Eve

Barbara placed the Bible on her lap; she, like Eve, had seated herself on the rocky ledge. Then she opened near what she believed to be the end of the book, and laid the golden cup on a page.

Eve leaned towards her and looked, and uttered an exclamation.

‘What is it?’ asked Barbara, and looked also.

Behold! the golden flower of Barbara was shining on the pink petal of Eve’s rose.

‘We have chosen the same place. Now, Barbie, what do you say to this? Is it a chance, or are we going to learn our fate, which is bound up together, from the passage Mr. Jasper is about to read?’

‘There is no mystery in the matter,’ said Barbara quietly; ‘you did not turn the book when you gave it to me, and it naturally opened where your flower lay.’

‘Go on, Mr. Jasper,’ exhorted Eve. But the young man seemed ill-disposed to obey.

‘Yes,’ said Barbara; ‘begin. We are ready.’

Then Jasper began to read: —

‘Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east. And he looked, and behold a well in a field, and, lo, there were flocks of sheep lying by it.’

‘I am glad we are going to have this story,’ said Eve; ‘I like it. It is a pretty one. Jacob came to that house of Laban just as you, Mr. Babb, have come to Morwell.’

Jasper read on: —

‘And Laban had two daughters: now the name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel. Leah was tender eyed; but Rachel was beautiful and well-favoured.’

Barbara was listening, but as she listened she looked away into the blue distance over the vast gulf of the Tamar valley towards the Cornish moors, the colour of cobalt, with a salmon sky above them. Something must at that moment have struck the mind of Jasper, for he paused in his reading, and his eyes sought hers.

She said in a hard tone, ‘Go on.’

Then he continued in a low voice, ‘And Jacob loved Rachel; and said, I will serve thee seven years for Rachel, thy younger daughter. And Laban said, It is better that I give her to thee, than that I should give her to another man: abide with me. And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her.’

The reader again paused; and again with a hard voice Barbara bade him proceed.

‘And Jacob said unto Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled. And Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast. And it came to pass in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to Jacob.’

‘That will do,’ said Eve, ‘I am tired.’

‘It seems to me,’ said Barbara, in a subdued tone, ‘that Leah was a despicable woman, a woman without self-respect. She took the man, though she knew his heart was set on Rachel, and that he did not care a rush for her. No! – I do not like the story. It is odious.’ She stood up and, beckoning to Eve, left the platform of rock.

Jasper remained where he had been, without closing the book, without reading further, lost in thought. Then a small head appeared above the side of the rock where it jutted out of the bank of underwood, also a pair of hands that clutched at the projecting points of stone; and in another moment a boy had pulled himself on to the platform, and lay on it with his feet dangling over the edge, his head and breast raised on his hands. He was laughing.

‘What! dreaming, Master Jasper Jacob? Of which? Of the weak-eyed Leah or the blue-orbed Rachel?’

The young man started as if he had been stung.

‘What has brought you here, Watt? No good, I fear.’

‘O my dear Jasper, there you are out. Goodness personified has brought me here – even your own pious self, sitting Bible-reading to two pretty girls. How happy could I be with either! Eh, Jasper?’

‘What do you want with me?’ asked Jasper, reddening; ‘I detest your fun.’

‘Which is it?’ taunted the mischievous boy. ‘Which – the elder, plain and dark; or the younger, beautiful as dawn? or – like the patriarch Jacob – both?’

‘Enough of this, Watt. What has brought you here?’

‘To see you, of course. I know you think me void of all Christianity, but I have that in me yet, I like to know the whereabouts of my brother, and how he is getting on. I am still with Martin – ever on the move, like the sun, like the winds, like the streams, like everything that does not stagnate.’

‘It is a hard thing for me to say,’ said Jasper, ‘but it is true. Poor Martin would be better without you. He would be another man, and his life not blighted, had it not been for your profane and mocking tongue. He was a generous-hearted fellow, thoughtless, but not wicked; you, however, have gained complete power over him, and have used it for evil. Your advice is for the bad, your sneers for what is good.’

‘I do not know good from bad,’ said the boy, with a contemptuous grin.

‘Watt, you have scoffed at every good impulse in Martin’s heart, you have drowned the voice of his conscience by your gibes. It is you who have driven him with your waspish tongue along the road of ruin.’

