Front matter (continued 4)

Nance fell into a more serious mood as they saw Stonehanger standing bleak and grey in the moonlight. She knew that she was to be left alone with her own thoughts and fears, nor could she escape from some dread of the crisis that Jasper was provoking for her sake. She was afraid of De Rothan, and knew him for a dangerous and a masterful man.

They came to the place where the furze thinned out toward the rough grassland below the terrace. Nance faltered and paused. Her face looked shadowy and troubled.

"We must say good-bye here."

He looked at her very dearly.

"Good night, Nance."

Her hands seemed to wait to be taken in his, and her face was turned to his with sudden wistfulness.

"I don't like to think of what may happen."

"Don't think of it, then."

"How can I help it?"

They looked straight into each other's eyes.

"Nance, I'm not afraid of anything—for your sake. Take heart, dear, take heart."

Her lips quivered. Her white face and dark hair seemed to swim nearer to him in the moonlight.

"Nance——"

Their lips met. Her upturned face dreamed for a moment with shadowy mouth and closed eyes. Then she drew her hands away, and fled in a shy panic across the grass.

Jasper watched her with exultant tenderness. She paused, and turned at the steps, waved to him and disappeared. He was hidden from the house by the furze bushes, and he kept cover there lest Anthony Durrell should be watching from one of the windows.

Jasper made his way back toward Bramble End and Tom Stook's cottage. The night seemed very wonderful. The black summer woods reminded him of Nance's hair.

Three miles away De Rothan was riding slowly along lanes and field paths, moody-eyed and savage, a man possessed by ugly emotions. Jerome's failure to appear at the quarry had not troubled him very greatly. It was a dull anger against the man who had toppled him into a ditch that filled De Rothan's consciousness. He hated Jasper Benham with all the hatred of which a strong and passionate man is capable. He meant to be revenged, to salve his own smarting self-conceit. But even the easing of this blood lust was an inopportune necessity thrust upon him in the thick of many dangers. The affair had come to a head at the moment when De Rothan least desired it, for there were the larger issues to be remembered. In ten days—twenty days—a month, Napoleon might be in England. De Rothan wanted those days free and untrammelled. If he could only fight this man in some secret corner, and leave him lying hidden in a ditch! Yes, but would Jasper Benham consent to such conditions? Would it be possible for them to fight without a living soul knowing of the quarrel? De Rothan felt sore and savage over the problem. It threatened confusion to his plans, promised to interfere with the delicate balancing of possible events.

He reached the Brick House about three in the morning, stabled his horse, and was let in by the man Gaston. Supper had been laid in the long parlour, and De Rothan sat down and ate with the morose deliberation of a man who is vexed by his own thoughts. He was tired, too, and thirsty, and wine was a welcome sustainer. The long night spent in the open made itself felt. De Rothan fell asleep in his chair, while the two candles on the table burned steadily toward the sockets.

The light of the dawn was just touching the windows when a man came up the brick path to the porch and hammered at the oak door. The sound woke De Rothan, who sat up in his chair and stared at the candles. The knocking at the door was loud and persistent. De Rothan took a hanger down from over the fireplace, picked up one of the candles, and went out into the hall. There was a grill in the door, closed by a little wooden shutter. De Rothan set the candlestick on the floor, pushed back the shutter, and, looking through, saw a piece of greyish sky, and a man's right shoulder.

"Hallo—who's there?"

"Jerome."

"The devil! You are late, and at the wrong place."

"You'll thank me for being here at all."

De Rothan unbolted the door and let Monsieur Jerome in. He looked tired and sulky, with a shock-haired head that resembled the head of a wild beast. His forehead showed a big, purpling bruise.

He was a bearer of bad news, and he looked it. De Rothan guessed that at the first glance.

"What has gone wrong?"

"I'm thirsty. I'll drink first."

"Good, my child. Is it Dutch courage you want?"

"Look you here, Monsieur de Rothan, if I have come here to save your neck, keep your accursed tongue out of your cheek. I'll have none of it."

He looked savage and dangerous. They passed into the parlour. There were glasses on the table, and De Rothan took a spirit bottle from an oak cupboard, and mixed Jerome a stiff glass of grog.

"Sit down, man. What has happened? Why didn't you come to the quarry?"

"I came there right enough."

"So——!"

"Yes, to be knocked on the head and have the cipher stolen."

De Rothan's figure stiffened like a sword that has been bent against the floor, and is allowed to spring back into shape.

"You have lost the dispatches!"

"I say they were taken from me."

"By whom?"

"That fellow whom Mees Nance was kind to at Stonehanger, that Jasper Benham."

De Rothan's face grew dusky.

"God—you great fool—how did it happen?"

"Keep your big words to yourself. He and a man of his were in hiding. They knocked me on the head and had me on my back before I could take aim with a pistol. Then I was marched down to the sea by a lanky devil of a peasant, and left there to find the boat. They promised to have me hanged if I said a word, and didn't jump the Channel. I put out, and managed to sneak in and land again in the marshes—to save your neck—see! A lot of gratitude you seem to show me."

De Rothan stood resting his hands on the back of a chair. He did not speak for some seconds.

"Jerome, you have done me a service. I shall not forget it."

The sea-captain finished his grog, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He glanced at the windows that were going grey with the dawn.

"Time to make a run for it. The game is up."

De Rothan's forehead was one fierce frown.

"No, by heaven, it is not! I have these dispatches to recover—and to cut out Mr. Jasper Benham's tongue."

XXV

Jerome had gone, and De Rothan walked up and down the brick-paved path between the porch and the gate, with the two yew-trees cut in the shape of peacocks spreading their tails on either side. There were climbing roses flowering over the rust-red front of the house. The stone pillar of the sun-dial had an edging of rank, green grass.

De Rothan stood by the sun-dial and stared at it reflectively. What a thing was Time, how trivial and yet how urgent with its little droppings of sand or the slow stealing of a shadow! And time, delay, was everything to De Rothan for the moment. It was as though a marvellous clock had been constructed; that he had set it going and was waiting to hear it chime all manner of tunes at the hour of noon, when chance, in the shape of a Sussex squire, threatened to send a pistol bullet into the works, and to ruin the whole mechanism.

How was the thing to be prevented?

De Rothan's consciousness of the imminent peril of a betrayal was like the barking of dogs about a man who was trying to puzzle out some problem. The need for immediate action importuned him. He must have silence, for a week, two weeks, a month, silence till Napoleon's schemes matured, till Villeneuve made his dash for the Channel, and the French bayonets glittered in English meadows.

Supposing he killed this man?

So far as he could see, this grim attempt at a solution would only plunge him into further difficulties. There would be a huge outcry, for it would be next to impossible for him to hope to keep it secret. Even if he pleaded that it had been an affair of honour, the gentry here would not be in a mood to show much pity.

Moreover, Jasper Benham might have handed on his information, though it had been in his possession only a few hours.

It took De Rothan some time to strike the one possible line of attack. The idea came to him as an inspiration. He seized it, and turned it over and over in his mind with the exultant audacity of a man recovering his self-confidence.

De Rothan returned to the parlour, and sat down before the oak bureau by the window. The scratching of a quill pen ran on through the silence. He frowned, and moved restlessly in his chair as he wrote, his whole mind-force concentrating itself upon the wording of that letter. When he had finished it and sealed it, he sat awhile, reflecting. Some one was moving now in the house. Gaston and the other two servants were stirring.

De Rothan went out into the hall and waited. A door opened. Heavy footsteps came down the stairs.

"Gaston."

"Monsieur?"

"Quick, man, come in here."

He took the slow, surly fellow into the parlour, poured him out a glass of wine, and began to talk decisively and quickly. Gaston listened, sipping his wine, and staring at De Rothan with the intelligence of a shrewd and ugly dog.

"You can trust me, monsieur."

"It will not be for nothing."

"No, no, one does not risk one's neck for nothing."

"You know Rush Heath Hall; we have often ridden that way. Saddle a horse at once, and take this letter to Mr. Jasper Benham. Give it to none but him. Answer no questions. Wait for him if he is not at home."

"Yes, monsieur."

"I will look to things here. François and Jean will obey you, if needs be?"

"They fear me, monsieur."

"Good. There is the south attic. We can knock staples into one of the oak posts, and fasten rings to the floor. Off with you, Gaston. By the Emperor, there is no time to lose."

It happened that De Rothan's man did not have to ride all the way to Rush Heath that morning. As he was coming down Hog Lane into the road from the direction of Bexhill, he sighted a gentleman on a brown cob trotting toward him. Gaston was none too sure of the way, and he hailed the man on the brown cob.

"To Rush Heath, sir?"

Jasper reined in with a stare at this queer-looking rogue in livery on a smart-looking horse. He was riding home from Tom Stook's cottage after two hours' sleep on a bundle of bracken, the bracken being cleaner than Tom's bed.

"Yes. What do you want at Rush Heath?"

"I carry a letter."

"From the Chevalier de Rothan, perhaps?"

"From the Chevalier de Rothan to Meester Jasper Benham."

Gaston chewed at his broken English, for he was a man who talked as though he were munching a crust.

"I can save you two miles. I am Mr. Jasper Benham."

Gaston eyed him critically.

"All right, monsieur, you need not doubt me being myself. I was expecting to hear from your master."

Gaston handed the letter over.

"It is urgent, monsieur."

"No doubt."

"Good day to you, monsieur."

"Good day to you."

And they parted company, Jasper riding on toward Rush Heath.

