Rose Benham's sentimentality was part of the guile of the huntress. Ordinarily she was a hard and very shrewd young woman, capable of managing most men and horses, and sincere enough when her egotistical piety was on the prowl. She knew that there were other women who desired to marry Jasper Benham. Her determination to marry him herself was made up of the lust to possess, and the desire to defeat rivals.
"Jasper, you will see me back to Beech Hill."
She was on the edge of an appealing simper, and detestable as most plain and hard young women are when they ape passions that they do not possess. Rose went about such matters as though she were selling pots and pans in a shop. Cleverness cannot take the place of instinct. That is why clever people are often such wearisome fools.
"Do you want to go back at once?"
They had driven and ridden a little way along the Sea Road, and Miss Benham was looking with some of her provincial scorn at the gay folk who idled there. To a certain type of woman all fashionable people are profligates. Most women have a secret desire to dazzle and to devastate. It is the utter inability of the majority to do anything of the kind that gives such a feline viciousness to their morality.
"I do not think that there is much to see in Eastbourne, Jasper. What absurd creatures there are here. Look at that thing yonder, like a lettuce tied up at the top with bass."
"Shall we turn back?"
"Such women always make me cross. As if men were worth all the trouble!"
Courtesy, not necessity, put Jasper in the position of outrider. Rose was perfectly capable of driving alone across England, but when a thin-natured woman tries to be melting, she muddles the mingling of the wine and honey.
"I have a little basket under the seat, Jasper. Cold chicken and a bottle of wine. We can put up the horses at some farm, and make a meal under a tree."
Such feasting in Arcady was wholly outside Jasper's mood.
"Oh, yes, we could do that."
The tiredness of his voice piqued her.
"I believe you are sorry that the French did not come. I know; you have uncorked your courage and it has gone flat."
Jasper left her to think what she pleased.
They found a farm-house set back in a little meadow, and a big chestnut-tree made them a green pavilion. The horses were left in the care of a lad who bit his thumb-nail and stared.
Jasper's attitude was one of impatient reserve. Every thought that came into his mind unrolled itself from the one word "if." If another face had been inside that bonnet. If other hands——! He had to sit there and listen to Rose Benham's thin suggestions, when love had become almost a ferocity, a tormented thing that was ready to break out into violence.
"There is only one glass, Jasper."
Her playful coyness made him feel evil.
"It doesn't matter."
When he drank he was careful to avoid the place that Rose's lips had touched. She noticed it, and her eyes registered the impression.
Her sentimental gaiety was like the buzzing of gnats in the sunshine. It intensified that other richer reality, that passion that had become akin to pain. Rose, too, had a way of asking direct questions, as exasperating a trick as pretending to tread on the toes of a gouty old man.
"You don't look very gay, Jasper. Are you sorry the French did not land?"
"Yes, I am."
"What a desperate mood! You ought to be in love."
This did not make matters flow any more pleasantly. Rose's face began to assume its set, Sabbath expression.
"I think you are very dull. I know men like to talk about themselves. You don't seem to find even yourself interesting."
"I'm not in a mood to talk. The fact is, I was up all night, and drank rather too much sherry."
"How silly you men are. You never seem to think of the to-morrow."
They packed up the basket, left the shade of the chestnut-tree, and travelled on. Rose looked somewhat grim, and Jasper was struck by a sudden amazing likeness to her mother. She appeared to have grown thinner, and her plainness cried out at him. Yet Rose, without knowing it, was to have a very subtle and delicate revenge. She was to be the cause of pain and secret reproaches and a little world of misunderstanding, for half the troubles of life come from people being at cross-purposes and refusing to speak out.
Though the road ran within two miles of Stonehanger, Jasper had no thought of a possible meeting with Nance Durrell. But meet her they did where the road ran through the oak woods in Buckhurst Hollow.
An oak wood in May is one of the most splendid of sights, with the golds and greens of the young foliage giving the effect of reflected sunlight. The lush freshness of the woods enters into the soul of a young man's dreams. Birds sing and the cuckoo calls from mysterious distances. The blue of the wild hyacinths brings visions of chaplets of flowers woven about the dark hair of some young girl.
A stream ran through Buckhurst Wood, crossing the road where a big beech-tree stood on a knoll that was covered with blue-bells. The moist murmur of the running water seemed part of the dewiness of the green and secret thickets.
Under the shade of the beech-tree sat Nance Durrell, a rush basket thrown beside her, her chin resting in the palms of her two hands. She looked intense, passionately preoccupied, her brown eyes staring into the mysterious distances of the wood. Her mouth was grave, and a little sad.
She glanced round with a certain impatient shyness when the green curricle appeared upon the road. For the moment she looked at Rose Benham and did not notice Jasper. Her thoughts had been disturbed, and waited for the disturbers to pass.
Then she recognised Jasper. Her self-consciousness became a thing of the vivid and inevitable present. It was not possible for her to shirk the clamour of her emotions.
Jasper reddened like a boy. He faltered, and then let the two horses and the curricle splash through the shallow water.
Nance had gone very white, with the whiteness of pride that resists. Why did the man thrust himself into her life? She hardened herself against him, and tried to find the impress of the repulsive things she had heard of him upon his face.
