Eve

‘All the balls are here except the Jack,’ said she. ‘I shall have to rummage everywhere for the black-a-moor; I can’t think where he can be.’ Then she ran into the house in quest of the missing ball.

The grass had been left to grow all spring and had not been cut at all, so that it was rank. Mr. Jordan did not well know how to wield a scythe. He tried and met with so little success that he suspected the blade was blunt. Accordingly he went to the tool-house for the hone, and, standing the scythe up with the handle on the swath, tried to sharpen the blade.

The grass was of the worst possible quality. The quadrangle was much in shadow. The plots were so exhausted that little grew except daisy and buttercup. Jasper had already told Barbara to have the wood-ashes thrown on the plots, and had promised to see that they were limed in winter. Whilst Mr. Jordan was honing the scythe slowly and clumsily Barbara came to him. She was surprised to see him thus engaged. Lean, haggard, with deep-sunken eyes, and hollow cheeks, he lacked but the hour-glass to make him stand as the personification of Time. He was in an ill-humour at having been disturbed and set to an uncongenial task, though his ill-humour was not directed towards Eve. Barbara was always puzzled by her father. That he suffered, she saw, but she could not make out of what and where he suffered, and he resented inquiry. There were times when his usually dazed look was exchanged for one of keenness, when his eyes glittered with a feverish anxiety, and he seemed to be watching and expecting with eye and ear something or some person that never came. At table he was without conversation; he sat morose, lost in his own thoughts till roused by an observation addressed to him. His temper was uncertain. Often, as he observed nothing, he took offence at nothing; but occasionally small matters roused and unreasonably irritated him. An uneasy apprehension in Barbara’s mind would not be set at rest. She feared that her father’s brain was disturbed, and that at any time, without warning, he might break out into some wild, unreasonable, possibly dreadful, act, proclaiming to everyone that what she dreaded in secret had come to pass – total derangement. Of late his humour had been especially changeful, but his eldest daughter sought to convince herself that this could be accounted for by distress at the loss of Eve’s dowry.

Barbara asked her father why he was mowing the grass plot, and when he told her that Eve had asked him to do so that she might play bowls that evening on it, she remonstrated, ‘Whom is she to play with?’

‘Jasper Babb has promised her a game. I suppose you and I will be dragged out to make up a party.’

‘O papa, there is no necessity for your mowing! You do not understand a scythe. Now you are honing the wrong way, blunting, not sharpening, the blade.’

‘Of course I am wrong. I never do right in your eyes.’

‘My dear father,’ said Barbara, hurt at the injustice of the remark, ‘that is not true.’

‘Then why are you always watching me? I cannot walk in the garden, I cannot go out of the door, I cannot eat a meal, but your eyes are on me. Is there anything very frightful about me? Anything very extraordinary? No – it is not that. I can read the thoughts in your head. You are finding fault with me. I am not doing useful work. I am wasting valuable hours over empty pursuits. I am eating what disagrees with me, too much, or too little. Understand this, once for all. I hate to be watched. Here is a case in point, a proof if one were needed. I came out here to cut this grass, and at once you are after me. You have spied my proceedings. I must not do this. If I sharpen the scythe I am all in the wrong, blunting the blade.’

The tears filled Barbara’s eyes.

‘I am told nothing,’ continued Mr. Jordan. ‘Everything I ought to know is kept concealed from me, and you whisper about me behind my back to Jasper and Mr. Coyshe.’

‘Indeed, indeed, dear papa – ’

‘It is true. I have seen you talking to Jasper, and I know it was about me. What were you trying to worm out of him about me? And so with the doctor. You rode with him all the way from Tavistock to the Down the other day; my left ear was burning that afternoon. What did it burn for? Because I was being discussed. I object to being made the topic of discussion. Then, when you parted with the doctor, Jasper Babb ran out to meet you, that you might learn from him how I had behaved, what I had done, whilst you were away. I have no rest in my own house because of your prying eyes. Will you go now, and leave me.’

‘I will go now, certainly,’ said Barbara, with a gulp in her throat, and swimming eyes.

‘Stay!’ he said, as she turned. He stood leaning his elbow on the head of the scythe, balancing it awkwardly. ‘I was told nothing of your visit to Buckfastleigh. You told Eve, and you told Jasper – but I who am most concerned only heard about it by a side-wind. You brought Jasper his fiddle, and when I asked how he had got it, Eve told me. You visited his father. Well! am I nobody that I am to be kept in the dark?’

‘I have nothing of importance to tell,’ said Barbara. ‘It is true I saw Mr. Babb, but he would not let me inside his house.’