Curiosity pinched him, and he stopped his horse under the shade of one of the big chestnut-trees by Lavender's Forge, and opened De Rothan's letter. It was written in a fine hand upon fine paper, and the heads and tails of the letters ran into curls and flourishes, making it quite a courtly document where each word kept up a kind of royal progress.

MR. JASPER BENHAM.

SIR—

I send this in haste by the hands of my servant. Seeing that I have had news that calls me to London, and seeing that I must chastise you before I go, I ask you to meet me in the clearing in Darvel's Wood. You will know the place. They tell me charcoal-burners used to burn charcoal there.

I have no time to attend to formalities and to send you my friends. I desire to fight you as man to man, and I shall go alone to Darvel's Wood.

Bring a sword and pistols. We will take our choice.

I shall be in the wood by seven o'clock this evening, and I shall wait there for an hour. If you do not come to me I shall be constrained to scorn you as a coward, and shall go my way, promising to deal with you on my return.

DE ROTHAN.

The audacity and the informality of the challenge were all to Jasper's liking. De Rothan was giving him the opportunity that he desired, and its very nearness made him realise the utter seriousness of the adventure. De Rothan would show him little consideration when their swords crossed or their pistols pointed in the middle of Darvel's Wood. It was a question of nerve, steadiness, and determination. Men pull themselves together to meet such hazards, more easily perhaps when they have learned to take big risks in some such school as the hunting field. Moreover, Jasper Benham had pledged himself, and he was in love.

He would ride to Darvel's Wood and fight De Rothan. His confidence steadied itself on a quiet belief in his own strength and skill. There was just that simmer of exhilaration in his mood that makes a man a little better than his normal self. It was his day. He felt on the top of the game, with all the confidence of a man who attacks.

He rode on toward Rush Heath, putting his plans in order.

There was Jeremy Winter to be considered, and he had to decide that he would tell Jeremy nothing. Winter would never consent to let him fight upon such terms, and would insist on going with him to Darvel's Wood. Jasper knew what Jeremy could be when he was obstinate, and that it was hard to beat him from a position when he had once chosen it. He would have to keep Jeremy Winter out of the adventure.

At Rush Heath Jasper found that Jeremy had ridden into Hastings, and might not be back till supper time. This was useful in its way, and Jasper showed his sound sense by making a light meal and going straight to bed. He wanted steady nerves and a fresh body, and though few men could have slept on the edge of such an adventure, Jasper accomplished it, a point to his credit. He had told Jack Bumpstead to call him at four o'clock, and at that hour he arose, dressed himself, went below, and made a meal.

To get from Rush Heath to Darvel's Wood one could go by way of Stonehanger Common, and Jasper rode that way, meaning to see Nance. A glimpse of her would be as a cup of red wine to him, though the melancholy of fatalism was not part of his nature. His own imagination was not strong enough to force upon him a vision of his own body lying dead in Darvel's Wood. He neither felt like dying nor being beaten, but he had the sense to realise that in a couple of hours he might be dead. The thought did not frighten him, but roused a sense of cheerful incredulity.

Anthony Durrell had become nothing more than De Rothan's dupe, the man of the arm-chair being the servant of the man of the sword, and Jasper did not trouble his head about Durrell's prejudices. He rode into the yard at Stonehanger, fastened Devil Dick to the ring by the stable door, and, leaving his sword and pistols there, walked round the house to Nance's garden on the terrace.

He found her there, cutting the dead blooms from the rose-bushes, and the sight of her gave his mood the touch of deeper solemnity that it had lacked. He felt of a sudden that life was a very serious and passionate affair, and that no one was justified in risking it lightly. The girlish figure bending over the rose-bushes made him bend more reverently over her fate and his own.

"Nance——"

She had not heard his footsteps on the grass, and it was a coy, flushed face that she turned to him. Her eyes might have shown him that she did not regret anything. The kiss upon her mouth had enriched life for her, and made it more dear and desirable.

"You! It is rash of you to be here!"

"I don't think so. Is your father at home?"

"No; he went out for a walk over the common."

"Either way, it does not matter."

They moved to a seat under one of the yews, Jasper's hand holding Nance's arm just above the elbow. She looked round and up at him with shy and shining eyes.

"How did things happen last night after I left you?"

"Quite happily. Father was waiting. He said nothing."

"What do you make of that?"

"Perhaps he does not know whether to tell me everything or nothing."

"Why not make him trust you?"

"Against his will?"

Jasper held both her hands in his.

"Nance, I shall have news for you to-morrow, news that should sweep all these deceits aside. I shall come and talk to your father—as I promised. And you will help me to make him see the uselessness of further plotting with the French."

Nance's hands tightened on his. She understood what his words portended.

"You mean——"

"Nothing as yet. I may have good news."

"Then there is danger."

"Don't let the thought of that trouble you."

She looked him steadily in the eyes, compelling them to acknowledge the truth.

"Jasper?"

"Well, dear—"

"You know you are trying to hide this from me. You are going to fight this man."

"Well, do I look like a dead man, or one who is not sure of pulling through? I never meant you to know this, but things will out."

"When is it?"

"In an hour or so."

"Oh, Jasper!"

He showed a fine and tender cheerfulness.

"I have been longing to fight him, Nance, and here is my chance. What's the hour? By George, I must be going."

She caught his hands and would not let him go for the moment. Her eyes were afraid.

"It's wrong of me to let you do this."

"No, no."

"If the wrong thing should happen!"

"Nance, it has to be; it's an affair of honour. Do you think I would let a man like De Rothan call me a coward? No, by God, I am going to take him by the shoulders and thrust him out of your life."

He rose, and his arm went round her as they crossed the terrace, and passed round to where Devil Dick waited in the stone-paved yard. The pistol butts sticking out of the holsters, and the sword leaning against the stable wall made Nance's mouth quiver.

"Who is going with you?"

"No one."

"Where is it to be?"

"In Darvel's Wood. I shall ride back here."

He talked so as to hearten her as they passed through the wild shrubbery to the gate. Her tense, white face hurt him. It was so near to tears and yet so very far from them.

"God bless you, Nance. In two hours I shall be back again."

He kissed her, and felt her lips answer his with quick and passionate abandonment.

XXVI

Long slants of sunlight came through the trees as Jasper rode into Darvel's Wood. The place was a smother of leaves, for the underwood had not been cut for five years or more, and the hazel tops were up among the lower boughs of the oaks. A broad ride ran through the wood from north to south like a gallery tunnelling through the green gloom.

A jay screamed raucously in the distance, but save for the bird's cry the silence was complete. The very sunlight stealing through shone upon leaves that did not quiver. There was an eeriness about the stillness that suggested treachery and secret threats.

For the first time Jasper felt something that was akin to fear. It was a vast uneasiness; a primitive, physical distrust of his surroundings. The wood threw deep shadows, and the shadows lay across his confidence. Was he trusting De Rothan too much by meeting him alone in the middle of this wood? The man might have been warned, and be tempted by his own danger. Their meeting was avowedly for polite and gentlemanly murder, but it was possible that De Rothan might put his honour in his pocket and pull the trigger of his pistol ten seconds too soon. Jasper shivered with a kind of chilly alertness. He found himself favouring swords rather than pistols. There was less chance of trickery with cold steel.

He was not sorry when he came to the clearing in the centre of Darvel's Wood. A horse tied to a tree, and a tall figure walking up and down in the sunlight gave him something real to look at. De Rothan was waiting for him, and he was alone.

The clearing had been used by charcoal-burners years ago, and it was marked in the centre by a circle of sleek and vivid grass that did not look unlike a great fairy-ring. Half of the clearing lay in shadow, the other half in sunlight. The boles of the oak-trees rose like grey-green pillars round it, curtained in between by the foliage of the hazels.

De Rothan swept off his hat and bowed. His grandiose courtesy made Jasper keep a keener eye on him, for he would not have trusted this child of St. Patrick and St. Louis behind his back. A case of pistols and a sword lay on a black cloak at the foot of a tree.

"The very best health to you, Mr. Benham."

His politeness was ironical. The man appeared to be his conceited and condescending self, cynically amused, and not in the least flurried.

Jasper rolled out of the saddle and fastened Devil Dick to a tree. The vague sense of apprehension had left him. He felt hard, and grim, and steady now that he and De Rothan were face to face.

"I am at your service, Chevalier."

"I am charmed, sir. Please choose your weapon. It is immaterial to me whether we fight with sword or pistol."

He swaggered finely, throwing off an air of aristocratic nonchalance.

"I prefer cold steel."

"Excellent, Mr. Benham, excellent. You have given me my own desire. Let it be cold steel. I would rather kill my man with a sword than with a pistol."

He went to the oak-tree, picked up his sword, and came back to Jasper with the most condescending of smiles.

"I see no reason why we should delay, Mr. Benham."

"None at all."

"Very good. We had better fight here in the shade."

They went apart, stripped off coats and waistcoats, and rolled up the sleeves of their sword-arms. De Rothan posed, and made a series of rapid passes and parries, ending the display with a whirl of the sword. He felt the muscles of his right shoulder, and smiled. His forearm was thin and white, and shaded with black hairs.

"More supple than most young men's! You have a fine arm, sir, the arm of a ploughboy. Come—I am at your service."

They took ground, saluted, and crossed swords, De Rothan resting his weight on his left foot, and holding his head with a kind of high fierceness. His eyes looked dangerous yet amused.

