Kitabı oku: «Eve», sayfa 9

CHAPTER XVII.
FORGET-ME-NOT!

That night Eve could not sleep. She thought of her wonderful adventure. Who was that strange boy? And who was Martin? And, what was the link between these two and Jasper?

Towards morning, when she ought to have been stirring, she fell asleep, and laughed in her dreams. She woke with the sun shining in on her, and her father standing by her bed, watching her.

After the visions in which she had been steeped full of fair forms and brilliant colours, it was a shock to her to unclose her eyes on the haggard face of her father, with sunken eyes.

‘What is it, papa?’

‘My dear, it is ten o’clock. I have waited for my breakfast. The tea is cold, the toast has lost its crispness, and the eggs are like the tea – cold.’

‘O papa!’ she said sorrowfully, sitting up in bed; ‘I have overslept myself. But, you will not begrudge me the lovely dreams I have had. Papa! I saw a pixy yesterday.’

‘Where, child?’

‘On the Raven Rock.’

He shut his eyes, and put his hand over his mouth. Then he heaved a deep sigh, said nothing, turned, and went out of the room.

Eve was the idol of her father’s heart. He spoiled her, by allowing her her own way in everything, by relieving her of every duty, and heaping all the responsibilities on the shoulders of his eldest daughter.

Eve was so full of love and gaiety, that it was impossible to be angry with her when she made provoking mistakes; she was so penitent, so pretty in her apologies, and so sincere in her purpose of amendment.

Eve was warmly attached to her father. She had an affectionate nature, but none of her feelings were deep. Her rippling conversation, her buoyant spirits, enlivened the prevailing gloom of Mr. Jordan. His sadness did not depress her. Indeed, she hardly noticed it. Hers was not a sympathetic nature. She exacted the sympathy of others, but gave nothing more in return than prattle and laughter.

She danced down the stairs when dressed, without any regret for having kept her father waiting. He would eat a better breakfast for a little delay, she said to herself, and satisfied her conscience.

She came into the breakfast-room in a white muslin dress, covered with little blue sprigs, and with a blue riband in her golden hair. The lovely roses of her complexion, the sparkling eyes, the dimple in her cheeks, the air of perfect content with herself, and with all the world, disarmed what little vexation hung in her father’s mood.

‘Do you think Bab will be home to-day?’ she asked, seating herself at the tea-tray without a word of apology for the lateness of her appearance.

‘I do not know what her movements are.’

‘I hope she will. I want her home.’

‘Yes, she must return, to relieve you of your duties.’

‘I am sure the animals want her home. The pigeons find I am not regular in throwing them barley, and I sometimes forget the bread-crumbs after a meal. The little black heifer always runs along the paddock when Bab goes by, and she is indifferent to me. She lows when I appear, as much as to say, Where is Miss Barbara? Then the cat has not been himself for some days, and the little horse is in the dumps. Do you think brute beasts have souls?’

‘I do not know.’ Then after a pause, ‘What was that you said about a pixy?’

‘O papa! it was a dream.’ She coloured. Something rose in her heart to check her from confiding to him what in her thoughtless freedom she was prepared to tell on first awaking.

He pressed her no further. He doubtless believed she had spoken the truth. She had ever been candid. Now, however, she lacked courage to speak. She remembered that the boy had said ‘I come to you with a message.’ He had disappeared without giving it. What was that message? Was he gone without delivering it?

Mr. Jordan slowly ate his breakfast. Every now and then he looked at his daughter, never steadily, for he could look fixedly long at nothing.

‘I will tell you all, papa,’ said Eve suddenly, shaking her head, to shake off the temptation to be untrue. Her better nature had prevailed. ‘It was not a dream, it was a reality. I did see a pixy on the Raven Rock, the maddest, merriest, ugliest imp in the world.’

‘We are surrounded by an unseen creation,’ said Mr. Jordan. ‘The microscope reveals to us teeming life in a drop of water. Another generation will use an instrument that will show them the air full of living things. Then the laugh will be no more heard on earth. Life will be grave, if not horrible. This generation is sadder than the last because less ignorant.’

‘O papa! He was not a pixy at all. I have seen him before, when Mr. Jasper was thrown. Then he was perched like an ape, as he is, on the cross you set up, where my mother first appeared to you. He was making screams with his fiddle.’

Mr. Jordan looked at her with flickering, frightened eyes. ‘It was a spirit – the horse saw it and started – that was how Jasper was thrown,’ he said gravely.

