Mad Barbara

by Warwick Deeping

Mrs. Winnie stuck out her elbows as though to express the word “exactly.” But her husband came up to her and kissed her on the mouth with a manly vigor that swept away any sense of superiority on her part.

Mrs. Jennifer was busy over many things that day, seeing that Furze Farm might be turned into a refuge for romance, and that she had people of quality to cook for. Yet she found time to have a short gossip or two with John Gore over the parlor fire, and that which struck her most was the grim foreshadowing of something in his eyes, as though he had an enemy to meet or a debt to wipe out in the cause of honor. Had Mrs. Winnie been able to read his thoughts as he sat before the fire and cleaned his pistols after sending the bullets splashing into the pond, she would have hugged her bosom and have understood that grim look about his eyes and mouth. For in the silence of the night, and amid the wet, black woods where he had seen the dawn gather, John Gore had suffered a revelation that would have made any man’s heart heavy and ashamed. He had never greatly loved his father, nor had they ever trusted each other with the inner intimacies of life, yet a son cannot lay bare his begetter’s true nature without recoiling from it when he beholds rottenness and hidden sores. The tragedy was so plain to him, so terribly simple now that the scattered rays of his conjectures had been gathered by the burning-glass of truth. And John Gore had ridden into Furze Farm that morning with the cold raw air of the wet woods in his blood and the heart numb in him but for the thought of Barbara. The warmth of the fire and a tankard of ale had driven some of the poisonous taste from under his tongue, but the truth galled him like a bone in the throat, filling him with wrath and shame and pity.

Mrs. Winnie found herself called upon to provide more tools for him that day, and after some rummaging in an oak locker in the harness-room she found him what he needed—namely, a file and a half-inch auger. He also borrowed the pillion on which Christopher Jennifer took his wife to market at Battle, Hailsham, or Robertsbridge. By reason of these details Mrs. Winnie understood that the romance was deepening to a crisis, and though she kept her tongue to herself in the matter of asking questions, she cordially commended John Gore in his prison-breaking, having a hearty contempt for authority when true sentiment was threatened.

While John Gore rode through the woods when the evening mists began to dim the splendor of the trees so that they were like shrines of gold seen through the drift of incense, Simon Pinniger sat in the kitchen at Thorn drinking to get his temper up and his blood hot and muddled against the night. He would spread out his great hands before the fire and look at them with a kind of sottish pride, keeping an uneasy eye upon the woman Nance, who in turn kept a keen eye on him.

“What is it to be, Sim?” she asked, with the air of one who must keep a surly dog in good temper with himself.

The man drew off a great red neckerchief that he was wearing, made a loop, and, putting one fist through it, drew the ends tight with his teeth and the other hand.

“That’s my trick,” he said, dropping the end from his mouth; “them Spaniards have a liking for it, and Spaniards are particular in the playing of such tricks.”

XXXVI

There was to be a moon that night, and the thickets were black at sunset against the cold yellow of a winter sky. Frost hung in the air, with a gusty, arid northeast wind that came sweeping south with a sense of coming snow, while great purple cloudbanks loomed slowly into the north. The grass was already stiffening, and the leaves made a dry thin rattle as John Gore drew up in the beech-thicket over against Thorn. He had brought an extra cloak with him, and a loin-cloth for his horse, and after some searching he found a little hollow where dead bracken stood, and where the beast would be sheltered from the wind. He buckled the bridle about a young ash whose black buds and branches stood out against the sky.

John Gore took his sword, pistols, and tools into Thorn with him that night, tying them up in the end of a red scarf, and swinging them after him as he straddled the gate. He hid the sword and one pistol in the ivy at the foot of the tower, and set out on a reconnoissance, holding close under the deep shadow of the walls, and keeping a long knife ready in case the dog should be loose and on the prowl. There was a faint silvery glow low down in the eastern sky, but no moon as yet, and John Gore, meeting the keen north wind, thought of Barbara in that cold room, and felt his heart warm to her, and to Mrs. Winnie as he remembered the blazing kitchen at Furze Farm.