Then Barbara took up the bundle of clothes and softly withdrew. She was
risking something for Jasper—the loss of her father’s regard. She had
recently drawn nearer to his heart than ever before, and he had allowed
her to cling round his neck and kiss him. Yet now she deliberately
disobeyed him. He would be very angry next morning.
When she was in the hall she turned over in her mind what was best to
be done with the clothes. She could not hide them in the house. Her
father would insist on their reproduction. They must be destroyed. She
could not burn them: the fire in the kitchen was out. The only way she
could think of getting rid of them was to carry them to the Raven Rock
and throw them over the precipice. This, accordingly, she did. She
left the house, and in the moonlight walked through the fields and wood
to the crag and hurled the bundle over the edge.
Now that this piece of evidence against Jasper was removed, it was
expedient that he should escape without further delay—if he were still
at Morwell.
Barbara had a little money of her own. When she unlocked her desk
and looked at the withered flowers, she drew from it her purse, that
contained her savings. There were several pounds in it. She drew the
knitted silk purse from her pocket, and, standing in the moonlight,
counted the sovereigns in her hand. She was standing before the
gatehouse near the old trees, hidden by their shadow. She looked up at
Jasper’s other window—that which commanded the entrance and was turned
from the moon. Was he there? How could she communicate with him, give
him the money, and send him off? Then the grating clock in the tower
tolled one. Time was passing, danger drew on apace. Something must be
done. Barbara picked up some pebbles and threw them at Jasper’s window,
but her aim was bad or her arm shook, and they scattered without
touching the glass.
All at once she heard feet—a trampling in the lane—and she saw also
that lights were burning on the down. The lights were merely gorse
blazes, for Morwell Moor was being ‘swaled,’ and the flames were
creeping on; and the trampling was of young colts and bullocks that fed
on the down, which were escaping before the fires; but to Barbara’s
nervous fear the lights and the tramp betokened the approach of a body
of men to capture Jasper Babb. Then, without any other thought but to
save him, she ran up the stair, struck at his door, threw it open, and
entered. He started from his bed, on which he had cast himself fully
dressed, and from dead weariness had dropped asleep.
‘For God’s dear sake,’ said Barbara, ‘come away! They are after you;
they are close to the house. Here is money—take it, and go by the
garden.’
She stood in the door, holding it, trembling in all her limbs, and the
door she held rattled.
He came straight towards her.
‘Miss Jordan!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, Miss Jordan I shall never forgive
myself. Go down into the garden—I will follow at once. I will speak to
you; I will tell you all.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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