Parson Goffin and old Christopher Benham had dined together, and sat facing each other on either side of the fire.
Kit Benham was past sixty, and had drunk himself into premature dotage. A pursy, ponderous, florid man, he could do little more than sit in his padded chair, smoke interminable pipes, and drink perpetual beer. He was a gross man, who could hardly speak without uttering all manner of quaint and ingenious oaths. Already his legs were swollen with dropsy, and they were propped on a joint stool as he fumed and pulled at his pipe.
"Four horses, Parson; four blazing, burning, heaven-forsaken beasts pinched by eternally accursed, skunk-livered, black-mouthed thieves! My lad shot in the arm, too, and abed, with old Blister of Battle running up a bill! Tell me to be an addle-brained, pond-waterweed of a Christian! Grrrh!"
The great thing about Parson Goffin was his gout. He was a knobbly man, the colour of leather, and he always sat with his knees drawn up and his bumpy feet tucked away under his chair as though he dreaded having them trodden on. Goffin might have been in the habit of using Cayenne pepper in place of snuff, for his nose looked so angry. Gout had made him explosive, yet this explosiveness suited the neighbourhood. It threw him into sympathy with his surroundings, and made him popular with the hot-tongued squires and farmers. Goffin was the very man for a grievance. He took it as a dog takes a rat, crunched it, shook it to and fro, not indeed to kill, but out of sympathy for the aggrieved friend.
"They will catch the rogues, sir; catch them and hang them."
Kit Benham flourished his pipe.
"By old Nick's bones, Parson, that's just what they won't do. We are driven clear crazy by these infernal French. All the oafs in the county are standing and gaping all day at the sea. And all the flea-bitten scoundrels in the county rob and do just as they please."
"Yes, sir; perhaps in this world, sir. But think how they will burn in the next!"
"I should like to see it, Goffin, by all the lies of Ananias—I should like to see it!"
"They'll all sizzle, sir—just like apples."
Christopher Benham expanded his nostrils.
"To smell 'm singeing! Dear heart—I'd be ready to go there myself, surely! Thank God, sir, there is a hell."
"Thank God, sir, indeed. Think of all the thieves there ever were going up in glorious black smoke."
"Don't, sir—don't—Goffin! The thought of it makes me too infernally excited."
"Happy, you mean, sir. Hallo now, I hear wheels on the drive."
A green curricle had swept up past the cedars on the lawn, and drawn up outside the house. Jack Bumpstead came running from somewhere, pulling an eager forelock. A young woman with a rather sallow face, and a short, upturned nose, threw Jack the reins. She had blue eyes that stared, and a quick, masterful manner. A prim little bonnet caressed the neat plaits of her reddish hair.
"Lucky there are any springs left to the carriage, Jack! These by-roads!"
"Ah, miss, you oughtn't to take her off t' main road, sure-ly!"
"Squire Christopher in? And Master Jasper? Yes, I have heard all about it, Jack—all, thank you."
"Parson Goffin be with the squire in the oak parlour."
"Oh, is he! I thought I saw flames coming out of the chimney!"
Into the oak parlour marched this brisk and urgent young woman with her queer blending of piety and worldliness. Parson Goffin rose stiffly and made her a formal bow. Mr. Christopher Benham pointed with his pipe stem at the legs reposing on the stool.
"Laid up, see. Can't move. Goffin can do the bowing. Well, young woman, you look too fat."
"Mr. Goffin, do you agree with my uncle?"
"I never interfere between relatives, Miss Benham."
"Oh, don't you! So Jasper has been getting into the wars. Four horses, was it? Lucky that Devil Dick came back. I hear some people at Stonehanger took pity on Jasper. Durrell or Darrell or Barrell or something. Who are they?"
Christopher Benham looked at her irritably.
"Just like her mother; talks like a water-wheel. Don't ask me, girl, how should I know? Ask the parson, he knows everybody's business."
Mr. Goffin grinned, and showed his tobacco-blackened teeth.
"Durrell is the name, Miss Benham. They are queer folk, I hear. The man is a bookworm, deist, encyclopædist, atheist, anything you like. I don't know much about them. No one does. This Durrell put it about that he wanted to be left alone. He is."
Mr. Goffin took snuff and sneezed, turning his angry nose toward the fire.
"Then it was the girl who picked Jasper out of the road?"
"The girl! Thunder and cabbages, the lad never told us that."
Kit Benham heaved with laughter.
"A girl, was there? Oh, the rogue! I know nothing about it. You had better ask Jasper. May old Nick boil my marrow-bones——"
Rose Benham had her Methodist face—for the moment.
"Uncle Christopher, when will you learn to be clean in your speech?"
"What!"
"It is contemptible, at your age."
"Thunder and lightning, can't I swear in my own house? Here's Goffin, too; he's a good judge of language. You go and see Jasper. He's in bed."
"I will."
She left Parson Goffin and her uncle staring at each other. Then Squire Kit spluttered:
"If that girl hadn't got a thousand a year of her own, hang, draw, and quarter me if I'd——"
"Ssh, sir; ssh! She is your brother's daughter."
"Bah, she's not! She's his cat-faced wife's cat-clawed daughter! They killed poor Nat between 'em with their little goody books and their snuffle."
Rose Benham had climbed the broad stairs, noticing a number of trivial things, such as dust on the bannister rail, and cobwebs in some of the corners. Jasper was lying asleep in the oak four-poster when his cousin knocked at the door.
He woke out of the thick of a dream, to hear Rose's metallic voice calling:
"Jasper, can I come in?"
