What wonder that Richard, chivalrous lad, pressed Miss Hardacre’s hand to his lips, and vowed that no more beautiful and forgiving spirit had ever chastened mortal flesh. What wonder that the reconciliation was complete between them, and that Miss Jilian consented to sing her songs. How much more finely she sang than that stupid giantess, Julia Perkaby! “La, cousin Dick, you must not call young ladies names.” Might he not read his epic poem to her? “Oh, Richard, I am such an ignorant little thing. Listen? I could listen all day. I am sure you are a genius, Richard. Mr. Pope and Mr. Dryden never wrote half such fine verses as yours.” What wonder that Richard Jeffray departed from Hardacre that day, convinced in his heart that he was in love with his adorable cousin. Why, she was an angel. How could Aunt Letitia fabricate such monstrous and malignant lies?
When the purple shadow of the Beacon Rock fell athwart the crisp turf that afternoon, Richard remembered, even in his state of exaltation, the glowing face and fierce blue eyes of the fair savage of the woods. Old Peter Gladden had told his master all he knew concerning the forest-folk whose hamlet lurked in the midst of Pevensel. Richard remembered the place vaguely as a scattering of stone-roofed cottages sunk in the shadows of the woods. He had often explored the rides and wood-ways of Pevensel as a boy, and had even taken young owls from a ruined tower of the Abbey of Holy Cross. A sudden whim seized him that day to follow the bridle-track that branched off by the Beacon Rock, and led close, so old Gladden said, by the hamlet in the woods. It would lead him out by White Hind walk on the broad coaching-road to Lewes.
No sooner had the whim tickled Richard’s sensibilities for romance than he was off at a trot down the bridle-track, seeing the Queen’s Circle sink down on his left below the slope of the open moor. The sun came slanting through and through as Richard wound through the solemn thickets, where the dead bracken glowed under the purple shade, and whin, whortleberries, and heather tangled each knoll and dell. There was a beckoning awe about the place, a brooding mystery that lured on and on.
Now Bess had wandered out, while old Ursula was taking a nap in the ingle-nook, to search for certain herbs that the old lady needed. She had thrown her red cloak over her shoulders, taken a rush-basket and a stout thorn stick. Three weeks or more had passed since the scrimmage in the pine thicket, and young David, fearing Dan’s wrath, had fled the hamlet, tramped down to Portsmouth, and been “pressed” for the king’s navy. Isaac Grimshaw had had the news from a Jew peddler who had come through by Chichester, and had seen young David dragged out of a tavern by the press men, and hauled off with others to the harbor. The Jew peddler knew all the forest-folk by name and face, having sold his wares to them and obliged Isaac in many ways, year in, year out. There had been hot words between old Isaac and his son, and hot words between Isaac and Dame Ursula. Bess had called Black Dan a coward and a bully to his face. But since the mischief was done, and young David on the seas, Isaac calmed the contentions of his flock, and mollified the women as best he could.
Dan Grimshaw had followed Bess from the hamlet that day with sullen fire in his red-brown eyes. There had been words between them in the morning, and the girl had treated the giant to a picturesque display of scorn. Dan Grimshaw was ugly enough, but it did not please him to hear the truth from Miss Bess’s petulant lips. He had blundered home to his cottage in bovine wrath, inflamed by the girl’s comeliness, and by her passionate taunts. Sly and savage he had watched her take the path that led up through the woods to Beacon Rock, and had followed at a distance, clinching his great fists as he saw her red cloak flit amid the trees.
Jeffray, riding down White Hind walk where the hamlet path crossed the sleek grass that seemed to run like a river amid the trees, was edified by beholding a tall wench belaboring a forester with a stick. The man was dodging from side to side, cursing and taking the blows upon his forearms. A basket half filled with sprouting weeds lay tossed aside under a tree. So busy were these two Pevensel savages with their stick-wielding and their dodging that neither of them noticed Richard’s approach.
Of a sudden, however, the scene took on a more sinister expression. The man had caught the stick and twisted it out of the girl’s hand. Jeffray could distinguish his inflamed and passionate face even at a distance of fifty paces. In another instant the man’s arms were about the girl’s body, and she was writhing and struggling like a hound hugged to the hairy bosom of a bear.
Richard, who had recognized the elf of the Queen’s Circle, pricked in his spurs, and went cantering down the ride. He rolled out of the saddle when close upon the pair, left his mare loose, and, drawing his sword, ran towards Dan Grimshaw and Miss Bess. The girl had one hand on the man’s throat, and was beating the other in his face. He had picked her up bodily and was holding her in mid-air when Richard’s shout startled his hairy ears.
Black Dan dropped Bess upon the grass, and, being mad as any antlered stag baffled by a hunter, snatched up the girl’s stick and made at Richard with savage good-will. Jeffray’s pretty bodkin of a blade was smitten away out of his hand, and he himself was brought low with heavy cut across the crown. Black Dan, his face as like a flesh-eating ogre’s as any nursemaid might paint for the intimidation of the young, stood over Richard as though tempted to strike again. He was balked in his charitable purpose, however, by finding Bess fronting him with a pistol in either hand. She had caught Jeffray’s mare, and plucked the pistols from the holsters, their master having forgotten the good barkers in the full flux of chivalry.
“Touch him, Dan, and I’ll shoot you, you devil.”