Bess of the Woods

by Warwick Deeping

XV

Jeffray left Hardacre House that afternoon with his betrothal an assured fact in the eyes of Christendom. The way the fog had melted before him of a sudden had surprised even the generous Squireling of Rodenham. He had expected an unnerving interview with Sir Peter, and possibly a very affecting one with Miss Jilian, and here—in a morning he found himself betrothed to the daughter and embraced and blessed by a future father. Jeffray could only admire in Sir Peter the workings of an admirable and manly spirit of forgiveness. As for Mr. Lot, Richard still felt the slap that worthy gentleman had given him upon the shoulder and the hearty way he had crunched his hand. Jilian had been wondrous sweet and coy with her betrothed, and Jeffray should have boasted himself happy in possessing the right to clasp such perfumed purity in his arms.

Was it the inevitable reaction after so much sweet ecstasy and such squanderings of sentiment that threw Richard into a decidedly melancholy mood after taking leave of his Jilian on the terrace? No doubt the parting from the lady should have accounted for the onset of such a humor, but Richard’s inclinations were contrary to custom, since he desired to think and to be alone. Whether contact had crumbled up the romance, or whether the seriousness of the step bulked for the first time in Jeffray’s mind, he found himself meditating on the affair with a chilly reasonableness that was not begotten in the rapturous school of Venus.

Why was it that Aunt Letitia’s gibes and fables recurred with such vividness to his mind? He had not heeded them before the crisis; wherefore should he heed them now? He wished somehow that Wilson had not loved the girl ten years ago; ten years were ten years—despite idealism. What was amiss with him that the happy reunion of the morning lost some of its glamour and assumed the suggestive notion of a net? Surely he was not for recovering his own liberty, that liberty that had weighed as a mere feather in the balance against honor? Was not Jilian sweet and amiable, and still a girl, though older than himself? Surely he could imagine a father in Sir Peter and a worthy brother in honest Lot? And yet the vapor of melancholy persisted in Richard Jeffray’s mind, despite his angry reasonings with himself. He had been happy in the morning, righteously and sincerely happy. Why this loosening of the cords of confidence, this morbid introspection that suggested the possibility of error.

The day was such a one as begets the ideal of spring in the heart, warm, fragrant, like a dewy dawn in June. The hills and valleys were bathed in silvery light, a light more delicate and rare than the glare of summer. All the colors of the landscape were soft and beautiful, the dusky greens, the purples, the browns, the blue mistiness of the distant downs. On the far hills beyond Pevensel a piece of ploughed land would flash up almost as gold under the sun, or a chalk cliff glisten like foam at the throat of a bursting billow. The meadows in the lowlands were like a mosaic of emeralds set in silver.

Jeffray took the western track that plunged into Pevensel by White Hard Ghyll. The pines and firs stood out a rich and generous green against the sensitive azure of the sky, while the olive-colored trunks of the oaks upheld the purple feltwork of swelling buds above. The yellow palm was flashing in the breeze; primroses shone everywhere amid the moss and leaves. The ragged and tempestuous gorse flamed about the listening shadows of the woods. The track ran down into the wastes and crossed the stream that fretted by the ruins of the old Abbey of Holy Cross.

Richard had not seen the place since he had climbed and hunted there as a boy in the days when life flew fast and without thought. Holy Cross was a mile or more from the hamlet of the foresters, and perhaps some insensible magic drew Jeffray towards this relic of Popish power. The monastic calm, the glow of ancient memories, would be in keeping with the temper of the day. Certainly Mr. Richard was not anxious to return to the society of the Lady Letitia, and he found sufficient friendship in his thoughts. Yet the sly plea crept in amid the rest, for if chance favored him he might catch sight of Bess amid the woods, and learn how fortune had served her since she had nursed him in old Ursula’s cottage.

He walked his horse down the hill that closed in Holy Cross on the north. He saw the ruined walls and the ragged remnant of a tower rising beyond the trees that covered the hill-side. A stream came glinting through the green to swell into a broad pool above the stone weir that the monks had built of old. The thunder of the fall filled the dreamy silence of the valley, as though chanting an eternal mass for the souls of those who had lived and died in Holy Cross.

He gave himself to these Gothic mysteries for a while before turning his horse towards the ford that crossed the stream some sixty yards above the weir. The weir pool was hidden by undergrowth and a clump of firs and birches. The sound of his horse’s hoofs was deadened by the mossy grass as he rode down slowly from the ruins. As he rounded the birchen brake he saw something on the farther side of the stream that made him rein in suddenly.

Bess was sitting on a rock beside the pool, combing her hair with her fingers as it hung in a black mass over her shoulders. She looked up as Jeffray came splashing through the water, recognized him instantly, and flushed red as a poppy. A peculiar light kindled in her keen, blue eyes, softening their hardness, and making her face seem less petulant and heavy.