richard jeffray’s recovery from the small-pox was hailed by the tenants of the rodenham estate as nothing less than a public blessing. the farmers were astute enough to know when they had a generous “booby” for a landlord, a man who could easily be cheated, and who was ready to listen to their grievances instead of sensibly grinding the gold out of their tough and materialistic hearts. hence they listened with unction to dr. sugg’s thanksgiving sermon, and thanked providence when they realized that there would be no raising of their rents.
even the lady letitia experienced a comfortable sensation when she read the good news in a letter from dr. sugg, or, rather, when parsons read it to her at a distance of three paces, lest there should be any infection in the sheet. jeffray was an amiable relative who might oblige her delicately on occasions. as for the hardacre folk, their sympathies were centred for the moment in their own family, for jilian was abed with the small-pox, and sir peter and mr. lot were much agitated in their minds as to how her precious complexion would withstand the ravages of the disease.
there were flowers on the broad window-seat of jeffray’s bedroom window, flowers that should have testified to some gentle and soft-eyed presence in the house. who was it that had set those gorgeous king-cups in that bowl of blue, filled those tall vases with wild hyacinths, and ranged the tulips red and white in pots along the window-ledge? no woman’s hand had done the deed. blunt dick wilson was the culprit on this occasion. wilson, whose creased and cynical face had come back through rodenham, tanned by the sea-wind and the sun upon the downs. peter gladden had shown no reluctance to delegate many of his duties to his master’s friend, and the painter had put aside his brushes and busied himself with phials and feeding-cups, spoons and red flannel, warming-pans and iced-wine.
one may morning richard sat at his open window, looking over the park towards rodenham village and the purple slopes of pevensel. there had been no maying in the village that month, and the blackthorn and the broom, the palm and wild-cherry, had escaped unbroken, for though the pest appeared to have spent its malice, death had entered many of the cottages. george gogg, of the wheat sheaf, had lost his daughter, a plump, black-haired, bright-eyed wench, whose red cheeks and red ribbons had turned many a young farmer’s head. old sturtevant, the cobbler, had gone the way of all flesh, and several more of the villagers, men, women, and children, were lying under the green-sward in rodenham church-yard. as for jeffray, he was but in a feeble way himself, and surgeon stott had decreed it that he was to be troubled with no news from the outer world as yet.
richard, muffled up in a dressing-gown, with dusky mottlings covering his thin face, sat before the open window and looked out over the park. the disease had seized him sharply, but not dangerously, and even richard had vanity enough to feel some satisfaction at surgeon stott’s verdict that he would be left with few scars. there is a delicious languor in convalescence when the world seems to spread itself anew before the reawakened eyes, and life is reborn like a dream of renewed youth into the heart. nature seems to welcome the exile with smiling eyes and soft breathings of her green-clad bosom. so might it have been for richard that spring day as he saw the great trees standing so calm and still under the blue heavens, and the green billows of the park a-glisten under the sun.
sickness is held to solemnize the soul, to chasten the understanding, and purge the passion out of man. it is considered to be a season of severe self-judgment, and of inward searchings of the heart, a season when religious impulses should struggle to the surface, and solemn promises be made to propitiate the god who has granted health. such is the orthodox exposition of the doctrine of disease. the pious hand points to the precipice that has provided the mortal with a chance of realizing the abysses of the unknown.
but with jeffray his recovery was as the coming forth of a moth from the cramping sack of custom. he had much to repent of in the past, but the repentance was romantic rather than religious. it was a lifting up of the hands to the light, not the wan and sickly light of prosaic morality, but the glow of the instincts that burn on the altar of nature, the life fire of love, of wonder, and of worship.
it was towards bess—bess of the woods—that jeffray’s thoughts flew feverishly as he lay in bed or sat propped up in his chair before the window. he yearned to see that face again, to watch the light kindling in the keen-sighted eyes, to hear the deep and husky modulations of her voice. he was eager to learn whether she were safe from dan or no, and to tell her why the tryst at holy cross had been broken. his thoughts hovered more tenderly about her radiant face bathed by the splendor of its dusky hair than about miss jilian’s tawny head. his recollections of miss hardacre were neither satisfying to his soul nor flattering to the future. he remembered her as vain, peevish, ready to wax petulant over trifles, selfishly jealous of her own safety.