‘Tell me, what did that man say about the money?’

‘I do not think there is any chance of his paying unless he be compelled. He has satisfied his conscience. He put the money away for you, and as it did not reach you the loss is yours, and you must bear it.’

‘But good heavens! that is no excuse at all. The base hypocrite! He is a worse thief than the man who stole the money. He should sell the fields he bought with my loan.’

‘They were fields useful to him for the stretching of the cloth he wove in his factory.’

‘Are you trying to justify him for withholding payment?’ asked Mr. Jordan. ‘He is a hypocrite. What was he to cry out against the strange blood, and to curse it? – he, Ezekiel Babb, in whose veins ran fraud and guile?’

Barbara looked wonderingly at him through the veil of tears that obscured her sight. What did he mean?

‘He is an old man, papa, but hard as iron. He has white hair, but none of the reverence which clings to age attaches to him.’

‘White hair!’ Mr. Jordan turned the scythe, and with the point aimed at, missed, aimed at again, and cut down a white-seeded dandelion in the grass. ‘That is white, but the neck is soft, even if the head be hard,’ said Mr. Jordan, pointing to the dandelion. ‘I wish that were his head, and I had cut through his neck. But then – ’ he seemed to fall into a bewildered state – ’the blood should run red – run, run, dribble over the edge, red. This is milky, but acrid.’ He recovered himself. ‘I have only cut down a head of dandelion.’ He reversed the scythe again, and stood leaning his arm on the back of the blade, and staying the handle against his knee.

‘My dear father, had you not better put the scythe away?’

‘Why should I do that? I have done no harm with it. No one can set on me for what I have cut with it – only a white old head of dandelion with a soft neck. Think – if it had been Ezekiel Babb’s head sticking out of the grass, with the white hair about it, and the sloe-black wicked eyes, and with one cut of the scythe – swish, it had tumbled over, with the stalk upwards, bleeding, bleeding, and the eyes were in the grass, and winking because the daisies teased them and made them water.’

Barbara was distressed. She must change the current of his thoughts. To do this she caught at the first thing that came into her head.

‘Papa! I will tell you what Mr. Coyshe was talking to me about. It is quite right, as you say, that you should know all; it is proper that nothing should be kept from you.’

‘It is hardly big enough,’ said Mr. Jordan.

‘What, papa?’

‘The dandelion. I can’t feel towards it as if it were Mr. Babb’s head.’

‘Papa,’ said Barbara, speaking rapidly, and eager to divert his mind into another channel, ‘papa dear, do you know that the doctor is much attached to our pet?’

‘It could not be otherwise. Everyone loves Eve; if they do not, they deserve to die.’

‘Papa! He told me as much as that. He admires her greatly, and would dearly like to propose for her, but, though I do not suppose he is bashful, he is not quite sure that she cares for him.’

‘Eve shall have whom she will. If she does not like Coyshe, she shall have anyone else.’

Then he hinted that, though he had no doubt he would make himself a great name in his profession, and in time be very wealthy, that yet he could not afford as he is now circumstanced to marry a wife without means.

‘There! there!’ exclaimed Mr. Jordan, becoming again excited. ‘See how the wrong done by Ezekiel Babb is beginning to work. There is a future, a fine future offering for my child, but she cannot accept it. The gate is open, but she may not pass through, because she has not the toll-money in her hand.’

‘Are you sure, papa, that Mr. Coyshe would make Eve happy?’

‘I am sure of it. What is this place for her? She should be in the world, be seen and received, and shine. Here she is like one hidden in a nook. She must be brought out, she must be admired by all.’

‘I do not think Eve cares for him.’

But her father did not hear her; he went on, and as he spoke his eyes flashed, and spots of dark red colour flared on his cheek-bones. ‘There is no chance for poor Eve! The money is gone past recovery. Her future is for ever blighted. I call on heaven to redress the wrong. I went the other day to Plymouth to hear Mass, and I had but one prayer on my lips, Avenge me on my enemy! When the choir sang “Gloria in Excelsis, Deo,” I heard my heart sing a bass, “On earth a curse on the man of ill-will.” When they sang the Hosanna! I muttered, Cursed is he that cometh to defraud the motherless! I could not hear the Benedictus. My heart roared out “Imprecatus! Imprecatus sit!” I can pray nothing else. All my prayers turn sour in my throat, and I taste them like gall on my tongue.’

‘O papa! this is horrible!’

