Eve

‘Well, father, what happened?’

‘As I could not keep my appointment – I remember now how it was, I was laid up with a grip of lumbago at Tavistock – I sent one of the actors there, from whom I had heard about her, with a message. I had the lumbago in my back that badly that I was bent double. When I was able to go, on the morrow, it was too late; she was gone.’

‘Gone! Whither?’

‘Gone off with the play-actor,’ answered Mr. Babb, grimly. ‘It runs in the blood.’

‘You are sure of this?’

‘Mr. Jordan told me so.’

‘Did you not pursue her?’

‘To what end? I had done my duty. I had tried my utmost to recover my daughter, and when for the second time she played me false, I wiped off the dust of my feet as a testimony against her.’

‘She left her child?’

‘Yes, she deserted her child as well as her husband – that is to say, Mr. Ignatius Jordan. She deserted the house that had sheltered her, to run after a homeless, bespangled, bepainted play-actor. I know all about it. The life at Morwell was too dull for her, it was duller there than at Buckfastleigh. Here she could see something of the world; she could watch the factory hands coming to their work and leaving it; but there she was as much out of the world as if she were in Lundy Isle. She had a hankering after the glitter and paint of this empty world.’

‘I cannot believe this. I cannot believe that she would desert the man who befriended her, and forsake her child.’

‘You say that because you did not know her. You know Martin; would he not do it? You know Watt; has he any scruples and strong domestic affections? She was like them; had in her veins the same boiling, giddy, wanton blood.’

Jasper knew but too well that Martin and Watt were unscrupulous, and followed pleasure regardless of the calls of duty. He had been too young when his sister left home to know anything of her character. It was possible that she had the same light and careless temperament as Martin.

‘A horse that shies once will shy again,’ said the old man. ‘Eve ran away from home once, and she ran away from the second home. If she did not run away from home a third time it probably was that she had none to desert.’

‘And Mr. Jordan knows nothing of her?’

‘He lives too far from the stream of life to see the broken dead things that drift down it.’

Jasper considered. The flush of anger had faded from his brow; an expression of great sadness had succeeded. His hand was over his brow, but he was no longer intent on his father’s face; his eyes rested on the table.

‘I must find out something about my sister. It is too horrible to think of our sister, our only sister, as a lost, sunk, degraded thing.’

He thought of Mr. Jordan, of his strange manner, his abstracted look, his capricious temper. He did not believe that the master of Morwell was in his sound senses. He seemed to be a man whose mind had preyed on some great sorrow till all nerve had gone out of it. What was that sorrow? Once Barbara had said to him, in excuse for some violence and rudeness in her father’s conduct, that he had never got over the loss of Eve’s mother.

‘Mr. Jordan was not easy about his treatment of my daughter,’ said old Babb. ‘From what little I saw of him seventeen years ago I take him to be a weak-spirited man. He was in a sad take-on then at the loss of Eve, and having a baby thrown on his hands unweaned. He offered me the money I wanted to buy those fields for stretching the cloth. You may be sure when a man presses money on you, and is indifferent to interest, that he wants you to forgive him something. He desired me to look over his conduct to my daughter, and drop all inquiries. I dare say they had had words, and then she was ready in her passion to run away with the first vagabond who offered.’

Then Jasper removed his hand from his face, and laid one on the other upon the table. His face was now pale, and the muscles set. His eyes looked steadily and sternly at the mean old man, who averted his eyes from those of his son.

‘What is this? You took a bribe, father, to let the affair remain unsifted! For the sake of a few acres of meadow you sacrificed your child!’

‘Fiddlesticks-ends,’ said the manufacturer. ‘I sacrificed nothing. What could I do? If I ran after Eve and found her in some harlequin and columbine booth, could I force her to return? She had made her bed, and must lie on it. What could I gain by stirring in the matter? Let sleeping dogs lie.’

‘Father,’ said Jasper, very gravely, ‘the fact remains that you took money that looks to me very much like a bribe to shut your eyes.’

‘Pshaw! pshaw! I had made up my mind. I was full of anger against Eve. I would not have taken her into my house had I met her. Fine scandals I should have had with her there! Better let her run and disappear in the mud, than come muddy into my parlour and besmirch all the furniture and me with it, and perhaps damage the business. These children of mine have eaten sour grapes, and the parent’s teeth are set on edge. It all comes’ – the old man brought his fist down on the table – ’of my accursed folly in bringing strange blood into the house, and now the chastisement is on me. Are you come back to live with me, Jasper? Will you help me again in the mill?’