‘Here Jasper comes,’ said Eve, laughing; ‘ask him.’ But instead of waiting for her father to do this, she sprang up, and danced to meet him with the simplicity of a child, and clapping her palms, she asked, ‘Mr. Jasper! My father will have it that my funny little pixy was a spirit of the woods or wold, and will not believe that he is flesh and blood.’

‘My daughter,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘has told me a strange story. She says that she saw a boy on the – the Raven Rock, and that you know him.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Whence comes he?’

‘That I cannot say.’

‘Where does he live?’

‘Nowhere.’

‘Is he here still?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Have you seen him before?’

‘Yes – often.’

‘That will do.’ Mr. Jordan jerked his head and waved his hand, in sign that he did not wish Jasper to remain.

He treated Jasper with rudeness; he resented the loss of Eve’s money, and being a man of narrow mind and vindictive temper, he revenged the loss on the man who was partly to blame for the loss. He brooded over his misfortune, and was bitter. The sight of Jasper irritated him, and he did not scruple at meals to make allusions to the lost money which must hurt the young man’s feelings. When Barbara was present, she interposed to turn the conversation or blunt the significance of her father’s words. Eve, on the other hand, when Mr. Jordan spoke in a way she did not like to Jasper or Barbara, started up and left the room, because she could not endure discords. She sprang out of the way of harsh words as she turned from a brier. It did not occur to her to save others, she saved herself.

Barbara thought of Jasper and her father, Eve only of herself.

When Jasper was gone, Mr. Jordan put his hand to his head. ‘I do not understand, I cannot think,’ he said, with a vacant look in his eyes. ‘You say one thing, and he another.’

‘Pardon me, dearest papa, we both say the same, that the pixy was nothing but a real boy of flesh and blood, but – there, let us think and talk of something else.’

‘Take care!’ said Mr. Jordan gloomily; ‘take care! There are spirits where the wise see shadows; the eye of the fool sees farther than the eye of the sage. My dear Eve, beware of the Raven Rock.’

Eve began to warble the air of the serenade in ‘Don Giovanni’ which she had heard the boy Watt sing.

Then she threw her arms round her father’s neck. ‘Do not look so miserable, papa. I am the happiest little being in the world, and I will kiss your cheeks till they dimple with laughter.’ But instead of doing so, she dashed away to pick flowers, for she thought, seeing herself in the glass opposite, that a bunch of forget-me-not in her bosom was what lacked to perfect her appearance in the blue-sprigged muslin.

She knew where wild forget-me-nots grew. The Abbot’s Well sent its little silver rill through rich grass towards the wood, where it spilled down the steep descent to the Tamar. She knew that forget-me-not grew at the border of the wood, just where the stream left the meadow and the glare of the sun for its pleasant shadow. As she approached the spot she saw the imp-like boy leap from behind a tree.

He held up his finger, put it to his lips, then beckoned her to follow him. This she would not do. She halted in the meadow, stooped, and, pretending not to see him, picked some of the blue flowers she desired.

He came stealthily towards her, and pointed to a stone a few steps further, which was hidden from the house by the slope of the hill. ‘I will tell you nothing unless you come,’ he said.

She hesitated a moment, looked round, and advanced to the place indicated.

‘I will go no farther with you,’ said she, putting her hand on the rock. ‘I am afraid of you.’

‘It matters not,’ answered the boy; ‘I can say what I want here.’

‘What is it? Be quick, I must go home.’

‘Oh, you little puss! Oh, you came out full of business! I can tell you, you came for nothing but the chance of hearing what I forgot to tell you yesterday. I must give the message I was commissioned to bear before I can leave.’

‘Who from?’

‘Can you ask? From Martin.’

‘But who is Martin?’

‘Sometimes he is one thing, then another; he is Don Giovanni. Then he is a king. There – he is an actor. Will that content you?’

‘What is his surname?’

‘O Eve! daughter of Eve!’ jeered the boy, ‘all inquisitiveness! What does that matter? An actor takes what name suits him.’

‘What is his message? I must run home.’

‘He stole something from you – wicked Martin.’

‘Yes; a ring.’

‘And you – you stole his heart away. Poor Martin has had no peace of mind since he saw you. His conscience has stung him like a viper. So he has sent me back to you with the ring.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Shut your blue eyes, they dazzle me, and put out your finger.’

‘Give me the ring, please, and let me go.’

