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Title: Orphan Dinah
Author: Eden Phillpotts
Release date: November 14, 2023 [eBook #72130]
Language: English
Original publication: London: William Heinemann, 1920
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ORPHAN DINAH ***
Orphan Dinah
By
Eden Phillpotts
Author of "Miser's Money," etc.
1920
London : William Heinemann
LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 1920.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE HILLTOP
II. FALCON FARM
III. SUPPER
IV. AT BUCKLAND-IN-THE-MOOR
V. THE ACCIDENT
VI. ON HAZEL TOR
VII. AT GREEN HAYES
VIII. THE OLD FOX-HUNTER
IX. A HOLIDAY FOR SUSAN
X. TALKING WITH DINAH
XI. NEW BRIDGE
XII. AFTERWARDS
XIII. JOE ON ECONOMICS
XIV. THE FACE ON THE ROCK
XV. BEN BAMSEY'S DOUBTS
XVI. SUNDAY
XVII. DINAH
XVIII. MAYNARD
XIX. LIGHT OF AUTUMN
XX. THE HUNTER'S MOON
XXI. FUNERAL
XXII. AT WATERSMEET
XXIII. IN A SICK-ROOM
XXIV. "THE REST IS EASY"
XXV. JOHN AND JOE
XXVI. MR. PALK SEEKS ADVICE
XXVII. DISCOVERY
XXVIII. THE LAW
XXIX. JOE TAKES IT ILL
XXX. THE NEST
XXXI. JOE'S SUNDAY
XXXII. JANE AND JERRY
XXXIII. JOE HEARS THE SECRET
XXXIV. AN OFFER
XXXV. FOR RIGHT AND JUSTICE
XXXVI. THE WEDDING DAY
XXXVII. SHEPHERD'S CROSS
XXXVIII. RETURN FROM THE HONEYMOON
CHAPTER I
THE HILLTOP
The spectacle of a free horizon from Buckland Beacon, at the southern
rampart of Dartmoor, challenges the least discerning eye by the
accident of its immensity, and attracts an understanding vision for
weightier reasons. Beheld from this high place, Dart Vale and the
land beyond it afford a great composition of nature, orbicular and
complete. Its obvious grandeur none can question, but there is much
more to be said for it, and from beneath the conspicuous and
rhetorical qualities there emerge enduring distinctions. The scene
belongs to an order of beauty that does not grow old. Its
sensitiveness to light and the operations of the sky; its gracious,
yet austere, composition and its far flung arena for the masques and
interludes of the dancing hours render it a centre of sleepless
variation. Its native fabrics, now gay, now solemn, are a fit habit
for the lyrical and epic seasons, and its garments are transformed,
not only by the robings and disrobings of Spring and Winter, but at a
point's change in the wind, at a rise or fall of temperature. These
delicacies, with the more patent magic of fore-glow and dawn, sunset
and after-glow, crepuscule and gloaming, are revealed under the most
perfect imaginable conditions; for, by many chances and happy
hazards, earth here responds to air in all its heights and depths so
completely that each phenomenon finds all needful for fullest
achievement. One might study the vision a thousand times, yet find
no picture resemble another, even in detail of large forms; for the
actual modelling changes, since light and atmosphere deal with
forest, rock and ridge as though they were plastic--suppressing here,
uplifting there, obliterating great passages at one moment and
erecting into sudden prominence things concealed at another. The
hill sinks at the pressure of a purple shadow; the unseen river
suddenly sparkles its presence at a sunbeam.
In this hour, after noon on a day of mid September, the light was
changing, not gradually at the sun's proper declension, but under the
forces of a south-west wind bringing up vapour at twenty miles an
hour from the distant sea.
From the rounded and weathered masses of the Beacon, the hill sloped
abruptly and a receding foreground of dying fern and grey, granite
boulders broke on a gap of such extent that earth, reappearing far
below, was already washed by the milky azure of the air, through
which it glimmered and receded and presently again rose to lofty
lands beyond. The ground plan was a mighty cup, over which the
valley undulated, rising here to knap and knoll, falling there into
coombs and plains, sinking to its lowest depths immediately beneath
the view point, where Dart wound about lesser hills, not small in
themselves, yet dwarfed by the greatness of the expanse and the
loftiness of the horizon's brim. Upon that distant and irregular
line, now melting into the thick air, border heights and saliencies
sank and rose, repeating on a vaster scale the anatomy of the river
basin. They lifted through the hazes until they faded upon the sight
into the gathering clouds, that loomed still full of light, above
their grey confines. The sea was long since hidden.
A chief quality of this spectacle appeared in the three dissimilar
and different coverings that draped it. The body of the earth lay
wrapped in a triple robe, and each garment was slashed and broken, so
that its texture flowed into and revealed the others. Every furlong
of these rolling leagues, save only where the river looped and twined
through the middle distance, was clad with forest, with field, or
with wilderness of heath and stone; and all, preserving their special
qualities, added character of contrast to their neighbours. There
was not a monotonous passage from east to west in this huge
spectacle. Tilth and meadow oozed out through coppice and hanger;
the forests ascended the steep places and fledged the hills, only
drooping their dark wings where furze and stone climbed higher still,
until they heaved upon the sky. The immemorial heights changed not,
save to the painting of the seasons; the woods, that seemed as
ancient as they, were largely the work of man, even as the tesselated
patterns of the fields that spread, shorn of their corn, or still
green with their roots, among them. The verdant patchwork of mangel
and swede, the grey of arrish, and the gloom of freshly broken earth
bosomed out in gentle arcs among the forests, breaking their ragged
edges with long, smooth billows of colour. They shone against the
summer sobriety of the trees, for the solid masses of the foliage
were as yet scarcely stained with the approaching breath of the fall.
