De Rothan led Nance to the attic story of the Brick House, talking all the while with a gay and railing vivacity that sharpened the edge of her feeling of suspense.
"Mr. Benham is so valuable to me that I have to lodge him high up near the gods. You may find him a little moody. It seems, too, that a certain display of dirt and disorder helps him to maintain an attitude of resentment and independence. Have you ever heard of pride refusing soap and water?"
She felt that there was an abominable cleverness about this man that might succeed in turning her finer instincts into ridicule. It was the old trick of throwing some evil-smelling stuff over a man's coat just as he was about to meet the woman of his desire. It might be contemptible and sordid, but the taint lingered and offended the senses.
They, passed along the gallery and stopped before a stout oak door. De Rothan knocked gently.
The man Gaston was within, and he appeared to fling the door open with studied suddenness, showing Jasper Benham sprawling on his bed of straw. He was asleep and snoring, head hanging back over a rough bolster stuffed with straw, his face flaccid and vacant, his shirt open at the throat. That one glimpse of him was a shock to Nance. De Rothan had come near persuading her to be disgusted.
Gaston went out, closing the door, while De Rothan walked across to Jasper and stood looking down at him with pleased vindictiveness.
"Mr. Benham—sir, wake up; here is a lady to see you. You see how he sleeps, Miss Nance, this fat young Sussex ox. Wake up, sir, wake up."
He touched Jasper with his foot, and Jasper woke up, snarling.
"Curse you! Let me alone!"
"Mr. Benham, here is a friend to see you."
Jasper sat up and caught sight of Nance. His face showed utter astonishment, nor was it lovely to look upon with its sprouting beard, uncombed hair, and streakings of dirt. His irons made a ridiculous jangling. There was much in the picture to provoke laughter and pity.
"Mr. Benham, do you not recognise the lady?"
Jasper did not look at De Rothan. The sudden heat of his angry humiliation was too bitter and too fierce in him. His eyes fixed themselves on Nance's shoes; nor had he a word to say.
"Come, Mr. Benham, come—are you not pleased?"
There was a sneer in De Rothan's voice, and it stung Nance to the quick. A sudden great pity carried her away. Jasper was humbled before her and before his enemy, and this shame of his transfigured all that was uncouth and ridiculous. It was she who felt humiliated and sneered at.
She turned on De Rothan.
"I understand now. I did not understand before."
He shrugged his shoulders, but the scorn and anger in her eyes stung him.
"My child, this is what we call romance. You do not seem to appreciate the opportunities I am giving you. No mere humdrum, thread-and-needle experiences——"
She regarded him steadily, thoughtfully, and then turned to Jasper.
"It sounds so empty to say that I am sorry."
Her voice made him look up. It seemed to uplift his courage and his pride, and to rescue him from the foolish squalor of his surroundings.
"Don't worry about me, Nance. It comes of my own conceit. But why are you here?"
Her eyes shone angrily.
"Because, like you, I have been kidnapped."
"You, too!"
"Yes, and I know everything."
Jasper met De Rothan's eyes, and De Rothan smiled at him.
"If circumstances admitted it, my dear young people, I would leave you alone together. But——"
Nance ignored him.
"Jasper, it makes me burn with anger——"
His eyes no longer shirked hers, and even his grime and his uncouthness heightened the tragic note that she persisted in hearing.
"I treated our friend here as a gentleman. It was foolish of me. Chevalier, I never ought to have let you out of that ditch."
De Rothan jerked a laugh, and Nance's eyes flashed to Jasper's. They said, "Well done, throw your scorn in his face."
He showed her his chained wrists.
"Pretty things, these, as the result of an affair of honour. Do you know, Nance, he had his men hidden in Darvel's Wood to pelt me with stones so that I should not hurt him."
She gave a dry little laugh, and glanced at De Rothan.
"That was very brave and honourable."
His sudden arrogance showed that he was growing out of patience with their scorn.
"Miss Nance, you have not the sense yet to know men, and the ways of men. If you were only five years older, and if you had been married to Mr. Benham here for five years, I should have had more hope of you. Still, it may be good for you both to remember that I am the man in power."
Jasper eyed him meaningly.
"You can be as insolent to me as you please, but——"
"Mr. Benham, let us have no fool's bellowing. I say what I please, even to a woman. I have brought you two together to see how weak in the head my poor Nance here might, be. It is a bad case, but I shall cure her. Gaston, you can come in."
The man entered, smothering a grin.
"Now, my most sweet lady——"
He shepherded Nance out with a sweep of the arm, but she went slowly, holding her pride aloof, and giving Jasper a look that he could treasure.
Nance went to her room, De Rothan following her to the door, and bowing as she entered. She heard the key turned in the lock, and then De Rothan's footsteps dying away down the stairs.
Nance went to the window, and, leaning her elbows on the sill, looked across toward the oak wood on the hill to the west of the house. What was De Rothan's ultimate desire with regard to her, and did he believe in the crushing of England by Napoleon's army of invasion? Supposing this should happen, what would become of them all? She saw not only herself, but Jasper and her father at the mercy of a man who would be in a position to satisfy any vindictive whim or passion.