‘Never again, father, never,’ answered the young man, standing up. ‘Never, after what I have just heard. I shall do what I can to find my poor sister, Eve Jordan’s mother. It is a duty – a duty your neglect has left to me; a duty hard to take up after it has been laid aside for seventeen years; a duty betrayed for a sum of money.’

‘Pshaw!’ The old man put his hands in his pockets, and walked about the room. He was shrunk with age; his eagle profile was without beauty or dignity.

Jasper followed him with his eye, reproachfully, sorrowfully.

‘Father,’ he said, ‘it seems to me as if that money was hush-money, and that you, by taking it, had brought the blood of your child on your own head.’

‘Blood! Fiddlesticks! Blood! There is no blood in the case. If she chose to run, how was I to stop her? Blood, indeed! Red raddle!’

CHAPTER XXX.

BETRAYAL

Barbara came out on the platform of rock. Eve stood before her trembling, with downcast eyes, conscious of having done wrong, and of being put in a position from which it was difficult to escape.

Barbara had walked fast. She was hot and excited, and her temper was roused. She loved Eve dearly, but Eve tried her.

‘Eve,’ she said sharply, ‘what is the meaning of this? Who has been here with you?’

The young girl hung her head.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ she repeated, and her tone of voice showed her irritation. Barbara had a temper.

Eve murmured an inarticulate reply.

‘What is it? I cannot understand. Jane came tearing home with a rhodomontade about a boy jumping down on her from a tree, and I saw him just now at the gate making faces at me. He put his fingers into his mouth, hooted like an owl, and dived into the bushes. What is the meaning of this?’

Eve burst into tears, and hid her face on her sister’s neck.

‘Come, come,’ said Barbara, somewhat mollified, ‘I must be told all. Your giddiness is leading you into a hobble. Who was that on the rock with you? I caught a glimpse of a man as I passed the Scotch fir, and I thought the voice I heard was that of Jasper.’

The girl still cried, cried out of confusion, because she did not know how to answer her sister. She must not tell the truth; the secret had been confided to her. Poor Martin’s safety must not be jeopardised by her. Barbara was so hot, impetuous, and frank, that she might let out about him, and so he might be arrested. What was she to say and do?

‘Come back with me,’ said Barbara, drawing her sister’s hand through her arm. ‘Now, then, Eve, there must be no secrets with me. You have no mother; I stand to you in the place of mother and sister in one. Was that Jasper?’

Eve’s hand quivered on her sister’s arm; in a faint voice she answered, ‘Yes, Barbara.’ Had Miss Jordan looked round she would have seen her sister’s face crimson with shame. But Barbara turned her eyes away to the far-off pearly range of Cornish mountains, sighed, and said nothing.

The two girls walked together through the wood without speaking till they came to the gate, and there they entered the atmosphere of honeysuckle fragrance.

‘Perhaps that boy thought he would scare me as he scared Jane,’ said Barbara. ‘He was mistaken. Who was he?’

‘Jasper’s brother,’ answered Eve in a low tone. She was full of sorrow and humiliation at having told Barbara an untruth, her poor little soul was tossed with conflicting emotions, and Barbara felt her emotion through the little hand resting on her arm. Eve had joined her hands, so that as she walked she was completely linked to her dear elder sister.

Presently Eve said timidly, ‘Bab, darling, it was not Mr. Jasper.’

‘Who was the man then?’

‘I cannot, I must not, tell.’

‘That will do,’ said Barbara decidedly; ‘say no more about it, Eve; I know that you met Jasper Babb and no one else.’

‘Well,’ whispered Eve, ‘don’t be cross with me. I did not know he was there. I had no idea.’

‘It was Mr. Babb?’ asked Barbara, suddenly turning and looking steadily at her.

Here was an opportunity offered a poor, weak creature. Eve trembled, and after a moment’s vacillation fell into the pitfall unconsciously dug for her by her sister. ‘It was Mr. Babb, dear Barbara.’

Miss Jordan said no more, her bosom was heaving. Perhaps she could not speak. She was angry, troubled, distracted; angry at the gross imposition practised by Jasper in pretending to leave the place, whilst lurking about it to hold secret meetings with her sister; troubled she was because she feared that Eve had connived at his proceedings, and had lost her heart to him – troubled also because she could not tell to what this would lead; distracted she was, because she did not know what steps to take. Before she reached home she had made up her mind, and on reaching Morwell she acted on it with promptitude, leaving Eve to go to her room or stay below as suited her best.