But woodlands welcomed the light also, and the sunshine, though
already softened by a gathering haze that advanced before the actual
clouds, still beat into the copse and spinney, to fringe with a
nimbus of pale gold the boss of each great tree and outline it from
the rest. Light rained and ran through the multitude of the trees,
drowning their green and raying all their faces with a dim and
delicate fire.
In a gap southward, shrunk to velvet tapestry among clumps and
sheaves of pine and oak, spread the lawns of Holne Chase--great park
lands, reduced by distance to a garden. There the last sun gleam
wakened a transient emerald; then it was gone, as a jewel revealed
for a moment and hidden in its casket again.
The woods of Buckland bear noble timber and each tree in many a glen
is a giant, thrusting upward from vast bole to mossy branch, until
its high top ascends among its neighbours to sunlight and storm.
They are worthy of the hills that harbour them, and in their combined
myriads affect the operations of the air, draw the rain clouds for
their own sustenance and help to create the humidity that keeps Dart
Vale so dewy and so green. Down and down they roll endlessly,
sinking away into the likeness of a clinging moss; for seen afar,
they look no more upon this great pattern of rising and falling
earth, than a close integument. Their size is lost against the
greater size of the undulations they clothe; they shrink to a close
pelt for the land--no heavier than the leagues of the eagle fern, or
the autumnal cloth of purple and gold flung upon the hills above them.
To-day the highest lights were in the depths, where Dart flashed at a
fall, or shone along some placid reach. She was but a streak of
polished silver seen from aloft, and her manifold beauties hidden;
while other remote spots and sparks of light that held the eye
conveyed no detail either. They meant a mansion, or the white or
rosy wash on cottage faces. A grey smudge, sunk in the green to
westward, was a village; a white lozenge in the woods beneath, the
roof of a moorland church. Here and there blue feathers of wood
smoke melted upward into the oncoming clouds; and thinly, through
vapours beyond, like a tangle of thread, there twined high roads,
ascending from invisible bridges and hamlets to the hills.
And then, little by little, detail faded and the shadows of the
clouds grew denser, the body of the clouds extended. Still they were
edged with light, but the light died as they thickened and lumbered
forward, spreading their pinions over the Vale. The air gradually
grew opaque, and ridge after ridge, height after height, disappeared
in it. They were not blotted out, but washed away, until the fingers
of the rain felt dumbly along the bosom of Buckland Beacon, dimmed
the heath and furze to greyness, curled over the uplifted boulder,
found and slaked the least thirsty wafer of gold or ebony lichen that
clung thereto.
A young man, who had been standing motionless upon the Beacon, felt
the cool brush of the rain upon his face and woke from his reverie.
He was of a recipient, intelligent aspect, and appeared to admire the
great spectacle spread before him; but whether, behind the thing
seen, any deeper emotion existed for him; whether to the outward and
visible sign there responded any inward and spiritual grace, was a
question not to be answered immediately. He prepared to descend,
where a building stood upon the hill below him half a mile distant.
There he was expected, but as yet knew it not.
CHAPTER II
FALCON FARM
Beneath the Beacon, across the great slope that fell from its summit
to the river valley, a road ran into the woods that hid Buckland
village, and upon the right hand of this highway, perched among open
fields, that quilted the southern slope of the heights, there stood a
stone house. Here was Falcon Farm, and over it the hawks that had
given it name would often poise and soar and utter their complaining
cries. The cluster of buildings perched on the hillside consisted of
a slate-roofed dwelling house, with cartsheds, a cowhouse, and stable
and a fine barn assembled round the farm yard. About them stretched
square fields, off some of which a harvest of oats had just been
shorn; while others were grass green with the sprawling foliage of
turnip. Beneath, between the farmhouse and the wooded road, extended
meadows into which fern and heath were intruding ominously. A little
wedge of kitchen garden was scooped out of the hill beside the yard
and a dry-built wall fell from the shoulder of the Beacon above,
broke at Falcon Farm, and with diverging arms separated its field and
fallow from the surrounding wild.
The door of the dwelling faced west, and here stood a man talking to
a woman.
He was of sturdy build with a clean shaved, fresh-coloured face and
head growing bald. But he had plenty of grey hair still and his
countenance was plump and little wrinkled. His eyes were grey and,
having long learned the value of direct vision in affairs, he fixed
them upon people when he talked. Mr. Joseph Stockman declared
himself to be in sight of seventy; but he did not appear so much and
his neighbours believed this assertion of age no more than an excuse
for his manner of life.
