“Yes, for the good of both parties. Pardon the suggestion, but ladies need time for proper and reasonable convalescence. Let there be an interlude, Mr. Jeffray; I recommend it as a man of sentiment.”
Jeffray caught the surgeon’s meaning, and discovered himself not so very prejudiced against the proposal, in that it offered him time for procrastinating with the future. He had had but little sleep the previous night, with Jilian’s scarred face haunting him and her patheticisms and her sneers ringing changes in his brain. He experienced an almost fierce desire to escape for a while from the importunate responsibilities of the present.
“Very probably, Stott, the change would do me good,” he said.
“Certainly, sir, certainly; pack your books away, and leave the thinking part of you at home. That is my advice—take it or leave it, as you like.”
Jeffray flattered the surgeon by acknowledging his authority, and by straightway deciding to join the Lady Letitia at The Wells for one month. He was glad of the excuse to commend himself to Jilian by letter, pleading ill-health and Surgeon Stott’s advice. He imagined that his absence might prepare Miss Hardacre for a possible parting, and at least he would gain leisure to face the future calmly and without haste.
He rode out that same evening, and found Bess in the valley of yews, a dusky fiord that ran from the green levels about Thorney Chapel into the towering gloom of Pevensel. Hundreds of yews were crowded about piled-up rocks that looked like the broken towers and battlements of a ruin. A path ran amid the trees, leading to a little glade where a pool covered with the white stars of the water-crowfoot glimmered before the old, rock-cut hermitage.
She started up on seeing him, the blood in her cheeks, sunlight in her eyes. Jeffray was as red as Bess, the sense of her nearness adding the charm of strangeness to the meeting.
“So you have found your way?”
She held out her hands, and Jeffray took them, brown and rough-skinned as they were. They seemed to smell of new mown hay and milk to him, and of the pots of musk that grow in cottage windows.
“I rode here last night, but you did not come.”