She went direct to her father. He was sitting up, looking worse and distressed; his pale forehead was beaded with perspiration; his shaking hand clutched the table, then relaxed its hold, then clutched again.

‘Are you feeling worse, papa?’

‘No,’ he answered, without looking at her, but with his dazed eyes directed through the window. ‘No – only for black thoughts. They come flying to me. If you stand at evening under a great rock, as soon as the sun sets you see from all quarters the ravens flying towards it, uttering doleful cries, and they enter into the clefts and disappear for the night. The whole rock all night is alive with ravens. So is it with me. As my day declines the sorrows and black thoughts come back to lodge in me, and torment me with their clawing and pecking and croaking. There is no driving them away. They come back.’

‘Dear papa,’ said Barbara, ‘I am afraid I must add to them. I have something very unpleasant to communicate.’

‘I suppose,’ said Mr. Jordan peevishly, ‘you are out of coffee, or the lemons are mouldy, or the sheets have been torn on the thorn hedge. These matters do not trouble me.’ He signed with his finger. ‘They are like black spots in the air, but instead of floating they fly, and they all fly one way – towards me.’

‘Father, I am afraid for Eve!’

‘What?’ His face was full of terror. ‘What of her? What is there to fear? Is she ill?’

‘It is, dearest papa, as I foresaw. She has set her heart on Mr. Jasper, and she meets him secretly. He asked leave of you yesterday to go home to Buckfastleigh; but he has not gone there. He has not left this neighbourhood. He is secreting himself somewhere, and this evening he met darling Eve on the Raven Rock, when he knew you were here ill, and I was in the house with you.’

‘I cannot believe it,’ said Mr. Jordan, with every token of distress, wiping his wet brow with his thin hands, clasping his hands, plucking at his waistcoat, biting his quivering lips.

‘It is true, dearest papa. Eve took Jane with her as far as the gate, and there an ugly boy, who, Eve tells me, is Jasper’s brother, scared the girl away. I hurried off to the Rock as soon as told of this, and I saw through an opening of the trees someone with Eve, and heard a voice like that of Mr. Jasper. When I charged Eve with having met him, she could not deny it.’

‘What does he want? Why did he ask to leave?’

‘I can put but one interpretation on his conduct. I have for some time suspected a growing attachment between him and Eve. I suppose he knows that you never would consent – ’

‘Never, never!’ He clenched his hands, raised them over his head, uttered a cry, and dropped them.

‘Do be careful, dear papa,’ said Barbara. ‘You forget your wound; you must not raise your right arm.’

‘It cannot be! It cannot be! Never, never!’ He was intensely moved, and paid no heed to his daughter’s caution. She caught his right hand, held it between her own firmly, and kissed it. ‘My God!’ cried the unhappy man. ‘Spare me this! It cannot be! The black spots come thick as rain.’ He waved his left hand as though warding off something. ‘Not as rain – as bullets.’

‘No, papa, as you say, it never, never can be.’

‘Never!’ he said eagerly, his wild eyes kindling with a lambent terror. ‘There stands between them a barrier that must cut them off the one from the other for ever. But of that you know nothing.’

‘It is so,’ said Barbara; ‘there does stand an impassable barrier between them. I know more than you suppose, dear papa. Knowing what I do I have wondered at your permitting his presence in this house.’

‘You know?’ He looked at her, and pressed his brow. ‘And Eve, does she know?’

‘She knows nothing,’ answered Barbara; ‘I alone – that is, you and I together – alone know all about him. I found out when he first came here, and was ill.’

‘From anything he said?’

‘No – I found a bundle of his clothes.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘It came about this way. There was a roll on the saddle of his horse, and when I came to undo it, that I might put it away, I found that it was a convict suit.’ Mr. Jordan stared. ‘Yes!’ continued Barbara, speaking quickly, anxious to get the miserable tale told. ‘Yes, papa, I found the garments which betrayed him. When he came to himself I showed them to him, and asked if they were his. Afterwards I heard all the particulars: how he had robbed his own father of the money laid by to repay you an old loan, how his father had prosecuted him, and how he had been sent to prison; how also he had escaped from prison. It was as he was flying to the Tamar to cross it, and get as far as he could from pursuit, that he met with his accident, and remained here.’