‘Only on conditions – not my conditions – those of Martin. He was very particular in his instructions to me. Shut your eyes and extend your dear little finger. Next swear never, never to part with the ring I put on your finger.’

‘That I never will. Mr. Martin had no right to take the ring. It was impertinent of him; it made me very angry. Once I get it back I will never let the ring go again.’ She opened her eyes.

‘Shut! shut!’ cried the boy: ‘and now swear.’

‘I promise,’ said the girl. ‘That suffices.’

‘There, then, take the ring.’ He thrust the circlet on her finger. She opened her eyes again and looked at her hand.

‘Why, boy!’ she exclaimed, ‘this is not my ring. It is another.’

‘To be sure it is, you little fool. Do you think that Martin would return the ring you gave him? No, no. He sends you this in exchange for yours. It is prettier, Look at the blue flower on it, formed of turquoise. Forget-me-not.’

‘I cannot keep this. I want my own,’ said Eve, pouting, and her eyes filling.

‘You must abide Martin’s time. Meanwhile retain this pledge.’

‘I cannot! I will not!’ she stamped her foot petulantly on the oxalis and forget-me-not that grew beneath the rock, tears of vexation brimming in her eyes. ‘You have not dealt fairly by me. You have cheated me.’

‘Listen to me, Miss Eve,’ said the boy in a coaxing tone. ‘You are a child, and have to be treated as such. Look at the beautiful stones, observe the sweet blue flower. You know what that means – Forget-me-not. Our poor Martin has to ramble through the world with a heart-ache, yearning for a pair of sparkling blue eyes, and for two wild roses blooming in the sweetest cheeks the sun ever kissed, and for a head of hair like a beech tree touched by frost in a blazing autumn’s sun. Do you think he can forget these? He carries that face of yours ever about with him, and now he sends you this ring, and that means – ”Miss, you have made me very unhappy. I can never forget the little maid with eyes of blue, and so I send her this token to bid her forget me not, as I can never forget her.”’

And as Eve stood musing with pouting lips, and troubled brow, looking at the ring, the boy took his violin, and with the fingers plucked the strings to make an accompaniment as he sang: —

 
A maiden stood beside a river,
And with her pitcher seemed to play;
Then sudden stooped and drew up water,
But drew my heart as well away.
 
 
And now I sigh beside the river,
I dream about that maid I saw,
I wait, I watch, am restless, weeping,
Until she come again to draw.
 
 
A flower is blooming by the river,
A floweret with a petal blue,
Forget me not, my love, my treasure!
My flower and heart are both for you.
 

He played and sang a sweet, simple and plaintive air. It touched Eve’s heart; always susceptible to music. Her lips repeated after the boy, ‘My flower and heart are both for you.’

She could not make up her mind what to do. While she hesitated, the opportunity of returning the ring was gone. Watt had disappeared into the bushes.

CHAPTER XVIII.
DISCOVERIES

A beautiful summer evening. Eve from her window saw Jasper in the garden; he was trimming the flower-beds which had been neglected since Christopher Davy had been ill. The men were busy on the farm, too busy to be taken off for flower gardening. Barbara had said one day that it was a pity the beds were not put to rights; and now Jasper was attending to her wishes during her absence. Mr. Jordan was out. He had gone forth with his hammer, and there was no telling when he would return. Eve disliked being alone. She must talk to someone. She brushed her beautiful hair, looked in the glass, adjusted a scarf round her shoulders, and in a coquettish way tripped into the garden and began to pick the flowers, peeping at Jasper out of the corners of her eyes, to see if he were observing her. He, however, paid no attention to what she was doing. In a fit of impatience, she flung the auriculas and polyanthus she had picked on the path, and threw herself pouting into the nearest garden seat.

‘Mr. Jasper!’ she called; ‘are you so mightily busy that you cannot afford me a word?’

‘I am always and altogether at your service, dear Miss Eve.’

‘Why have you taken to gardening? Are you fond of flowers?’

‘I am devoted to flowers.’

‘So am I. I pick them.’

‘And throw them away,’ said Jasper, stooping and collecting those she had strewn on the path.

‘Well – I have not the patience to garden. I leave all that to Barbara and old Christopher. I wish things generally, gardens included, would go along without giving trouble. I wish my sister were home.’

‘To relieve you of all responsibility and trouble.’

‘I hate trouble,’ said Eve frankly, ‘and responsibility is like a burr in one’s clothes – detestable. There! you are laughing at me, Mr. Jasper.’

