Grimly elated, Jasper rode back to Rush Heath. The day had given him far more than he had dared to desire. He had thrashed his man and made a second conquest of Nance Durrell's confidence. His jealousy had dispersed like a thunder-cloud, leaving a clear and adventurous sky.
At Rush Heath he found Jeremy Winter and Cousin Rose in the thick of a quarrel. Rose had driven over from Beech Hill, ostensibly to sit at Squire Kit's bedside, and treat him to some of her frank and pious opinions.
"Uncle Christopher, you shall listen to good words. It fills me with pity, to hear an old man curse and blaspheme."
Mr. Benham had leaned against his pillows and glared at her with a man's disgust. She had talked on and on, and though he had shut his eyes and pretended to snore, she had not been turned from thrusting her piety upon him. It had ended in Squire Kit hammering the floor with the stick he kept on the bed, and Jeremy had arrived to rescue him.
"Jeremy, I say,—Jeremy——"
Winter had understood things at a glance. He had hooked up her arm, and walked her off by main force, and that was why they were quarrelling in the oak parlour.
"I wonder you don't keep away from here, Mr. Winter. You never do any good to Uncle Christopher and Jasper."
Jeremy was the imperturbable fencer whose laughing eyes and sage, sardonic mouth always filled Rose with anger. Her attacks amused him, and Rose Benham insisted upon being taken very seriously.
"So you think I have debased the whole household; Jasper, too, eh?"
"You have always been an irreligious man. You would have led poor father into all sorts of foolishness if we had not prevented it."
"Poor man!"
"I hate your flippancy."
"What a world it is! I have seen my share of it, and upon my soul there is nothing to touch English piety. And there is no one who knows so much about everything as a good back-country English gentlewoman. I suppose she has it all straight from the Almighty."
Rose sat very straight and stiff in her chair.
"That's right, Mr. Jeremy Winter, be blasphemous. At your age——"
"At my age, Miss Benham, you will be a very old woman. As it is, the women still fall in love with me."
"Oh, you wretched old reprobate."
Jeremy went off into huge yet quiet laughter, and it was in the midst of it that Jasper entered with the steady, gleaming eyes of a man who had desires to satisfy and enemies to grapple.
"Hallo!"
He had one glimpse of Rose's stiff and implacable face.
"What have you been doing, Jerry?"
"I? Nothing, sir, nothing. But Miss Benham will have it that I am a disgusting old reprobate and not fit to be in this house."
His smile exasperated Rose. It was so good-tempered, so sly, so unanswerable.
"You ought to know Jeremy Winter by this time, Rose."
"Thank you. I know a little, and that has always been too much."
"Oh, come now!"
She felt that he was on Winter's side, the man's side, and it angered her.
"You men are all alike. You love old ruffians who tipple and tell bad stories."
"Now, how on earth do you come at that, Miss Benham? Keyholes, eh?"
"Mr. Winter, should I listen to your voice through a keyhole!"
Both men laughed, and Rose stood up. She looked thinner and sharper-featured when she was angry.
"Jasper, tell your man to bring my horses round."
And she whirled away from Rush Heath in a dust cloud of indignation. The cat in her knew and feared the dog in Jeremy.
Jasper rejoined Winter in the parlour. Jeremy was lighting his pipe, and looking humorously down his nose.
"Are you going to marry your cousin?"
"What, marry Rose!"
"You be careful, young man; she'll ask you the question and have your immortal soul in her reticule before you can say 'gammon'."
"I don't think she will, Jerry."
"That's good. You seem most deucedly pleased with yourself. What is it?"
Jasper went to the wine-cupboard and brought out a decanter and two long-stemmed glasses.
"Drink her health, Jerry."
"Miss Benham's?"
"Don't be a tease. Her health, and God bless her. By George, I have had my money out of De Rothan."
"How?"
"I landed him in a ditch. Do you know what it feels like to crush a man's ribs in, Jerry? It's a gorgeous feeling. I gather there will be a fight."
Winter looked serious.
"You may have thrown him all right, lad, but——"
"I have looked him in the eyes, Jeremy, and I can match him. Besides, I am going through with it—for the sake of Nance Durrell."
"O you youngsters! I've done it myself, too. Run your chest up against a sword-point because a girl glimmers her eyes. Tell me about it."
And Jasper told him.
Jeremy sat for a while in thought.
"Why don't you pounce on the man? Have him arrested. It would save a lot of trouble."
"I want to keep Durrell out of it. You see, Jerry, if I work this through quietly, it will save no end of a mess."
"Will it?"
"Yes."
"You seem cocksure."
"Haven't I got my devil back these few days with the foils? And look you, Jerry, do you remember fighting when you were in love?"