Indeed, at this moment, his companion was uttering a pleasantry at
the farmer's expense. She had come on an errand from Buckland
village, a mile away, and loitered because she esteemed the humorous
qualities of Mr. Stockman and herself found laughter a source to
existence. She needed this addition. Her lot had not been one of
great emotions, or pleasures, for Melinda Honeysett was a widow after
three uneven years of marriage. They passed before she was five and
twenty, when a drunken husband, riding a horse that would not "carry
beer," was pitched off in the night on Dunstone Down and broke his
neck. She had no children and now lived with a bed-ridden father and
ministered to him in the village. This had been her life for nearly
twenty years. She was a connection of Joseph Stockman through her
marriage, for the Bamseys and the Stockmans and the Honeysetts were
related, though neither family exactly knew how.
"A day of great events," said the farmer. "My two new hands both
coming and, as my manner is, I hope the best, but fear the worst."
"A horseman and a cowman, so Susan said."
"Yes. But that means more than the words on a little place like
this, as I made clear. In fact, they've got to do pretty much
everything--with such help as I can give and Neddy Tutt."
"Hope they'll be all right. But they mustn't count on a poor, weak,
old man like you, of course."
Mr. Stockman looked into Melinda's face. She was a chubby,
red-haired woman built on massive lines with a bosom that threatened
to burst its lavender print, and a broad, beamy body beneath. She
had a pair of pale blue eyes and a finely modelled mouth, not devoid
of character. Her teeth were neglected. She wore a white sunbonnet,
which threw a cool shadow over her face, and carried a basket, now
full of small carrots and large lettuces.
"You poke your fun at me, forgetting I've done ten men's work in my
time and must slack off," he said. "Because, thanks to plain living
and moderation in all things, and the widowed state with all its
restfulness, I don't look my age, that's not to say I don't feel it,
I can assure you. There's certain rights I owe to myself--the only
person as ever I did owe anything to in my life--and even if I was
fool enough to want to make a martyr of myself, which I'm not--even
so Soosie-Toosie would never let me."
"I'm sure she wouldn't."
"My daughter knows where the shoe pinches; and that's in my breathing
parts. Often I'll stand to work like a young man, knowing all the
time I shall have to pay for it with a long rest after."
"Poor chap!"
He shook his head.
"You be among the unbelievers I see--that's your father's bad work.
But since he don't believe in nothing, I can't hope he'll ever
believe in me."
"But the new men. Tell me about them. What are they like?"
"Ah, you females! It's always the outside of a man as interests you.
For my part it was what their papers and characters were like that I
had to think about; and even so I've took one largely on trust."
"You're such a trustful creature, Joe."
"I like to trust. I like to do unto others as they should do unto
me. But it's a disappointing rule of life. To be above the staple
of your fellow creatures is to get a lot of shocks, Melinda; but you
can only set a good example; you can't make people follow it. One
man I have seen, t'other I have not. Thomas Palk, the horseman--so
to call him--is in sight of middle-age and a towser for work. He's
leaving Haccombe, down Newton Abbot way, because his master's son is
taking up his job. A very good man by all accounts, and he
understands the position and knows what lies before him. A
faithful-looking man and I hope he'll prove so. Plain as a bit of
moor-stone--in fact a mighty ugly man; but an honest face if I know
anything."
"Sounds all right."
"T'other I haven't seen. He comes from up country and answered my
advertisement. Can't give no character direct, because his master's
died sudden. But he's been along with him for nearly five years, and
it was a bigger place than this, and he writes a very good letter.
In fact an educated man seemingly, and nobody's the worse for that if
it don't come between them and work. Though I grant it be doing so."
"So father says."
"Lawrence Maynard he's called. I've engaged him and hope for the
best. Both free men--no encumbrances. I hope, with my gift of
making the darkness light where farming is concerned, they'll soon be
pulling their weight and getting things all ship-shape."
"Father says nobody knows better than you what work means; but
somebody else has always got to do it."
"A wonderful man your father; yet I'm very much afraid he'll go to
hell when the end comes, Melinda."
"He's not."
A ginger-coloured lurcher appeared. It was a gaunt and hideous dog
with a white muzzle. Behind it came a black spaniel and a white,
wire-haired fox-terrier.
"Us must get to work," said Mr. Stockman. "Soosie-Toosie wants a
brace of rabbits for supper to-night and I'd best to fight for 'em
afore the rain comes. It have been offering since morning and will
be on us afore nightfall."
The dogs, apparently understanding, sat round with their eye on
Joseph.
"If your godless parent was to see these poor creatures to work, I
can tell you what he'd say, Melinda. He'd say thicky spaniel was
like me--knows her job very well indeed and prefers to see the
younger dogs doing it. And why not?"
"No use growing old if you don't grow artful," admitted Melinda.
"Of course it ban't--here's the girl. What's the matter now, Soosie?
The rabbits? I be just going after 'em."
But Miss Stockman, Joseph's only child, had not come about the
rabbits. She was a woman resembling her father in no respect. Her
hair was black, lustreless and rough, her brown face disfigured by a
"port wine" stain that descended from her forehead to her cheek. Her
expression was anxious and careworn, and though large-boned and
powerfully made, she was thin. She had brown, dog-like eyes, a mouth
with sad lips and a pleading voice, which seemed to have the same
querulous note as the hawks that so often hung in air above her home.
