In truth, a fine stage effect, Belphœbe rescuing Timias from the wrath of the savage of the woods!
VII
Dan’s fury cooled out of him as he looked at the white face half hidden by a grass tussock, and caught a glint of the polished barrels of Bess’s pistols. Jeffray’s beaver had fallen off, and he lay with the blood soaking from a scalp-wound into his hair. Dan drew back, swinging his stick, and staring sheepishly at the blood trickling across Jeffray’s forehead.
Bess, seeing that Dan had come to his senses, put back one of the pistols into the holster, but kept the other in her hand. She ordered Dan back, and kneeling down on the wet grass turned Jeffray’s head gently into her lap. A look of wonder flashed into her eyes as she considered his face, for this was the man St. Agnes had showed her in her dream. He even wore black, with white ruffles at his wrists, and his blood had been spilled for her in saving her from Dan’s savagery.
She looked wonderingly at Jeffray, remembering him at last as the gentleman who had ridden by when Dan and David were fighting in the mist by the Queen’s Circle. The sight of the blood trickling across his forehead roused her from such reveries to womanly pity. She flashed a glance at Dan, and bade him give her the scarf he wore about his neck. With this she bound up Jeffray’s head, smoothing back his hair with her strong brown hands.
“Take him up,” she said to Dan; “we must carry him home to Mother Ursula.”
Dan was swinging his stick and watching Bess holding Jeffray’s head in her lap with a sullen jealousy that he could not dissemble. He obeyed the girl, however, and lifted Jeffray as though he had been a child. Bess picked up the fallen sword, and taking Jeffray’s mare by the bridle, pointed to the path that led towards the hamlet.
Old Ursula held up her hands when Dan appeared at her cottage door with Jeffray still unconscious in his arms. Bess told her foster-mother all that had happened, not deigning to spare Dan shame in the telling of it. They laid Jeffray on the settle before the fire, and sent in haste for Isaac, who knew all the gentry by sight who lived within ten miles of the Beacon Rock.
Isaac, sleek and authoritative, cursed Dan when he recognized the Squire of Rodenham.
“Dan ’ll swing for it,” quoth Ursula, with an unloving glance at her nephew.