‘A mean and wicked wish. Tired already, I suppose, of doing honest work.’
‘Miss Barbara,’ he said, ‘pray let me speak.’
‘Cruel,’ – she recurred to what he had said before, without listening to his entreaty, ‘It is you who are cruel coming here – you, with the ugly stain on your life, coming here to hide it in this innocent household. Would it not be cruel in a man with the plague poison in him to steal into a home of harmless women and children, and give them all the pestilence? Had I suspected that you intended making Morwell your retreat and skulking den, I would never have passed my promise to keep silence. I would have taken the hateful evidence of what you are in my hand, and gone to the first constable and bid him arrest you in your bed.’
‘No,’ said Jasper, ‘you would not have done it. I know you better than you know yourself. Are you lost to all humanity? Surely you feel pity in your gentle bosom, notwithstanding your bitter words.’
‘No,’ she answered, with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, ‘no, I have pity only for myself, because I was weak enough to take pains to save your worthless life.’
‘Miss Jordan,’ he said, looking sorrowfully at her – and her eyes fell – ’surely I have a right to ask some pity of you. Have you considered what the temptations must be that beset a young man who has been roughly handled at home, maltreated by his father, reared without love – a young man with a soul bounding with hopes, ambition, love of life, with a heart for pleasure, all which are beaten back and trampled down by the man who ought to direct them? Can you not understand how a lad who has been thwarted in every way, without a mother to soothe him in trouble, and encourage him in good, driven desperate by a father’s harshness, may break away and transgress? Consider the case of one who has been taught that everything beautiful – laughter, delight in music, in art, in nature, a merry gambol, a joyous warble – is sinful; is it not likely that the outlines of right and wrong would be so blurred in his conscience, that he might lapse into crime without criminal intent?’
‘Are you speaking of yourself, or are you excusing another?’
‘I am putting a case.’
Barbara sighed involuntarily. Her own father had been unsympathetic. He had never been actually severe, he had been indifferent.
‘I can see that there were temptations to one so situated to leave his home,’ she answered, ‘but this is not a case of truancy, but of crime.’
‘You judge without knowing the circumstances.’
‘Then tell me all, that I may form a more equitable judgment.’
‘I cannot do that now. You shall be told – later.’
‘Then I must judge by what I know – ’
‘By what you guess,’ he said, correcting her.
‘As you will.’ Her eyes were on the ground. A white spar was there. She turned it over with her foot, and turned it again.
She hesitated what to say.
‘Should you favour me so far as to visit my father,’ said Jasper, ‘I beg of you one thing most earnestly. Do not mention the name of my companion – Martin.’
‘Why not?’
‘He may suspect him of having robbed me. My father is an energetic, resolute man. He might pursue him, and I alone am to blame. I lost the money.’
‘Who was that Martin?’
‘He told you – that I was nothing to him.’
‘Then why do you seek to screen him?’
‘Can I say that he took the money? If my father gets him arrested – I shall be found.’
Barbara laughed bitterly.
‘Of course, the innocent must not be brought into suspicion because he has ridden an hour alongside of the guilty. No! I will say nothing of Martin.’
She was still turning over the piece of spar with her foot. It sparkled in the sun.
‘How are you going to Ashburton, Miss Jordan?’
‘I ride, and little John Ostler rides with me, conveying my portmanteau.’
Then she trifled with the spar again. There was some peacock copper on it that glistened with all the colours of the rainbow. Abruptly, at length, she turned away and went indoors.
Next morning early she came in her habit to the gate where the boy who was to accompany her held the horses. She had not seen Jasper that morning, but she knew where he was. He had gone along the lane toward the common to set the men to repair fences and hedges, as the cattle that strayed on the waste-land had broken into the wheat field.
She rode along the lane in meditative mood. She saw Jasper awaiting her on the down, near an old quarry, the rubble heap from which was now blazing with gorse in full bloom. She drew rein, and said, ‘I am going to Ashburton. I will take your message, not because you asked me, but because I doubt the truth of your story.’
‘Very well, Miss Jordan,’ he said respectfully; ‘I thank you, whatever your motive may be.’
‘I expect and desire no thanks,’ she answered, and whipped her horse, that started forward.
‘I wish you a favourable journey,’ he said. ‘Good-bye.’
She did not turn her head or respond. She was very angry with him. She stooped over her pommel and buckled the strap of the little pocket in the leather for her kerchief. But, before she had ridden far, an intervening gorse bush forced her to bend her horse aside, and then she looked back, without appearing to look, looked back out of her eye-corners. Jasper stood where she had left him, with his hat in his hand.
CHAPTER XIII.
MR. BABB AT HOME
A lovely July day in the fresh air of Dartmoor, that seems to sparkle as it enters the lungs: fresh, but given a sharpness of salt: pure, but tinged with the sweetness of heather bloom and the honey of gorse. Human spirits bound in this air. The scenery of Dartmoor, if bare of trees, is wildly picturesque with granite masses and bold mountain peaks. Barbara could not shake off the anxiety that enveloped her spirits like the haze of a valley till she rose up a long ascent of three miles from the wooded valley of the Tavy to the bald, rock-strewn expanse of Dartmoor. She rode on, attended by her little groom, till she reached Prince’s Town, the highest point attained by the road, where, in a desolate plain of bog, but little below the crests of some of the granite tors, stands a prison surrounded by a few mean houses. From Prince’s Town Barbara would have a rough moor-path, not a good road, before her; and, as the horses were exhausted with their long climb, she halted at the little inn, and ordered some dinner for herself, and required that the boy and the horses should be attended to.
Whilst ham and eggs – nothing else was procurable – were being fried, Barbara walked along the road to the prison, and looked at the gloomy, rugged gate built of untrimmed granite blocks. The unbroken desolation swept to the very walls of the prison.1 At that height the wind moans among the rocks and rushes mournfully; the air is never still. The landlady of the inn came to her.
‘That is the jail,’ she said. ‘There was a prisoner broke out not long ago, and he has not yet been caught. How he managed it none can tell. Where he now is no one knows. He may be still wandering on the moor. Every road from it is watched. Perhaps he may give himself up, finding escape impossible. If not, he will die of hunger among the rocks.’
‘What was the crime for which he was here?’ asked Barbara; but she spoke with an effort.
‘He was a bad man; it was no ordinary wickedness he committed. He robbed his own father.’
‘His own father!’ echoed Barbara, starting.
‘Yes, he robbed him of nigh on two thousand pounds. The father acted sharp, and had him caught before he had spent all the money.