‘Not at all, Jasper; there you wrong me. It was you who had the undoing of Martin. You have loved him and screened him since he was a child. You have taken the punishment and blame on you which he deserved by his misconduct. Of course he is a giddypate. It is you who have let him grow up without dread of the consequences of wrong-doing, because the punishment always fell on you. You, Jasper, have spoiled Martin, not I.’

‘Well, Watt, this may be so. Father was unduly harsh. I had no one else to love at home but my brother Martin. You were such a babe as to be no companion. And Martin I did – I do love. Such a noble, handsome, frank-hearted brother! All sunshine and laughter! My childhood had been charged with grief and shadow, and I did my best to screen him. One must love something in this world, or the heart dies. I loved my brother.’

‘Love, love!’ laughed Watt. ‘Now you have that heart so full that it is overflowing towards two nice girls. I suppose that, enthralled between blue eyes and brown, you have no thought left for Martin, none for father – who, by the way, is dying.’

‘Dying!’ exclaimed Jasper, springing to his feet.

‘There, now!’ said the boy; ‘don’t in your astonishment topple over the edge of the precipice into kingdom come.’

‘How do you know this, Watt?’ asked Jasper in great agitation.

‘Because I have been to Buckfastleigh and seen the beastly old hole, and the factory, and the grey rat in his hole, curled up, gnawing his nails and squealing with pain.’

‘For shame of you, Watt! you have no reverence even for your father.’

‘Reverence, Jasper! none in the world for anybody or anything. Everything like reverence was killed out of me by my training.’

‘What is the matter with father?’

‘How should I tell? I saw him making contortions and yowling. I did not approach too near lest he should bite.’

‘I shall go at once,’ said Jasper earnestly.

‘Of course you will. You are the heir. Eh! Jasper! When you come in for the house and cloth mill, you will extend to us the helping hand. O you saint! Why don’t you dance as I do? Am I taken in by your long face? Ain’t I sure that your heart is beating because now at last you will come in for the daddy’s collected money? Poor Martin! He can’t come and share. You won’t be mean, but divide, Jasper? I’ll be the go-between.’

‘Be silent, you wicked boy!’ said Jasper angrily; ‘I cannot endure your talk. It is repugnant to me.’

‘Because I talk of sharing. You, the saint! He sniffs filthy mammon and away he flies like a crow to carrion. Good-bye, Jasper! Away you go like an arrow from the bow. Don’t let that old housekeeper rummage the stockings stuffed with guineas out of the chimney before you get to Buckfastleigh!’

Jasper left the rock and strode hastily towards Morwell, troubled at heart at the news given him. Had he looked behind him as he entered the wood, he would have seen the boy making grimaces, capering, clapping his hands and knees, whistling, screaming snatches of operatic tunes, laughing, and shouting ‘Which is it to be, Rachel or Leah?’

CHAPTER XXVI.

AN IMP OF DARKNESS

Jasper went immediately to Mr. Jordan. He found Eve with her father. Jane, the housemaid, had exhibited signs of restlessness and impatience to be off. Joseph Woodman, the policeman from Tavistock, a young and sleepy man who was paying her his addresses, had appeared at the kitchen window and coughed. He was off duty, and Jane thought it hard that she should be on when he was off. So Eve had let her depart with her lover.

‘Well,’ said Mr. Jordan, who was still in bed, ‘what is it? Do you want me?’

‘I have come to ask your permission to leave for a few days. I must go to my father, who is dying. I will return as soon as I can.’

Eve’s great blue eyes opened with amazement. ‘You said nothing about this ten minutes ago.’

‘I did not know it then.’

‘What!’ exclaimed Mr. Jordan, trying to rise on his elbow, and his eyes brightening, ‘Ezekiel Babb dying! Is justice overtaking him at last?’

‘I hear that he is dying,’ said Jasper; ‘it is my duty to go to him.’

‘If he dies,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘to whom will his property go?’

‘Probably to me; but it is premature to inquire.’

‘Not at all. My Eve has been robbed – ’

‘Sir!’ said Jasper gravely, ‘I undertook to repay that sum as soon as it should be in my power to do so, principal and interest. I have your permission, sir?’ He bowed and withdrew.

At supper Barbara looked round, and noticed the absence of Jasper Babb, but she said nothing.

‘You need not look at that empty chair,’ said Eve; ‘Mr. Jasper will not be here. He is gone.’

‘Gone where?’

‘Called away suddenly. His father is dying.’