Now he rested both his elbows on the back of the blade and raised his hands, trembling with passion, as if in prayer. His long thin hair, instead of hanging lank about his head, seemed to bristle with electric excitement, his cheeks and lips quivered. Barbara had never seen him so greatly moved as now, and she did not know what to do to pacify him. She feared lest any intervention might exasperate him further.

‘I pray,’ he began, in a low, vibrating monotone, ‘I pray to the God of justice, who protecteth the orphan and the oppressed, that He may cause the man that sinned to suffer; that He will whet his gleaming sword, and smite and not spare – smite and not spare the guilty.’ His voice rose in tone and increased in volume. Barbara looked round, in hopes of seeing Eve, trusting that the sight of her might soothe her father, and yet afraid of her sister seeing him in this condition.

‘There was a time, seventeen years ago,’ continued Mr. Jordan, not noticing Barbara, looking before him as if he saw something far beyond the boundary walls of the house, ‘there was a time when he lifted up his hand and voice to curse my child. I saw the black cross, and the shadow of Eve against it, and he with his cruel black hands held her there, nailed her with his black fingers to the black cross. And now I lift my soul and my hands to God against him. I cry to Heaven to avenge the innocent. Raise Thy arm and Thy glittering blade, O Lord, and smite!’

Suddenly the scythe slipped from under his elbows. He uttered a sharp cry, staggered back and fell.

As he lay on the turf, Barbara saw a dark red stain ooze from his right side, and spread as ink on blotting-paper. The point of the scythe had entered his side. He put his hand to the wound, and then looked at his palm. His face turned livid. At that moment, just as Barbara sprang to her father, having recovered from the momentary paralysis of terror, Eve bounded from the hall-door, holding a ball over her head in both her hands, and shouting joyously, ‘I have the Jack! I have the Jack!’

CHAPTER XXII.

THE RED STREAK

Barbara was not a girl to allow precious moments to be lost; instead of giving way to emotion and exclamations, she knelt and tore off her father’s waistcoat, ripped his shirt, and found a gash under the rib; tearing off her kerchief she ran, sopped it in cold water, and held it tightly to the wound.

‘Run, Eve, run, summon help!’ she cried. But Eve was powerless to be of assistance; she had turned white to the lips, had staggered back to the door, and sent the Jack rolling over the turf to her father’s feet.

‘I am faint,’ gasped poor Eve. ‘I cannot see blood.’

‘You must,’ exclaimed Barbara, ‘command yourself. Ring the alarm bell: Jasper – someone – will hear.’

‘The power is gone from my arms,’ sobbed Eve, shivering.

‘Call one of the maids. Bid her ring,’ ordered the elder.

Eve, holding the sides of the door to prevent herself from falling, deadly white, with knees that yielded under her, staggered into the house.

Presently the old bell hung in a pent-house over the roof of the chapel began to give tongue.

Barbara, kneeling behind her father, raised his head on her bosom, and held her kerchief to his side. The first token of returning consciousness was given by his hands, which clutched at some grass he had cut. Then he opened his eyes.

‘Why is the bell tolling?’

‘Dear papa! it is calling for help. Yon must be moved. You are badly hurt.’

‘I feel it. In my side. How was it? I do not remember. Ah! the scythe. Has the blade cut deep?’

‘I cannot tell, papa, till the doctor comes. Are you easier now?’

‘You did it. Interfering with me when I was mowing. Teasing me. You will not leave me alone. You are always watching me. You wanted to take the scythe from me. If you had left me alone this would not have happened.’

‘Never mind, darling papa, how it happened. Now we must do our best to cure you.’

‘Am I badly hurt? What are these women coming crowding round me for? I do not want the maids here. Drive them back, Barbara.’

Barbara made a sign to the cook and house and kitchen maids to stand back.

‘You must be moved to your room, papa.’

‘Am I dying, Barbara?’

‘I hope and trust not, dear.’

‘I cannot die without speaking; but I will not speak till I am on the point of death.’

‘Do not speak, father, at all now.’

He obeyed and remained quiet, with his eyes looking up at the sky. Thus he lay till Jasper arrived breathless. He had heard the bell, and had run, suspecting some disaster.

‘Let me carry him, with one of the maids,’ said Jasper.

‘No,’ answered Barbara. ‘You shall take his shoulders, I his feet. We will carry him on a mattress. Cook and Jane have brought one. Help me to raise him on to it.’

Jasper was the man she wanted. He did not lose his head. He did not ask questions, how the accident had happened; he did not waste words in useless lamentation. He sent a maid at once to the stable to saddle the horse. A girl, in the country, can saddle and bridle as well as a boy.

