XXXIII
If Winnie Jennifer was not in love with John Gore, she was in love with the love in him, for no man could sit and stare so at the fire, and look so quietly grim over such a matter, without winning over a woman’s heart. There was a romance here, and your true woman, be she drudge or madam, has that trick of the fancy that lifts life out of its sordid round and makes her a queen of the fairies, though there be gray in her hair. And when he looked at Winnie with those deepset eyes of his she knew that he was looking beyond her toward his love, and that the heart in him said: “I must go to her, for she has suffered.”
Therefore, when John Gore rose up from the ingle-nook about three in the afternoon, and asked her whether Mr. Jennifer could lend him several fathoms of good rope, Mrs. Winnie regarded him with a curious glint of the eyes, and felt a delight in meddling in such a matter.
“To be sure, sir, there is a good round of rope hanging on a harness-peg in the stable. Come you—we will see.”
She went out with him, swinging her brown arms and holding her head high, as though proud in her woman’s way of sharing in the adventure, and, opening the stable door, showed him a hank of brown rope hanging from the wood.
“How much would you be wanting, sir?”
“Ten fathoms will do.”
He took the hank down, and, laying it on the floor, began to measure the rope out, yard by yard, coiling it neatly close by Mrs. Winnie’s feet. It was good hemp, unfrayed and unrotted, not too thick and stiff, yet stout enough to carry the weight of three men.
Mrs. Winnie watched him, her eyes inquisitively kind, and her tongue all of a tremble. He was borrowing the rope in the cause of adventure, and she felt flattered in the lending of it, but she wished he would tell her what it was for.
“It is good hemp, sir.”
“I should know a good rope, being a sailor. I shall need it to help me in a bit of a scramble.”
Mrs. Winnie began to think of all the cliffs and quarries in the neighborhood, for John Gore had withheld the name of Thorn.
“I had better get you a wallet full of food, sir; you may be needing it.”
“You think of everything, Mrs. Jennifer. I am going treasure-hunting.” And he laughed.
“Treasure, sir?”
“Yes. In a few days I may bring my treasure-trove back with me.”
Mrs. Winnie understood of a sudden, and her eyes grew full of light.
“No doubt she is all you desire, sir, and I ask no more questions of you. You have told me enough before to make me want to take and comfort her.”
She went away, and returned anon with an extra cloak, a parcel of bread and meat, some apples, and a drop of good hollands in a flask, for the autumn nights were growing raw and cold. John Gore had saddled his horse and hung the rope over one of the holsters. He looked touched by Mrs. Winnie’s simple kindliness, and by the faith she seemed ready to give to him.
“I shall have a heavy debt before long,” he said.
“We don’t count by tallies here, sir.”
And she was quite happy, good soul, in feeling his gratitude pledge its truth. She watched him ride away along the hedge, knowing him for a brave man and a strong one—a man whom a woman instinctively respects.
Now, at Thorn, Simon Pinniger sat on a tree-stump in an out-house lazily splitting billets of wood with the axe edge of a pick. It was growing dusk, and a pile of white wood lay beside him, with here and there the pink core of an old apple trunk amid the billets of oak and ash. Simon Pinniger was tired of the job, and, filling a basket with split logs, he shouldered it and crossed the court-yard into the kitchen, and dumped the basket down beside the hearth with the air of a man whose day’s work was done.
The woman Nance was at the table, peeling apples for a pie, her lips pressed intently together, and three hard lines running across her forehead. The man looked at her a little furtively, and then went to draw some beer from a cask that stood in the corner. He put the jug on the floor under the tap, so that the ale should have a head on it, and stood there watching the liquor flow with the stupid slouching pose of a man whose body was too big for his brain.
“Sim!”
The sharp rasp of the woman’s voice brought him round as though she had clouted him on the ear.
“What are you thinking of, man?”
The red-lidded eyes behind the eyelet-holes in the linen looked capable of expressing nothing but fleshly things.