it is scarcely necessary to spin a flimsy tissue of words about richard jeffray’s thoughts. probably his illness had suffered his convictions to sink to the solid earth instead of drifting feather-like in air. frankly, he discovered in himself a strong and aggressive disinclination to make miss jilian hardacre his wife. it was no great psychological problem, but merely a question of nature asserting herself in the magic person of poor bess. bess was a finer and lovelier being than miss hardacre; she had more soul, more splendor of outline, more womanly suggestiveness. and thus mr. richard sat brooding in his chair, watching the clouds drift across the blue, and wondering what the near future had in store for him.
perhaps jeffray was not sorry to have his solitude broken by the sound of dick wilson’s heavy and deliberate footsteps in the gallery, and the shining of his red face round the edge of the oak door. the painter wore the same rusty suit of clothes, and he had been mourning his approaching parting with these well-worn retainers, for surgeon stott had ordered him to burn every shred of them before he left rodenham. in danger of being “nonsuited,” mr. dick was contemplating a descent upon the late mr. jeffray’s wardrobe, since it was certain that he could not turn adamite in the cause of cleanliness, and perhaps end in a mad-house by reason of his nudity.
jeffray’s pale face, with the shadow-rings under the eyes, lighted up at wilson’s coming. the painter had a roll of manuscript in his hand. he went and sat in the window-seat, after pushing aside the bowl of king-cups, and patted the roll of paper with peculiar and amusing emphasis.
“may i congratulate you, sir,” he said, “on having revived the spirit of the elizabethans?”
jeffray colored, like a boy whose mother has caught him inditing verses to a pretty milliner.
“what! you have been reading my epic, dick?”
“i have, sir, i have. i discovered it in the library, and you will pardon the friendly curiosity that prompted me to bury my nose in it.”
jeffray laughed shyly, and lay back with his hands clasped behind his head. the painter had unfolded the roll, and, holding it before him, with a quaint and sententious pride, read the three opening stanzas of the poem.
“there is life for you,” he said, warmly. “the divine utterance, the gushing out of song.”
jeffray’s face was still red under his waving hair. he laughed, the quiet, pleased laugh of aspiring yet incredulous youth, and looked at wilson with affectionate amusement.
“i am glad you like the work, dick,” he said. “heaven knows, i have copied nobody, and yet my lines seem childish when set beside pope’s or dryden’s.”
“childish, sir, and if they are childish, you should thank heaven for their innocence. as for pope, he’s nothing but a pedant setting prose on stilts, and trying to make her tread a stately measure. why, sir, his poetry is like a respectable old lady knitting epigrams together on her needles. dash his preciseness, and his pompous and ponderous conceit! set him beside will shakespeare, and you will hear an artificial waterfall trying to thunder against the sea.”
jeffray smiled, and stretched out his hand for the manuscript. he glanced at the neat and sensitive writing with satisfaction, moving his lips the while as though reading certain of his favorite passages over to himself.
“but what would the critics say of them?” he asked.
“critics, sir!”
“yes.”
wilson blew his nose with great vigor, and grimaced as though he had swallowed vinegar. he reached for a volume of the annual register, that was lying on the table beside jeffray’s chair, and opened the book at the place dedicated to verse.
“here, sir,” he said, holding the volume at arm’s-length and declaiming, sententiously, through his nose—“here is the sort of stuff we english feed the imaginative passion on.
“ ‘to a robin
“ ‘sweet social bird! whose soft harmonious lays
swell the glad song of thy creator’s praise,
say, art thou conscious of approaching ills?
fell winter’s storms, the pointed blast that kills?’