Barbara raised her eyebrows. She was greatly puzzled. She sat playing with her fork, and presently said, ‘This is very odd – who brought the news?’

‘I saw no one. He came in almost directly after we left him on the Raven Rock.’

‘But no one came up to the house.’

‘Oh, yes – Joseph Woodman, Jane’s sweetheart, the policeman.’

‘He cannot have brought the news.’

‘I do not think Mr. Jasper saw him, but I cannot say.’

‘I cannot understand it, Eve,’ mused Barbara. ‘What is more, I do not believe it.’

Barbara was more puzzled and disturbed than she chose to show. How could Jasper have received news of his father? If the old man had sent a messenger, that messenger would have come to the house and rested there, and been refreshed with a glass of cider and cake and cold beef. No one had been to the house but the policeman, and a policeman was not likely to be made the vehicle of communication between old Babb and his son, living in concealment. More probably Jasper had noticed that a policeman was hovering about Morwell, had taken alarm, and absented himself.

Then that story of Jacob serving for Rachel and being given Leah came back on her. Was it not being in part enacted before her eyes? Was not Jasper there acting as steward to her father, likely to remain there for some years, and all the time with the love of Eve consuming his heart? ‘And the seven years seemed unto him but a few days for the love that he had to her.’ What of Eve? Would she come to care for him, and in her wilfulness insist on having him? It could not be. It must not be. Please God, now that Jasper was gone, he would not return. Then, again, her mind swung back to the perplexing question of the reason of Jasper’s departure. He could not go home. It was out of the question his showing his face again at Buckfastleigh. He would be recognised and taken immediately. Why did he invent and pass off on her father such a falsehood as an excuse for his disappearance? If he were made uneasy by the arrival of the Tavistock policeman at the house, he might have found some other excuse, but to deliberately say that his father was dying and that he must attend his deathbed, this was monstrous.

Eve remained till late, sitting in the parlour without a light. The servant maids were all out. Their eagerness to attend places of worship on Sunday – especially Sunday evenings – showed a strong spirit of devotion; and the lateness of the hour to which those acts of worship detained them proved also that their piety was of stubborn and enduring quality. Generally, one of the maids remained at home, but on this occasion Barbara and Eve had allowed Jane to go out when she had laid the table for supper, because her policeman had come, and there was to be a love-feast at the little dissenting chapel which Jane attended. The lover having turned up, the love-feast must follow.

As the servants had not returned, Barbara remained below, waiting till she heard their voices. Her father was dozing. She looked in at him and then returned to her place by the latticed window. The room was dark, but there was silvery light in the summer sky, becoming very white towards the north. Outside the window was a jessamine; the scent it exhaled at night was too strong. Barbara shut the window to exclude the fragrance. It made her head ache. A light air played with the jessamine, and brushed some of the white flowers against the glass. Barbara was usually sharp with the servants when they returned from their revivals, and love-feasts, and missionary meetings, late; but this evening she felt no impatience. She had plenty to occupy her mind, and the time passed quickly with her. All at once she heard a loud prolonged hoot of an owl, so near and so loud that she felt sure the bird must be in the house. Next moment she heard her father’s voice calling repeatedly and excitedly. She ran to him and found him alarmed and agitated. His window had been left open, as the evening was warm.

‘I heard an owl!’ he said. ‘It was at my ear; it called, and roused me from my sleep. It was not an owl – I do not know what it was. I saw something, I am not sure what.’

‘Papa dear, I heard the bird. You know there are several about. They have their nests in the barn and old empty pigeon-house. One came by the window hooting. I heard it also.’

‘I saw something,’ he said.

She took his hand. It was cold and trembling.

‘You were dreaming, papa. The owl roused you, and dreams mixed with your waking impressions, so that you cannot distinguish one from another.’

‘I do not know,’ he said, vacantly, and put his hand to his head. ‘I do see and hear strange things. Do not leave me alone, Barbara. Kindle a light, and read me one of Challoner’s Meditations. It may compose me.’

Eve was upstairs, amusing herself with unfolding and trying on the yellow and crimson dress she had found in the garret. She knew that Barbara would not come upstairs yet. She would have been afraid to masquerade before her. She put her looking-glass on a chair, so that she might see herself better in it. Then she took the timbrel, and poised herself on one foot, and held the instrument over her head, and lightly tingled the little bells. She had put on the blue turquoise ring. She looked at it, kissed it, waved that hand, and rattled the tambourine, but not so loud that Barbara might hear. Eve was quite happy thus amusing herself. Her only disappointment was that she had not more such dresses to try on.