‘I am not laughing, I am sighing.’

‘Oh, you are always sad.’

‘I do not like to hear you talk in this manner. You cannot expect to have your sister at your elbow throughout life, to fan off all the flies that tease you.’

‘If I have not Bab, I shall have someone else.’

‘Miss Barbara might marry – and then – ’

‘Barbara marry!’ exclaimed Eve, and clapped her hands. ‘The idea is too absurd. Who would marry her? She is a dear, darling girl, but – ’

‘But what, missie?’

‘I dare say I shall marry.’

‘Miss Eve! listen to me. It is most likely that you will be married some day, but what then? You will have a thousand more cares on your shoulders than you have now, duties you will be forced to bear, troubles which will encompass you on all sides.’

‘Do you know,’ said Eve, with a twinkling face, and a sly look in her eyes, ‘do you know, Mr. Jasper, I don’t think I shall marry for ever so long. But I have a glorious scheme in my head. As my money is gone, if anything should happen to us, I should dearly like to go on the stage. That would be simply splendid!’

‘The young crows,’ said Jasper gravely, ‘live on the dew of heaven, and then they are covered with a soft shining down. After a while the old birds bring them carrion, and when they have tasted flesh, they no longer have any liking for dew. Then the black feathers sprout, then only.’ He raised his dark eyes to those of Eve, and said in a deep, vibrating voice, ‘I would have this sweet fledgling sit still in her beautiful Morwell nest, and drink only the sparkling drops that fall into her mouth from the finger of God. I cannot bear to think of her growing black feathers, and hopping about – a carrion crow.’

Eve fidgeted on her seat. She had thrust her pretty feet before her, clad in white stockings and blue leather slippers, one on the other; she crossed and recrossed them impatiently.

‘I do not like you to talk to me like this. I am tired of living in the wilds where one sees nobody, and where I can never go to theatre or concert or ball. I should – oh, I should like to live in a town.’

‘You are a child, Miss Eve, and think and talk like a child. But the time is coming when you must put away childish things, and face life seriously.’

‘It is not wicked to want to go to a town. There is no harm in dreaming that I am an actress. Oh!’ she exclaimed, held up her hands, and laughed, ‘that would be too delightful!’

‘What has put this mad fancy into your head?’

‘Two or three things. I will confide in you, dear Mr. Jasper, if you can spare the time to listen. This morning as I had nothing to do, and no one to talk to, I thought I would search the garrets here. I have never been over them, and they are extensive. Barbara has always dissuaded me from going up there because they are so dusty and hung with cobwebs. There is such a lot of rubbish heaped up and packed away in the attics. I don’t believe that Barbara knows what is there. I don’t fancy papa does. Well! I went up to-day and found treasures.’

‘Pray, what treasures?’

‘Barbara is away, and there is no one to scold. There are boxes there, and old chairs, all kinds of things, some are so heavy I could hardly move them. I could not get them back into their places again, if I were to try.’

‘So you threw the entire garret into disorder?’

‘Pretty well, but I will send up one of the men or maids to tidy it before Barbara comes home. Behind an old broken winnowing machine – fancy a winnowing machine up there! – and under a pile of old pans and bottomless crocks is a chest, to which I got with infinite trouble, and not till I was very hot and dirty. I found it was locked, but the rust had eaten through the hinges, or the nails fastening them; and after working the lid about awhile I was able to lift it. What do you suppose I found inside?’

‘I cannot guess.’

‘No, I am sure you cannot. Wait – go on with your gardening. I will bring you one of my treasures.’

She darted into the house, and after a few minutes, Jasper heard a tinkling as of brass. Then Eve danced out to him, laughing and shaking a tambourine.

‘I suppose it belonged to you or Miss Jordan when you were children, and was stowed away under the mistaken impression that you had outgrown toys.’

‘No, Mr. Jasper, it never belonged to either Barbara or me. I never had one. Barbara gave me everything of her own I wanted. I could not have forgotten this. I would have played with it till I had broken the parchment, and shaken out all the little bells.’

‘Give it to me. I will tighten the parchment, and then you can drum on it with your fingers.’ He took the instrument from her, and strained the cover. ‘Do you know, Miss Eve, how to use a tambourine?’

‘No. I shake it, and then all the little bells tingle.’

‘Yes, but you also tap the drum. You want music as an accompaniment, and to that you dance with this toy.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I will show you how I have seen it played by Italian and gipsy girls.’ He took the tambourine, and singing a lively dance air, struck the drum and clinked the brasses. He danced before Eve gravely, with graceful movements.

