BARBARA had no thought of going to bed. She could not have slept had
she gone. There was a clock in the tower, a noisy clock that made its
pulsations heard through the quadrangle, and this clock struck twelve.
By this time Jane had roused the young policeman, and he was collecting
men to assist him in the capture. Perhaps they were already on their
way,—or were they waiting for the arrival of warders from Prince’s
Town? Those warders were more dangerous men than the constables, for
they were armed with short guns, and prepared to fire should their game
attempt to break away.
She looked across the court at Jasper’s window. No light was in it. Was
he there, asleep? or had he taken her advice and gone? She could not
endure the thought of his capture, the self-reproach of having betrayed
him was more than she could bear. Barbara, usually so collected and
cool, was now nervous and hot.
More light was in the sky than had been when she was on the down. The
moon was rising over the roof. She could not see it, but she saw the
reflection in Jasper’s window, like flakes of silver.
What should she do? Her distress became insupportable, and she felt she
must be doing something to relieve her mind. The only thing open to her
was to make another attempt to recover the prison suit. If she could
destroy that, it would be putting out of the way one piece of evidence
against him—a poor piece, still a piece. She was not sure that it would
avail him anything, but it was worth risking her father’s anger on the
chance.
She descended the stairs once more to her father’s room. The door
was ajar, with a feeble yellow streak issuing from it. She looked
in cautiously. Then with the tread of a thief she entered and passed
through a maze of quivering bezants of dull light. She stooped, but,
as she touched the garments, heard her father’s voice, and started
upright. He was speaking in his sleep—’De profundis clamavi ad te;’
then he tossed and moaned, and put up his hand and held it shaking
in the air. ‘_Si iniquitates_’—he seemed troubled in his sleep,
unable to catch the sequence of words, and repeated ‘_Si iniquitates
observaveris_,’ and lay still on his pillow again; whilst Barbara stood
watching him, with her finger to her lip, afraid to move, afraid of the
consequences, should he wake and see her in her disobedience.
Then he mumbled, and she heard him pulling at his sheet. ‘Out of love,
out of the deeps of love, I have sinned.’ Then suddenly he cried out,
‘_Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine, quis sustinebit?_’—he had the
sentence complete, or nearly so, and it appeased him. Barbara heard him
sigh, she stole to his side, bowed over his ear, and said, ‘_Apud te
propitiatio est: speravit anima mea in Domino._’ Whether he heard or
not she did not know; he breathed thenceforth evenly in sleep, and the
expression of distress left his face.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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