All at once she started, stood still, turned and uttered a cry of terror. She had been posturing hitherto with her back to the window. A noise at it made her look round. She saw, seated in it, with his short legs inside, and his hands grasping the stone mullions – a small dark figure.

‘Well done, Eve! Well done, Zerlina!

Là ci darem la mano,Là mi dirai di si!’

Then the boy laughed maliciously; he enjoyed her confusion and alarm.

‘The weak-eyed Leah is away, quieting Laban,’ he said; ‘Leah shall have her Jacob, but Rachel shall get Esau, the gay, the handsome, whose hand is against every man, or rather one against whom every man’s hand is raised. I am going to jump into your room.’

‘Keep away!’ cried Eve in the greatest alarm.

‘If you cry out, if you rouse Leah and bring her here, I will make such a hooting and howling as will kill the old man downstairs with fear.’

‘In pity go. What do you want?’ asked Eve, backing from the window to the farthest wall.

‘Take care! Do not run out of the room. If you attempt it, I will jump in, and make my fiddle squeal, and caper about, till even the sober Barbara – Leah I mean – will believe that devils have taken possession, and as for the old man, he will give up his ghost to them without a protest.’

‘I entreat you – I implore you – go!’ pleaded Eve, with tears of alarm in her eyes, cowering back against the wall, too frightened even to think of the costume she wore.

‘Ah!’ jeered the impish boy. ‘Run along down into the room where your sister is reading and praying with the old man, and what will they suppose but that a crazy opera-dancer has broken loose from her caravan and is rambling over the country.’

He chuckled, he enjoyed her terror.

‘Do you know how I have managed to get this little talk with you uninterrupted? I hooted in at the window of your father, and when he woke made faces at him. Then he screamed for help, and Barbara went to him. Now here am I; I scrambled up the old pear-tree trained against the wall. What is it, a Chaumontel or a Jargonelle? It can’t be a Bon Chrétien, or it would not have borne me.’

Eve’s face was white, her eyes were wide with terror, her hands behind her scrabbled at the wall, and tore the paper. ‘Oh, what do you want? Pray, pray go!’

‘I will come in at the window, I will caper and whistle, and scream and fiddle. I will jump on the bed and kick all the clothes this way, that way. I will throw your Sunday frock out of the window; I will smash the basin and water-bottle, and glass and jug. I will throw the mirror against the wall; I will tear down the blinds and curtains, and drive the curtain-pole through the windows; I will throw your candle into the heap of clothes and linen and curtain, and make a blaze which will burn the room and set the house flaming, unless you make me a solemn promise. I have a message for you from poor Martin. Poor Martin! his heart is breaking. He can think only of lovely Eve. As soon as the sun sets be on the Raven Rock to-morrow.’

‘I cannot. Do leave the window.’

‘Very well,’ said the boy, ‘in ten minutes the house will be on fire. I am coming in; you run away. I shall lock you out, and before you have got help together the room will be in a blaze.’

‘What do you want? I will promise anything to be rid of you.’

‘Promise to be on the Raven Rock to-morrow evening.’

‘Why must I be there?’

‘Because I have a message to give you there.’

‘Give it me now.’

‘I cannot; it is too long. That sister of yours will come tumbling in on us with a Roley-poley, gammon and spinach, Heigh-ho! says Anthony Roley, oh!’

‘Yes, yes! I will promise.’

Instantly he slipped his leg out, she saw only the hands on the bottom of the window. Then up came the boy’s queer face again, that he might make grimaces at her and shake his fist, and point to candle, and bed, and garments, and curtains: and then, in a moment, he was gone.

Some minutes elapsed before Eve recovered courage to leave her place, shut her window, and take off the tawdry dress in which she had disguised herself.

She heard the voices of the servant maids returning along the lane. Soon after Barbara came upstairs. She found her sister sitting on the bed.

‘What is it, Eve? You look white and frightened.’

Eve did not answer.

‘What is the matter, dear? Have you been alarmed at anything?’

‘Yes, Bab,’ in a faint voice.

‘Did you see anything from your window?’

‘I think so.’

‘I cannot understand,’ said Barbara. ‘I also fancied I saw a dark figure dart across the garden and leap the wall whilst I was reading to papa. I can’t say, because there was a candle in our room.’