‘I am off for the doctor,’ he said shortly, as soon as he had seen Mr. Jordan removed to the same downstairs room in which he had so recently lain himself.

‘Send for the lawyer,’ said Mr. Jordan, who had lain with his eyes shut.

‘The lawyer, papa!’

‘I must make my will. I might die, and then what would become of Eve?’

‘Ride on to Tavistock after you have summoned Mr. Coyshe,’ said Barbara.

When Jasper was gone, Eve, who had been fluttering about the door, came in, and threw herself sobbing on her knees by her father’s bed. He put out his hand, stroked her brow, and called her tender names.

She was in great distress, reproaching herself for having asked him to mow the grass for her; she charged herself with having wounded him.

‘No – no, Eve!’ said her father. ‘It was not your fault. Barbara would not let me alone. She interfered, and I lost my balance.’

‘I am so glad it was not I,’ sobbed Eve.

‘Let me look at you. Stand up,’ he said.

She rose, but averted her face somewhat, so as not to see the blood on the sheet. He had been caressing her. Now, as he looked at her, he saw a red streak across her forehead.

‘My child! what is that? You are hurt! Barbara, help! She is bleeding.’

Barbara looked.

‘It is nothing,’ she said; ‘your hand, papa, has left some of its stains on her brow. Come with me, Eve, and I will wash it clean.’

The colour died completely out of Eve’s face, and she seemed again about to faint. Barbara hastily bathed a napkin in fresh water, and removed all traces of blood from her forehead, and then kissed it.

‘Is it gone?’ whispered Eve.

‘Entirely.’

‘I feel it still. I cannot remain here.’ Then the young girl crept out of the room, hardly able to sustain herself on her feet.

When Barbara was alone with her father, she said to him, in her quiet, composed tones, ‘Papa, though I do not in the least think this wound will prove fatal, I am glad you have sent for Lawyer Knighton, because you ought to make your will, and provide for Eve. I made up my mind to speak to you when I was on my way home from Ashburton.’

‘Well, what have you to say?’

‘Papa! I’ve been thinking that as the money laid by for Eve is gone for ever, and as my aunt has left me a little more than sixteen hundred pounds, you ought to give Morwell to Eve – that is, for the rest of your term of it, some sixty-three years, I think. If you like to make a little charge on it for me, do so, but do not let it be much. I shall not require much to make me happy. I shall never marry. If I had a good deal of money it is possible some man would be base enough to want to marry me for it; but if I have only a little, no one will think of asking me. There is no one whom I care for whom I would dream of taking – under no circumstances – nothing would move me to it – nothing. And as an old maid, what could I do with this property? Eve must marry. Indeed, she can have almost anyone she likes. I do not think she cares for the doctor, but there must be some young squire about here who would suit her.’

‘Yes, Barbara, you are right.’

‘I am glad you think so,’ she said, smiled, and coloured, pleased with his commendation, so rarely won. ‘No one can see Eve without loving her. I have my little scheme. Captain Cloberry is coming home from the army this ensuing autumn, and if he is as nice as his sisters say – then something may come of it. But I do not know whether Eve cares or does not care for Mr. Coyshe. He has not spoken to her yet. I think, papa, it would be well to let him and everyone know that Morwell is not to come to me, but is to go to Eve. Then everyone will know what to expect.

‘It shall be so. If Mr. Knighton comes, I will get the doctor to be in the room when I make my will, and Jasper Babb also.’ He considered for a while, and then said, ‘In spite of all – there is good in you, Barbara. I forgive you my wound. There – you may kiss me.’

As Barbara wished, and Mr. Jordan intended, so was the will executed. Mr. Knighton, the solicitor, arrived at the same time as the surgeon; he waited till Mr. Coyshe had bandaged up the wound, and then he entered the sick man’s room, summoned by Barbara.

‘My second daughter,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘is, in the eye of the law, illegitimate. My elder daughter has urged me to do what I likewise feel to be right – to leave my title to Morwell estate to Eve.’

‘What is her surname – I mean her mother’s name?’

‘That you need not know. I leave Morwell to my daughter Eve, commonly called Eve Jordan. That is Barbara’s wish.’

‘I urged it on my father,’ said Barbara.

Jasper, who had been called in, looked into her face with an expression of admiration. She resented it, frowned, and averted her head.

When the will had been properly executed, the doctor left the room with Jasper. He had already given his instructions to Barbara how Mr. Jordan was to be treated. Outside the door he found Eve fluttering, nervous, alarmed, entreating to be reassured as to her father’s condition.

