Sugg, pocketing his Christian curiosity for the moment, told Jeffray, very simply, how Bess had stopped to speak to him at the parsonage gate, how he had felt pity for her, and by Mary’s advice taken her as a servant. He confessed his liking for poor Bess, and spoke with some heat of the way she had been ambuscaded and snatched away out of his house.
“Well, sir,” said the rector, at the end of the recital, “I was not a little vexed by the rough handling the girl received. She was a handsome, well-spoken lass, and gracious and kind as could be to Mary. My daughter saw the whole thing, sir, and blubbered over it all night. But what could I do, sir? I had no authority over the young woman’s person. I suppose by now they have forced her to marry that oaf of a cousin.”
“I saw Bess married this morning,” Jeffray said, quietly.
Dr. Sugg twitched his eyebrows.
“Indeed, sir—indeed!”
“Wilson and I were out driving and happened to turn down to Thorney Chapel. The wedding-party was coming out, and I suppose Mr. Mossop had been conducting the service. I can assure you, sir, that it was something of a shock to me.”
The rector drummed on his knees with his right fist, and looked at Jeffray with a certain amount of puzzled sympathy. He was at loss to know why the master of Rodenham should feel himself so deeply concerned in the matter, nor was it usual for a young gentleman of birth to take a brotherly interest in a girl of Bess’s station. The suspicion glimmered across the rector’s mind that there might have been some unlawful passage of romance between the two, but he dismissed it as an insult to his belief in Jeffray’s honor.
Richard himself had been touched by the reflection that Dr. Sugg might be concerned about his motives. Flushing at the thought, he marched out his forces boldly to the sound of the drum, like a general who is not ashamed either of his cause or of his men.
“Rector,” he said, “I suppose there is nothing in the world so convincing as the truth. I tell you, as man to man, that I have felt very tenderly towards this girl, for she saved my life, sir, and has had much to bear. I hold that reverence for the purity of womanhood is a virtue more honorable than the giving of gold. Therefore, I was shocked at the thought that this young girl should be sacrificed to the unclean appetite of a coarse and loose-mouthed savage. The fellow filled her with dread and with disgust. That is why I strove to save her from this shame.”
Sugg’s round face beamed sympathetically.