Had Jasper Benham been able to see into Nance's heart he would have felt a man's pity for her, that richer tenderness that dissolves away the pettier and more selfish thoughts.
For Nance was very lonely, and perplexed amid her loneliness. Things had happened that had troubled her beyond measure. In the first place, she had overheard some talk that had passed between De Rothan and her father, a few, disjointed sentences, nothing more, and yet the words had caught her ear and set her musing upon their meaning. Moreover, De Rothan himself had become suddenly and ominously real. He had swaggered out of a vague and questionable past into an urgent and audacious present. He had kissed her hand, and he had tried to touch her with the touch of a lover.
A woman can judge a man by his eyes, and his way of looking. The Frenchman was infinitely courteous, but he had no reverence. His admiration was a complacent and self-confident emotion. It bent, half patronisingly, and touched what it admired, as though a woman's charm was a mere flower to be plucked and held to the nostrils.
De Rothan had made Nance's spirit creep. She had become suddenly afraid of him, and shy of being alone.
Queerly enough her loneliness and her craving for comradeship and sympathy found her thoughts turning toward Jasper Benham. It was a pure impulse and it surprised her new self-consciousness. There seemed something inevitable about it, something that claimed spontaneous justification. Nance found herself questioning the meaning of this impulse. If she distrusted one man and felt drawn toward the other, did not this spiritual phenomenon suggest some deep and instinctive truth? It contradicted the things that she had been told about Jasper. If he was a bad man why should she think of him now that she needed help?
It was in a mood of doubt and unrest that she idled round her terrace garden, looking at the faces of the pansies, pulling up weeds, and putting a stick here and there to a head-heavy flower. The sound of footsteps made her start self-consciously. A figure of Time came striding over the grass—old David Barfoot—scythe on shoulder, a brown straw hat shading his lean, tanned face.
Nance smiled at the old man, a smile of relief. There had been rain in the night, and the moist grass was ripe for scything. It would cling to the edge of the blade and make the work easier.
"I like the grass short, David."
He had a way of hearing Nance's words as he heard no one else's.
"I'll shave it close; trust me."
He carried the stone in a queer little leather case fastened to his belt at the back. Getting an edge was a great business. The stone rang along the blade of the scythe. Presently he began to mow with steady, purring strokes, and the swinging movement of his arms and shoulders was not without a kind of grace.
Nance sat herself on the terrace and watched him. There was something restful in the level, swinging rhythm.
David was not a talkative man, but he had his moments of illumined loquacity.
"Fine weather for the crops. They'll be making hay afore the end o' June. Maybe the French won't tarrify us at all."
Nance had the look of a contented listener. It was pure coincidence that sent David drifting toward matters that were vital to her needs. He began to talk about his relatives and their affairs, which were mostly of a sordid, poverty-stricken, and child-bearing order.
"Maybe you've heard speak of my sister, Sue Barton. Thirteen brats, and her man down with t' ague. Bad times, too. I don't say as the gentry can't be kind."
"Thirteen children, David!"
He stopped to sharpen his scythe.
"Pig's meal, they be glad to get it! Jim sick, and Sue expectin' as usual. It was lucky for Jim Barton as he had worked on and off for t' Benhams. They be good gentlefolk, t' Benhams, though t' old squire has the mouth of hell on him."
Nance said "Oh!"—a non-committal exclamation.
"Master Jasper, he be a good young gentleman."
"The Mr. Benham who was shot in the lane?"
"Sure. There be gentry and gentry. Some of 'em doan't care; some of 'em gives for what they gets. Master Jasper's a soft heart, but he be'unt no fool, neither. A tough gentleman when a man be a rogue and a beggar."
Nance had a moment's perplexity. Then she said:
"I have heard bad things about Mr. Benham, David."
She spoke softly, but David was watching her mouth. He picked up the words and answered them.
"Have ye now! Well, I've heard different. Be man, woman, or child sick down Rush Heath way, the young squire he be for knowing about it. Better than the parson, he be. Not pious-like; can do his cussing. Clean about t' wenches, too. Though I shouldn't be saying such a thing afore you, Miss Nance."
Nance reddened, not wholly because of David's words.
"You appear to know a great deal about Mr. Benham, David."
"Sure—we knows this and that in t' country. I likes a fine, upstanding gentleman. I wishes him good luck in the shoes of his father."
"Is it true that Mr. Benham is to marry his cousin, David?"
"She? You be meaning Miss Benham o' Beech Hill?"
"I don't know."
"Sure, Mr. Benham be'unt no fool! Marry she! 'Tain't no sense."
"Well, it isn't our business, is it, David?"
The old man grunted. He was thinking of things that it was not his business to utter.