Jasper called to mind Jeremy's advice. De Rothan was a man whose vanity might be played with, and who might be lured into despising his opponent. It takes a subtle swordsman to ape clumsiness, and yet to keep a clever adversary out. Jasper tried it, and was nearly run through the shoulder for his pains. The Frenchman's point tore his shirt.

De Rothan's face with its fierce and arrogant eyes was like a foul word flung in Jasper's mouth. His hatred aimed for a body thrust. His swordsmanship caught a sudden flash of brilliance. He had his chance and took it, and saw blood on the Frenchman's shirt.

It was a skin wound, but De Rothan leapt back with a cry of savage surprise. His eyes looked beyond Jasper for the moment to where the head and shoulders of a man showed from behind a tree trunk.

Jasper caught the look, but had to keep face foremost and meet the return rush of De Rothan's sword. The man Gaston had come out from behind the tree, and had his fist raised, whirling a stone. It did no more than strike Jasper between the shoulders, but it staggered him sufficiently to let in De Rothan's sword.

Run through the sword-arm, he was seized from behind, thrown down, with De Rothan, Gaston, and another man on top of him. Grim, silent, yet violent figures, they wasted no words. Jasper's sword was kicked away. He was rolled over on his face, his arms tied behind his back, and his ankles lashed together. Then they lifted him between them, carried him into the thick of the underwood, and threw him down at the foot of a clump of hazels.

De Rothan spoke to Gaston.

"Get the horses. Don't let Benham's beast break away."

He went out into the clearing, put on his coat and waistcoat, and, returning, stood by Jasper, looking down at him with amused contempt.

"Well, Mr. Benham—well, you are no fool with a sword."

Jasper lay in a dumb rage. The lust to resist was still strong in him, and he was savage over the roughness the men had used. The dastardly nature of the whole thing maddened him; also the knowledge that he had been tricked.

"You damned cur!"

Their brevity was expressive, but the words did not appear to hurt De Rothan.

"Mr. Benham, we are playing a critical hand in a great game—that is all. If there is any gratitude in you, you should be grateful to me for not having killed you. Meddlers must not complain if they are treated without ceremony."

His complacency scourged Jasper's sense of savage humiliation.

"This comes of trusting the word of a scoundrel. I was a fool not to have you arrested and shot."

De Rothan took out his snuff-box, and helped himself with finger and thumb.

"So you confess to that, Mr. Benham. It is a relief to me to know that you have been a fool. Now, if you will pardon me, we will have that packet of cipher you stole from my friend last night."

So De Rothan had been warned! Jasper cursed his own self-confidence that had persuaded him to try and carry the adventure through alone. No wonder De Rothan had laid a trap. The bitterest thing of all was that the packet of cipher lay in the breast pocket of his coat.

"Give me the gentleman's coat, François."

A wonderful smile spread over his face as he felt in the pocket and drew out Jerome's packet.

"Mr. Benham, I am obliged to you for being so simple. This may save a great deal of trouble. At all events, you will be spared the vexation of deciphering it."

He put it in his pocket, looking down at Jasper with whimsical self-satisfaction.

"You will have to be my guest for a time, Mr. Benham, and we will have that arm of yours seen to. It may inconvenience you, but that cannot be helped. I must keep you from meddling in my affairs."

Jasper said nothing. He was thinking quickly and angrily, and not greatly to his own content.

"Gaston, I think you have a silk handkerchief there. We had better tie up Mr. Benham's mouth, or he may be too talkative."

They gagged Jasper and bandaged his eyes. Dusk was falling, and De Rothan went back to the clearing to see that the man François had taken up Jasper's sword and pistols.

The wood grew darker each minute. De Rothan, returning, sat down at the foot of a tree with his sword across his knees. He had sent Gaston ahead along the ride to see that no one was loitering there.

It was nearly dark when Gaston returned. De Rothan and he spoke together in undertones. Jasper heard them coming back through the undergrowth. They came close, and he felt himself lifted and carried some yards further into the wood. They placed him on the back of a horse, passed a strap and ropes round him, and lashed him firmly to the beast's back.

Then they started out through the darkness, passed northward along the ride, and halted awhile on the edge of Darvel's Wood. Jasper felt half smothered by the gag, and saliva clogged his throat. The long silence seemed threatening. He wondered what they were going to do.

Then he heard De Rothan's voice.

"Forward. François, go ahead, and keep your eyes and ears open."

They set out along a dark lane, Gaston hanging back awhile with Devil Dick. He gave the horse a stab with a knife, and started him galloping back into the wood. Then he hurried on, and rejoined De Rothan.

Meanwhile, at Stonehanger, Nance sat at her window, listening. Suspense hung in the silent hush of the June night. She was waiting for Jasper to ride back and to tell her that all was well.

XXVII

Jeremy Winter grew anxious when Jasper did not return. Squire Kit was not in a state to be worried with alarms, and Jeremy, who knew the inwardness of Jasper's plans, felt the responsibility to lie upon his shoulders. He cross-questioned Jack Bumpstead, but the groom could tell him no more than that Jasper had ridden out on Devil Dick with pistols in his holsters.

Jeremy's anxiety seemed justified when a labourer arrived at Rush Heath, leading Devil Dick by the bridle. He said that he had found the horse grazing in the corner of a field not far from Rookhurst.

"'If that be'unt Master Benham's horse, may I be struck blind,' says I. And look 'ee, sir, he's bin stuck in t' shoulder wid a knife."

Jeremy examined the horse, and made light of it.

"The squire has had a spill, and lost his nag."

Jack Bumpstead and the labourer shook their heads at each other with dolorous pessimism.

"He's bin stuck wid a knife, or t' point of a hanger."

"Hedge stake, more likely."

"No, sir, it be'unt, sir. 'Tain't the sort o' mark a stake leaves."

Jeremy was vastly disturbed, but his main desire was to keep the affair from Squire Christopher and to put the gag upon these two garrulous men. Gossip always runs on ahead to make trouble, and Jeremy, man of the world that he was, had learned the value of a subtle unobtrusiveness in dealing with all happenings that touched even the edge of passion. He took the labourer aside and dealt with him wonderfully after the manner of a soldier and a philosopher. The fellow had to be persuaded into taking a pride in his own discretion.

"I be'unt for sayin' a word, sir."

"That's it; you are the right sort of fellow. We may want a man of your sense over here in a day or two. Jesse Saunders, is it? I'll keep you in mind."

With Jack Bumpstead he played the bully.

"Saddle my nag, Jack. And look you here,—not a word about this—not one word—see."

Nothing could be more ferocious than Jeremy when fierceness was a necessity. Jack Bumpstead wilted before him.

"Sure, Mister Winter, sir. I'll do as ye please."

"By George, you will, Jack; I'll take care of that. Wash the horse's wound, and plaster a little hair over it, and not a word to a living soul."

Jeremy rode out, with pistols in his pockets, and a certain significant tightness about the mouth. He knew the country well, and his conjectures pointed him toward Stonehanger. Jeremy was something of a cynic. Experience had taught him that there was truth in the saying, "Look for the woman." He had his mind's eye on Nance, and his thoughts were none of the kindest.

Riding up the steep lane at the back of Stonehanger, he found himself reining in before the gate at the very moment that a girl appeared between the two stone pillars. The hollies and laurels made a deep shade there. The white anxiousness of the girl's face struck Jeremy at the first glance. The startled way she looked at him provoked his suspicions.

He raised his hat to her.

"Miss Durrell, I believe?"

The eyes that met his were big, and most honestly troubled.

"Yes, I am Miss Durrell."

"I am trying to hear something of Mr. Jasper Benham. His horse came home this morning without him. I had an idea that he might have been at Stonehanger."

Jeremy believed in being blunt with women. He wanted to try Nance and to judge her by the way she reacted to his words. And react she did, in a way that made Jeremy rearrange his notions.

"Are you a friend of Jasper's?"

She came across the stone bridge over the ditch, the white eagerness of her face driving the cynicism out of Jeremy's mood.

"I may say so. I am his adopted uncle, and almost taught him to walk."

He eyed Nance with keen sympathy. She was all pale and intent passion. There had been none of those self-conscious changes of colour, those vain little manœuvres that so few women can forget. The girl was white steel, fine-tempered, and a little fierce.

"Did Jasper tell you where he was going last night?"

"I had been away from Rush Heath all day."

"Had he told you nothing? I have been awake all night—waiting."

Jeremy's face grew grim, but his voice was gentle.

"Miss Durrell, I know a good deal. I can guess still more."

"This Chevalier de Rothan, this so-called émigré——"

"Ah, now we have it."

"They were to fight a duel in Darvel's Wood."

The forward thrust of Jeremy's jaw became more pronounced.

"What! And the lad never told me! He went out alone against that Irish blackguard! Good God——!"

A quivering upper lip and a pair of brown eyes brought him back to Nance's outlook upon life.

"Miss Durrell, you'll forgive me—"

Her hands were gripping the folds of her dress.

"You know, it was for us. Perhaps he told you? He came to Stonehanger last night before he went to Darvel's Wood. He was so confident. He would go. He promised to ride back and tell me how it all happened."

Jeremy—that man of many experiences—slipped out of the saddle and held out a comrade's hand.

"I don't blame Jasper for this, but I do blame him for going alone. The fellow De Rothan would have stabbed him in the back for the price of a pewter pot."

Nance shivered.

"Oh, don't talk like this!"

"My dear, I ask your pardon. Winter, Jeremy Winter is my name. Where the devil is Darvel's Wood? I'll ride there at once."

"I'll come—I'll show you."

"But——"

"I must come—I must. I was going when you rode up."

