Eve: A Novel

by S. Baring-Gould

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.’