‘Dear Barbie disturbed him whilst he was mowing,’ she said, ‘and he let the scythe slip, and so got hurt.’ She was readily consoled when assured that the old gentleman lay in no immediate danger. He must, however, be kept quiet, and not allowed to leave his bed for some time. Then Eve bounded away, light as a roe. The reaction set in at once. She was like a cork in water, that can only be kept depressed by force; remove the pressure and the cork leaps to the surface again.

Such was her nature. She could not help it.

‘Mr. Jasper,’ said the surgeon, ‘I have never gone over this property. If you have a spare hour and would do me a favour, I should like to look about me. The quality of the land is good?’

‘Excellent.’

‘Is there anywhere a map of the property that I could run my eye over?’

‘In the study.’

‘What about the shooting, now?’

‘It is not preserved. If it were it would be good, the cover is so fine.’

‘And there seems to be a good deal of timber.’

After about an hour Mr. Coyshe rode away. ‘Some men are Cyclopses, as far as their own interests are concerned,’ said he to himself; ‘they carry but a single eye. I invariably use two.’

In the evening, when Barbara came to her sister’s room to tell her that she intended to sit up during the night with her father, she said: ‘Mr. Jasper is very kind. He insists on taking half the watch, he will relieve me at two o’clock. What is the matter with you, Eve?’

‘I can see nothing, Barbie, but it is there still.’

‘What is?’

‘That red mark. I have been rubbing, and washing, and it burns like fire.’

‘I can see, my dear Eve, that where you have rubbed your pretty white delicate skin, you have made it red.’

‘I have rubbed it in. I feel it. I cannot get the feel away. It stains me. It hurts me. It burns me.’

CHAPTER XXIII.

A BUNCH OF ROSES

Mr. Jordan’s wound was not dangerous, but the strictest rest was enjoined. He must keep his bed for some days. As when Jasper was ill, so now that her father was an invalid, the principal care devolved on Barbara. No reliance could be placed on Eve, who was willing enough, but too thoughtless and forgetful to be trusted. When Barbara returned from Ashburton she found her store closet in utter confusion: bags of groceries opened and not tied up again, bottles of sauces upset and broken, coffee berries and rice spilled over the floor, lemons with the sugar, become mouldy, and dissolving the sugar. The linen cupboard was in a similar disorder: sheets pulled out and thrust back unfolded in a crumpled heap, pillow-cases torn up for dusters, blankets turned out and left in a damp place, where the moth had got to them. Now, rather than give the keys to Eve, Barbara retained them, and was kept all day engaged without a moment’s cessation. She was not able to sit much with her father, but Eve could do that, and her presence soothed the sick man. Eve, however, would not remain long in the room with her father. She was restless, her spirits flagged, and Mr. Jordan himself insisted on her going out. Then she would run to Jasper Babb, if he were near. She had taken a great fancy to him. He was kind to her; he treated her as a child, and accommodated himself to her humours. Barbara could not now be with her. Besides, Barbara had not that craving for colour and light, and melody and poetry, that formed the very core of Eve’s soul. The elder sister was severely practical. She liked what was beautiful, as a well-educated young lady is required by society to have such a liking, but it was not instinctive in her, it was in no way a passion. Jasper, on the other hand, responded to the æsthetic longings of Eve. He could sympathise with her raptures; Barbara laughed at them. It is said that everyone sees his own rainbow, but there are many who are colour-blind and see no rainbows, only raindrops. Wherever Eve looked she saw rainbows. Jasper had a strong fibre of poetry in him, and he was able to read the girl’s character and understand the uncertain aspirations of her heart. He thought that Barbara was mistaken in laughing down and showing no interest in her enthusiasms, and he sought to give her vague aspirations some direction, and her cravings some satisfaction.

Eve appreciated his efforts. She saw that he understood her, which Barbara did not; she and Jasper had a world of ideas in common from which her sister was shut out. Eve took great delight in talking to Jasper, but her chief delight was in listening to him when he played the violin, or in accompanying him on the piano. Old violin music was routed out of the cupboards, fresh was ordered. Jasper introduced her to a great deal of very beautiful classical music of which she was ignorant. Hitherto she had been restrained to a few meagre collections: the ‘Musical Treasury,’ the ‘Sacred Harmonist,’ and the like. Now, with her father’s consent, she ordered the operas of Mozart, Beethoven’s sonatas, Rossini, Boieldieu, and was guided, a ready pupil, by Jasper into this new and enchanted world. By this means Jasper gave Eve an interest, which hitherto she had lacked – a pursuit which she followed with eagerness.