Jeremy knew when a wish was not to be gainsaid. Here was a girl who leapt into the experiences of life with her whole heart. She was strong, rich, and convincing.

"My dear, can you borrow such a thing as a horse?"

"No, and I can't ride."

"Well, we must take what Nature gives us. How far is it?"

"Two miles."

"I'll walk—for the sake of sympathy."

They seemed to have known each other years by the time the oaks of Darvel's Wood rose against the white clouds of the summer sky. Their instinctive liking for each other met and kindled in these moments of suspense. Both of them were thinking of Jasper, but Jeremy coupled his thoughts with the tense, white face of this young girl.

"She's true metal; she has edge and temper," he kept saying to himself. "Confound the lad, why was he in such a damnable hurry!"

When they came to the gate that led into Darvel's Wood, Jeremy paused and looked questioningly at Nance.

"Will you stay here?"

"No, I will come with you."

He was afraid for her sake and of what he might find. But her courage persuaded him.

"Come, then. I'll fasten my horse to the gate-post."

And they entered Darvel's Wood.

It was close and oppressive in among the trees, and the summer foliage shut in the ride with massive walls of green. Flies, too, were in evidence, swarming down out of the foliage as though these two humans had entered Darvel's Wood with the particular intention of offering themselves as food. Jeremy, less imperturbable than usual, cursed the black pests and smote the air with his hat.

"The insolence of the brutes! As though we mortals walked abroad for the benefit of flies! Some day we shall wipe all these things out—and then have the earth as clean as a Dutch kitchen."

They were anxious and under strain, and showed it by their silence. Jeremy's face looked fierce. He was thinking how he would hunt De Rothan into a corner, drive his sword through the man's body, and see him double up like a doll.

Nance knew of the clearing, and Jeremy could tell that they were nearing the place—by the sound of her breathing. He had his eyes on the tracks left by Jasper's horse.

"Not far now?"

"We are there."

The clearing opened out before them with the horse tracks turning aside into it. Half the place was in sunlight, the rest smothered in umbrage, and very silent.

"Stay here, child."

He left Nance under an oak, and began to explore the place, his sharp eyes soon discovering many suggestive facts. Another horse had been ridden into the clearing, and there was a trampled place where men had fought. What was more, Jeremy found the track through the underwood that De Rothan and his men had made. Twigs were bent and broken, dead leaves kicked up. More than one man had been responsible for this.

He returned to Nance. Her eyes questioned him—like the eyes of one in pain.

"Yes, there are traces. Foul play, probably."

"Do you think that Jasper——?"

"My dear, I don't know. I have found nothing but trampled grass and broken underwood. De Rothan was not alone. He had men with him."

"The coward! He laid a trap?"

"That's what I gather."

Jeremy stood smoothing his chin and staring at the ground.

"This fellow lives over beyond the ridge—Winchelsea way?"

"No, nearer than that, off a lane between Sedlescombe and Westfield. It is called the Brick House."

"Brick House. I know the place. I shall ride there at once."

"Will you?"

"Something may be found out. I know how to deal with a man like De Rothan."

They returned through the wood to the gate, Jeremy thinking hard and saying nothing to his companion.

As he unfastened his horse, Nance spoke out, standing and looking over the lulls toward the sea. Her face was set, and her eyes hard.

"If the worst has happened, we must be revenged."

Jeremy was struck by the passion in her voice.

"We will not believe the worst yet. It is possible that they may have kidnapped Jasper for those dispatches he seized."

"Whatever has happened, my father is nearly as guilty as De Rothan."

"He may not have known."

"I have no pity. I shall make him confess everything."

Jeremy reflected a moment.

"It might be as well to let him understand that the whole business has been discovered."

They parted at the gate, Nance pointing out to Jeremy the way he should take. He lifted his hat to her devoutly.

"Keep your heart up, child. I will ride back and tell you what I have discovered."

Nance walked back slowly to Stonehanger, her mouth set in a determined line, her eyes steady with thought. She felt very bitter against her father, and in no mood to spare him in his conspiracy with De Rothan.

Anthony Durrell was reading on the bench under the yew-tree when she returned. He glanced up sharply as Nance crossed the grass, and she was struck by the narrowness of his face, and ill-balanced bigotry of the man's whole nature. But Nance had risen above fear of her father. She had youth on her side, and the strength that youth gives.

"I want to speak to you."

He put his book aside, an irritable crease appearing between his eyebrows.

"Well, what is it?"

"It is known that you are a French spy."

"Child——!"

"I know it, as others know it. You may be grateful that those who know it are my friends."

Durrell sat staring, his face vacant, mouth slightly open. Nance had expected a violent outburst, recriminations, arguments, denials.

Presently he spoke to her, making a great effort to regain his self-control.

"What do you mean, child?"

"What I have said, father. Nor is that all. This man De Rothan may be accused of murder."

Durrell's hands moved restlessly to and fro along the edge of the seat.

"Murder! I know nothing of that."

She stood looking down at him with her uncompromising eyes.

"God grant that you do know nothing. We must wait—and be patient. Remember, now, that you are at the mercy of these friends of mine—who know. It would have been better if you had trusted me a little."

XXVIII

Jeremy stopped at the "Queen's Head" Inn at Sedlescombe for some bread and cheese and a mug of ale. He was an old campaigner and remembered the needs of the inner man.

The landlord of the "Queen's Head" appeared to be a person of sense. He had a shrewd, well-shaved face, and a mouth that spoke pleasantly, but was always able to keep something back. Jeremy chatted with him for twenty minutes. He had a queer way of getting hold of men, of making them feel the grip of his character. Jeremy asked for the Brick House.

"You mean Mounseer de Rotten's place, sir?"

"That name's good enough."

"Go straight down the village, over yon hill, and take a lane to the right. You'll see the house in a hollow."

The landlord and Jeremy looked at each other as though neither took the other for a fool.

"Does mounseer keep a big staff of servants?"

"Three, sir, so far as I know."

"Men?"

"Men, sir, yes."

"I met the Chevalier in London. I might look in on him now that I am down in these parts."

Jeremy strolled down the brick path to the white fence where a boy was holding his horse. The landlord followed at his heels, staring reflectively at the sturdy breadth of Mr. Winter's back. This was a gentleman who walked very much on his own legs.

"Roads nice and dry, sir. You might be wanting a bed for the night?"

Jeremy paused with a toe in the stirrup.

"I'll keep you in mind, landlord. How far do you call it to Mr. de Rothan's?"

"A matter of two miles, sir."

"If he hasn't a bed to spare, you may see me again. I like a quiet place, and quiet people."

"We're quiet, sir, very quiet."

"I'll remember it. Good day to you."

The landlord watched him ride off down the village.

"Hum—what's he after? A gentleman of parts. He had an eye on me for something, friendliwise. No small beer, I reckon."

Jeremy found the lane leading off the main road. It was a mere grass track with high hedges on either side of it. The red chimneys of the house showed above the thorns and hazels, and a plume of blue smoke went up against the green background of a wooded hill. A gate closed the end of the lane which opened into a meadow.

Jeremy dismounted and leaned his arms on the top bar of the gate and looked across the meadow at the Brick House with its red walls, clipped yews, and diamond-paned casements. The place looked peaceful enough in the green dip of its valley, but Jeremy was not in quest of beauty. He scrutinised every window of the house like a man staring at an ancient tablet whose writing refuses to be deciphered.

Jeremy fastened his horse to the gate-post, and looked to the priming of his pistols. He was playing a bold game, and in such case a man needs something more dangerous to rely on than his tongue. He climbed the gate and walked slowly across the meadow, slapping his right leg with a little riding switch that he carried.

When he came within twenty yards of the brick wall of the garden, he halted and stood staring at the house as though he were an antiquary studying types of English domestic architecture. Jeremy was not going to put himself within safe pistol-shot of the windows. To provoke a parley a man must not give away all his advantages.

Jeremy began to walk up and down in the line of the garden wall, keeping a sharp eye on all the windows. It was not long before he saw a face appear at one of the upper lattices. It remained there a moment, and then melted back into the shadow of the room.

Presently a servant in black livery came out from the porch, and down the path into the meadow. He approached Jeremy, and spoke in broken English.

"What will monsieur desire here?"

Jeremy stood with feet apart, hands behind his back, staring at the house.

"Good mullions, and excellent brickwork. There is a solidity about these Jacobean houses. My good fellow, is your master at home?"

"What will monsieur desire here?"

"Nothing, Pierre, nothing, but a word with your master. Tell him there is a gentleman here who is interested in old houses."

The man looked contemptuously at Winter and returned to the house. De Rothan was waiting in the hall.

"Well, François?"

"A gentleman who loves old houses."

"Thunder, what, a dry-as-dust! Go and tell him the house is not to be viewed."

François went back to Jeremy.

"Monsieur, my master the Chevalier de Rothan cannot be agreeable to your curiosity."

Jeremy's eyes twinkled.

"Go and tell him I have ridden sixty miles to see this house. If he will give me a few minutes I can explain."

This time the man was exchanged for the master. De Rothan appeared at the porch, came slowly down the path and out into the meadow. Stateliness was the pose of the moment. An aristocrat of France came to speak with some antiquarian huckster who would force himself upon an exile's privacy.

"Sir, I wish you good day."

Jeremy took off his hat and bowed. He could be damnably urbane when he was most dangerous. De Rothan had not recognised him. Who would expect to see a fencing-master from St. James's in an out-of-the-world Sussex meadow?

