees, hidden by their shadow. She looked up at Jasper’s other window—that which commanded the entrance and was turned from the moon. Was he there? How could she communicate with him, give him the money, and send him off? Then the grating clock in the tower tolled one. Time was passing, danger drew on apace. Something must be done. Barbara picked up some pebbles and threw them at Jasper’s window, but her aim was bad or her arm shook, and they scattered without touching the glass.

All at once she heard feet—a trampling in the lane—and she saw also that lights were burning on the down. The lights were merely gorse blazes, for Morwell Moor was being ‘swaled,’ and the flames were creeping on; and the trampling was of young colts and bullocks that fed on the down, which were escaping before the fires; but to Barbara’s nervous fear the lights and the tramp betokened the approach of a body of men to capture Jasper Babb. Then, without any other thought but to save him, she ran up the stair, struck at his door, threw it open, and entered. He started from his bed, on which he had cast himself fully dressed, and from dead weariness had dropped asleep.

‘For God’s dear sake,’ said Barbara, ‘come away! They are after you; they are close to the house. Here is money—take it, and go by the garden.’

She stood in the door, holding it, trembling in all her limbs, and the door she held rattled.

He came straight towards her.

‘Miss Jordan!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, Miss Jordan I shall never forgive myself. Go down into the garden—I will follow at once. I will speak to you; I will tell you all.’

‘I do not wish you to speak. I insist on your going.’

He came to her, took her hand from the door, and led her down the stairs. As they came out into the gateway they heard the tramp of many feet, and a rush of young cattle debouched from the lane upon the open space before the gate.

Barbara was not one to cry, but she shivered and shrank before her eyes told her what a mistake she had made.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘I give you my purse. Go!’

‘No,’ answered Jasper. ‘There is no occasion for me to go. I have acted wrongly, but I did it for the best. You see, there is no occasion for fear. These ponies have been frightened by the flames, and have come through the moor-gate, which has been left open. I must see that they do not enter the court and do mischief.’

‘Never mind about the cattle, I pray you. Go! Take this money; it is mine. I freely give it you. Go!’

‘Why are you so anxious about me if you hate me?’ asked Jasper. ‘Surely it would gratify hate to see me handcuffed and carried off!’

‘No, I do not hate you—that is, not so much as to desire that. I have but one desire concerning you—that we should never see your face again.’

‘Miss Jordan, I shall not be taken.’

She flared up with rage, disappointment, shame. ‘How dare you!’ she cried. ‘How dare you stand here and set me at naught, when I have done so much for you—when I have even ventured to rouse you in the depth of night! My God! you are enough to madden me. I will not have the shame come on this house of having you taken here. Yes—I recall my words—I do hate you.’

She wrung her hands; Jasper caught them and held them between his own.

‘Miss Barbara, I have deceived you. Be calm.’

‘I know only too well that you have deceived me—all of us,’ she said passionately. ‘Let go my hands.’

‘You misunderstand me. I shall not be taken, for I am not pursued. I never took your sister’s money. I have never been in jail.’

She plucked her hands away.

‘I do not comprehend.’

‘Nevertheless, what I say is simple. You have supposed me to be a thief and an escaped convict. I am neither.’

Barbara shook her head impatiently.

‘I have allowed you to think it for reasons of my own. But now you must be undeceived.’

The young cattle were galloping about in front, kicking, snorting, trying the hedges. Jasper left Barbara for a while that he might drive them into a field where they could do no harm. She remained under the great gate in the shadow, bewildered, hoping that what he now said was true, yet not daring to believe his words.

Presently he returned to her. He had purposely left her that she might have time to compose herself. When he returned she was calm and stern.

‘You cannot blind me with your falsehoods,’ she said. ‘I know that Mr. Ezekiel Babb was robbed by his own son. I know the prison suit was yours. You confessed it when I showed it you on your return to consciousness: perhaps before you were aware how seriously you committed yourself. I know that you were in jail at Prince’s Town, and that you escaped.’

‘Well, Miss Jordan, what you say is partly true, and partly incorrect.’

‘Are you not Mr. Babb’s son?’ she asked imperiously.

He bowed; he was courtly in manner.

‘Was not his son found guilty of robbing him?’

He bowed again.

‘Was he not imprisoned for so doing?’

‘He was so.’

‘Did he not escape from prison?’

‘He did.’

‘And yet,’ exclaimed Barbara angrily, ‘you dare to say with one breath that you are innocent, whilst with the next you confess your guilt! Like the satyr in the fable, I would drive you from my presence, you blower of true and false!’

He caught her hands again and held her firmly, whilst he drew her out of the shadow of the archway into the moonlight of the court.

‘Do you give it up?’ he asked; and, by the moon, the sickle moon, on his pale face, she saw him smile. By that same moon he saw the frown on her brow. ‘Miss Barbara, I am not Ezekiel Babb’s only son!’

Her heart stood still; then the blood rushed through her veins like the tidal bore in the Severn. The whole of the sky seemed full of daylight. She saw all now clearly. Her pride, her anger fell from her as the chains fell from Peter when the angel touched him.

‘No, Miss Jordan, I am guiltless in this matter—guiltless in everything except in having deceived you.’

‘God forgive you!’ she said in a low tone as her eyes fell and tears rushed to them. She did not draw her hands from his. She was too much dazed to know that he held them. ‘God forgive you!—you have made me suffer very much!’

She did not see how his large earnest eyes were fixed upon her, how he was struggling with his own heart to refrain from speaking out what he felt; but had she met his eye then in the moonlight, there would have been no need of words, only a quiver of the lips, and they would have been clasped in each other’s arms.

She did not look up; she was studying, through a veil of tears, some white stones that caught the moonlight.

‘This is not the time for me to tell you the whole sad tale,’ he went on. ‘I have acted as I thought my duty pointed out—my duty to a brother.’

‘Yes,’ said Barbara, ‘you have a brother—that strange boy.’

A laugh, jeering and shrill, close in their ears. From behind the great yew appeared the shoulders and face of the impish Walter.

‘Oh, the pious, the proper Jasper! Oh, ho, ho! What frail men these saints are who read their Bibles to weak-eyed Leahs and blooming Rachels, and make love to both!

He pointed jeeringly at them with his long fingers.

‘I set the down on fire for a little fun. I drove the ponies along this lane; and see, I have disturbed a pair of ring-doves as well. I won’t hoot any more; but—coo! coo! coo!’ He ran away, but stopped every now and then and sent back to them his insulting imitations of the call of wood-pigeons—’Coo! coo! coo!’