Nance had travelled beyond mere amazement. Incredible things had happened, and were happening. Even the seemingly quiet life that her father had led all these years had been but the fitting-out of the ship of adventure. Monotony indeed! The prudish stolidity of English life! And yet there were people who lived as though all the world was a comfortable breakfast-table, little people who dabbled with their teaspoons, and for whom time was spaced out by a change of underclothing and the donning of a Sunday hat.
Nance kept asking herself, "What is Jeremy Winter doing?" For Jeremy seemed their one hope, the one man capable of dealing with this devil of a Frenchman. She knew that Jeremy had to be sly and cautious, yet this very cautiousness had begun to try her patience. She wanted things to happen, quickly and even violently. She wanted Jasper freed, and De Rothan confounded. The suspense would be intolerable, with this man holding her at his mercy.
Meanwhile De Rothan had rejoined Durrell in the garden—Durrell, whose face carried an expression of resentful bewilderment. He was so little of a man of action that he was still gaping at the events of the previous night. The whole adventure would be over and done with before he had decided what part he ought to play.
De Rothan twitted him maliciously.
"Come, come, friend Durrell, put away that grieved look. I have all these people in the hollow of my hand, and for the glory of La Belle France, and Liberty. A month ago you would have been patting me on the shoulder."
Durrell looked at him with an old man's thin distrust.
"Yes, but what are your plans?"
"Why, to pick up some of these fine English estates, to live as one of the grandees of the Empire, to marry and found a family!"
"That is all very magnificent, but——"
"Men of courage are ready to meet the 'buts' of life. A general has his line of retreat as well as his line of advance. You will not object to joining me if I have to return to France!"
"What do you mean?"
"If we are foiled I shall not leave you behind to be hanged. I am too good a comrade. I shall take you and Nance back with me to France."
Durrell stood open-mouthed, staring, and De Rothan smiled at his amazed face.
"The idea surprises you! You are struck by it, eh?"
"De Rothan, I have had enough of this monstrous fooling."
"Will it be fooling if I marry your daughter?"
"Sir?"
"Save your emotions."
"You think you can marry Nance!"
"There are three reasons why I should marry her. Because I desire to, because she does not desire me to, and because Mr. Jasper Benham will be struck across the face. Motives indeed! Our motives in life are curiously complex. I love complexities, entanglements, quarrels. Am I a man for a tame hare? Psst! Durrell, if a woman provokes me I like her all the better."
Durrell stared at him in impotent indignation.
"You are beyond me, De Rothan, and yet not beyond me."
"Indeed, I should not have to go far! What time is it? I think I shall have to request you to be locked up in your room."
That night Nance watched at her window, sitting there in the darkness with a cloak over her shoulders. She had heard De Rothan pass along the gallery, pause outside her door, and then walk on toward his room. When the dusk fell she had managed to push an oak chest against the door so that no one could force their way in without waking her if she were asleep.
The house seemed very silent, and the summer night was a noiseless glitter of stars. Now and again she heard the faint splashing of water as frogs leapt in the great rain-water cistern below her window.
It was past midnight when Nance saw a glimmer out in the woods on the opposite hillside. It moved to and fro three times, and then disappeared. Nance had brought a tinder-box with her, and a candle stood on the little table at her elbow. It took her some time to get a light, but she managed it and moved the candle to and fro three times across the window. Then she blew it out and sat down to wait.
A quarter of an hour passed before she heard a faint splash in the water below. She leaned out of the window and stared down into the darkness, to see nothing but vague outlines and an uncertain glimmering of water. Then something moved, close to the wall. A whisper came up to her out of the darkness.
"Nance——"
She leaned out and curved her hands about her mouth as though to confine her voice and throw it down to the man below.
"Who is it?"
"Jeremy."
She shivered with excitement.
"Oh, I'm glad, so glad."
"Not too fast, child. Where is Jasper? Do you know anything?"
"They have him in irons in one of the attics."
"Irons! Damn them!"
"I am locked into my room and father into his. A man seems to sleep in the same attic as Jasper."
Jeremy was silent a moment.
"Cunning rogues. Ssh! Nance, could you let down a cord or anything, a couple of sheets tied together?"
"Are you coming in?"
"No, no, not this time. Listen. Do you know what opium is?"
"Yes."
"Then let down a line. Here's a packet of poppy-powder."
Nance went to the bed, stripped the sheets off, tied them together, and let the rope out of the window. The lower end dangled itself in the water of the cistern.
"Jerk it to one side——"
She tried several times before Jeremy managed to catch the wet sheet on the end of a stick. He fastened the packet to the dry part of the sheet.
"Right, Nance. Do you think you can manage to get this stuff into the wine—De Rothan's wine?"
"I'll try. Would it kill him?"
"No, there's not enough for that. If we could get him drugged, we could deal with the others. Try the trick to-morrow evening. We shall be on the watch in the wood. If you succeed, signal with your candle."
Nance had pulled up the sheets, and had the packet in her hands.
"Is there no other way, Jeremy?"
"We will try this. Are you afraid?"
"Yes—and no. No—not for Jasper's sake."
"Good. No more risks to-night. And, Nance?"
"Yes."
"If anything bad should happen, call, shout, someone will be within hearing. We should break in and chance the rest. See?"
"Yes."
"Good night, child."
"Good night, Jeremy, good night."