"Sir, I take liberties in being here. I am one of those inquisitive persons who are interested in everything."

De Rothan looked him over with supercilious politeness.

"A very admirable state of mind, but a little embarrassing at times—to others."

"You cannot be so kind as to let me see your house, Chevalier?"

De Rothan's eyelids seemed to close a little.

"My house, monsieur, is not a museum."

"But I am told there is a unique curio to be seen in it, a thing of particular, local interest——"

"Indeed! You surprise me."

"Not at all, sir, not at all. It is a gentleman who was stolen yesterday out of Darvel's Wood. I am sure you will oblige me in the matter."

De Rothan's figure seemed to lengthen. His nostrils dilated, and his eyes became very bright and staring.

"Sir, I fail to understand you. Nor do I love impertinence."

"Nor I, Monsieur de Rothan. I expect Mr. Jasper Benham to dine with me to-night. It will be courteous of you to produce the gentleman, and to deliver him over to me."

"You are talking nonsense."

"I'll wager that I am not."

They stood eyeing each other, challenging each other, gauging each other's strength and grimness.

"Who are you, and what do you want?"

Jeremy's eyes twinkled. He had been standing with hands clasped behind him. One hand had slipped itself into the tail pocket of his coat and was gripping the butt of a pistol.

He began to speak slowly, and very distinctly, looking at De Rothan from under frowning eyebrows.

"Mr. Frenchman, let us understand each other. I have two men over yonder behind the hedge; neither you nor yours can play any tricks with me. Now, I ask you, what is there to prevent me putting a bullet in your body?"

Jeremy had a pistol out, and, holding it at his hip, covered De Rothan with the muzzle.

"My good sir, this is like a stage play!"

De Rothan had nerve, and showed it in the casual way he glanced at the pistol, and then looked Jeremy in the eyes. Quick wit and audacity were divided pretty equally between them.

"Well, Chevalier, what do you say?"

"Of course, sir, if you wish to blow Mr. Benham's brains out——"

"Thanks. So I was on the mark—there."

"Do not congratulate yourself. I can tell you at once that Mr. Jasper Benham is in my house, alive and well, save for a sword thrust through the arm."

Jeremy nodded.

"You laid a trap for him and cheated him on a point of honour."

"My good sir, I outwitted him, if you call that cheating."

They were silent for a few seconds like men who break away and take breath between two bouts of boxing. Jeremy's mouth looked ugly, but he was as debonair as ever.

"Listen to me, Chevalier. This spy business of yours is over and done with. What I have to do is to call one of my men, send him galloping for half a score red-coats, and hold you here at the pistol point till they come."

"Very good, sir, very good. But I take it that you have some respect for Mr. Benham's life."

Jeremy felt the cunning of the thrust.

"No doubt."

"Very well, do what you suggest. But I warn you that I have a man in the house whom I can trust. He has had his orders. It is a nasty business blowing out a young man's brains. Faugh—you will not drive us to that!"

"You are not without daring, Chevalier."

"I am one of the eagles of adventure, sir. I play my game and I play it boldly. Mr. Benham is my hostage. I demand to be left alone, to be allowed to give my plans a fighting chance. In three weeks or so French cavalry may be sabring your red-coats in these lanes."

Jeremy reflected.

"I see your point, sir."

"Regard it in this way. I play my game—I put down my stake. This Mr. Benham blunders in and tries to upset my table. I seize him and tie him up in a corner, and, to defend myself from his friends, I have to keep a pistol levelled at this good young man's head. You see, I hold him in front of me, so to speak. Shoot, or stab at me—and Mr. Benham's body takes the first blow. What you have to decide is whether you are willing to sacrifice your friend."

"By George! Do you mean to tell me you would shoot the lad?"

"Mr. Englishman, I am the devil when I am in earnest. My man is watching you, even now. If you were to fire that pistol at me—he would do the same to Mr. Jasper Benham. You see how things stand. The decision is with you."

Very rarely had Jeremy found himself fenced with so cleverly. De Rothan held him at a disadvantage.

"Let me put things plainly. You, Chevalier, are a French spy. The truth has been discovered. You expect the French fleet in the Channel, and Napoleon to invade us. Good! To gain breathing space you tie up this lad, hold a pistol at his head, and dare us to interfere."

De Rothan bowed and smiled.

"You have summed up the situation. It is very simple."

Jeremy lowered his pistol. He was baffled, and very furious behind that imperturbable face of his.

"Very well, Chevalier. It seems that we are not in a position to quarrel."

"Mr.——?"

"Winter, sir, Jeremy Winter."

"Mr. Winter, you show good sense."

Jeremy could have twisted De Rothan's neck. The man's complacent audacity rubbed him raw.

"One thing, Chevalier. Have you any personal spite against the lad?"

He watched De Rothan narrowly.

"No more than the natural contempt of a grown man for a big fool of a boy who tries to kick him."

Jeremy's mouth betrayed sarcasm.

"I believed he kicked—with success."

But he regretted the gibe when he saw the glint in De Rothan's eyes.

"Mr. Winter, I am too big a man to bear malice."

"Thank heaven for that!"

"I hold Mr. Benham as a hostage."

"And if the French come, sir?"

De Rothan shrugged his shoulders.

"A country squireling will not matter. He will be one of a mob of sheep."

"And if the French do not come?"

"I shall still hold Mr. Benham at my mercy. He will be my shield, Mr. Winter; you will shoot or stab at me through him."

"A very convenient arrangement for you, sir. I suppose it is useless to suggest that we might come to terms and give you a safe passage out of the country?"

De Rothan smiled.

"One does not count one's winnings, Mr. Winter, till the cards are played. Especially when one holds a winning hand."

Jeremy bowed to him, and they drew apart, keeping their faces toward each other.

"Good day to you, Chevalier."

"Good day, Mr. Winter. You will be careful how you meddle in any affair of mine."

XXIX

When Jeremy was in a rage his imperturbable face had a smooth, tight look, the lips pressed a little more closely together, the jaw well set. His wrath was always a quiet wrath, deep, purposeful, not wasting itself in words.

De Rothan had made him more furious than he had been for years, and even the knowledge that Jasper was very little the worse for his adventure in Darvel's Wood did not modify Jeremy's anger. De Rothan was the kind of man who filled him with a scornful disgust, and to be baffled and dictated to by such a man left Jeremy quarrelling with his own self-respect. He damned De Rothan as a coward, and was equally indignant over the contradictory conviction that the adventurer had audacity and courage. De Rothan had seized a desperate chance. It had been a clever move, too confoundedly clever to please Mr. Winter.

"Curse it, what shall I tell the girl?"

He laughed at his own impatience.

"Why, Jerry, my boy, you want to appear infallible, do you, dallying with a snuff-box, and proudly overwhelming all ruffians with one look. The lad's alive. Tell her that. She'll be ready to kiss you, though you have brought nothing but news."

It did not astonish Jeremy when he found Nance watching for him where the lane topped the high ground to the east of Stonehanger. She was sitting on a turf bank under a thorn-tree, out of sight of Stonehanger House.

Jeremy gave her the best news he could, while he was still some yards away.

"The lad's alive, and they tell me not much the worse."

The way her face changed stirred Jeremy, man of fifty that he was. It was good to be young, to desire, and to be desired.

"Where is he?"

"Ah, that's a long story. You and I have got to hold a council of war."

He dismounted, fastened his horse to the thorn-tree, and seated himself beside Nance on the bank. Her face still retained much of the radiance that had poured into it with the first rush of relief.

"What has happened, then?"

"They kidnapped Jasper in Darvel's Wood. I guessed it. De Rothan has him shut up safely in that house of his beyond Sedlescombe."

"As a prisoner?"

"Yes."

"But how absurd, in these days! Then we shall soon have him out."

Jeremy wagged his head.

"My dear, you don't know Monsieur de Rothan."

"What do you mean?"

"He has the audacity of the devil. He has snapped up Jasper as a hostage, and dares us to interfere."

"He told you that?"

"Why, to be sure, we had a parley in the meadow. I covered him with a pistol and asked him to tell me why I shouldn't shoot him. His argument was that one of his own men would promptly shoot Jasper. You see, they are holding him against us as a kind of shield."

Nance's face lost some of its radiance.

"But De Rothan dare not do this."

"Unfortunately he does dare, in fact, he is obliged to dare. It is the one chance left him of forcing his game through. We are on the edge of a crisis. The next month may decide whether we are to be invaded or not. De Rothan is standing out for a fighting chance."

She looked very gravely into Jeremy's eyes.

"Do you think he would be brute enough to murder Jasper?"

"My dear, I do."

"Then if we threaten or inform against him, Jasper will be sacrificed?"

"Exactly. That's what makes me feel like a caged tiger."

It seemed to take Nance some minutes to realise the vindictive grimness of the thing.

"But what a villain!"

"Call him that if you like, child. He is a clever gambler and has to use a gambler's tricks. The end justifies the means. That is what he tells himself."

She smoothed her dress with her hands, and looked into the distance.

"It makes me ashamed and furious that we are so helpless. And yet we have to be polite and swallow our anger. Can anything be done?"

"And take the risk of having the lad shot?"

"No, no, you know I don't mean that! But to think that we should have to truckle to this man!"

"I see no other course at present. I am not a lamb myself. I would run a sword through the man to-morrow if I thought that it would help us. But it won't. We have got to be careful."

"I see—yes, I see."

"We must hold our tongues, not let the truth out, and yet try to find some way out of this blind alley. If we were to let our neighbours know the truth, they might come blundering in and lose Jasper his life."

