Kitabı oku: «Eve», sayfa 26

CHAPTER LII.
THE WHOLE

A moment later, only a moment later, and a moment too late, Mr. Jordan reached the platform, having beaten the branches aside, regardless of the leaves that lashed his face and the brambles that tore his hands. Then, when he saw that he was too late, he uttered a cry of despair. He flung his gun from him, and it went over the edge and fell where it was never found again. Then he raised his arms over his head and clasped them, and brought them down on his hair – he wore no hat; and at the same time his knees gave way, and he fell fainting on his face, with his arms extended: the wound in his side had reopened, and the blood burst forth and ran in a red rill towards the fire.

A few minutes later Jasper came up. Watt was at the gate with the horse. They had heard the shot, and Jasper had run on. He was followed quickly by Walter, who had fastened up the horse, unable to endure the suspense.

‘Mr. Jordan is shot,’ gasped Jasper, ‘Martin has shot him. Help me. I must staunch the wound.’

‘Not I,’ answered the boy; ‘I care nothing for him. I must find Martin. Where is he? Gone to the hut? There is no time to be lost. I must find him – that cursed bell is ringing.’

Without another thought for the prostrate man, Walter plunged into the coppice, and ran down the steep slope towards the woodcutter’s hovel. It did not occur to Jasper that the shot he had heard proceeded from the squire’s gun. He knew that Martin was armed. He supposed that he had seen the old man emerge from the wood, and, supposing him to be one of his pursuers, had fired at him and made his escape. He knew nothing of Eve’s visit to the Raven Rock and interview with his brother.

He turned the insensible man over on his back and discovered, to his relief, that he was not dead. He tore open his shirt and found that he was unwounded by any bullet, but that the old self-inflicted wound in his side had opened and was bleeding freely. He knew how to deal with this. He took the old man’s shirt and tore it to form a bandage, and passed it round him and stopped temporarily the ebbing tide. He heard Walter calling Martin in the wood. It was clear that he had not found his brother in the hut. Now Jasper understood why the alarm-bell was ringing. Barbara had discovered that her father had left the house, and, in fear for the consequences, was summoning the workmen from their cottages to assist in finding him.

Watt reappeared in great agitation, and, without casting a look at the insensible man, said, ‘He is not there, he may be back in the mine. He may have unlocked the boathouse and be rowing over the Tamar, or down – no – the tide is out, he cannot get down.’ Then away he went again into the wood.

Mr. Jordan lay long insensible. He had lost much blood. Jasper knelt by him. All was now still. The bell was no longer pealing. No step could be heard. The bats flitted about the rock; the fire-embers snapped. The wind sighed and piped among the trees. The fire had communicated itself to some dry grass, and a tuft flamed up, then a little spluttering flame crept along from grass haulm and twig to a tuft of heather, which it kindled, and which flared up. Jasper, kneeling by Mr. Jordan, watched the progress of the fire without paying it much attention. In moments of anxiety trifles catch the eye. He dare not leave the old man. He waited till those who had been summoned by the bell came that way.

Presently Ignatius Jordan opened his eyes. ‘Eve!’ he said, and his dim eyes searched the feebly-illuminated platform. Then he laid his head back again on the moss and was unconscious or lost in dream – Jasper could not decide which. Jasper went to the fire and threw on some wood and collected more. The stronger the flame the more likely to attract the notice of the searchers. He trod out the fire where it stole, snakelike, along the withered grass that sprouted out of the cracks in the surface of the rock. He went to the edge of the precipice, and listened in hopes of hearing something, he hardly knew what – a sound that might tell him Walter had found his brother. He heard nothing – no dip of oars, no rattle of a chain, from the depths and darkness below. He returned to Mr. Jordan, and saw that he was conscious and recognised him. The old man signed to him to draw near.

‘The end is at hand. The blood has nearly all run out. Both are smitten – both the guilty and the guiltless.’

Jasper supposed he was wandering in his mind.

‘I will tell you all,’ said the old man. ‘You are her brother, and ought to know.’

‘You are speaking of my lost sister Eve!’ said Jasper eagerly. Not a suspicion crossed his mind that anything had happened to the girl.

‘I shall soon rejoin her, and the other as well. I would not speak before because of my child. I could not bear that she should look with horror on her father. Now it matters not. She has followed her mother. The need for silence is taken away. Wait! I must gather my strength, I cannot speak for long.’