"Have you heard the news——?"
Her eyes were two shadowy circles of reticent distrust.
"What news?"
"It was a false alarm last night. The beacon was fired by mistake."
She looked at him and was silent, and her very silence was resistant. Benham had a whole flood of fierce doubts and yearnings urging him forward against her reserve.
"Nance, why did you shut your window on me last night?"
"What right had you to come?"
She soared into haughtiness, and the knoll under the beech-tree became inaccessible.
"I had a man's right."
"And what is that?"
The curricle had drawn up some fifty yards beyond the ford, and a face in a yellow bonnet looked back at them with surprised intentness.
Nance rose. There was something tantalising and repressive about her movements. Few things can surpass the bleak and uncompromising pride of a young girl.
"Your friend is waiting for you."
"It is my cousin, Rose Benham. She——"
"I do not wish to keep her waiting."
Jasper's manhood raged within him. Primitive emotions and the more complex things of the heart made a confused turmoil. He rebelled against her tacit and unexplained antagonism.
"Nance, I must know what has made you change so suddenly."
She had half turned, and she looked back at him from beyond the finality of a dismissal.
"Your cousin is waiting."
"Heaven confound my cousin! What has she to do——"
The silent, backward look of her eyes rebuffed him.
"Nance—listen. I must know why you have changed. You have changed——"
"It is courteous of you to claim it."
She was ready to show that she resented his assumption of a past sympathy.
"Damnation! You must have reasons. Is it your father?"
"It may be. I am not here to be cross-questioned."
"After you shut your window, I saw him on the terrace last night."
His passion drove him toward aggression. The girl remained stone-cold.
"Was he?"
"Yes."
"Well, what of that?"
"He had another man with him."
"Most likely it was old David."
Jasper had come to the very citadel of her reserve. To press further would mean the giving of a final and forlorn assault. Her whole attitude seemed to him to be a beating back of inopportune and dangerous curiosity.
"Shall I say that there are things that you do not wish me to know?"
"What do you mean?"
She stood to attack in turn, alert, and a little haughty.
"Mr. Durrell may have reason for not wishing me to come to Stonehanger."
"You suspect that?"
"You drive me to it."
Her face flushed under her dark hair.
"You are bold to press so far. Are you so sure of yourself? My father has reasons. You might not thank me for telling you them."
"I should thank you—from my heart."
"Not if you have any sense of—pride. Miss Benham must think this conduct of yours as curious as it appears to me."
She turned her back on him, and walked away into the thick of the wood. Jasper could not follow her there without leaving his horse, and Nance knew it. He did not attempt to follow her, but sat staring half vacantly into the green depths, a man staggered in the full stride of his impetuous sincerity.
It cost Jasper something of an effort to ride on and overtake the green curricle. Rose Benham's sharp profile had a very exasperating effect on him. There was something dangerously watchful about her eyes.
They made an elaborate show of ignoring the events of the last five minutes. Jasper might have hung behind to talk to a farm bailiff, to judge by the way they treated the matter.
But Rose's shrewd brain was busy enough behind the forced facility of her chattering. She felt that it was not only absurd, but impolitic to ignore the incident. It had to be touched on lightly and without prejudice.
"You haven't yet told me the name of your friend, Jasper."
"What friend?"
"Why, the damsel among the blue-bells, stupid. You know—I felt horribly guilty. It occurred to me that I had put myself in the way of being an awkward third."
"That was Miss Nance Durrell."
Cousin Rose appeared immensely excited.
"Jasper—the heroine of your night adventure! Think of that now! I thought she would have been prettier. You ought to have made us known to each other. I might have driven her home in the curricle."
Jasper glanced at Rose mistrustfully. Nance had driven him into a world of cross-purposes and suspicions.
"Miss Durrell goes very much her own way."
"Proud, is she?"
"Call it that if you like."
"O, Jasper, Jasper, if only you would let me teach you a little about women."
The cynical yet motherly touch was excellent. Rose could be masterly, directly a little malice gave her practical shrewdness an opportunity. She could preach to a man, if she could not make love to him.
"What do you know about women, Rose?"
"La, now, listen to the lad! Jasper, half you men are nothing but great big boys. You think we are so much finer, and purer, and sweeter than you are, until we poor women show the true human stuff in us, and then you make a frightful to-do, and turn into cynics. Don't we want the men sometimes, just as much as the men want the women? And don't we plan and scheme to get them, playing all sorts of tricks with pride and coldness and smiles and relentings. Don't start away, Jasper, with thinking each girl a sweet fool of an angel."
He was caught by her words, and was angry with himself for being influenced.
"Sometimes people are what we wish them to be."
"Yes, especially if they are clever. The girl realises that. She puts on the clothes and the airs that please the man."
"You are a little cynic, Rose."
"Not a bit of it. I'm honest. I don't cover things up."
They said no more on the matter, but Rose had learnt something that made the lips of her soul curl maliciously.
"Always the pretty face!" she thought. "Fools! And we plain women have to look on, while a man squanders himself on a thing with soft eyes and an artful mouth. I'm plain, but am I going to be ousted by some treacle-and-honey chit with eyes like blackberries? This nonsense——!"
Rose had a sense of her limitations. That is what made her bitter.