She held her breath at the thought of such a chance.

"Then there is father. I spoke to him this morning."

"You did?"

"He is a strange man. I thought he would storm, but he looked stunned. I don't see that he could help us. He might even be dangerous."

"Yes, set everything in a blaze. I had thought of that. I think that I had better see Mr. Anthony Durrell."

She looked at him questioningly.

"But——"

"I have dealt with all sorts of men in my time."

"Do you mean to frighten him into silence?"

"I shall try to treat him as a reasonable creature. It is no time for soft phrases."

She thought awhile, knitting up her forehead, and clasping her hands.

"Perhaps it will be best."

"Shall we go on? I may find Mr. Durrell at Stonehanger."

The essential weakness of a man of Anthony Durrell's character showed itself in the parley that followed between him and Jeremy Winter. The man of action and the man of the bookshelf were pitted against each other, though Jeremy, unlike most Englishmen, had subtlety and a very quick sense of humour. Nance had left them alone together in the stone-room, feeling vaguely sorry for the thin, white-headed figure that looked so ineffectual.

Jeremy went straight to the point with a merciless directness, much as he would have attacked with a sword. Durrell's hysterical verbosity was like the clumsy and excitable fencing of a greenhorn who has never learned to use his hands. He chose the high, ethical, magniloquent attitude, being sincere enough in his wild, foolish, visionary way. Jeremy thrust the egregious fanatic through and through with the brutal logic of his common sense.

"You need not stand and orate, Mr. Durrell. Take the facts and leave your theories. Here are you, a traitor to your country, with a noose dangling invitingly over your head."

Durrell flapped his arms.

"I stand for liberty—for a great idea——"

"Bosh, man, bosh! We don't win things in this world in that way. Answer a straight question. Do you want your daughter to see you hanged?"

Durrell was disjointed, wild, hysterical. Jeremy kept up his body blows, driving home truth after truth till he had this poor, exclamatory piece of scholarly discontent battered into impotence. Durrell was a weak man. He was not built for pounding, for fighting toe to toe. He might have quarrelled and stormed with women. In the presence of a man like Jeremy he collapsed.

Winter softened a little when the enthusiast crumpled up into a chair.

"Mr. Durrell, sir, try to realise that we are your best friends. Have nothing more to do with this scoundrel De Rothan. You've got something valuable to live for in the shape of a daughter."

Durrell mumbled, and twisted this way and that. Jeremy had cowed him, and seized the dominating influence that De Rothan had held.

"I will think over what you have said, Mr. Winter. Heaven knows I would not countenance any violence to this young man."

Jeremy left him a beaten man, and went out into the garden to speak with Nance. She looked steady and sure of herself, and Jeremy respected the strength in her. It struck him that she would be able to dominate her father now that Durrell had been shocked into a kind of panic.

"Well?"

"You must forgive me if I have been a little rough with your father. Soft words are of no use at such a time."

"What does he say?"

"I think he has surrendered to us. I had to 'tarrify' him, as they say in these parts."

"If only he would keep to his books."

"That's it. Some men are made to live with books."

They walked through the shrubbery to the gate where David Barfoot was holding Mr. Winter's horse. Jeremy spoke what was in his mind.

"Go and play the daughter to him, my dear. I think he is in a mood to be managed. Some oldish men have to be treated like children."

"I will try."

"There must be plenty of good stuff in your father."

"Yes."

"I take you as my proof."

Cynicism, tinged with benevolence, such was Jeremy's attitude toward life. It was not very reasonable to expect a girl of spirit to hold a man of Anthony Durrell's nature in great love and reverence. Durrell needed hurdling in like an old sheep, and left to browse contentedly among his books.

Jeremy had already quarrelled twice that day, but he was yet to have a third quarrel laid upon his shoulders. This time it was with a woman, and the woman—Miss Rose Benham.

He found her at Rush Heath, energetic, inquisitive, and voluble, driving the inarticulate Jack Bumpstead into comers, and insisting upon examining Devil Dick in his stall. She had scolded the groom till he had involved himself in a maze of muddled contradictions, hunting him round and round with her cross-questions and her curiosity.

Jeremy's mouth went grim. His patience had borne up bravely, and he was in no mood to be teased by a managing and meddlesome young woman.

"Mr. Winter, what does all this mean?"

He handed his horse over to Jack Bumpstead, gave the groom one terrifying look, and bowed Miss Benham out of the stable.

"My dear young lady, I think you are a little excited."

He was deluged, but managed to divert the stream into a quiet corner of the garden.

"Miss Rose, you are inclined to call this affair your own. I warn you that it is nothing of the kind. I even forbid you to meddle with it."

"Forbid, indeed! I shall——"

"Excuse me, you will not."

"What right have you——?"

"Expediency justifies me—and a man's honour."

"Jasper's? You mean to say——"

Then Jeremy told what was very like an audacious lie.

"Miss Benham—Cousin Jasper will very shortly be married. And I am glad—because of the woman he will marry. Honour is concerned in it, even his very life. He is in great danger. One careless word may wreck everything."

Rose was white, furious, and astonished.

"To be married! And all this wild talk——?"

"My dear Miss Benham, sometimes two men desire to marry the same woman. It is not unusual. And one of the men may be desperate and unprincipled. The unprincipled man may take advantage of the other's sense of honour."

"But Jasper—is he in danger?"

"Very grave danger."

"Then why on earth don't you do something?"

Jeremy gave her one of his shrewd smiles.

"That is just what must not be done, for the moment. It will spoil my masterly inactivity if fools go cackling about the country. We are in a very delicate dilemma. I shall not explain it, as the less that is known about it—the better. You have it in your power to lose Jasper his life."

She flinched, as people had so often flinched in Jeremy's presence.

"If he is in danger, I——"

"Yes, you will be kind and cautious. You will say nothing. And for God's sake leave Jack Bumpstead alone, and not a word to Squire Christopher."

Rose tossed her head.

"I do not need to be lectured like a schoolgirl, Mr. Winter. I am a woman of sense. I will not interfere in a man's love affairs—even if he is my cousin."

And Jeremy saw that he had piqued her into a proper pride.

XXX

The men who had built the Brick House had framed the attic story of huge baulks of oak, posts and beams that looked like the halves of great trees, with struts and cross-pieces worked in quaintly at all angles. There was a long gallery connecting the attics, and the whole place looked like the interior of a ship, the little windows high up no larger than portholes. The plaster had not been whitewashed for years, and beams, rafters, and posts were a deep rich brown. Even the floor-boards were of oak, and riddled with worm-holes.

Jasper Benham's prison room was the attic at the far end of the gallery. Its dormer-window was squeezed in between the slopes of two gables. There was no furniture in the attic save a rough box-bed in one corner.

Nor did the bed belong to Jasper. The man Gaston slept there with a pistol under his pillow.

Jasper had been given a truss of straw to lie on. They could not have managed otherwise, for the simple reason that they had put him in irons. His ankles were chained and bolted to the floor-boards, and his wrists handcuffed. He might have been a negro in the hold of a slave ship, or a refractory seaman undergoing discipline.

Both De Rothan and Jeremy Winter were cynics, with the difference that one possessed far more natural kindliness than the other. Their materialism kept its eyes fixed upon the sensuous aspects of life. They knew good wine, and a woman who was worth following, and were ready to be amused by the ingenuous wraths and enthusiasms of youth.

As for De Rothan, he found Jasper a most companionable young person, a man who took his own honourable indignation with vast seriousness, and could be pricked into all manner of odd exasperations. Jasper had not learned to wink at life, or to sneer upon occasions. De Rothan baited his youthful sincerity. He would take his glass of wine and smoke his cheroot in Jasper's attic, sitting on the edge of Gaston's bed, and prodding the Englishman with his cynicism as he would have prodded a pig with a stick. He made a daily habit of this parley, spending an hour or two with his prisoner while Gaston had a change of air in the garden or meadow.

It was the fifth day of his imprisonment, and Jasper heard Gaston's descending footsteps meet those of De Rothan, who ascended to take his place. The Frenchman came in with his glass of wine and his cheroot, bowed ironically to Jasper, and took up his usual position on the bed.

"Well, Mr. Benham, how is the forlorn lover to-day?"

De Rothan's sleekness, his white linen and smoothly shaved face filled Jasper with a kind of fury. He felt himself unclean on his bundle of straw, with a five days' beard on his chin, and his face and hands unwashed. The wound in his right arm was giving him no trouble, but they had not offered to dress it for him, and Nature was responsible for any process of healing.

"Your consideration, Chevalier, does not run to a crock of water and a piece of soap."

"Why, my good sir, what should you want with such things? I might find an old clay pipe and let you blow soap bubbles!"

"It is something to feel clean, especially in the presence of people whose honour happens to be foul."

"We have been taught that it is the heart that matters. Inward cleanliness, eh? You have heard, Mr. Benham, of the old saints and hermits. Dirt and vermin were held to be honourable."

"You would talk in a different way if I were out of these irons."

"Pardon me, my dear young man, I think I should not. Besides, why should you trouble about your beard? The sweet charmer is not likely to see you—though there is pathos about an unshaven chin. Do you think that she troubles——"

He sipped his wine, and watched Jasper over the rim of his glass.

"I drink Miss Nance's health. She is a clever girl, Mr. Benham. How we laughed, she and I! It was funny, although so damnably serious."

"Curse you, what do you mean?"

De Rothan regarded him with infinite relish.