“Supper,” he said, curtly.
“Well, you’ll wait for it. Quick, you fool, the liquor’s running over.”
He turned and put a hand to the spigot, muttering as a rivulet of good ale curled across the floor.
“All your tongue, as usual.”
“It’s always my tongue, Sim, and never your lumpishness. Wipe that slop up; I’m not going to soil my shoes in it.”
He obeyed her, and then sat himself on the three-legged stool before the fire, taking the jug with him, and standing it on the hearth.
“There’s comfort in the stuff,” he said, sullenly.
The woman gave a sharp laugh.
“Courage, you mean, you six feet and a half of fat and folly! You would run away from it all but for me.”
“Run!”
“Yes, you.”
“You want a week of the branks, my dear. Give me my money and my liquor, and I’m the bully for any man.”
“Oh, you’re a fine fat falcon—you! Keep a little courage in the cask, Sim, till the business comes. Three days’ grace and no countermand. What’s it to be—a mattress, or a fathom of rope, or a soft scarf? What are you looking so sulky about?”
For the man had bunched himself over the fire, and was rocking backward and forward on two legs of the stool.
“Let it alone, you fool,” he said; “it don’t do a man good to think of such things.”
She looked up mockingly, and threw a half-rotten apple at him.
“Oh, you soft head!—you piece of pulp! You’re no better than a great girl—you, who pulled Adam Naylor’s windpipe out and broke in that Frenchman’s chest. You, to make such a blubber over this!”
“Who’s afraid?” he asked, savagely.
“My sweet conscience! Oh, dear, good saints! I’m a poor sinner, a poor snivelling sinner—”
“Nance, shut your trap!” And he opened his chest and roared at her with sudden fury.
She took it with a laugh.
“Better, Sim, better. Put a little temper into it. I’ll give you a pint of hollands when the night comes, and smack you across the face with a firebrand to make you mad.”
And she filled her apron with the apple-peelings, and came and tossed them into the fire.
A west wind blew fitfully about the tower of Thorn. The ivy rustled, leaf tapping against leaf; and the clouds passed slowly across the stars. An owl was beating up and down the edge of a neighboring wood, hooting as he went, now strangely near, now faint in the distance. From the court-yard came the dull “burr” of the dog’s chain as he fidgeted in his kennel.
Barbara had been at war with herself all day—distraught, troubled, afraid to believe that which she most desired. And with the dusk her uneasiness and her wavering suspense had deepened, heralding an anguish of self-hatred and humiliation that shirked the ordeal of another meeting. She dreaded lest John Gore should come, and yet listened for his coming, fearing and longing for him in one breath, the past and present fighting for her desire. Twice she rolled up the sheets to succor him in his climb, and twice unrolled them with a fever of indecision. Her heart labored with the secret that it held, striving against the untellable, yet trying to beat out nothing but the truth. There was that eternal blood-debt between them, lurid to her, now that the night had come, like the glare of a fire reddening the sky.
Barbara walked to and fro awhile, and then stood listening, leaning against the wall. Nor had she been long motionless when there was a faint rustling of the ivy, a sound as of something moving, of something drawing near to her in the darkness. She climbed the bed and put her hands to the bars. A faint whisper came up to her out of the sibilant shiver of the leaves.
“Barbara!”
The fever of doubt and of fear left her suddenly.
“John!”
“Can you help me?”
“Yes; wait.”
She was down instantly, rolling the sheets and knotting them into a rope. The strands of her hair were under the pillow. She took them and wound them round the knots, and, making them fast to a bar, threw the end thereof out of the window. But the rope would not run by its own weight, and she had to thrust it out foot by foot, standing on the bed and leaning her bosom against the wall.
The rope tightened, the knot straining at the bar. Then a shadow blotted out the window.
“Dear heart!”
She stretched out her hands to him, and then drew them with a sharp sob into her bosom, bending down her head and feeling the old despair taking possession of her heart.