"Mr. Maynard's box have come, father," she said. "Be he to live in
the house, or to go in the tallet over the stables? Both rooms are
sweet and ready for 'em."
"Trust you for that, Soosie," declared Melinda.
"The horseman goes over the stables, as being the right and proper
place for him," said Mr. Stockman. "And if there was a dwelling room
over the cows, the cowman would go there. But there is not, so he'll
come in the house."
"Right then," answered his daughter. "Mr. Maynard comes in the
house; Mr. Palk goes over the hosses."
Susan disappeared and Mrs. Honeysett prepared to depart.
"And you tell your father that so soon as the woodcock be back--not
long now--he'll have the first. I don't bear no malice."
"We all know that. And when you shoot it, you come in and have a
tell with father. You do him good."
"And you too I hope?"
"Of course you do--such a long-sighted man as you."
She descended down the farm road to the highway beneath, and Joseph,
getting his gun, went upwards with his rejoicing dogs into the fern
brakes on the side of the Beacon.
Here, in the pursuit of the only exercise he really loved, Joe
Stockman forgot his alleged years. He was a wonderfully steady shot,
though it suited him to pretend that failing sight interfered very
seriously with his sport; but he excelled still in the difficult
business of snapping rabbits in fern. Thus engaged, with his dogs to
help him, he became oblivious of weather and it was not until the
sight of an approaching stranger arrested him that he grew conscious
of the rain. Then he turned up his collar over his blue woollen
shirt and swore.
The man who had recently surveyed Dart Vale from the summit of the
rocks above, was now descending, and seeing the farmer, turned his
steps towards him. He was a slight-built but well-knit youth of
seven or eight and twenty. He stood an inch under six feet and was
somewhat refined in appearance. His face was resolute and cleanly
turned, his skin clear and of a natural olive, that his open-air life
had tanned. He wore a small, black moustache over a stern mouth, and
his eyes were very dark brown and of a restless and inquiring
expression. He wore rough, old tweeds, a little darned at the seat,
and on his left arm over the elbow was a mourning band. His legs
were cased in tawny gaiters; he had a grey cap on his black hair and
in his hands he carried an ash sapling with which, unconsciously from
habit, he smote his leg as he walked.
"Sorry to spoil sport," he said, in a quick, clear voice somewhat low
pitched, "but I'm a stranger in these parts and want Falcon Farm. Be
I right for it?"
"Very right indeed," answered Mr. Stockman. "In fact, so right that
it's under your nose. There's Falcon Farm, and I'm the farmer, and I
guess you're Lawrence Maynard, due to-day."
The other smiled and his habitual solemnity lifted off his face.
"That's right. I walked from Bovey, because I wanted to have a look
at the country."
"And what d'you think of it?"
"Fine. After flat Somerset it makes your legs wake up."
"I dare say it would. There's nothing like a hilly country for
tightening the muscles. The Shire hosses find that out when they
come here. Yes, that's Falcon Farm. And there's the cows--all red
Devons."
The newcomer looked down upon a little cluster of kine grazing in a
meadow.
"A beautiful spot sure enough. And snug by the look of it."
"Nothing to grumble at for high land. But it calls for work. I've
been here five and twenty year and made it what it is; but I'm old
for my age, along of hard labour in all weathers, and can't do all I
would no more. However, we'll tell about it later when my other new
man, Thomas Palk, arrives. Horseman, he is; but, as I explained, you
and him are going to be my right and left hand now, and I can see
you're the quick sort that will justify yourself from the first."
"I hope so."
"Heave up them rabbits then, and we'll go down along. I can stop a
bird or beast still, though getting cruel dim in the eye."
Maynard picked up three heavy rabbits and they went down the hill
together.
"We're a small party," explained Joe, "but very friendly, easy
people--too busy to waste time on differences. And you and Palk will
find yourselves very comfortable I hope. There's only me and my
daughter, Miss Stockman, who rules us men, and a young boy, Neddy
Tutt, whose making up into a useful hand. At hay harvest and corn
harvest I hire. We've just got home our oats. For the roots, we can
pull them ourselves. Of the men who have left me, one went for
faults, and we can let the past bury the past; t'other found the
winter a thought too hard up here and have gone down to the
in-country. He's wrong, but that's his business."
The newcomer felt favourably impressed, for Mr. Stockman had great
art to win strangers. He promised to be a kindly and easy man, as he
declared himself to be.
Lawrence patted the dogs, who sniffed round him with offers of
friendship, and presently all returned together.
CHAPTER III
SUPPER
"I must go and change my coat," said the farmer as they entered the
house place. "There was a time when I laughed at a wet jacket, same,
no doubt, as you do; but that time's past. Here's my daughter.
She'll show you your room."
Susan shook hands and her hurried, fitful smile hovered upon the new
arrival.
"Your box be come and I'll give you a hand up," she said. "Your
room's in the house at the end of the passage-way facing east. A
very comfortable room I hope you'll find."
"Thank you, miss. But I'll fetch up the box if you'll show the way."
He shouldered it and followed her.