Then from the depths of darkness below the rock, came the hoot of an owl. Jasper knew that it was Watt’s signal to Martin – that he was searching for him still. No answering hoot came.

‘You went to Plymouth. You saw the manager who had known my Eve. What did he say?’

‘He told me very little.’

‘Did he tell you where she was?’

‘No. He saw her for the last time on this rock. He had been sent here by her father, who was unable to keep his appointment.’

‘Go on.’

‘That is all. She refused to desert you and her child. It is false that she ran away with an actor.’

‘Who said she had? Not I – not I. Her own father, her own father – not I.’

‘Then what became of her? Mr. Barret told me he had been to see her here at Morwell once or twice whilst the company was at Tavistock, and found her happy. After that my father came and tried to induce her to return to Buckfastleigh with him.’

Mr. Jordan put out his white thin hand and laid it on Jasper’s wrist.

‘You need say no more. The end is come, and I will tell you all. I knew that one of the actors came out and saw her – not once only, but twice – and then her father came, and she met him in secret, here in the wood, on this rock. I did not know that he whom she met was her father. I supposed she was still meeting the actor privately. I was jealous. I loved Eve. Oh, my God! my God!’ – he put his hands against his temples – ’when have I ceased to love her?’

He did not speak for some moments. Again from the depths, but more distant, came the to-whoo of the owl. Mr. Jordan removed his hands from his brow and laid them flat at his side on the rock.

‘I was but a country gentleman, with humble pursuits – a silent man, who did not care for society – and I knew that I could not compare with the witty attractive men of the world. I knew that Morwell was a solitary place, and that there were few neighbours. I believed that Eve was unhappy here: I thought she was pining to go back to the merry life she had led with the players. I thought she was weary of me, and I was jealous – jealous and suspicious. I watched her, and when I found that she was meeting someone in secret here on this rock, and that she tried to hide from me especially that she was doing this, then I went mad – mad with disappointed love, mad with jealousy. I knew she intended to run away from me.’ He made a sign with his hand that he could say no more.

Jasper was greatly moved. At length the mystery was being revealed. The signs of insanity in the old man had disappeared. He spoke with emotion, as was natural, but not irrationally. The fact of being able to tell what had long been consuming his mind relieved it, and perhaps the blood he had lost reduced the fever which had produced hallucination.

Jasper said in as quiet a voice as he could command, ‘My sister loved you and her child, and had no mind to leave you. She was grateful to you for your kindness to her. Unfortunately her early life was not a happy one. My father treated her with harshness and lack of sympathy. He drove her, by his treatment, from home. Now, Mr. Jordan, I can well believe that in a fit of jealousy and unreasoning passion you drove my poor sister away from Morwell – you were not legally married, and could do so. God forgive you! She did not desert you: you expelled her. Now I desire to know what became of her. Whither did she go? If she be still alive, I must find her.’

‘She is not alive,’ said Mr. Jordan.

Then a great horror came over Jasper, and he shrank away. ‘You did not drive her in a fit of desperation to – to self-destruction?’

Mr. Jordan’s earnest eyes were fixed on the dark night sky. He muttered – the words were hardly audible —Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine: Domine, quis sustinebit?

Jasper did not catch what he said, and thinking it was something addressed to him, he stooped over Mr. Jordan and said, ‘What became of her? How did she die? Where is she buried?’

The old man raised himself on one arm and tried to sit up, and looked at Jasper with quivering lips; then held his arm over the rock as, pointing to the abyss, ‘Here!’ he whispered, and fell back on the moss.

Jasper saw that he had again become unconscious. He feared lest life – or reason – should desert him before he had told the whole story.

It was some time before the squire was able to speak. When consciousness returned he bent his face to Jasper, and there was not that flicker and wildness in his eyes which Jasper had observed at other times, and which had made him uneasy. Mr. Jordan looked intently and steadily at Jasper.

‘She did not run away from me. I did not drive her from my house as you think. It can avail nothing to conceal the truth longer. I did not wish that Eve, my child, should know it; but now – it matters no more. My fears are over. I have nothing more to disturb me. I care for no one else. I saw my wife on this rock meet the actor, I watched them. They did not know that I was spying. I could not hear much of what they said; I caught only snatches of sentences and stray words. I thought he was urging her to go with him.’