‘That is it!’ cried Eve, with eyes that flashed with delight, and with feet that itched to dance. ‘Oh, give it me back. I understand thoroughly now, thank you, thank you so heartily, dear Mr. Jasper. And now – I have not done. Come up into the garret when I call.’

‘What for? To help you to make more rummage, and find more toys?’

‘No! I want you to push the winnowing machine back, and to make order in the litter I have created.’

Jasper nodded good-humouredly.

Then Eve, rattling her tambourine over her head, ran in; and Jasper resumed his work at the flower-beds. Barbara’s heliotrope, from which she so often wore a fragrant flower, had not been planted many weeks. It was straggling, and needed pinning down. Her seedling asters had not been pricked out in a bed, and they were crowding each other in their box. He took them out and divided their interlaced roots.

‘Mr. Jasper!’ A little face was peeping out of the small window in the gable that lighted the attic. He looked up, waved his hand, and laid down the young asters with a sigh, but covered their roots with earth before leaving them.

Then he washed his hands at the Abbot’s Well, and slowly ascended the stair to the attic. It was a newel stone flight, very narrow, in the thickness of the wall.

When he reached the top he threw up a trap in the floor, and pushed his head through.

Then, indeed, he was surprised. The inconsiderate Eve had taken some candle ends and stuck them on the binding beam of the roof, and lighted them. They cast a yellow radiance through the vast space, without illumining its recesses. All was indistinct save within the radius of a few feet around the candles. In the far-off blackness was one silvery grey square of light – the little gable window. On the floor the rafter cast its shadow as a bar of ink.

Jasper was not surprised at the illumination, though vexed at the careless manner in which Eve had created it. What surprised him was the appearance of the young girl. She was transfigured. She was dressed in a saffron-yellow skirt with a crimson lattice of ribbon over it, fastened with bows, and covered with spangles. She wore a crimson velvet bodice, glittering with gold lace and bullion thread embroidery. But her eyes sparkled brighter than the tarnished spangles.

The moment Jasper’s head appeared through the trap in the floor, she struck the timbrel, and clattered the jingles, and danced and laughed. Then seeing how amazed he was she skipped coquettishly towards him, rattled her drum in his ear, and danced back again under her row of candles. She had caught the very air he had sung recently, when showing her how to manage the instrument. She had heard it that once, but she had seized the melody, and she sang it, and varied it after her own caprice, but without losing the leading thread, and always coming back to the burden with a similar set gesture of arms and feet, and stroke of drum and clash of bells. Then, all at once, one of the candles fell over on the rafter and dropped to the floor. Eve brought her tambourine down with a crash and jangle; Jasper sprang forward, and extinguished the candle with his foot.

‘There! Is not this witchcraft?’ exclaimed Eve. ‘Go down through the trap again, Mr. Jasper, and I will rejoin you. Not a word to papa, or to Barbie when she returns.’

‘I will not go till the candles are put out and the risk of a fire is past. You can see by the window to take off this trumpery.’

‘Trumpery! Oh, Mr. Jasper! Trumpery!’ she exclaimed in an injured, disappointed tone.

‘Call it what you will. Where did you find it?’

‘In yonder box. There is more in it. Do go now, Mr. Jasper; I will put out the candles, I will, honour bright.’

The bailiff descended, and resumed his work with the asters. He smiled and yet was vexed at Eve’s giddiness. It was impossible to be angry with her, she was but a child. It was hard not to look with apprehension to her future.

Suddenly he stood up, and listened. He heard the clatter of horse’s hoofs in the lane. Who could be coming? The evening had closed in. The sun was set. It was not dark so near midsummer, but dusk. He went hastily from the garden into the lane, and saw the young groom urging on his fagged horse, and leading another by the bridle, with a lady’s saddle on it.

‘Where is your mistress? Is anything the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ answered the lad. ‘She is behind. In taking off her glove she lost her ring, and now I must get a lantern to look for it.’

‘Nelly,’ that was the horse, ‘is tired. I will get a light and run back. Whereabouts is she?’

‘Oh, not a thousand yards from the edge of the moor. The doctor rode with us part of the way from Tavistock. After he left, Miss Barbara took off her glove and lost her ring. She won’t leave the spot till it be found.’

‘Go in. I will take the light to her. Tell the cook to prepare supper. Miss Jordan must be tired and hungry.’