"Us'll be having dinner in a minute," she said. "Faither likes it at
half after one. Mr. Palk ban't arriving till the afternoon."
During the afternoon Mr. Palk did arrive. He drove up from Ashburton
in a trap hired at an inn and brought his luggage with him. He
proved a broad and powerful man of fifty, iron grey, close bearded
and close cropped. His head was set on a massive neck that lifted
above heavy shoulders. His features were huddled together. His nose
turned up and revealed deep nostrils; his mouth was large and
shapeless; his eyes were steadfast. He proved a man with great
powers of concentration. Thus his modest intelligence took him
farther than many quicker wits lacking that gift. He did not see
much beyond his immediate vision, but could be clear-sighted enough
at close range. He had no humour and received impressions slowly, as
a child; but grasped them as a child. A light touch was thrown away
on Mr. Palk, as his new master soon found. Nod or wink were alike
futile as means of suggestion: it was necessary to speak plainly that
he might grasp a point. But, once grasped, the matter might safely
be left. He never forgot.
At tea that night Joe Stockman expatiated on the situation and his
new men listened, while the lad, Neddy Tutt, a big, fair youth,
intently regarded them and endeavoured to judge their probable
attitude to himself. He was inclined to like both, but doubted not
they were on their best behaviour at present and might develop
character averse from his interests.
"There's no manner of doubt that we're a little behind," confessed
the master. "There are things you'll be itching to put right this
autumn, I expect; and I doubt if men like you will rest till we're up
to the mark again. When I was young, I had a hawk's eye for danger,
and if I saw the thistles gaining on the meadow-land, or the fern and
heath getting in while our backs was turned, I'd fight 'em tooth and
nail and scarcely rest in my bed till they was down and out. On
Dartmoor the battle's to the strong, for we're up against unsleeping
forces of Nature as would rather hinder than help. In a word the
work's hard, but I lead the way, so far as my weight of years allow
it; and, what's more to the point, as you'll find, is my ideas on the
subject of food and money. The money you know about; the food you
don't. I attach a very great deal of importance to food, Mr. Palk."
Thomas Palk nodded.
"Them as work did ought to eat," he said.
"They did; and I'm often shocked in my observing way to see farmers
that don't appear to think so. We keep a generous table here and a
good cook likewise, for what my daughter don't know about a man's
likes and dislikes in the matter of food ain't worth knowing. As to
hours, what I say is that in private service, for that is how you
must look at yourselves with me, hours are beside the question.
Here's the work and the work must be done; and some days it's done
inside seven hours I shouldn't wonder, and some days it's not done
inside eight. But only the small mind snaps and snarls for a
regulation hour, and it is one of the most mean things to a man like
me, who never thought of hours but only the work, that poor spirits
here and there be jealous of the clock and down tools just because of
the time of day. For look at it. We ain't all built on the same
pattern, and one man can do his sort of work an hour a day quicker
than another, whether it is ploughing, or harvesting or what not; and
the other man can do something else an hour a day quicker than he
can. So I'm for no silly rules, but just give and take to get the
work done."
"A very self-respecting sort of way, and much what I'm used to," said
Maynard.
"Same with liquor," continued Joe. "On the subject of liquor, I take
a man as I find him. I drink my beer and take my nightcap also, and
there's beer and cider going; and if in drouthy weather a man says,
'I want another half pint,' the barrel's there. I'm like that. I
like to feel the respect for my people that they always get to feel
for me. But spirits, no. I might, or I might not of an evening say
to you, 'Have a spot from my bottle, Palk'; but there wouldn't be no
rule."
"I'm teetotal myself," said Maynard, "but very fond of cold tea in
working hours."
"Good. You'll never have less cold tea than you want, be sure."
"I be a thirsty man," confessed the elder. "Beer's my standby and
I'm glad you grant it; but I only drink when I'm thirsty, though
that's often, owing to a great freedom of perspiration. But no man
ever saw me bosky-eyed, and none ever will."
"All to the good, Palk. So there it stands. And one more thing:
till you know the ropes and my manners and customs, always come to me
when in doubt. Your way may be a good way, but where there's two
ways, I like mine, unless you can prove yours better. That's
reasonable--eh?"
"Very reasonable," admitted Maynard.
"The horses are a middling lot and can be trusted to do their work.
I'm buying another at the Ashburton Fair presently. My sheep--Devon
long wools crossed with Scotch--are on the Moor, and we'll ride out
Sunday and have a look at 'em. I'm buying pigs next week at a sale
over to Holne. The cows are a very fine lot indeed. We sell our
milk to Ashburton and Totnes."
He proceeded amiably until the cows were lowing at the farmyard gate.
Then Maynard departed with Neddy Tutt to the milking, and Palk, who
would begin to plough the stubble on the following day, started alone
to walk round the yard and inspect the horses and machinery.
"A quiet couple of men," said Joe to his daughter, when they had
gone; "but I like the quiet ones. They save their wind for their
work, which is where it ought to be."
"Mr. Maynard don't look particular strong," she said.
"Don't he? To my eye he's the wiry sort, that wear as well and
better than the mighty men. Don't you go axing him after his health
whatever you do. It often puts wrong ideas in their heads. We take
health for granted. I'm the only person in this house where health
comes in I should hope."
