Twice she had quarrelled fiercely with Dan since he had given her the brooch, and it was only by grappling her passions down that she could keep her hands from shedding blood. Silence and an attitude of meek submission went sorely against the temper of her soul. It was only the dire necessity for dissimulation that held her quiet under her husband’s bullyings. For bully her he did after the fashion of a great, clumsy savage, proud of his own huge strength and the prerogatives thereof. It pleased the oaf to fancy that he was taming Bess as he would have tamed a bad-tempered filly; that he was breaking her spirit, and fastening his bondage upon her with the masterful complacency of a lord and a possessor. Like a great ape he would grin and mock her, tweak her hair, pinch her arms, twit her with his triumph, and gloat over the passivity that seemed to flatter his strength. Now and again Bess’s anger would blaze up in hot revolt, a passion-play that lent a charm to the brute pride of conquest. He believed that he had tamed and subdued the girl, not suspecting that he was only stacking the pent-up fire within her heart.
It was not till Jeffray had ridden on three successive evenings to the yew valley that Bess was able to slip away from the hamlet to meet him. It was a still evening in June, the grass knee-deep in the golden meadows, the scent of the white may heavy on the air. The voices of the birds alone broke the deep silence of the summer woods. The black spires of the yews and their massive limbs were streaked and eyeleted with the flooding gold of the western sky.
Jeffray came first to the trysting-place, feeling like a man who has drunk a bumper of sparkling wine. He tethered his horse deep in one of the thickets, and went and stood in the entry of the Hermit’s Cave, a rough chamber cut in the rock, with a low doorway and a mere slit of a window. The air was damp, pungent, and refreshing. Below lay the pool covered with white water-weed, where the old recluse of yore had drawn his water and kept his fish. There was still the outline of a cross cut in the wall of the chamber, and a broken bench of stone jutted out beneath the window.
Richard straightened suddenly as he leaned against the rough jamb of the doorway, and stood listening with a smile hovering about his mouth. Some one was singing in the yew wood—an old country song, simple and full of pathos. The mellow and half-husky voice rose and fell amid the shadows of the trees.