“there, sir, there’s the proper pedantic stuff for you. it puzzles me to think what our english woods would be like if all the ‘sweet social birds’ sang in that fashion. and can you tell me, sir, why winter is always ‘fell’ with these gentlemen, and any poor thrush ‘a member of the feathered tribe’? damn it, why can’t they call a wind a wind, instead of ‘black boreas’s breath,’ or some such scholarly twaddle? i tell you, richard, this sort of stuff sickens me; it is like looking at some painted and behooped old hag, and trying to think she’s a pretty shepherdess. why, sir, your verses are as different from them as the scent of new-mown hay from the scent of a beauty’s pomade-box. they smell of the downs and of the woods and the sea, sir—they do that, by gad!”
jeffray was watching the strenuous play of thought on wilson’s countenance.
“then you do not think, dick, that my poetry would be popular?”
an indescribable flash of ironical amusement leaped across the painter’s face.
“popular!”
“yes.”
“no, sir; plain people who love nature and the truth are not popular in these learned days. why, were i to paint one of your sussex landscapes with the dawn coming up over the downs a great gush of gold, not a soul would look at it; but if i took lady tomfool, draped her, shoved her in front of a bit of a greek temple, made her strike some silly attitude, and called her juno or proserpine, or alcestis returned from hades, all the silly women would crowd round and gape at it, and declare that i had a most classic style.”
jeffray laughed, and lay back with a thoughtful light in his eyes, as he watched the cloud shadows playing over the sunny heights of pevensel. wilson was drumming on the window-sill with his fingers, and still holding the annual register upon his knee. he was watching richard with a grave and bent-browed tenderness, seeming to see in him the spirit of the coming age, when fine gentlemen would give up the carrying of muffs and the writing of odes in imitation of horace. men would wake again to the beauty that lived in the woods and upon the mountains. but for the present, wilson had other duties to perform beside the praising of jeffray’s poetry. he had been intrusted by surgeon stott with the responsibility of breaking the news of miss hardacre’s illness to his host. he had desired to put the lad in as good spirits as possible before flinging the unpleasant confession in his face.
“there is no doubt, richard,” he said, slowly, “that you have the true fire in you. go on, sir, go on as you have begun, and let the big-bellied academicals snort and blow rhetoric through their noses. but the muses must go flower-gathering for a moment; i have another matter on my mind this morning.”
there was a forced and suspicious cheerfulness in wilson’s voice that made richard jeffray turn his eyes to him from the slopes of pevensel. the painter had something of the air of a nurse, who was about to administer physic to a child, pretending barefacedly the while that it was sweet and palatable as sugared milk. wilson’s eyes were fixed on the annual register in his hand; he was turning the leaves and glancing perfunctorily from page to page.
“you are not the only sick person in the neighborhood, richard,” he said, significantly; “they say that love is wondrous sympathetic, and that your corydon can feel the toothache that is swelling in his chloe’s cheek.”
jeffray stared at wilson with vague surprise.
“what do you mean, dick?” he asked.
“mean, sir! why, your betrothed, like the sweet lady that she is, has been keeping you company in the matter of boluses and bleedings, that is all.”
“jilian ill?”
wilson nodded and exercised his facial muscles in the production of a reassuring smile.
“miss hardacre caught the small-pox, sir,” he explained, “but she is facing it famously, and stott declares her to be out of danger. let me assure you, richard, that there is no need for you to distress yourself about the lady. stott forbade me to mention her illness to you until he felt convinced that she would recover.”
jeffray leaned back in his chair with a sigh, frowned, and stared fixedly out of the window.
“i must have given it to her, dick,” he said.
wilson shut the book up with a snap.
“nonsense!” he retorted. “why imagine such a thing? nothing is to be gained by saddling one’s self with hypothetical responsibilities.”
the sensitive lines about jeffray’s mouth had deepened, and there was a strained look about his eyes. wilson, who was watching him affectionately, misread the whole meaning of the mood. he assumed richard to be in love with miss jilian, and magnified his friend’s distress like the warm-hearted fellow that he was.
“dick.”
“well, sir?”
“has she had it badly? will it—will it disfigure her?”
wilson shut one eye and sniffed, an expression peculiar to him in moments of deep feeling.
“confound it!” he said, cheerfully, “why heap up imaginery woes, sir? stott has said nothing about scars. besides, my dear friend, the lady will recover, and that is the great thing, eh?”
jeffray lay back heavily in his chair.
“yes, that is the great thing,” he answered.