"You'd best turn 'em on to the fern so soon as you can," answered
Susan. "Landlord was round again, when you were up over, seeing
hounds meet at eight o'clock last week."
"What an early man he is!"
"Yes, and he said he'd hoped to see the work begun, because it frets
him a lot that any land of his should go to rack. And he said that
he'd have thought one like you, with a name for high farming, would
have hated it as much as him."
"That's his cunning. The Honourable Childe's a very clever man, and
I respect him for it. He knows me and I know him. The field will be
as clean as a new pin before Christmas, I shouldn't wonder."
"You won't get your regular box of cigars from the man if it ain't, I
expect."
"Oh yes, I shall. He's large-minded. He knows his luck. I like him
very well, for he sees the amusing side of things."
"He weren't much amused last week."
Her father showed a trace of annoyance.
"What a damper you are, Soosie-Toosie! Was ever the like? You
always take the dark view and be grim as a ghost under the ups and
downs of life. If you'd only copy me there. But 'tis your poor
mother in you. A luckier woman never walked you might say; yet she
was never hopeful--always on the look out for the rainy day that
never came."
"I'm hopeful enough to-day anyhow. I think the new men be the sort
to suit you."
"Nobody's easier to suit than me," he answered. "Let a labourer but
do his duty, or even get in sight of his duty, and I'm his friend."
Susan reminded her father that a kinsman was coming in the evening.
"You know Johnny promised to look in on his way home from Ashburton
and take supper along with us."
"So he did. The man's affairs hang fire by the look of it. When's
he going to be married I wonder?"
"Might ask him," answered Susan. "Not that he knows I reckon. It's
up to her."
When night came John Bamsey duly arrived and shared the last meal of
the day.
His father and Mr. Stockman were cousins, or declared themselves to
be so, and John always called Joseph "Cousin Joe."
He was one of the water-bailiffs on the river--a position he had held
for six months. But he had already given a good account of himself,
and his peculiarities of character were such that they made him a
promising keeper. He was keen and resolute, with the merciless
qualities of youth that knows itself in the right. He was also swift
of foot and strong. A poacher, once seen, never escaped him. John
entertained a cheerful conceit of himself, and his career was
unsullied. He echoed his mother's temperament and was
religious-minded, but he had a light heart. He had fallen in love
with a girl two years older than himself, and she had accepted him.
And now, at twenty-two, John's only trouble was that Dinah Waycott
would not name the day.
He was a fair, tall man, with a solid, broad face, small grey eyes
and an expression that did not change. He wore an old-fashioned pair
of small whiskers and a tawny moustache in which he took some pride.
He greeted the newcomers in friendship and talked about his work on
the river. He was frank and hearty, a great chatterbox without much
self-consciousness.
"And when's the wedding going to be?" asked Mr. Stockman. "Don't
know; but it's about time I did; and I mean to know inside this
month. Dinah must make up her mind, Cousin Joe. Wouldn't you say
that was fair?"
"Certainly she should. Orphan Dinah took you very near a year ago,
and the marriage ought to be next spring in my opinion."
"No doubt it will be," answered John; "but I will have something
definite. Love-making is all right, but I want to be married and
take the lodge at Holne Chase."
"The lodge Neddy Tutt's parents keep?" said Susan.
"Yes; and by the same token, Neddy, your mother expects you Sunday."
"I be coming," said Neddy Tutt, and John continued. "I'm lodging
with 'em, but they're very wishful to be off, and they will be so
soon as ever I'm spliced. The Honourable Childe wants me at the
lodge and I want to be there."
Susan, who had a mind so sensitive that she often suspected
uneasiness in other minds where none existed, was reflecting now,
dimly, that the newcomers would not find this subject very
interesting. They sat stolidly and quietly listening and eating
their supper. Occasionally Maynard spoke to Susan; Palk had not made
a remark since he came to the meal.
Now, however, Joe relieved his daughter's care. He enjoyed
exposition and, for the benefit of his new men, he explained a
relationship somewhat complicated.
"We be talking in the air no doubt for your ears," he said "But I
hope you'll feel yourselves interested in my family before long, just
as I shall be in your families, if you've got relations that you like
to talk about. Me and this young man's father are cousins in a
general way of speaking, and his father, by name Benjamin Bamsey, was
married twice. First time he married the widow of Patrick Waycott,
who was a footman at the Honourable Childe's, lord of Holne Manor,
and she come to my cousin Benjamin with one baby daughter, Dinah by
name. So the girl, now up home twenty-three, is just 'Orphan Dinah,'
because her mother died of consumption a year after she married Mr.
Bamsey. Then Benjamin wedded again--a maiden by the name of Faith
West; and she's the present Mrs. Ben Bamsey, and this chap is her
son, and Jane Bamsey is her daughter. And now Johnny here be tokened
to his foster sister, 'Orphan Dinah,' who, of course, ain't no
relation of his. I hope I make myself clear."
"Nothing could be clearer," said Lawrence Maynard.
"What did the footman die of?" asked Palk slowly.
"Consumption, same as his wife. In fact the seeds was in the poor
girl when Ben took her. But she done very well with him as long as
she lived, and he's terrible fond of Dinah."