But his words had had their effect on Nance. For days she had been striving against a growing sense of resentment. Doubt and mental suffering have some kinship to physical pain; they torment the mind until it breaks out into passionate rebellion. Nance left David to his scything and went straight into the house. She knew that her father was in his study, and her very doubts drove her to demand some answer to the questions that were troubling her heart. Durrell's secretiveness, De Rothan's mysterious presence about the place, the slandering of Jasper Benham, all these things combined to form a distorting glass that threw the reflections of life back at her with perplexing vagueness.
Nance climbed the stairs slowly, stiffening her courage against this colloquy with her father. The house seemed very still as she passed down the long brown gallery and knocked at her father's door.
"Yes?"
"May I come in, father?"
"Yes, come in."
He was wrapped in an old dressing-gown, and sitting at his table, books open before him, a quill in his hand. It might have been some austere Milton inditing polemics against the Church of Rome.
Durrell had the look of a preoccupied man who suffered interruption grudgingly.
"Well, what is it?"
She closed the door.
"I want to speak to you, father."
He frowned, and laid his pen in the trough of an open book.
"What is it? About the food—or the pots and pans?"
"No. It is about things that have been worrying me."
"Things—things? How loosely you express yourself!"
His impatience stiffened her courage.
"This Chevalier De Rothan—why does he come to the house?"
Durrell leaned back in his chair, pushing his feet out under the table.
"What has that to do with you, Nance?"
"I want to know why you have him to the house."
"Indeed!"
"I don't like him. I don't trust him. I have a kind of feeling that we are in his power."
Durrell looked at her with frowning intentness.
"Little fool!"
She flushed, sensitively.
"Father, I feel that things are happening here about which you have suffered me to know nothing. It is wrong to me, unfair——"
"Tssh! Don't let us have this nonsense, this tragedy queening."
"Can you swear that——"
"Nance, you are a fool. Am I to be catechised by a silly girl! Stuff and nonsense!"
"Then why does this man come here in the middle of the night? Why does he spend hours with you, here, in this room? Oh, I may know more than you think, father. One cannot help having ears and eyes."
"Girl—what do you mean?"
"I have a right to know——"
"Right? You talk to me about your rights!"
Durrell was a quick-tempered and a scornful man, but Nance had never seen him look so evil.
"Let me tell you, Nance, that I am not a man who thinks it necessary to explain things to a child."
"But you explained away Jasper Benham's character—to me."
He pushed his chair back violently, and rose.
"I told you some truths for your own good."
"Did the man De Rothan tell you these things?"
"Silence!"
"I have a right——"
"Silence, I say!"
Durrell's face had lost all scholarly repose and refinement. It was harsh, flushed, and threatening.
"Go to your room, girl. Never let me have more of this interference."
"I am not a child any longer. If you drive me to it, father, I shall rebel——"
He broke out in a way that amazed her, with a scolding fury that threw aside all self-control. Durrell was not capable of the blind, physical violence of the ordinary male, and his unreasoning wrath ran into a torrent of outrageous taunts and sarcasms. We are the creatures of savage littlenesses in our rages, those nerve-storms that rise out of nothing, and end in nothing.
Durrell's fury of words had a numbing effect upon the girl. She stood mute, staring, astonished by the unreasoning violence of the man who had given his life to accumulating wisdom out of books. Then she drew back toward the door, opened it, and escaped.
She went to her own room, realising in a numb way that her father had spoken words to her that could never be forgotten. The very violence of his anger had been an outrage, its arbitrariness an answer to her suspicions.
Then she heard De Rothan's voice on the terrace below. He was talking to David Barfoot, but David would never consent to understand him.
The voice sent a shiver of repulsion through Nance. She turned and locked the door.
"Mees Nance, Mees Nance, where is the sunlight?"
He was calling up at her window, and she hated him for not being another man.
Durrell's footsteps came down the gallery, and he joined De Rothan on the terrace. The Frenchman could have done with other company, but he was drawn sharply toward sterner issues.
Durrell took him into one of the dark paths through the shrubbery.
"The girl has begun to suspect us."
"What, sweet Nance?"
"She challenged me to a confession, as though I owe any confession to a child!"
"And you scolded her! You men of letters lose your tempers as badly as tipplers at an inn. Poor Nance; you scorched her with that infernal tongue of yours."
Durrell gave him a sneering look.
"You need not pity the girl. She seems to hate the very sound of your name."
"Come, come, that is promising."
"You had better hold away from her."
De Rothan laughed.
"Mr. Benham, too, suspects us. I have decided how to deal with that gentleman. But sweet Nance hates me! That is good news."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"Do you see your daughter, Durrell, as one of the beauties of Napoleon's court? It is not impossible, sir, not impossible. Where hate is, there love shall be gathered in."