‘No,’ interrupted Jasper, ‘it was not so. He advised her not to return with her father, but to remain with you.’

‘Was it so? I was fevered with love and jealousy. I heard his last words – she was to be there on the morrow, Midsummer Day, and then to give the final decision. If I had had my gun I would have shot him there, but I was unarmed. All that night I was restless. I could not sleep; I was as one in a death agony. I thought that Eve was going to desert me for another. And when on the morrow, Midsummer Day, she went at the appointed hour to the Raven Rock, I followed her. She had taken her child – she had made up her mind – she was going. Then I took down my gun and loaded it.’

Jasper’s heart stood still. Now for the first time he began to see and fear what was coming. This was worse than he had anticipated.

‘I crept along behind a hedge, till I reached the wood. Then I stole through the gate under the trees. I came beneath the great Scotch pine’ – he pointed in the direction. ‘She had her child with her. She had made up her mind – so I thought – to leave me, and take with her the babe. That she could not leave. Now I see she took it only that she might show the little thing to her father. I watched her on the rock. She kissed the babe and soothed it, and fondled it, and sang to it. She had a sweet voice. I was watching – there – and I had my gun in my hands. The man was not come. I saw rise up before me the life my Eve would lead; I saw how she would sink, how the man would desert her, and she would fall lower; and my child, what would become of my child? Then she turned and looked in my direction. She was listening for the step of her lover. She stooped, and laid the child on the moss, where I lie now. I suppose it opened its eyes, and she began to sing and dance to it, snapping her fingers as though playing castanets. My heart flared within me, my hand shook, and God knows how it was – I do not. I cannot say how it came about, but in one moment the gun was discharged and she fell. I did not mean to kill her when I loaded it, but I did mean to kill the man, the seducer. But whether I did it purposely then, or my finger acted without my will, I cannot say. All is dark to me when I look back – dark as is the darkness over the edge of this rock.’

Jasper could not speak. He stood and looked with horror on the wounded, wretched man.

‘I buried her,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘in the old copper-mine – long deserted, and only known to me – and there she lies. That is the whole.’

Then he covered his eyes and said no more.

CHAPTER LIII.
BY LANTERN-LIGHT

When Barbara had finished her needlework, the wonder which had for some time been obtruding itself upon her – what had become of Eve – became prominent, and awoke a fear in her lest she should have run off into the wood to Martin. She did not wish to think that Eve would do such a thing; but, if she were not in the house, and neither her step nor her voice announced her presence, where was she? Eve was never able to amuse herself, by herself, for long. She must be with someone – with a maid if no one else were available. She had no resources in herself. If she were with Jasper, it did not matter; but Barbara hardly thought Eve was with him.

She laid aside her needlework, looked into her sister’s room, without expecting to see Eve there, then descended and sought Jane, to inquire whether her father had given signs of being awake by knocking. Jane, however, was not in the pantry nor in the kitchen. Jane had not been seen for some time. Then Barbara very softly stole through the hall and tapped at her father’s door. No answer. She opened it and looked in. The room was quite dark. She stood still and listened. She did not hear her father breathe. In some surprise, but hardly yet in alarm, she went for a candle, and returned with it to the room Mr. Jordan occupied. To her amazement and alarm, she found it empty. She ran into the parlour – no one was there. She sought through the house and garden, and stables – not a sign of her father anywhere, and, strangely enough, not of Eve, or of Jane either. Jasper, likewise, had not been seen for some time. Then, in her distress, Barbara rang the alarm-bell, long, hastily, and strongly. When, after the lapse of some while spent in fruitless search, Barbara arrived at the Raven Rock, she was not alone – two or three of the farm labourers and Joseph the policeman were with her. Jane had found her sweetheart on his way to Morwell to visit her. The light of the fire on the Rock, illumining the air above the trees, had attracted the notice of one of the workmen, and now the entire party came on to the Rock as Mr. Jordan had finished his confession, and Jasper, sick at heart, horror-stricken, stood back, speechless, not able to speak.

Barbara uttered a cry of dismay when she saw her father, and threw herself on her knees at his side. He made a sign to her to keep back, he did not want her; he beckoned to Jasper.

‘One word more,’ he said in a low tone. ‘My hours are nearly over. Lay us all three together – my wife, my child, and me.’

‘Papa,’ said Barbara, ‘what do you mean? what is the matter?’