Palk abstracted himself. One could almost appreciate outward signs
of the mental retreat into his shell. He became oblivious with a
frowning forehead, committing this family situation to a memory,
where it would remain graven for ever.
John took up the talk.
"Father's too fond of Dinah for my peace in a way. You know
father--how he dashes at a thing. The moment he heard from mother,
who'd found out, that I was gone on Dinah, he swore as nothing would
please him better. And he was on my side from the first. In fact if
Dinah hadn't wanted me for myself, I believe father would have driven
her to take me, for she'd do anything for him. She couldn't love a
real father better. She doats upon him."
"He can't spoil her, however. Nothing would spoil Dinah," said Susan.
"And now," continued John, "now that the time's in sight and changes
have got to come, father begins to sing small at the thought of
losing her. He seemed to have a sort of notion I'd live on at home
for ever, and Dinah too. He's like that. He dashes at a thing and
forgets how it will touch him when it happens. He don't look all
round a subject."
Maynard spoke.
"I hope the young woman is strong," he said. "'Tis rather serious
for both parents to have died so young."
"A very natural and thoughtful thing to say," declared Joe. "It
shows you've got intellects, Maynard. But, thank God, the girl is
sound every way; in fact, out of the common hearty and nice-looking
too--at least Johnny reckons she is."
"A very bowerly maid," said Susan.
"That's right, Soosie-Toosie," chuckled John.
"If she's got a fault, she's too plain-spoken," said Mr. Stockman.
"I'm all for direct speech myself and there's nothing like making
your meaning clear. It saves time better than any invention. But
Dinah--how can you put it? She's got such a naked way of talking. I
don't say that the gift of language was given us to conceal our
thoughts, because that's a very hard saying, though I know what it
means; but I do say it was given us so as we should present our
thoughts to our fellow creatures in a decent shape. She's a bit
startling at times, Dinah is."
"That's because plain speech be so rare it's always startling,"
answered John. "We're so used to her, we never think of it at home."
"It ain't she says anything to shock you, when you come to think over
it," argued Susan. "It's just plain thinking and going to the root
of the matter, which ain't common with most people."
Maynard ventured a sentiment.
"If the young woman says just what she means, it's a very rare
thing," he said.
"So it is then," admitted Mr. Stockman. "Few do so--either because
they don't want to, or else because they haven't got the words to fit
their feelings. There's lots feel more than they're educated to put
into speech. But though Dinah haven't got any more words than any
other young, ignorant creature, yet she's so inclined by nature to
say what she means, that she generally manages to do it."
"Can make herself bitter clear sometimes,'" Johnny assured them. He
spoke apparently from experience and memory, and his cheerful face
clouded a little.
"No lovers' quarrels I hope," murmured Susan.
"Of course there are," chaffed Joe. "You that have missed the state,
Soosie-Toosie, and don't know no more about love than a caterpillar,
no doubt think that a lovers' quarrel be a very parlous thing. But
it's no more parlous than the east wind in March--is it, Johnny? A
frosty breeze may be very healthy and kill a lot of grubs and
destroyers, if the ground be properly worked over and the frost can
get into it. And so with lovers' quarrels, they do good, if both
sides take 'em in a proper spirit."
Maynard laughed.
"I reckon that's true, Mr. Stockman," he said.
"What might you think, Mr. Palk?" asked Susan. She felt the heavy
silence of Thomas and knew not, as yet, that he often clothed himself
in silence for his own comfort. But he had listened with attention
and she thought he must probably have experience.
He declared the reverse, however.
"Couldn't offer an opinion, miss," he replied. "I be of the bachelor
persuasion and never felt no feeling to be otherwise. What you might
call complete in myself, so far as a man can be."
"You're a loser and a gainer, Thomas," said his new master genially.
"You may lose the blessing of a good son, or daughter, and a valuable
wife; and you gain also, because you might not have had those fine
things, but found yourself in a very different position. You might
have had what's better than freedom; but on the other hand you might
have had what's a long sight worse."
"And freedom's a very fine thing," added Maynard.
Mr. Stockman loved these questions. He proceeded to examine marriage
in all its aspects and left a general impression on the mind of the
attentive Mr. Palk that the ideal of achievement was to have loved
and lost, and be left with a faithful, home-staying daughter: in
fact, Mr. Stockman's own situation. He appeared to hold a brief for
the widowed state as both dignified and convenient.
"All the same, father reckons you're the sort will marry again,
Cousin Joe," Johnny told him. "He says that such a good-looking man
as you, and so popular with the ladies, will surely take another some
day, when you'm tired of sporting."
Mr. Stockman shook his head.
"That's like Benjamin--to judge by the outside and never sound the
depths. He thinks that his own pattern of mind be the pattern of
all. And not a word against him, for a finer pattern of mind and one
fuller of the milk of human kindness don't live; but let nobody hope,
or fear, any such adventure for me. Me and Soosie-Toosie will go our
way, all in all to each other; and the less we have to trouble about
ourselves, the more time and thought we can give to our neighbours."