"What an honest soul! You really believe that Miss Durrell wanted me at the end of a rope, and you kneeling romantically at her feet?"

Jasper had nothing adequate to say.

"Nance led you on so cleverly. She sent you off with her blessing to Darvel's Wood. Dear, honest fool!"

"You need not tell me lies about Miss Durrell."

"I don't, sir, I don't. She was kind to you, was she not? When did the kindness begin? Ask yourself that. Was it not when you had blundered like a bumble-bee into our web and seemed likely to give us trouble? Of course Miss Nance was circumspect. She handled you very cunningly, Mr. Benham."

"You need not try to make me believe that."

"It would be impossible? Your vanity is too serene and confident? No woman would have the audacity to treat you like a fool, would she? No, of course not. It would be impossible. Mr. Jasper Benham is too dignified and important a person to be played with."

"Make the most of your tongue, sir."

"Really, you refresh me. When our Emperor is in London, I must present you to him as a unique young man without any sense of humour. You would amuse the Court. You will continue to amuse my dear Nance when she is a great lady of the Empire."

"Don't boast too soon."

"I may as well tell you some news. You will not gossip and spread it abroad. The noble Nelson has been chasing a wild goose instead of your Lady Hamilton. Villeneuve has tricked him. And in a week or two Villeneuve will be blowing your Brest ships out of the water. Then we shall come up Channel, and the Emperor will land in England. It will be a fine spectacle. I shall enjoy it."

"It may prove a very fine spectacle."

"Ah, you dear English—you think yourselves invincible. Are you better men than the Germans, the Austrians, or the Russians? Are your country bumpkins so valiant? Why, our Grand Army will devour you. Think of the American colonists, think of Burgoyne at Saratoga, and Cornwallis at Yorktown. We French have had two years of war. We have fought all Europe. We are veterans, and a nation of soldiers. We shall gallop over you, hunt you hither and thither with the bayonet."

Jasper lay down on his straw.

"It must be a pleasure to you to talk, Chevalier," he said.

Jasper Benham was reliable, and he believed in the reliability of those in whom he trusted. De Rothan's clever mockery might exasperate him, but it did not shake his faith in Nance.

Meanwhile at Stonehanger Nance was strengthening her hold upon her father. The economics of life would seem to be very delicately balanced so far as old men were concerned. They may retain their faculties in a state of fair efficiency so long as no abnormal event interferes with that sanity that is begotten of old habits. But this equilibrium may easily be disturbed, and an illness or a great sorrow may age an old man more in one month than in the ten previous years.

So it seemed to be with Anthony Durrell. The shock of the discovery of his schemes, and the violent ethical attack made upon him by Nance and Jeremy appeared to overthrow his normal self. There was a sudden slackening of all his fibres, both physical and mental. The emotional part of him, so long smothered and overlaid, broke to the surface as the intellect lost some of its ascendency. Then—he appeared to become conscious of the existence of his daughter.

Now Nance had one of those large natures that bears no malice, and is ready to give of its best when an estranged friend stretches out an appealing hand. Her father had become to her a weak and pathetic old man whom the rough virility of younger men shouldered into a corner. She could not be very sorry for Anthony Durrell without being very tender toward him.

For some days her father appeared puzzled by a new atmosphere that enveloped him. Like a man who had been very ill, he was content to sit and muse and stare at nothing in particular. He had led a very lonely life, and a selfish one, since the life of a fanatic and a dreamer is often very selfish. It was now that he felt defeated and feeble that Nance's nature flooded in upon his consciousness.

She would take his chair into the garden under the shade of one of the yews, fetch him the books he loved, read to him, talk to him, try to enter into his thoughts and prejudices. Durrell felt old emotions stirring in his heart. Some of the old gentleness came back. The harsh, thin lines melted out of his face.

The change in him was betrayed by the very way he looked at Nance, and by what he said to her one evening as they sat on the terrace and watched the sun go down. The sea seemed no longer a strip of ominous silver across which the immortal dragon of war should swim to scorch up this green island rich with its yellowing wheat and rolling woods. Durrell had drifted suddenly into the softer evening lights of fife.

He realised that the girl had had a hard and a lonely life.

"Nance, you must often have been very lonely here."

She looked at him in surprise, but with a kind of compassionate radiance.

"I have been less lonely these few days, father."

He seemed to reflect upon these words. And perhaps the warm beauty of the July evening helped the quiet drifting of his thoughts.

"In this life—we make many mistakes."

She nodded as though she understood.

"I used to believe in the efficacy of violence and fear. Curious, in a man of my habits. I have come to doubt whether the quieter forces are not more powerful."

She smiled at him.

"People do hate to be driven."

"To be sure."

"It is easier to persuade them, to play the Pied Piper to the world."

He glanced at her with eyes that asked, "Where did you learn this wisdom?"

And presently he began to speak of De Rothan. It was the first time that he had mentioned the Chevalier's name since his meeting with Jeremy Winter. The adventurer had come to rouse in Durrell a feeling of repulsion. He had allowed himself to realise what manner of man this was whom he had pretended to call friend.

Nance let him talk, even encouraging him to speak of Jasper Benham. Jeremy Winter's anxiety had been unable to convince her that this monstrous piece of kidnapping could be very serious. It was an insolent attempt to extort terms. That was what Nance believed, not knowing the abominable and wanton things of which a revengeful man is capable. De Rothan had not yet taken his change for that rolling in the ditch.

She tried to suggest to Durrell what he should do.

"If the Chevalier de Rothan comes here, father, try and show him how absurd this is. Jasper and Mr. Winter will let him leave the country. They will keep silent—for our sakes."

Durrell looked troubled. Since the change in him he distrusted De Rothan even more than Nance distrusted him.

"This is a difficult man to argue with."

"But what sense is there? Who really believes that the French will land?"

"My dear, I believed it a week ago."

"But not now——"

"It is possible. De Rothan believes it, or he would have been across the water many days ago."

She glanced at her father, and realised once more how weak he was. The one great motive that had inspired him had crumbled away. Even her own sympathy had helped to sap and to undermine his strength.

Every day Jeremy rode over. He was blunt, laconic, but very courteous to Anthony Durrell. There were things that troubled him at Rush Heath, namely, the soothing of Squire Christopher's violent and choleric curiosity. The old man was bedridden, but he fumed for Jasper. Jeremy had told lies, that Jasper was away on duty. The whole household had to be deceived, and Jack Bumpstead kept from gossiping.

But Jeremy had not been able to stand wholly alone. He had been compelled to take Parson Goffin into his confidence, and by that peppery gentleman's advice he had enlarged the circle of trust still further. Certain of Jasper's friends were told the truth. They met at Goffin's, and held a council of war. The situation seemed absurd, even in its gravity. A Sussex gentleman kidnapped and held as a hostage in his own county by a French spy.

Jeremy told Nance all that he had to tell.

"We are having De Rothan's place watched, night and day. They are burning charcoal in a wood half a mile from the house, and one or two fellows have joined the charcoal-burners. If we could only collar De Rothan and his rogues, but they are cunning. They go out singly, and the fellow Gaston is always in the house."

He smiled grimly over the affair.

"Of course—a night attack would be the thing, after we had laid De Rothan by the heels. But there's the risk; I don't like taking it. The scoundrel still rides about as though he were in France. That makes me feel that he means business, and means to let us know it. He dares us to interfere."

"But can nothing be done?"

"I have an idea. I will tell it to you in a day or two."

XXXI

Jeremy had not exaggerated when he had said that De Rothan rode about the country as though he had nothing whatever to fear. His audacity carried him even into some of the country houses round about, and Jeremy himself met him in Hastings, riding along the High Street with a groom at his heels. He bowed to Jeremy and took off his hat.

"Good day to you, sir. I can assure you, in passing, that our mutual friend is very well."

"Damn your cheek," said Jeremy.

And De Rothan laughed in his face.

Some days elapsed before the Chevalier appeared again at Stonehanger. He had more desire to see Nance than to warn her father, for Durrell was becoming a negligible quantity now that the crisis was at hand. De Rothan was not the man to waste time upon a thing that was no longer of any use. He had made many shrewd guesses, but he had yet to learn that Nance herself was arrayed against him.

He found Durrell alone under one of the yews on the terrace. He had been reading and had fallen asleep with the book open across his knees. He woke with a start when De Rothan touched him, dropped the book, and looked up at the Frenchman with a narrowing and mistrustful stare.

"I had no notion you were here, sir. I have not been asleep more than five minutes."

He was confused, flurried, and De Rothan had quick eyes. He caught the restless antagonism in the other's manner. Durrell was a little afraid.

De Rothan sat down on the terrace wall, studying Durrell with cynical and amused eyes.

"So they have been frightening you, have they? Poor friend—poor comrade!"

Durrell moved restlessly in his chair. He had foreseen this meeting and had prepared himself for it, yet De Rothan's flippant scorn held him at a disadvantage.

"I have decided to abandon this enterprise——"

"Did they dangle a rope under your nose? Alas, we have not the blood of the martyrs in us! That little black-chinned bully has been here with his tongue and his pistols. He tried his bombast with me, but I had the adder's head under my heel."

Durrell's face twitched irritably.

"I have not been frightened from my purpose. But I see certain things as I did not see them before."

"A convenient conscience, eh!"

"I cannot share your methods."

"Indeed! That overwhelms me."

He looked at Durrell with amused contempt.

"So you know that I have compelled Mr. Jasper Benham to be my guest? And yet you cannot appreciate what a desperate piece of cleverness it was. A little man comes and storms at you, and instead of holding loyal to me, you throw up your arms and surrender."