‘Merciful heaven!’ exclaimed Mr. Jordan; ‘you knew all this, and never told me!’

‘I told no one,’ answered Barbara, ‘because I promised him that I would not betray him, and even now I would have said nothing about it but that you tell me that you know it as well as I. No,’ she added, after having drawn a long breath, ‘no, not even after all the provocation he has given would I betray him.’

Mr. Jordan looked as one dazed.

‘Where then are these clothes – this convict suit?’

‘In the garret. I hid them there.’

‘Let me see them. I cannot yet understand.’

Barbara left the room, and shortly returned with the bundle. She unfolded it, and spread the garments before her father. He rubbed his eyes, pressed his knuckles against his temples, and stared at them with astonishment.

‘So, then, it was he – Jasper Babb – who stole Eve’s money?’

‘Yes, papa.’

‘And he was taken and locked up for doing so – where?’

‘In Prince’s Town prison.’

‘And he escaped?’

‘Yes, papa. As I was on my way to Ashburton, I passed through Prince’s Town, and thus heard of it.’

‘Barbara! why did you keep this secret from me? If I had known it, I would have run and taken the news myself to the police and the warders, and have had him recaptured whilst he was ill in bed, unable to escape.’

It was now Barbara’s turn to express surprise.

‘But, dear papa, what do you mean? You have told me yourself that you knew all about Mr. Jasper.’

‘I knew nothing of this. My God! How thick the black spots are, and how big and pointed!’

‘Papa dear, what do you mean? You assured me you knew everything.’

‘I knew nothing of this. I had not the least suspicion.’

‘But, papa’ – Barbara was sick with terror – ’you told me that this stood as a bar between him and Eve?’

‘No – Barbara. I said that there was a barrier, but not this. Of this I was ignorant.’

The room swam round with Barbara. She uttered a faint cry, and put the back of her clenched hands against her mouth to choke another rising cry. ‘I have betrayed him! My God! My God! What have I done?’

CHAPTER XXXI.

CALLED TO ACCOUNT

‘Go,’ said Mr. Jordan, ‘bring Eve to me.’

Barbara obeyed mechanically. She had betrayed Jasper. Her father would not spare him. The granite walls of Prince’s Town prison rose before her, in the midst of a waste as bald as any in Greenland or Siberia. She called her sister, bade her go into her father’s room, and then, standing in the hall, placed her elbows on the window ledge, and rested her brow and eyes in her palms. She was consigning Jasper back to that miserable jail. She was incensed against him. She knew that he was unworthy of her regard, that he had forfeited all right to her consideration, and yet – she pitied him. She could not bring herself to believe that he was utterly bad; to send him again to prison was to ensure his complete ruin.

‘Eve,’ said Mr. Jordan, when his youngest daughter came timidly into the room, ‘tell me, whom did you meet on the Raven Rock?’

The girl hung her head and made no reply. She stood as a culprit before a judge, conscious that his case is hopeless.

‘Eve,’ he said again, ‘I insist on knowing. Whom did you meet?’

She tried to speak, but something rose in her throat, and choked her. She raised her eyes timidly to her father, who had never, hitherto, spoken an angry word to her. Tears and entreaty were in her eyes, but the room was dark, night had fallen, and he could not see her face.

‘Eve, tell me, was it Babb?’

She burst into a storm of sobs, and threw herself on her knees. ‘O papa! sweetest, dearest papa! Do not ask me! I must not tell. I promised him not to say. It is as much as his life is worth. He says he never will be taken alive. If it were known that he was here the police would be after him. Papa dear!’ she clasped and fondled, and kissed his hand, she bathed it in her tears, ‘do not be angry with me. I can bear anything but that. I do love you so, dear, precious papa!’

‘My darling,’ he replied, ‘I am not angry. I am troubled. I am on a rock and hold you in my arms, and the black sea is rising – I can feel it. Leave me alone, I am not myself.’

An hour later Barbara came in.

‘What, papa – without a light?’

‘Yes – it is dark everywhere, within as without. The black spots have run one into another and filled me. It will be better soon. When Jasper Babb shows his face again, he shall be given up.’

‘O papa, let him escape this time. All we now want is to get him away from this place, away from Eve.’

‘All we now want!’ repeated Mr. Jordan. ‘Let the man off who has beggared Eve!’

