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Mad Barbara

<div><h1>XLIII</h1></div> The days were pleasant enough at Furze Farm, with Barbara gaining in health and color, and in a womanly winsomeness that made even Mrs. Jennifer wonder. It was as though the real soul had come to life in her again, and her heart, that had been a thing of moods and sorrows of old, had warmed into a richer consciousness of life, so that the beautiful shell began to glow with the light of the beautiful spirit within. There was a sweet sparkle of youth in her that began to play over the surface of sadness, and though the past still shadowed her, she stood free from the utter gloom of it and saw the golden rim of the sun. She made friends with little Will Jennifer, played hide-and-seek with the boy, and told him tales in the dusk before he went to bed. She and Mrs. Winnie, too, were busy making up the stuffs from Battle into gowns and petticoats, and though Mrs. Winnie’s craft was simple and somewhat crude, the colors lighted up Barbara’s comeliness, and the very simplicity of the frocks seemed in keeping with that Sussex fireside. She even besought Mrs. Winnie to let her learn the lore of the dairy, the art of butter-making, and the like; for the primitive, busy life of the place seemed good to her, and full of the warmth and fragrance of a home. John Gore took her riding with him over the winter fields, for he had bought her a quiet saddle-horse in one of the market towns. Yet though the days were magical for lover and beloved, there were the sterner issues of life to be confronted, nor could they forget those clouds that had withdrawn a little toward the horizon. Moreover, John Gore began to feel the very material need of a replenished purse, and an insight into the future that concerned him and his love, even unto the death. He laid everything before Barbara one evening as they rode homeward toward Furze Farm, with a red, wintry glow in the west, and the hills wrapped in bluish gloom. Riding very close to him, she listened to all his reasonings, accepting things that went against her heart, because she knew that he loved her, and because she felt him to be shrewd and strong. “Do that which you think best, John,” she said, with an upward look into his face; “I trust you with all that life can hold.” And so their nags went homeward side by side, so close that the man’s arm was over the girl’s shoulders, and her breathing rising up to him in the keen, clear air like a little cloud of incense. One morning early in December John Gore took the London road, following the same course that he and Mr. Pepys had taken—by Battle, Lamberhurst, Tunbridge, and Seven Oaks. Nor could he help contrasting the difference of the ways, and the different spirit that inspired him, though the woods were bare now, and the country gray and colorless when no sun shone. His thoughts went back over the Sussex hills to that farm-house with its broad black thatch, its beech-trees, and its uplands, its brick-paved, low-beamed kitchen with the fire red even to the chimney’s throat, and the kindly folk who moved therein. But chiefly he thought of Barbara sitting before that winter fire, her great eyes full of the light and dreams thereof, and her Spanish face betraying new deeps of womanhood because of the suffering she had borne and the spirit of beauty she had won thereby. John Gore put up at an inn in Southwark, meaning to keep his distance from the precincts of St. James’s, and from that intriguing, cultured, cruel world that had held his own father as a murderer and a paramour. He had heard of grim things in the Spanish Provinces and the Islands, but nothing that had brought home to him the shame of the goddess self in passion as this tragedy in an English home had done. He could only think of the man—his father—with pity, and a kind of revolting of the honorable manhood in him. It was almost a subject beyond the pale of thought; a thing rather to be realized and then—buried. Now John Gore was innocent of all knowledge of Oates’s Plot and of the wild ferment the City was in, for the news of it had not trickled as yet into the by-ways of Sussex, and he had kept to himself upon the road. His plan was to hunt out Samuel Pepys and hear the news of the surface of things, whether my lord was in town, and whether the Secretary would act for him in receiving and forwarding his Yorkshire moneys. His first visit across the water was to the Admiralty offices, and there, when he had sent his name in, Mr. Pepys came out in person with a mightily solemn face. He took his friend straight to a little private cabinet of his own, locked the door, and pushed John Gore unceremoniously into a chair. “Well, John, you have come here, have you, with a lighted candle to look for sixpence in a barrel of gunpowder. Where have you been all these weeks?” Mr. Pepys’s manner was the manner of a man who had some reason for being honestly perturbed. “Within ten miles of the place you left me at, Sam. I have come up for news and money.” Mr. Pepys looked at him steadily, yet with a species of alarmed awe. “News, John! Gracious God, we are shaken in our shoes with fresh news every other day! You have heard of the Plot, of course.” “Plot! What plot?” Mr. Pepys’s silent stare expressed infinite things. He stepped forward, tapped John Gore on the chest with his forefinger, then stepped back again, and made him a reverence. “Can I bow, sir, to a gentleman who has never heard of Titus Oates? Alack, John, I fear me I have many sad and solemn things to tell you! I thought that you had heard everything, and that you were wintering in the country—like a wise man. For it is not flattering at present to bear the name of Gore.” He saw the sea-captain straighten suddenly in his chair and look up at him keenly. “What do you mean, Sam?” “Mean, sir? Did I not warn you that the papists were likely to burn their fingers? And we are in the thick of such fire and fright and fury because of them that we are all afraid to catechize our own souls. News, my good John! The Protestants raging, informers making Ananias seem a simpleton, Catholic peers in the Tower, hundreds in jail, Coleman the Jesuit tried and executed, a warrant out against your father, who has taken to his heels and fled.” “Good God, Sam! Where?” “That is what certain people would like to know, sir. I pity your innocence, John, but we are all of us shaking in our shoes. Even the Queen has not been pitied.” John Gore sat forward in his chair, his hands on his knees, his eyes looking into the distance. He was silent a moment, while Mr. Pepys fidgeted with his feet and glanced nervously at both door and window. “I have not seen my—Lord Gore since I left London with you, Sam.” “No?” “I have heard nothing