“Nance, shut your trap!” And he opened his chest and roared at her with sudden fury.
She took it with a laugh.
“Better, Sim, better. Put a little temper into it. I’ll give you a pint of hollands when the night comes, and smack you across the face with a firebrand to make you mad.”
And she filled her apron with the apple-peelings, and came and tossed them into the fire.
A west wind blew fitfully about the tower of Thorn. The ivy rustled, leaf tapping against leaf; and the clouds passed slowly across the stars. An owl was beating up and down the edge of a neighboring wood, hooting as he went, now strangely near, now faint in the distance. From the court-yard came the dull “burr” of the dog’s chain as he fidgeted in his kennel.
Barbara had been at war with herself all day—distraught, troubled, afraid to believe that which she most desired. And with the dusk her uneasiness and her wavering suspense had deepened, heralding an anguish of self-hatred and humiliation that shirked the ordeal of another meeting. She dreaded lest John Gore should come, and yet listened for his coming, fearing and longing for him in one breath, the past and present fighting for her desire. Twice she rolled up the sheets to succor him in his climb, and twice unrolled them with a fever of indecision. Her heart labored with the secret that it held, striving against the untellable, yet trying to beat out nothing but the truth. There was that eternal blood-debt between them, lurid to her, now that the night had come, like the glare of a fire reddening the sky.
Barbara walked to and fro awhile, and then stood listening, leaning against the wall. Nor had she been long motionless when there was a faint rustling of the ivy, a sound as of something moving, of something drawing near to her in the darkness. She climbed the bed and put her hands to the bars. A faint whisper came up to her out of the sibilant shiver of the leaves.
“Barbara!”
The fever of doubt and of fear left her suddenly.
“John!”