"I have refused to accept your methods."

"Because of a wonderful new affection for this cub of a Sussex squire? Thunder! I wish you had your girl's courage, and not the heart of a sheep."

Durrell's eyes began to glitter in his white face.

"It is because of Nance that I have seen fit to renounce you and your cleverness."

"You overwhelm me! How much does your daughter know?"

"Everything."

"Oh, come, now, come!"

"I said everything."

"And she does not despise you for playing the coward—calling out when the shoe begins to pinch?"

De Rothan's insolence roused Durrell to a thin and austere dignity.

"Sir, do you think that my daughter admires your idea of honour any more than I do? Her sympathies are with this young man, concerning whom you saw fit to tell me many lies."

"Ah—is that so!"

"I have said it. I do not ask your leave to tell the truth."

De Rothan's face seemed to sharpen and to harden its outlines. He looked at Durrell out of half-closed eyes.

"Let us be frank. Am I to understand that this calf that I have tied up in a stall is particularly precious to your daughter?"

"I refuse to deal in such terms."

"The devil take all our little nicenesses! Do you mean to tell me that Nance cares one farthing whether that round-headed young oaf——"

"My daughter is not for your discussion."

De Rothan laughed, but it was the laughter of a man whose self-love felt savage.

"What a pretty little romance I have been feeding! That I should have rubbed this young fool on the raw, while sweet Nance pitied him."

Durrell's fingers kept up an agitated rapping on the arms of the chair.

"If you have any sense of honour, De Rothan——"

"Honour! I am packed full of honour. My marrow tingles with it. But you, Sir Pantaloon, do not understand."

"You are right. I do not understand."

"No, who could expect it. You desert me to play the fond father. It is very laughable. As if you could not have played the fond father and kept all your ambitions! Well, Mr. Anthony Durrell, I think there is nothing left for you but to sit here and wait to see the Emperor land."

"I believe less, sir, in the Emperor than I did."

"A pity! Yet we shall recover from your sudden scepticism. No doubt you will be happier with your books."

De Rothan rose, and stood looking over Stonehanger Common. His long mouth curled, and his nostrils were contemptuous. Durrell watched him uneasily, resentfully, still tapping the chair-rails with his fingers.

"You will release Mr. Benham."

De Rothan turned on him sharply.

"Pardon me—am I so soft a fool! I am not a man who turns back, or who shirks the holding of an advantage. I have some respect for my own neck, though I no longer look to you to respect it."

Durrell nodded solemnly.

"No good can come of it. As for this house——"

"Shut the door on me quickly. Lock me out in a great hurry, Mr. Durrell. I will wish you good morning."

He marched off across the grass, swaggering with stiff shoulders, and smiling a queer, sidelong smile up at Nance's window. David Barfoot was holding his horse in the yard. De Rothan glanced at him as though there were some sudden significance in the thought that the man was deaf.

"Do you sleep well in summer, Mr. David?"

Barfoot stared back at him and said nothing.

In the lane, close to the yew-tree where Jasper had been shot, De Rothan came right upon Nance and Jeremy Winter. They were climbing the hill side by side, Jeremy leading his horse by the bridle. The meeting roused a quick crackle of complex enmities. De Rothan stiffened in the saddle, and raised his hat to Nance.

She did not look at him, but beyond him, and her face was white frost. Jeremy bit his lip. There were so many things that he desired to say and do.

De Rothan smiled in his face as he passed him.

"Good day to you, sir; I may tell our friend that he has a kind relative who sees that his shoes are kept warm."

"Tell him what you please. It won't matter. Liars are easily known."

"How you would like to argue with me! But I am content with my present advantages. Good day."

De Rothan rode on, savagely amused. The varied experiences of life had not made him magnanimous, or tolerant, and cynic that he was he loved himself like a spoiled and passionate boy. He could not forgive the snatching away of a thing that he himself desired, his overweening egotism ruffing itself over the insult.

The most cynical of men are often the worst sensualists, and anything that balks their appetite rouses the wrath of the animal in them. De Rothan's hatred of Jasper Benham was natural enough in itself. He had been meddled with and humiliated by this young man, and De Rothan had no sentimentality when the stiff-haired anger of a dog was on him. Man of the world that he was, his cynicism could not save his vanity from being exasperated by the affair between Nance and Jasper Benham. He might call it a pinafore romance, and sneer at the crude preferences of a young girl. His self-love became an angry, snarling, dangerous thing, the more dangerous because it was clever and could sneer.

"Why not?"

His sullen face gleamed under the light of sudden suggestive thought. Why not, indeed? There were many ways of humiliating and hurting a man besides slashing him with a whip.

He roused his horse to a canter, brisked up by the delightful maliciousness of this new inspiration. He swaggered in the saddle and assumed a flamboyant jauntiness in passing a coach full of women on the Hastings road. The preposterous simplicity of the idea made him laugh, the sly noiseless laughter of a bon viveur enjoying a suggestive story.

"Bravo for the villain! What a queer mix-up of characters we mortals be! The philosopher crushing the wasp that has stung him. It is the nature of wasps to sting, therefore a philosopher should not be angry. But there is a joy in the crushing. And to see the sick black mug of that little fencing-master! It would be worth it even for that."

De Rothan rode home in great good humour. He left his horse with François, and went straight to the attic where Jasper was imprisoned. Gaston opened the door.

Jasper was lying on his straw in the corner, his face turned to the wall. He sat up when De Rothan entered, his hair over his eyes, a fine stubble on his upper lip and chin. A man's dignity is apt to go to pieces under such conditions, showing how greatly he is the slave of his comb and his razor.

De Rothan eyed him whimsically.

"Very good, Mr. Benham, very good indeed. Work just a little more straw into your hair. It would be sacrilege to have you washed and barbered."

He gloated, opening his chest, and forcing back his shoulders. Jasper looked at him stubbornly.

"If it is a question which dog is the dirtier——"

"My good young man, I am a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I make clean the outside of the cup. Women prefer it. Gaston, come down with me. Presently you may show Mr. Benham himself in a mirror."

Gaston followed De Rothan to the panelled dining-room. Master and man were in a good humour with one another.

"Bring the sherry and glasses, Gaston. If you can manage to make our friend up yonder look a little dirtier and more like an unclean lunatic I shall be gratified."

He poured out two glasses of wine.

"I expect more visitors, Gaston, my friend. Have two bedrooms got ready, and see that the locks of the doors are in order."

"More visitors, sir!"

"We are to fetch them to-night, Gaston. I shall want you and François with me. Jean can stay with the gentleman. He is a surly lad, is Jean. Tell him to cuff Mr. Benham on the mouth if he tries to talk to him. And have the horses ready at ten."

XXXII

Nance was awakened that night by the sound of some one walking on the stone-paved path below her window. She sat up in bed with a fluttering of the heart, wondering whether the footsteps were the footsteps of her father, or whether Jeremy had ridden over late with news.

She was about to slip out of bed when she heard voices on the terrace. There appeared to be several men talking together in undertones. Then came the crash of glass being broken, as though they were battering in one of the lower windows.

Nance went cold, her heart drumming, her ears straining to catch the slightest sound. The smashing of glass had ceased. She heard the voices again, and then a thud as of a man leaping from a window-sill into one of the lower rooms.

She told herself that these must be thieves. There was little to steal in Stonehanger, but even this thought was not altogether comforting. She knew that some of the country-folk were little better than savages, and that acts of brutal and even wanton violence were by no means uncommon. Some of the wild tales she had heard flashed vividly across her consciousness.

What should she do? Try and join her father? Or would it be better to lie still and wait, and even pretend to be asleep? She was still shivering with indecision when she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

They came up slowly, steadily, with no attempt at concealment. Nance could see streaks of light showing under her door. The man, whoever he was, carried a lantern or a candle.

She held her breath when the footsteps turned aside at the landing and came toward her door. They paused there, and she knew that the man would be standing within four feet of her bed. With the door open he could reach in and almost touch her.

Her heart leapt at the sound of a knock, and she had to moisten her lips before she could speak.

"Who's there?"

"Have nothing to fear. It is the Chevalier de Rothan."

For the moment she felt an irrational rush of gratitude and relief. She could have embraced the man; he seemed so much less terrible than some low gipsy or rough footpad. The mere physical fear was appeased for the moment, but it was to be followed by a dread that was more spiritual and refined.

"The Chevalier de Rothan?"

"Your very good friend—in spite of many prejudices. Miss Nance, I am here to secure you and your father. Will you wake him, or shall I?"

She swung her feet out of the bed, and sat with her arms wrapped round her.

"But what does this mean? Breaking into the house?"

"It means that I am shrewder than you think. I insist upon befriending you, on placing you somewhere where you will be safe. I must beg you to rise and dress."

"But still—I do not understand. What right——?"

"It is not necessary that you should understand. I hold myself responsible. You and Mr. Durrell are coming back with me to my house. I mistrust your friends. That is sufficient."

There was a confident irony about his masterfulness. She could picture him standing there with those hard Irish eyes of his smiling at the door. Her wits groped hither and thither in the darkness, searching for motives. One thing she realised very vividly, that De Rothan was in a temper that would not wait to argue.

"But this is ridiculous! You cannot compel us in this way——"

He brushed her words aside.

"I do not explain. In half an hour we leave Stonehanger. You will go with me, if I have to break down your door and wrap you up in blankets. I do not desire to use force, so spare me the necessity."