He paid no attention to her. ‘I have told you where she lies. When you have recovered my poor child – ’

‘What child?’ asked Jasper.

‘Eve; what other?’

Jasper did not understand, and supposed he was wandering.

‘He – your brother – leaped off the precipice with her in his arms.’

‘Papa!’ cried Barbara.

‘She is dead – dashed to pieces – and he too.’

Barbara looked at Jasper, then, in terror ran to the edge. Nothing whatever could be seen. That platform of rock might be the end of the world, a cliff jutting forth into infinite space and descending into infinite abysses of blackness. She leaned over and called, but received no answer. Jasper could hardly believe in the truth of what had been said. Turning to the policeman and servants, he spoke sternly: ‘Mr. Jordan must be removed at once. Let him be lifted very carefully and carried into the house. He has lain here already unsuccoured too long.’

‘I will not be removed,’ said the old man; ‘leave me here, I shall take no further harm. Go – seek for the body of my poor Eve.’

‘John Westlake,’ called Barbara to one of the men, ‘give me the lantern at once.’ The man was carrying one. Then, distracted between fear for her sister and anxiety about her father, she ran back to Mr. Jordan to know how he was.

‘You need be in no immediate anxiety about him,’ said Jasper. ‘It is true that his wound has opened and bled, but I have tightly bandaged it again.’

Joseph, the policeman, stood by helpless, staring blankly about him and scratching his ear.

Then Barbara noticed a blanket lying in a heap on the rock – the blanket Jasper had brought to his brother, but which had been refused. She caught it up at once and tore it into shreds, knotted the ends together, took the lantern from the man Westlake, and let the light down the face of the crag. The lantern was of tin and horn, and through the sides but a dull light was thrown. She could see nothing – the lantern caught in ivy and heather bushes and turned on one side; the candle-flame scorched the horn.

‘I can see nothing,’ she said despairingly. ‘What shall I do!’

Suddenly she grasped Jasper’s hand, as he knelt by her, looking down.

‘Do you hear?’

A faint moan was audible. Was it a human voice, or was a bough swayed and groaning in the wind?

All crowded to the edge and held their breath. Mr. Jordan was disregarded in the immediate interest attaching to the fate of Eve.

No other sound was heard.

Jasper ran and gathered fir and oak branches and grass, bound them into a faggot, set it on fire, and threw it over the edge, so that it might fall wide of the Rock and illumine its face. There was a glare for a moment, but the faggot went down too swiftly to be of any avail.

Then Walter, whom none had hitherto observed, pushed through, and, without saying a word to anyone, kicked off his shoes and went over the edge.

‘Let him go,’ said Jasper as one of the men endeavoured to stay him; ‘the boy can climb like a squirrel. Let him take the lantern, Barbara, that he may see where to plant his foot and what to hold.’ Then he took the blanket rope from her hand, raised the light, and slowly lowered it again beside the descending boy.

Watt went down nimbly yet cautiously, clinging to ivy and tufts of grass, feeling every projection, and trying with his foot before trusting his weight to it. He did not hurry himself. He did not regard those who watched his advance. His descent was in zigzags. He crept along ledges, found a cleft or a step of stone, or a tuft of heather, or a stem of ivy. All at once he grasped the lantern.

‘I see something! Oh, Jasper, what can it be!’ gasped Barbara.

‘Be careful,’ he said; ‘do not overbalance yourself.’

‘I have found her,’ shouted Watt; ‘only her – not him.’

‘God be praised!’ whispered Barbara.

‘Is she alive?’ called Jasper.

‘I do not know, I do not care. Martin is not here.’

‘Now,’ said Jasper, ‘come on, you men – that is, all but one. We must go below; not over the cliff, but round through the coppice. We can find our way to the lantern. The boy must be at the bottom. She has fallen,’ he addressed Barbara now, ‘she has fallen, I trust, among bushes of oak which have broken the force of the fall. Do not be discouraged. Trust in God. Stay here and pray.’

‘Oh, Jasper, I cannot! I must go with you.’

‘You cannot. You must not. The coppice and brambles would tear your clothes and hands and face. The scramble is difficult by day and dangerous by night. You must remain here by your father. Trust me. I will do all in my power for poor Eve. We cannot bring her up the way we descend. We must force our way laterally into a path. You remain by your father, and let a man run for another or two more lanterns.’