“Barbe!”
He had forced himself into the stone framing of the window, and she could hear him breathing hard with the grimness of the climb.
“Where are you, child?”
He lay there with his face to the bars, and heard nothing but sudden passionate weeping. The sound of it went through him to the heart. He stretched out an arm and was able to touch her hair.
“Dear heart, what is it?”
She shivered and drew away.
“You should not have come—”
“No, no.”
“John, you should not—”
“My life, child—come, speak to me—I cannot bear to hear you weep.”
She knew that he was trying to touch her, to be nearer to her, even with all the deep tenderness of his manhood. It was so easy and yet so difficult, so sweet and yet so full of torment. She felt that she could not bear out against him; and yet—how could she tell?
He spoke again.
“Barbara!”
And then:
“Dear heart, do you not trust me?”
Something seemed to break within her, and she thrust up her hands to him with a cry as of one drowning.
“John, I am afraid! John, I am afraid!”
“There, my life.”
“Take my hands—hold them—keep me; I am afraid, John! Dear God, what can I say!”
Her courage and her will had gone, and a storm of trembling shook her. John Gore felt the quivering of her body coming along her arms to him. Her hands strained at his, as though he were the one sure thing left to her in the anguish of it all.
“Barbara!”
He drew her as close to him as bars and wall would suffer.
“Tell me, child, everything.”
“I can’t, John! oh, I can’t!”
“Dear, do you think there is not one heart in the world? Look up, and tell me; I cannot let you go!”
She was silent a moment, still trembling greatly.
“John, you will hate me!”
“No! no! no!”
“Your father—”
His hands tightened on hers.
“My life, courage!”
“Your father killed my father, John!”
“Child!”
“And I—I tried to win revenge.”
She buried her face upon her arms, and then lifted it suddenly toward him in the dark, as though in an agony to know what he was thinking. His hands still had hold of hers, and there was no slackening of his fingers.
“John!”
“Dear heart!”
He bent his head, and drawing her hands to him, pressed his lips to them. Below him he could see the dim, appealing whiteness of her face.
“Barbe, you should have told me.”
“I was mad.”
“Who shall judge us, dear? You should have told me. I might have spared you much.”
He drew her hands close into his bosom, and she leaned there, letting the tears flow silently and the sorrow in her take refuge in his strength.
“You will not condemn me, John—you?”
“I! What am I, child, to condemn you?”
“But I have learned and I have suffered, and, John, in the long, silent nights I have prayed to God that He would be merciful to me—that I in turn might be more merciful.”
He kissed her hands again.
“God is with us, child, here and now.”
“How good you are, John! If I could only tell him—and my mother.”
“Dear heart, let that rest awhile. It is you I pray for—you that I remember.”
He was silent awhile, like a man waking to life from some strange dream. Then he pressed her hands in his, and spoke very dearly through the bars to her.
“Barbe, I must get you away from here. I would do it without violence for your sake—for the sake of every one. It would be easy for me to kill that man, but I would not have blood with the memory of this.”
She looked up at him and sighed.
“Listen: you can trust me. I have a rope here round my body; take it, when I am gone, and hide it in your bed. I will come again to-morrow and file these bars through. Do you know how the door is fastened?”
“With lock and bar.”
“A tough customer. Do they leave you alone the whole night?”
“Yes.”
“Time, an auger, and a good knife will serve then. I have a place to take you to. You will trust me in this?”
“John, need you ask that?”
“Dear heart of mine, no, no. Now for a rope’s-end. When I am safe below I will give three twitches to the rope. Draw it up, dear, and hide it in your bed.”
“Yes.”
“And, child, if you are in danger, or fear anything, tear off a piece of linen and tie it to one of the bars. I shall storm in then without by your leave or welcome, and deal with those gentry at the point of the sword.”
He kissed her fingers, hung there a moment, and then unwound the rope from about his body. Fastening it, he touched her hands through the bars of the window and went down into the night.