Strong language prevailed next day, and the eloquence of disgust. Mounted men had gone galloping along the roads and lanes, overtaking farm wagons laden with people and household gear, and stopping at inns to drink and spread the news.
"A false alarm. The French never showed their noses out of Boulogne."
"Then who fired the beacon?"
Angry-faced farmers asked each other this question outside the village inns after they had returned their teams and rumbled back the way they had come. Only fools and red-coats saw the humour of the thing. Respectable citizens were angry. Shopkeepers who had sat up all night behind locked doors were ironical and grieved. Women embraced their children and scolded their husbands in the exuberance of their relief. The whole community, like a man who has been scared out of his dignity by boys playing "ghost" at night, flew into a rage, and tried to cover the unseemliness of its panic by a display of valiant indignation.
A big dragoon mounted on a bay horse was emptying a pewter pot outside the principal inn at Hurstmonceux. The dragoon's face looked fat and round and lazy under his heavy helmet. A fair crowd had gathered about him. Beer and admiration are equally cheap.
"How did that thur bonfire get alight?"
"Go along with you trying to tap a King's trooper."
The dragoon winked at a group of women. He was a fat, lusty, cheerful dog, and the women giggled and were flattered.
"The sergeant knows."
"Just look at his wicked eye."
"I like a chap to be red and healthy. They do say the French be the colour o' tallow."
"Now, sergeant, we were that terrified!"
"Sure—you'll be for telling——"
"Well, ladies, if old men will nip a little to keep out the cold! It all came of old Daddy Tonks having a bottle of smuggled rum on him."
"What, he set her alight while he was merry?"
"That's it. Half Eastbourne went panting up to the Head when the beacon started burning. What d'ye think they found? Old Daddy Tonks dancing round the fire like mad and shouting that he was burning them as was damned. The language! Some one knocked the old man's pins from under him with the butt-end of a musket. And here were we sent galloping after all the poor sheep as had stampeded, and all the death and glory boys holding each other up for fear o' fainting with joy."
The people grew confidential, crowding close about the dragoon's horse.
"Do ye think t' French ull cross, sergeant?"
"They do say as Nelson 'as lost hisself."
"My ol' sow's just had a fine fam'ly. 'Taint no sense. What be a body to do!"
"It terrifies ye from sowing seeds. I ain't going to grow peas for Johnny Crappo to pick!"
The dragoon gazed profoundly at the bottom of the pot.
"Bone manure may be cheap—French bones, hee-hee!"
"Give me m'own mixen."
"Who wants the Bonypart!"
"Some of our fellows, too, thrown in."
The dragoon looked round scornfully.
"If there was a man here," he said, "he'd stand a King's soldier another mug of beer."
The trooper trotted eastward toward Ashburnham, and encountered a green curricle at the meeting of four ways. The occupant hailed him, and the dragoon was urbane and gallant.
"A false alarm, miss. The beacon-keeper got in liquor and set the beacon-light. We are cantering round to quiet the poor things."
Rose thought by his fat smile that his officers had chosen wisely. There was nothing savouring of famine and sudden death about the trooper.
"Can you tell me if the Eastbourne road is clear?"
"You may overtake some of the wagons, miss, but they'll pull aside for such as you."
And the green curricle whirled on.
Meanwhile Jasper Benham was at Hastings in the battery at the east end of the parade. He had left his men bivouacked in a field by Halton barracks, and had spent the night with a number of roaring, wine-drinking officers who had waited for the crisis in the large room of an inn in High Street. The morning was still and sunny, and to judge by the number of people who had gathered on the sea-front, the Hastingers had not deserted the town at the first flash of the alarm. There was a goodly gathering on the Castle Hill, staring out to sea. Younger women, who had not forgotten to put on gay prints and muslins, kept to the parade by the east battery, in order to be reassured by the red-coated gentlemen who were laughing and joking among the guns. Green hills, red coats, blue sea, brown roofs were spread before the people who climbed the east and west hills. There were more red coats to be seen about the three-gun battery at White Rock. Signals were being passed along the coast, from Fairlight Down to Galley Hill, Wall End Pevensey, Beachy Head, and so on westward.
Jasper, leaning against a gun, stared hard at nothing in particular with the savage intentness of a man plagued with doubts. He was sick of the sound of the voice of his own conscience that talked so obviously about duty and honour, and loyalty to one's King. He ought to be reporting his suspicions to the officer commanding the troops in the neighbourhood. A dozen troopers ought to be riding up to Stonehanger, and old Durrell laid by the heels and his house searched.
But Jasper's decision faltered, and he fell to temporising and to making excuses. Was he sure of his facts? Had he trusted to mere sinister coincidences and to suspicions? He realised that if he denounced Anthony Durrell as a French spy, the burden of proof would rest on his own shoulders. He would have to hurt Nance; that was what bothered him. He could not forget the touch of her hands that night. She had fired all the mysteries of sense and spirit. How could he throw shame and ignominy in her face?
A corporal of volunteers was leading Devil Dick up and down the parade. Jasper roused himself, and marched out of the battery with a casual nod to his brother officers. The volunteer companies had been ordered back to their country quarters. The presence of the men near their own homes would restore confidence, and help to smother panic.
"Corporal Jenner."
"Sir?"
"Go up to Halton and tell Sergeant Cochrane to march the men back to Battle."
"Yes, sir."
"The men will parade on the green at seven o'clock."
"Yes, sir."
"I shall be there."
Jasper mounted Devil Dick and rode westward toward Bexhill. He was in a restless mood, driven to keep step with his own urgent thoughts. The happenings of the night were like so many thorns spread in the path of his pilgrimage. The gloom of an inevitable choice lay over him.