of all this. What is more, I have had matters of my own.” Mr. Pepys stroked his chin. “There is yet another piece of news, John.” “Well?” “Concerning the Purcells.” The sea-captain looked at him sharply. “What?” “Anne Purcell died of the small-pox a month ago.” “Anne Purcell!” “Yes; it would have been the talk of the town but for this furious belcher of accusations, even the man Oates.” John Gore looked at him in silence. “She was found dead in her bed in her house in Pall Mall. All the servants had fled, and the house had been rifled. But there also appears to be a mystery about the daughter. The lawyers have discovered that she was put away in the autumn for being of unsound mind; and now that all the property seems to have fallen to her, not a living soul knows what has become of the girl.” The sea-captain smiled very slightly, with a grim light in the eyes. “Who has the control of the matter?” he asked. “It has fallen into Chancery.” “Like the traveller to Jericho, Sam, in the parable. How long is it since my Lord Stephen hoisted sail?” “Somewhere about a month ago—before I returned from Portsmouth.” “Did Anne Purcell die before then?” “Heaven help me if I know, John. But what has that to do with the case?” “More than you know, my friend—more than you may suspect.” He had the air of a man who was troubled and perplexed by many difficulties. “Sam, I want your help and advice. I can trust you.” Mr. Pepys made him a little bow. “Where are you staying, John?” “In Southwark. I had my reasons. Can you give me supper to-night, and an hour’s private talk? I have many things to turn over in my mind before then.” The Secretary laid a hand upon John Gore’s shoulder. “A friend’s trust is a friend’s affection, John. Come and sup with me; what I can do I will.” The Secretary’s wife was feasting with friends that night, and Mr. Pepys and John Gore had the table to themselves. When supper was over, Mr. Samuel took the sea-captain to the library, locked the door, and prepared to play the part of counsellor and friend. For Mr. Pepys was a shrewd, sound man of the world, for all his oddities and love of news—a man who had walked the slippery path of public responsibility, and who knew the world’s deceitfulness, even to the latest lie from the lips of a king. But even this critic of court scandals, and of the vanities of himself and of mankind at large, was flustered a little by John Gore’s account of his doings, and of the tragedy that had taken place at Thorn. Mr. Pepys could pass over a gay intrigue, but this darker and more sinister affair gripped the manhood in him, and made him understand his friend’s grimness. “On the Cross of our Lord, Sam, I pledge you to silence over this. I know you are to be trusted where questions of life and death are concerned.” There was no need to question the intenseness of the Secretary’s sincerity. He was a man of oak whose foibles and frivolities were merely the flutter of leaves in the wind. “Have no doubt of that, John. But upon my conscience, this is black villany or something marvellous like it. Iago, oh Iago, thou dinest with us and smilest at us in church, thou art not only a thing of the stage!” John Gore sat thinking, smoking his pipe, and snapping the thumb and middle finger of his right hand. “It is the girl who has to be considered, Sam. She has borne enough, suffered enough, and from my own flesh and blood; that’s where the rub comes.” Mr. Pepys sat and considered. “The Chancery folk are such a dastardly meddlesome lot,” he said. “I am not afraid of the lawyers, Sam; we can take our chances over the sea, if needs be. But there is this man—this father—to be considered. And, by my hope in Heaven, I will kill him as he killed Lionel Purcell if he meddles further with the girl’s life!” Mr. Pepys looked a little shocked despite his sympathy. He had been a good son himself, and the word “father” had its true meaning for him. “Softly, John, softly. There is always the other side of the case; we cannot always see into another man’s heart.” John Gore stared at the floor grimly. “What I have said, Sam, I have said; even one’s father is not privileged to seduce and murder as he pleases. I shall put my sword to his breast and say: ‘Sir, no further.’ He has his life in his hand.” Mr. Pepys looked at him kindly. “Have you not thought, John, that it may rest with the girl?” “With her—how?” “If she chooses not to speak, to play a part.” John Gore met his friend’s eyes. “Why should this—this man be shielded? There is blood upon his hands; he has stained the lives of others. Who shall consider him?” “John, John, you talk like a man who stabs fiercely at a shadow. No man is wholly the devil’s creature, and, say what you will, his loins begot you.” “The greater the need, Sam, to put aside false sentiment. Still, he is out of our ken at present. We must bide our time—and watch.” Mr. Pepys rubbed his knees with the palms of his hands. “Do you know what I would have you do, John? Go back to this quiet farm; let the child come by her health and happiness. Keep the lawyers out of it, and marry her, if you can.” “You are echoing my own thoughts, Sam.” “Good; very good. See what a seal, my friend, you might set upon the past, if God granted you children and happiness, and the long love of wife and man.” John Gore understood his meaning. “The blood-debt might be wiped away, Sam, for the sake of the future.” “God grant it. And now, John, you will want money.” “Money! How do you know that?” “John, my man, when I was in love I was always poor. I know how Dan Cupid picks a man’s pocket. Besides, money is above the law, John, and at a pinch you might find it useful.” “I have money enough; it needs handling, that is all. There is all my property in Yorkshire.” “Give me a written authority, John, and I will act for you.” “Sam, you are a friend.” “I am a man of business, sir. I can receive and hand on rentals, can I not? And as for the present need, I always keep money in my house. Take what you want; the security is good enough.” John Gore began to thank him, but Mr. Pepys rose up from his chair and put his two hands on his friend’s shoulders. “Man John, there may be two or three souls in the wide world whom a man may love without prejudice and without disaster. The friends of a life are few, John, and we find them without forethought. Men come to me for favors, scores of them in the year; most of them are sycophants, rogues, hypocrites; I know it, and there is no deep pleasure in what I do. But there are some men, John, to whom the heart goes out in the game of life. To be a friend to a friend comes not so very often. A man who has seen life will swear to that.” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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