They had been children together, but no such thing as false modesty would have kept Rose Benham out of her cousin's room. She entered breezily, without a fleck of colour on her cheeks, her blue eyes full of a frank, intimate interest. Three years older than Jasper, she still treated him as a boy.
"This is a nice affair! Getting shot when you are wanted to drill your volunteers on the green of a Sunday. Not that I can call them anything but a lot of waddling ducks. And you have had old Blister Doddington, have you? I hope he was sober. And you are sure he has set your arm properly?"
Her pale-blue eyes and her reddish hair seemed to tone with her brisk self-confidence. Rose Benham knew what she expected of life, and she meant life to satisfy her expectations. Whisking a rush-bottomed chair from a corner, she sat down beside the bed, talking the whole time. She was one of those women who overwhelm the world with words.
"Well, what an adventure! And how does it feel to be picked up out of the road by a young woman? Yes, I have heard all about it."
She laughed her quick, harsh laugh.
"Don't look at me as if such things happened every day! You men, you take everything for granted. And here am I dying to hear all about it. Cousin Rose has a right to know, hasn't she?"
There was a subtle suggestion of ownership in the way she put out a hand and smoothed the pillow. Jasper was not wholly the boy cousin to her. He was the man she had determined to marry.
Jasper looked bothered. Rose had such a way of driving people into a corner.
"There is nothing to tell. One of the rogues waited for me in the dark, and shot me in Stonehanger Lane. They just helped me into the house, and I spent the night there. Jack fetched me in the wagon yesterday morning."
She grew caressing, and a caressing mood never suited her. She was too thin, too hard about the eyes.
"Now, Jasper, you know——"
"What do you want me to tell you, Rose?"
"Why, everything. Dear lad, do you think it is nothing?"
"I'm not dead, or likely to be."
Their eyes met. There was something in Jasper's that repulsed the girl. She stiffened, and withdrew her hand.
"You know, Jasper, these things sometimes come to us from above. They are messages, divine warnings."
It was her doctrinal phase, and she had inherited it from her mother. Jasper glanced at her uneasily, and then stared at the window. He had never realised it so vividly before that Rose talked to him as though he belonged to her.
"It pulls a man up, and makes him think."
"Yes; only men will put off the thinking. Though I don't believe you are that sort of man, Jasper. You are steady, and sensible, and I know you read your Bible."
Jasper turned restlessly on the pillow. Her cool way of discussing him to himself, of approving and disapproving as though she had a kind of authority, had always rather amused him. Whether some new intelligence had come to him in the course of two days, he could not tell. One thing he did know. He had discovered a sudden new significance in his cousin's attitude toward himself.
"I'm afraid I'm a stupid fool, Rose. I still have a head from that bump in the road."
"Poor Jasper!"
Her hand came out, and for the moment there was something very like repulsion in Jasper's eyes.
"Now, I won't chatter any longer. Go to sleep. I will draw the curtains. There, lad. And now I will go and have a talk with Uncle Christopher."
Said Squire Christopher to the parson when the green curricle had driven off along the road across the paddock: "There's a hell-cat for you, Goffin; preach at you or scratch your face—whichever you please. The image of her dear mother. She means to marry lad Jasper."
The parson refilled his pipe.
"What have you to say to that, sir?"
"If Jasper cares to be caught, I shan't meddle. What's more, one woman's very like another. I don't believe in a man marrying the woman he's in love with."
"But, Mr. Benham—sir!"
"What! You don't see how it works? Why, sir, marry a woman you dislike and you will always be in love with some charmer who won't nag your head off. A man ought to go out loving as he goes out hunting; it's a sour, dull sport in your own yard. Poor Nat was ruled by his wife. But Jasper's got grit. Maybe he'd tame Miss Rose. And don't you see, Goffin, there's something in a thousand a year and more to come! You don't expect good looks and a sweet temper when you get so much cash."
As for the two people under discussion, Rose had driven off with a tightly shut mouth and three lines of thought across her forehead, while Jasper lay abed with a chafed and uneasy conscience. Generous men are always inclined to be severe upon themselves, when some unforeseen clash of the emotions makes them look at life very seriously. Jasper was puzzled with regard to Rose, and angry with himself. Had he been blind, and missed seeing things that had been very visible to others?
One thing he did know. He was haunted perpetually by the face and voice of Nance Durrell.
As for Nance herself, the sun shone on her as she sat on the stone parapet of the terrace garden at Stonehanger, and looked toward the sea. Nance had developed a passion for gardening, and had adventurously set herself to grow flowers in that wind-swept upland garden. She had made old David dig her a broad border at the edge of the stone path, and she had searched the overrun garden at the back of the house for stray plants that had managed to survive the weeds. Old David had bought her a few roots from some of the cottages at Rookhurst, and Nance had pansies, sweetwilliams, pinks, foxgloves, lavender, and a few roses ready to bloom in the coming summer. Several clumps of daffodils waved their golden heads in the wind. A rake, a trowel, and a wooden trug lay on the grass beside her. Her hands were brown with soil, and she sat and forgot for a moment that such things as flowers existed.
She was thinking of Jasper Benham, and wondering how he did with his broken arm. His brown face, square jaw, and steady blue eyes had seemed very pleasant to her. Something in him had called to her own youth.
Her father's voice startled her from her reverie. He was looking out of an upper window, the window of his study, the wind blowing his white hair over his forehead.
"Nance."
"Yes, father."
"What are you idling there for, child?"
"I wasn't idling—I was thinking."
"Oh, and what may these most serious thoughts be?"
His morose and peering curiosity puzzled her, but she was quite frank in her answering.
"I was wondering how Mr. Benham is?"
"Tssh—do you call that thinking! Go in and brew me some tea."