‘Don’t you think,’ said Eve, in a faltering voice, ‘it may have been Joseph Woodman parting with Jane?’ Eve’s cheeks coloured as she said this; she was false with her sister.

Barbara shook her head, and went into her own room. ‘He has gone,’ she thought, ‘because the house is watched, his whereabouts has been discovered. I am glad he is gone. It is best for himself, for Eve’ – after a pause – ’and for me.’

CHAPTER XXVII.

POOR MARTIN

Eve was uneasy all next day – at intervals – she could do nothing continuously – because of her promise. The recollection that she had bound herself to meet Watt on the Raven Rock at sundown came on her repeatedly during the day, spoiling her happiness. She would not have scrupled to fail to keep her promise, but that the horrible boy would be sure to force himself upon her, and in revenge do some dreadful mischief. She was so much afraid of him, that she felt that to keep her appointment was the lesser evil.

As the sun declined her heart failed her, and just before the orb set in bronze and gold, she asked Jane, the housemaid, to accompany her through the fields to the Raven Rock.

Timid Eve dare not trust herself alone on the dangerous platform with that imp. He was capable of any devilry. He might scare her out of her wits.

Jane was a good-natured girl, and she readily obliged her young mistress. Jane Welsh’s mother, who was a widow, lived not far from Morwell, in a cottage on the banks of the Tamar, higher up, where a slip of level meadow ran out from the cliffs, and the river made a loop round it.

As Eve walked through the fields towards the wood, and neared the trees and rocks, she began to think that she had made a mistake. It would not do for Jane to see Watt. She would talk about him, and Barbara would hear, and question her. If Barbara asked her why she had gone out at dusk to meet the boy, what answer could she make?

When Eve came to the gate into the wood, she stood still, and holding the gate half open, told Jane she might stay there, for she would go on by herself.

Jane was surprised.

‘Please, Miss, I’ve nothing to take me back to the house.’ Eve hastily protested that she did not want her to return: she was to remain at the gate – ’And if I call – come on to me, Jane, not otherwise. I have a headache, and I want to be alone.’

‘Very well, Miss.’

But Jane was puzzled, and said to herself, ‘There’s a lover, sure as eggs in April.’

Then Eve closed the gate between herself and Jane, and went on. Before disappearing into the shade of the trees, she looked back, and saw the maid where she had left her, plaiting grass.

A lover! A lover is the philosopher’s stone that turns the sordid alloy of life into gold. The idea of a lover was the most natural solution of the caprice in Miss Eve’s conduct. As every road loads to Rome, so in the servant-maid mind does every line of life lead to a sweetheart.

Jane, having settled that her young mistress had gone on to meet a lover, next questioned who that lover could be, and here she was utterly puzzled. Sure enough Miss Eve had been to a dance at the Cloberrys’, but whom she had met there, and to whom lost her heart, that Jane did not know, and that also Jane was resolved to ascertain.

She noiselessly unhasped the gate, and stole along the path. The burnished brazen sky of evening shone between the tree trunks, but the foliage had lost its verdure in the gathering dusk. The honeysuckles poured forth their scent in waves. The air near the hedge and deep into the wood was honeyed with it. White and yellow speckled currant moths were flitting about the hedge. Jane stole along, stealthily, from tree to tree, fearful lest Eve should turn and catch her spying. A large Scotch pine cast a shadow under it like ink. On reaching that, Jane knew she could see the top of the Raven Rock.

As she thus advanced on tiptoe she heard a rustling, as of a bird in the tree overhead. Her heart stood still. Then, before she had time to recover herself, with a shrill laugh, a little black figure came tumbling down before her out of the tree, capered, leaped at her, threw his arms round her neck, and screamed into her face, ‘Carry me! Carry me! Carry me!’

Then his arms relaxed, he dropped off, shrieking with laughter, and Jane fled, as fast as her limbs could bear her, back to the gate, through the gate and away over the meadows to Morwell House.

Eve had gone on to the platform of rock; she stood there irresolute, hoping that the detested boy would not appear, when she heard his laugh and shout, and the scream of Jane. She would have fainted with terror, had not at that moment a tall man stepped up to her and laid his hand on her arm. ‘Do not be afraid, sweet fairy Eve! It is I – your poor slave Martin, – perfectly bewitched, drawn back by those loadstone eyes. Do not be frightened, Watt is merely giving a scare to the inquisitive servant.’