"I do."
"Were you beaten?"
"No."
"It makes you grim, quick as lightning, cool as cold steel. That's how it works with me."
Jeremy nodded his head sagely.
"Well," said he, "we'll spend the next two days fighting each other. And you bang away with your pistols. How do they carry?"
"I can hit a card five times out of six at twenty paces."
"I've got twice the nerve since I've seen her to-day."
"Confound you, I used to be just the same."
In the cool of the evening these two spent an hour in fencing together on the lawn by the cedars. The great black shadows of the trees lay in dark capes and promontories upon the green sea of the grass. The standard roses were in bloom, and the scent of the clover pinks in the borders filled the air. Swallows glided in and out, threading their way among the cedars, and circling round the tall chimneys of the house.
Parson Goffin hobbled up the drive, and sat down on a bench to watch Jeremy Winter and Jasper fencing. He had watched them at swordplay years ago, and there was nothing new in it to awaken curiosity.
Goffin was in one of his growling moods. He had a sore tongue from too much smoking, and England was going to the dogs.
"They say that we may have Villeneuve in the Channel any day during the next month. They don't know where he is; they expect him to swoop out of the blue. Boney will get across, and we shall be licking his shoes."
"A pretty angel of hope you are, Goffin!"
"Sir, we have been drinking too much these fifty years. The Almighty may be sending something to sober us."
"He gave us the Hanoverians to help us to drink! You are down at the heel, parson. If you could prove to me that Nelson is at the bottom of the sea, I might be ready to howl with you."
"So he may be, sir, so he may be, for all we know."
"Jasper, send for a good stiff glass of rum; Mr. Goffin is feeling a little faint and vapourish this evening. Yes, that was the best tussle we've had. It took me all I knew to keep your point out."
Parson Goffin's gloom was in sympathy with the gloom that overshadowed England during those months of May, June, and July. At Boulogne Napoleon waited for the chance that should give him control of the narrow sea—even for three days. Off Rochefort, Ferrol, and Brest the ships of Calder and Cornwallis kept up their grim blockade, while out yonder upon the Atlantic, Fate, Villeneuve, and Nelson faltered on the edge of the unknown. Nelson and his fleet had sailed away into the west, and men asked themselves what news the Atlantic would disgorge. Would it be the thunder of the French guns in the Channel, the breaking out of the ships blockaded in Brest and Rochefort, the sweeping of the Dover Straits, the red horror of invasion?
At Stonehanger Nance sat on the terrace wall and looked out toward the sea. The sunlight played upon her face and in her eyes, and gave them a brown radiance. There was a warmth and graciousness about her, a sadness that found its recompense in the richness of her thoughts and musings.
Her spiritual attitude toward her father was one of astonishment and compassion. She could pity him, even though she could not understand his motives. De Rothan was the scapegoat upon whom she laid the guilt and the burden of her resentment, though how Anthony Durrell had been inveigled into such schemes she could not imagine. What quarrel had he with England? He was a morose man, a silent man, and perhaps in a vague way she felt that he had been disappointed. Nance's nature was the very opposite of her father's. She was direct, generous, less ready to feel aggrieved. The flaming discontent of the fanatic is incomprehensible to healthy, humour-loving, sanguine people. There are men who will backbite their own country out of sheer hereditary cussedness. They are against everything that is—and Anthony Durrell was such a man.
He came out upon the terrace while Nance was there, and walked up and down under the house with his hands behind his back. There was a restless uncouthness even in the way he moved, for Durrell was one of those men who had been a sop at school, and a greenhorn at college. He had thrown a ball like a girl, and his legs and arms were not made to work like the limbs of a virile male. Books, philosophy, and theorising had filled his circle of consciousness. His liver had grown sluggish with a sedentary life, and now he was nothing but a lean and embittered figure of denunciation and discontent, impatient, ineffectual, passionate, yet weak.
Nance felt a kind of pity for him as she watched him go to and fro. She could not help contrasting him with Jasper Benham. As for De Rothan, he was a sinister figure dogging the footsteps of this lean, white-haired, narrow-shouldered man.
She crossed over to her father.
"Would you like a walk on the common? It is cooler now."
He glanced at her as though he had only just discovered her presence.
"No, no; I'm busy, thinking."
"You can think while you walk, and I'll keep quiet."
"Thank you. I wish to be alone."
His strung forehead and irritable eyes repulsed her. Intuition warned Nance that it would be useless to attack him openly, even with the power of compassion. Some men are mad, even when they are sane. It is useless to argue with them. They have to be strait-jacketed by the common sense of the community and kept from doing themselves and other people harm.