Then Jasper went down by way of the wood with the men scrambling, falling, bursting through the brakes; some cursing when slashed across the face by an oak bough or torn through cloth and skin by a braid of bramble. They were quite invisible to Barbara, and to each other. They went downward: fast they could not go, fearing at every moment to fall over a face of rock; groping, struggling as with snakes, in the coils of wood; slipping, falling, scrambling to their feet again, calling each other, becoming bewildered, losing their direction. The lantern that Watt held was quite invisible to them, buried above their heads in the densest undergrowth. The only man of them who came unhurt out of the coppice was Joseph, who, fearing for his face and hands and uniform, unwilling that he should appear lacerated and disfigured before Jane, instead of finding his way down through the brush, descended leisurely by the path or road that made a long circuit to the water’s edge, and then ascended by the same road again to the place whence he had started.

Jasper, who had more intelligence than the rest, had taken his bearings, before starting, by the red star on the side of Hingston Hill, that shone out of a miner’s hut window. This he was able always to see, and by it to steer his course; so that eventually he reached the spot where was Watt with the lantern.

‘Where is she? What are you doing?’ he asked breathlessly. His hands were torn and bleeding, his face bruised.

‘Oh, I do not know. I left her. I want to find Martin – he cannot be far off.’

The boy was scrambling on a slope of fallen rubble.

‘I insist, Watt: tell me. Give me the lantern at once.’

‘I will not. She is up there. You can make out the ledge against the sky, and by the light of the fire above; but Martin – whither is he gone?’

Then away farther down went the boy with his lantern. Instead of following him, Jasper climbed up the rubble slope to the ledge. His eyes had become accustomed to the dark. He distinguished the fluttering end of a white or light-coloured dress. Then he swung himself up upon the ledge, and saw, by the faint light that still lingered in the sky, the figure of a woman – of Eve – lying on one side, with the hands clinging to a broken branch of ivy. A thick bed of heather was on this ledge – so thick that it had prevented Eve from rolling off it when she had fallen into the bush.

He stooped over her. He felt her heart, he put his ear to her mouth. Immediately he called up to Barbara, ‘She is alive, but insensible.’

Then he put his hands to his mouth and shouted to the men who had started with him.

He was startled by seeing Watt with the lantern close to him: the light was on the boy’s face. It was agitated with fear, rage, and distress. His eyes were full of tears, sweat poured from his brow.

‘Why do you shout?’ he said, and shook his fist in Jasper’s face. ‘Have you no care for Martin? I cannot find him yet, but he is near. Be silent, and do not bring the men here. If he is alive I will get him away in the boat. If he is dead – ’ then his sobs burst forth. ‘Martin! poor Martin! where can he be! Do not call: let no one come here. Oh, Martin, Martin!’ and away went the boy down again. ‘Why is she fallen here and found at once, and he is lost! Oh, Martin – poor Martin!’ the edge of the rock came in the way of the light, and Jasper saw no more of the boy and the lantern.

Unrestrained by what his youngest brother had said, Jasper called repeatedly, till at last the men gathered where he was. Then, with difficulty Eve was moved from where she lay and received in the arms of the men below. She moaned and cried out with pain, but did not recover consciousness.

Watt was travelling about farther down with his dull light, sometimes obscured, sometimes visible. One of the men shouted to him to bring the lantern up, but his call was disregarded, and next moment Watt and his lantern were forgotten, as another came down the face of the cliff, lowered by Barbara.

Then the men moved away with their burden, and one went before with the light exploring the way. Barbara above knelt at the edge of the rock and prayed, and as she prayed her tears fell over her cheeks.

At length the little cluster of men appeared with their light through the trees, approaching the Rock from the wood; they had reached the path and were coming along it. Jasper took the lantern and led the way.

‘Lay her here,’ he said, ‘near her father, where there is moss, till we can get a couple of gates.’ Then, suddenly, as the men were about to obey him, he uttered an exclamation of horror. He had put the lantern down beside Mr. Jordan.

‘Stand back,’ he said to Barbara, who was coming up, ‘stand back, I pray you!’

But there was no need for her to stand back: she had seen what he would have hidden from her. In the darkness and loneliness, unobserved, Mr. Jordan had torn away his bandages, and his blood had deluged the turf. It had ceased to flow now – for he was dead.