There was a sudden scuffling in the wood as Jeffray rode by, a score of black pigs running squeaking and grunting amid the dead leaves and bracken. Close to the road, under the shadow of a great beech, sat an old woman with her chin near her knees, her nose a red hook above her lipless mouth. Behind the crone, and leaning against the trunk of the tree, stood a girl in a green gown and scarlet stays laced up over her full yet girlish bust, her short gown displaying a pair of buckled shoes and neat, gray-stockinged ankles. She wore also a red cloak, the hood, lined with rabbit-skin, turned back upon her shoulders.
Jeffray glanced at the pair as he reined in to avoid riding down a couple of pigs that were grunting and scurrying about the road. The girl in the red cloak was a tall wench with coal-black hair, petulant, full lips, cheeks tanned a rich red, a color that would have made the ladies of St. James’s appear pale and dim. Her eyes were of a hard and crude blue, looking almost fierce under their straight black brows. There was a haughty and intractable air about her. The sensuous curve of her strong figure seemed to suggest the agility and strength of a beautiful savage.
The old woman had clambered up and was laying her stick across the backs of the pigs with a verve that did her hardihood credit. The girl by the tree stood motionless, as though in no mood for playing under-swine-herd to the old lady. She was staring boldly at Jeffray, with no play of emotion upon her face, no softening of her large and petulant mouth. She looked, indeed, like a child of the wild woods, taught to rely solely upon her senses, and those primitive instincts that the forest life had developed.
The old woman dropped a courtesy to Jeffray as he rode on, but the girl by the tree favored him only with her barbaric stare. The storm wind was rising. It came crying through the wood like the massed trumpet-blasts of some black-bannered host. Jeffray drew his cloak about him, whipped up his horse, and held on for Rodenham. He still saw the hard blue eyes, the full, petulant lips, the black hair falling desirously about the ill-tempered and glowing face. He thought of Miss Jilian Hardacre’s rouged cheeks and simpering gray eyes. Surely the baronet’s daughter needed more blood under her delicate skin when even this forest wench made her seem thin and old.
II
It had begun to snow by the time Jeffray had left Pevensel Forest for the meadow-lands and brown fallows that spoke of civilization. Dusk had fallen, the whirling snow-flakes dimming the red glow in the west, yet filling the twilight with a gray radiance. Richard saw the lights of Rodenham village glimmering faintly in the valley below him. Soon he was riding through his own park with the thickening snow driving like mist amid the trees.
Jeffray left his mare at the stables and entered the house by the side door from the garden. The old priory of Rodenham was one of those dream-houses that seem built up out of the idyls of the past. It was full of long galleries, dark entries, beams, recessed windows, huge cupboards, and winding stairs. Casements glimmered in unexpected places. The rooms led one into the other at all angles, and were rarely on a level. Here were panels black with age, phantasmal beds, carved chests that might have tombed mysteries for centuries, faded tapestries that breathed forth tragedy as they waved upon the walls. All was dark, mellow, stately, silent. The very essences of life seemed to have melted into the stones; the deep throes of the human heart had become as echoes in each solemn room.
Jeffray found the Lady Letitia, his aunt, playing piquet in the damask drawing-room with Dr. Sugg, the rector of Rodenham. The Lady Letitia was a red-beaked and bushy browed old vulture, with wicked eyes and a budding beard. Her towering “head” was stuffed full of ribbons and feathers, her stupendous hoop of red damask, her gown flowered red and blue. The Lady Letitia was one of those preposterous old ladies who labor under the delusion that a woman of sixty may still presume to trade upon the reputation of impudent loveliness she had created some thirty years ago. Everything about the Lady Letitia was false and artificial. Her teeth and eyebrows were emblems of what her virtues were, manufactured articles to make the wearer passable in society. The old lady had deigned to drive down from London in her coach-and-four to spend Christmas with her nephew, a piece of affectionate economy necessitated by heavy losses at cards. She had deigned also to take Richard’s education in hand. The lad was deplorably quiet, gauche, and sensitive.
“So you are back at last, Richard,” she said, looking like a pompous old parrot, with one eye on her cards and one on her nephew. “Seat yourself, Dr. Sugg; Richard does not want you to stand on ceremony. Snowing, eh? Detestable weather; the country is like a quagmire already, as I may see by your coat and breeches, nephew. It is usual for a gentleman to dress before presenting himself to a lady. You look surprised, Richard. ‘Is it not my own house?’ you say. Certainly, mon cher, so it is, but I am a lady of birth, sir, and I like to be treated as such. How is Mistress Jilian? Deft at the harpsichord as ever?”
Richard, whose face had flushed towards the end of this oration, drew a chair beside the card-table, and seated himself before the fire. It was characteristic of the Lady Letitia that she had a habit of ruling and correcting every one. She would tilt her beak of a nose, fix her wicked little eyes on the victim, and drop gall and bitterness from her shrivelled old mouth with a condescension that made her detestable. There was an avaricious glint in the old lady’s eyes for the moment. Poor Dr. Sugg, purple-faced and stertorous, came nightly to the priory in clean ruffles and a well-powdered wig to permit the Lady Letitia to possess herself of his small cash in the hope that the worthy dowager might use her influence on his behalf with my lord the bishop.