It was some time before the squire was able to speak. When consciousness returned he bent his face to Jasper, and there was not that flicker and wildness in his eyes which Jasper had observed at other times, and which had made him uneasy. Mr. Jordan looked intently and steadily at Jasper.
‘She did not run away from me. I did not drive her from my house as you think. It can avail nothing to conceal the truth longer. I did not wish that Eve, my child, should know it; but now—it matters no more. My fears are over. I have nothing more to disturb me. I care for no one else. I saw my wife on this rock meet the actor, I watched them. They did not know that I was spying. I could not hear much of what they said; I caught only snatches of sentences and stray words. I thought he was urging her to go with him.’
‘No,’ interrupted Jasper, ‘it was not so. He advised her not to return with her father, but to remain with you.’
‘Was it so? I was fevered with love and jealousy. I heard his last words—she was to be there on the morrow, Midsummer Day, and then to give the final decision. If I had had my gun I would have shot him there, but I was unarmed. All that night I was restless. I could not sleep; I was as one in a death agony. I thought that Eve was going to desert me for another. And when on the morrow, Midsummer Day, she went at the appointed hour to the Raven Rock, I followed her. She had taken her child—she had made up her mind—she was going. Then I took down my gun and loaded it.’
Jasper’s heart stood still. Now for the first time he began to see and fear what was coming. This was worse than he had anticipated.
‘I crept along behind a hedge, till I reached the wood. Then I stole through the gate under the trees. I came beneath the great Scotch pine’—he pointed in the direction. ‘She had her child with her. She had made up her mind—so I thought—to leave me, and take with her the babe. That she could not leave. Now I see she took it only that she might show the little thing to her father. I watched her on the rock. She kissed the babe and soothed it, and fondled it, and sang to it. She had a sweet voice. I was watching—there—and I had my gun in my hands. The man was not come. I saw rise up before me the life my Eve would lead; I saw how she would sink, how the man would desert her, and she would fall lower; and my child, what would become of my child? Then she turned and looked in my direction. She was listening for the step of her lover. She stooped, and laid the child on the moss, where I lie now. I suppose it opened its eyes, and she began to sing and dance to it, snapping her fingers as though playing castanets. My heart flared within me, my hand shook, and God knows how it was—I do not. I cannot say how it came about, but in one moment the gun was discharged and she fell. I did not mean to kill her when I loaded it, but I did mean to kill the man, the seducer. But whether I did it purposely then, or my finger acted without my will, I cannot say. All is dark to me when I look back—dark as is the darkness over the edge of this rock.’
Jasper could not speak. He stood and looked with horror on the wounded, wretched man.
‘I buried her,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘in the old copper-mine—long deserted, and only known to me—and there she lies. That is the whole.’
Then he covered his eyes and said no more.