‘Papa, Eve will be well provided for.’

‘He has robbed her.’

‘But, dear papa, consider. He has been your guest. He has worked for you, he has eaten at your table, partaken of your salt. When you were hurt, he carried you to your bed. He has been a devoted servant to you.’

‘We are quits,’ said Mr. Jordan. ‘He was nursed when he was ill. That makes up for all the good he has done me. Then there is that other account which can never be made up.’

‘I am sure, papa, he repents.’

‘And tries to snatch away Eve, as he has snatched away her fortune?’

‘Papa, there I think he may be excused. Consider how beautiful Eve is. It is quite impossible for a man to see her and not love her. I do not myself know what love is, but I have read about it, and I have fancied to myself what it is – a kind of madness that comes on one, and obscures the judgment. I do not believe that Mr. Jasper had any thought of Eve at first, but little by little she won him. You know, papa, how she has run after him, like a kitten; and so she has stolen his heart out of his breast before he knew what she was about. Then, after that, everything – honour, duty went. I dare say it is very hard for one who loves to think calmly and act conscientiously! Would you like the lights brought in, papa?’

He shook his head.

‘You must not remain up longer than you can bear,’ she said. She took a seat on a stool, and leaned her head on her hand, her elbow resting on her knee. ‘Papa, whilst I have been waiting in the hall, I have turned the whole matter over and over in my mind. Papa, I suppose that Eve’s mother was very, very beautiful?’

He sighed in the dark and put his hands together. The pale twilight through the window shone on them; they were white and ghost-like.

‘Papa dear, I suppose that you saw her when she was ill every day, and got to love her. I dare say you struggled against the feeling, but your heart was too strong for your head and carried your resolutions away, just as I have seen a flood on the Tamar against the dam at Abbotswear; it has burst through all obstructions, and in a moment every trace of the dam has disappeared. You were under the same roof with her. Then there came a great ache here’ – she touched her heart – ’allowing you no rest. Well, dear papa, I think it must have been so with Mr. Babb, he saw our dear sweet Eve daily, and love for her swelled in his heart; he formed the strongest resolutions, and platted them with the toughest considerations, and stamped and wedged them in with vigorous effort, but all was of no avail – the flood rose and burst over it and carried all away.’

Mr. Jordan was touched by the allusion to his dead or lost wife, but not in the manner Barbara intended.

‘I have heard,’ continued Barbara, ‘that Eve’s mother was brought to this house very ill, and that you cared for her till she was recovered. Was it in this room? Was it in this bed?’

She heard a low moan, and saw the white hands raised in deprecation, or in prayer.

‘Then you sat here and watched her; and when she was in fever you suffered; when her breath came so faint that you thought she was dying, your very soul stood on tiptoe, agonised. When her eyes opened with reason in them, your heart leaped. When she slept, you sat here with your eyes on her face and could not withdraw them. Perhaps you took her hand in the night, when she was vexed with horrible dreams, and the pulse of your heart sent its waves against her hot, tossing, troubled heart, and little by little cooled that fire, and brought peace to that unrest. Papa, I dare say that somehow thus it came about that Eve got interested in Mr. Jasper and grew to love him. I often let her take my place when he was ill. You must excuse dearest Eve. It was my fault. I should have been more cautious. But I thought nothing of it then. I knew nothing of how love is sown, and throws up its leaves, and spreads and fills the whole heart with a tangle of roots.’

In this last half hour Barbara had drawn nearer to her father than in all her previous life. For once she had entered into his thoughts, roused old recollections, both sweet and bitter – inexpressibly sweet, unutterably bitter – and his heart was full of tears.

‘Was Eve’s mother as beautiful as our darling?’

‘O yes, Barbara!’ His voice shook, and he raised his white hands to cover his eyes. ‘Even more beautiful.’

‘And you loved her with all your heart?’

‘I have never ceased to love her. It is that, Barbara, which’ – he put his hands to his head, and she understood him – which disturbed his brain.

‘But,’ he said, suddenly as waking from a dream, ‘Barbara, how do you know all this? Who told you?’

She did not answer him, but she rose, knelt on the stool, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him. Her cheeks were wet.

‘You are crying, Barbara.’

‘I am thinking of your sorrows, dear papa.’

She was still kneeling on one knee, with her arms round her father. ‘Poor papa! I want to know really what became of Eve’s mother.’