The pale man, Jordan, rushed at him and thrust his hand over his mouth.
‘Curse not,’ he said vehemently; then in a subdued tone, ‘Listen to reason, and you will feel pity and love for my little one who inherits the name and blood of your Eve. I have laid by money: I am in no want. It shall be the portion of my little Eve, and I will lend it you for seventeen years. This day, the 24th of June, seventeen years hence, you shall repay me the whole sum without interest. I am not a Jew to lend on usury. I shall want the money then for my Eve, as her dower. She’ – he held up his head for a moment – ‘she shall not be portionless. In the meantime take and use the money, and when you walk over the fields you have purchased with it, – bless the name.’
A flush came in the sallow face of Ezekiel Babb. He rose to his feet and held out his hand.
‘You will lend me the money, two thousand pounds?’
‘I will lend you fifteen hundred.’
‘I will swear to repay the sum in seventeen years. You shall have a mortgage.’
‘On this day.’
‘This 24th day of June, so help me God.’
A ray of orange light, smiting through the window, was falling high up the wall. The hands of the men met in the beam, and the reflection was cast on their faces, – on the dark hard face of Ezekiel, on the white quivering face of Ignatius.
‘And you bless,’ said the latter, ‘you bless the name of Eve, and the blood that follows it.’
‘I bless. Peace be to the restless blood.’
CHAPTER III.
THE WHISH-HUNT
On a wild and blustering evening, seventeen years after the events related in the two preceding chapters, two girls were out, in spite of the fierce wind and gathering darkness, in a little gig that accommodated only two, the body perched on very large and elastic springs. At every jolt of the wheels the body bounced and swayed in a manner likely to trouble a bad sailor. But the girls were used to the motion of the vehicle, and to the badness of the road. They drove a very sober cob, who went at his leisure, picking his way, seeing ruts in spite of the darkness.
The moor stretched in unbroken desolation far away on all sides but one, where it dropped to the gorge of the Tamar, but the presence of this dividing valley could only be guessed, not perceived by the crescent moon. The distant Cornish moorland range of Hingston and the dome of Kit Hill seemed to belong to the tract over which the girls were driving. These girls were Barbara and Eve Jordan. They had been out on a visit to some neighbours, if those can be called neighbours who lived at a distance of five miles, and were divided from Morwell by a range of desolate moor. They had spent the day with their friends, and were returning home later than they had intended.
‘I do not know what father would say to our being abroad so late, and in the dark, unattended,’ said Eve, ‘were he at home. It is well he is away.’
‘He would rebuke me, not you,’ said Barbara.
‘Of course he would; you are the elder, and responsible.’
‘But I yielded to your persuasion.’
‘Yes, I like to enjoy myself when I may. It is vastly dull at Morwell, Tell me, Bab, did I look well in my figured dress?’
‘Charming, darling; you always are that.’
‘You are a sweet sister,’ said Eve, and she put her arm round Barbara, who was driving.
Mr. Jordan, their father, was tenant of the Duke of Bedford. The Jordans were the oldest tenants on the estate which had come to the Russells on the sequestration of the abbey. The Jordans had been tenants under the abbot, and they remained on after the change of religion and owners, without abandoning their religion or losing their position. The Jordans were not accounted squires, but were reckoned as gentry. They held Morwell on long leases of ninety-nine years, regularly renewed when the leases lapsed. They regarded Morwell House almost as their freehold; it was bound up with all their family traditions and associations.
As a vast tract of country round belonged to the duke, it was void of landed gentry residing on their estates, and the only families of education and birth in the district were those of the parsons, but the difference in religion formed a barrier against intimacy with these. Mr. Jordan, moreover, was living under a cloud. It was well-known throughout the country that he had not been married to Eve’s mother, and this had caused a cessation of visits to Morwell. Moreover, since the disappearance of Eve’s mother, Mr. Jordan had become morose, reserved, and so peculiar in his manner, that it was doubted whether he were in his right mind.
Like many a small country squire, he farmed the estate himself. At one time he had been accounted an active farmer, and was credited with having made a great deal of money, but for the last seventeen years he had neglected agriculture a good deal, to devote himself to mineralogical researches. He was convinced that the rocks were full of veins of metal – silver, lead, and copper, and he occupied himself in searching for the metals in the wood, and on the moor, sinking pits, breaking stones, washing and melting what he found. He believed that he would come on some vein of almost pure silver or copper, which would make his fortune. Bitten with this craze, he neglected his farm, which would have gone to ruin had not his eldest daughter, Barbara, taken the management into her own hands.
Mr. Jordan was quite right in believing that he lived on rocks rich with metal: the whole land is now honeycombed with shafts and adits: but he made the mistake in thinking that he could gather a fortune out of the rocks unassisted, armed only with his own hammer, drawing only out of his own purse. His knowledge of chemistry and mineralogy was not merely elementary, but incorrect; he read old books of science mixed up with the fantastic alchemical notions of the middle ages, believed in the sympathies of the planets with metals, and in the virtues of the divining rod.
‘Does a blue or a rose ribbon suit my hair best, Bab?’ asked Eve. ‘You see my hair is chestnut, and I doubt me if pink suits the colour so well as forget-me-not.’
‘Every ribbon of every hue agrees with Eve,’ said Barbara.
‘You are a darling.’ The younger girl made an attempt to kiss her sister, in return for the compliment.
‘Be careful,’ said Barbara, ‘you will upset the gig.’
‘But I love you so much when you are kind.’
‘Am not I always kind to you, dear?’
‘O yes, but sometimes much kinder than at others.’
‘That is, when I flatter you.’
‘O if you call it flattery – ’ said Eve, pouting.
‘No – it is plain truth, my dearest.’
‘Bab,’ broke forth the younger suddenly, ‘do you not think Bradstone a charming house? It is not so dull as ours.’
‘And the Cloberrys – you like them?’
‘Yes, dear, very much.’
‘Do you believe that story about Oliver Cloberry, the page?’
‘What story?’
‘That which Grace Cloberry told me.’
‘I was not with you in the lanes when you were talking together. I do not know it.’
‘Then I will tell you. Listen, Bab, and shiver.’
‘I am shivering in the cold wind already.’
‘Shiver more shiveringly still. I am going to curdle your blood.’
‘Go on with the story, but do not squeeze up against me so close, or I shall be pushed out of the gig.’
‘But, Bab, I am frightened to tell the tale.’
‘Then do not