He rode across the great green Level of Pevensey where kingcups were all golden along the waterways, and the larks hovered and sang. Countryfolk and men on horseback were gathered at Castle End, but Jasper did not turn aside. The grey, shimmering downs swelled before him against the blue of the sky. Yonder rose Beachy Head, its beacon a heap of ashes. An insane hatred of the headland leapt into Jasper's heart. It was as though love had been martyred there, and the ashes scattered over the seas.
Devil Dick carried Jasper into Eastbourne, urged thither by a vague restlessness rather than by any desire to get anywhere in particular. The town had soon recovered from the night's scare, and being a gay place it laughed and made fun of the whole affair. Eastbourne had a certain fashionable reputation, and by the Sea Houses where the London coach started, and where the great circular redoubt had been thrown up, idlers enjoyed the sunshine and aired their little genteel vanities as though there were no such thing as war.
Jasper rode Devil Dick to the edge of this little world of valetudinarianism, gossip, and dissipation. Blue sea and sky and the grey gloom of Beachy Head formed the background, while the space between the houses and the redoubt was stippled over with the little coloured figures that idled to and fro. Here were leering old men, foppishly dressed, yet unable to hide their tainted bodies behind the craft of valet and tailor. There were women to keep these old men in countenance, mature, sly, scandalous old women who still triumphed, and rouged, and tattled. It was a quick-witted, gay, cynical crowd, vicious according to the conceptions of the moralists, but having the laugh of the moralists in the matter of enjoyment.
Jasper drew rein, the serious gloom of youthful romanticism refusing to mingle with this mature frivolity. He had turned Devil Dick, and was walking the horse away from the Sea Houses and the redoubt when he heard some one calling him by name.
"Meester Benham, Meester Benham."
Jasper became aware of a group close on his left, one tall and stately cypress in the midst of a smother of flowering shrubs. The cypress bowed and swept a hat. The flowering shrubs exhaled perfumes, and delighted the eyes with colour.
It was the Chevalier de Rothan, and with him four or five gay ladies in Empire gowns and bonnets, very seductive, very merry, very frail. They were classic in more than the mere incidents of dress. One had black hair, huge dark "orbs," and a melancholy mouth. Another was a little, red-haired woman, wonderfully dainty, with china-blue eyes, and every feminine impertinence for the provoking of men. They were looking at Jasper with the eyes of connoisseurs. A somewhat elderly charmer had levelled an ebony-handled lorgnette.
De Rothan had a way of enveloping people and entangling their activities in the net of his magnificent manners.
"Meester Benham, our friends were in ecstasy over your horse. I thought I knew both the horse and the rider. It is a splendid animal, ladies, and splendidly ridden, eh?"
He included them all in one sweeping gesture.
"Mr. Benham, let me present you to my friends. Mrs. Juno, Mrs. Venus, Mrs. Impertinence, Mrs. Pallas. We are very young, sir, although so ancient. I myself am Mr. Paris of Troy."
They laughed, and looked with friendly interest at Jasper, who had responded with a rather perfunctory bow.
"Mr. Benham looks disappointed about something," said the little red-haired woman with a provocative glance.
"Mars cheated of a battle, eh! Meester Benham, pardon me, but I have been delighted by your droll people."
"Oh!"
"A little, old man drinks too much—goddesses, forgive me—and a whole county is in consternation. You call the French excitable, sir, but, by St. Louis, you run us close. I was disappointed in the stolidity of the English."
Jasper suspected the presence of malicious raillery. De Rothan's figure filled his consciousness. He felt ready to quarrel with the man and quite ready to forget the ladies.
"What did you expect, sir?"
"Less scuffling into clothes, and the pulling on of stockings inside out. Little things—but significant."
"We were prompt in getting the people away."
"Prompt! Excellent word! Dear goddesses, your good countrymen were prompt at running away."
He gave Jasper an exasperatingly roguish look.
"I have heard of no running away. There seem plenty of people in Eastbourne."
"The panic was soon put out here, Meester Benham. But I rode fifteen miles before I came to Eastbourne this morning. You should have seen the roads, sir. People running away with their pans and kettles and cash-boxes on their backs. It was like the rout of an army."
"They had been ordered to go inland. The French would have found the stem stuff ready for them, even if they had survived the mal de mer."
"You are facetious, Meester Benham."
"I echo you, Chevalier."
"It is my privilege to amuse the ladies."
"We have often amused ourselves at the expense of the French."
De Rothan drew himself up dramatically.
"Meester Benham, I do not permit myself or others to pass beyond mere jesting words."
"Very good, sir, then keep clear of the facts. You have thrashed us, and we have thrashed you. Though I think we can count three Blenheims to one Fontenoy."
De Rothan made a gesture as though he would lay a hand on a sword.
"I do not quarrel, Meester Benham, when ladies are present. Insult me some other day."
"With pleasure," said Jasper, and rode on in a black rage.
He had not gone more than a hundred yards when two smart horses drawing a green curricle came into view. A whip was held slantingly at a professional angle. The sea-breeze played with the reddish curls under the big bonnet.
Jasper blasphemed under his breath. Cousin Rose was the very last creature he desired to meet that morning.
She drew up, with a heightened colour and a shallow glitter of the eyes. The woman had dash, and a certain audacity in her methods of attack.
"You see, Jasper, I had not run away. What a reprieve for us all. We should thank God from our hearts."
She eyed him steadily, noticing his morose, inward look.
"The responsibility has been heavy on you, lad. Do you know I prayed for you last night. I felt that you were not alone. I was with you—in the spirit."
"You are always very good, Rose."
"Am I? I think we always understood each other, Jasper, even when we were children."