Susan displayed her wan smile at these sentiments. She was in stark
fact her father's slave and John well knew it; but he made no
comment. Mr. Stockman seldom said a word that was open to comment on
any subject. He gave his views and opinions for what they were
worth, but quarrelled with none who might differ from him. Indeed,
he never quarrelled with anybody. It was his genius invariably to
give the soft answer; and this he did from no particular moral
conviction, but as a matter of policy. Life had taught him that
friction was seldom worth the trouble; and he had an art to get his
way rather by geniality of manner than force of character. He
achieved his purpose, and that frequently a hard and selfish purpose,
as often as a more strenuous man; but, such was his hearty humanity
of approach, that people for the most part found themselves conceding
his wishes. He did not, however, hoodwink everybody. A bad bargain
is a bad bargain, no matter how charming may be the man with whom it
is made; and there were neighbours who did not hesitate to say that
Joe was a humbug always playing for his own hand, and better able so
to do than many far less gracious and genial.
John Bamsey departed presently, and after he had gone the master of
Falcon Farm praised him generously.
"A four-square, fine chap that," he said. "An example to the young
fellows. A proper glutton for work. He'll be down on the river for
hours to-night, to keep off they baggering salmon poachers. And he
goes to church Sundays with his parents and always keeps his temper
well in hand. For that matter a water-watcher ought to have a
temper, so as the doubtful characters shall know he's not to be
trifled with. A forceful chap--a little narrow in his opinions I
dare say; but that don't matter when his opinions are sound and on
the side of morals and good order. He gets 'em from both parents.
And the larger charity will come in time. That's a question of
mellowing and years. I can see you men are charitable minded, for
I'm a student of character and read people pretty clever, owing to my
large experience. Have a spot out of my bottle to-night for luck.
Then, I dare say, you won't be sorry to turn in. We're early birds
by night and early birds in the morning. I always say the hours
before breakfast lay the foundation of the day and break the back of
it."
Maynard took no liquor, but drank a cup of tea with Susan, whose
solitary dissipation was much tea taken at all possible times.
Thomas Palk accepted a glass of whisky and water.
Soon after ten all went to bed.
"Soosie-Toosie will call you at half after five," said Joseph, "and I
like, in a general way, to hear Ned start with the milk cart to
Ashburton before seven for the milk train. It's always a pain to me
not to stir myself till breakfast. I lie awake and hunger for the
hour; but lifelong rules have often got to be broke for failing
health's sake in sight of seventy, as you'll find in your turn no
doubt. Life, as I always say, be all cakes and cream to youth; but
it's little more than physic when you be nearing the allotted span.
Well, I wish you good night, and if there's anything you lack, tell
my daughter to-morrow. I hope we shall be good friends and a lot
more than master and man pretty soon."
He shook hands with them both, and while Palk contented himself by
saying, "Good night, master," Maynard, who was clearly moved by such
comfortable words, echoed them and thanked Mr. Stockman for the
manner of his reception.
CHAPTER IV
AT BUCKLAND-IN-THE-MOOR
Like beehives cluster the thatched roofs of Buckland, for the
cottages are dwarfed by the lofty trees which soar above them. Oak
and ash, pine and beech heave up hugely to their canopies upon the
hill slope, and the grey roofs and whitewashed walls of the hamlet
seem little more than a lodge of pygmies sequestered in the forest.
The very undergrowth of laurel has assumed giant proportions and
flings many a ponderous bough across the highway, where winds a road
with mossy walls through the forest and the village. Here and there
green meadows break the woods and lay broad, bright tracts between
the masses of the trees; then glimpses of the Vale beneath are
visible through woodland rifts.
The cottage coverings were old and sombre of tone; but on this
September day, before the great fall of the leaf, destined presently
to sweep like a storm from tree top to earth, sunshine soaked through
the interlacing boughs and brought light to the low-browed windows,
to the fuchsias and purple daisies in the gardens. It flashed a ruby
on the rays of Virginian creepers that sometimes clothed a wall and
brightened the white faces of the little dwellings to pale gold. All
was very silent about the hour of noon. For a few moments no human
form appeared; only a brook poured down from the hills, foamed
through its dark, hidden ways, rested at a granite drinking trough
beside the road, then trickled on again. A robin sang, and far
distant throbbed the note of a woodman's axe.
Midway between the squat-towered church, that stood at the limits of
the village to the north-west, and the congeries of cots within the
border of the woods, a second rivulet leapt in a waterfall from the
hedge at the root of a mighty ash that shook out its serrated foliage
a hundred feet above and made the lane a place of shade. The road
bent here and the dingle was broken with great stones heavily clad in
moss. Above stretched the woods, legion upon legion, their receding
intricacies of branch and bough broken by many thousand trunks.
Beneath, again the woods receded over steep acclivities to the river
valley.
Though the houses were few and small, great distinction marked them.
They held themselves as though conscious of their setting, and worthy
of it. They fitted into the large and elaborate moulding of the
hillside and by their human significance completed a vision that had
been less without them. There was a quality of massive permanence in
the scene, imparted by the gigantic slope of the hill whereon it was
set. It fell with no addition of abrupt edge or precipice, but
evenly, serenely from its crown on the naked Beacon above, by
passages of heath and fern, by the great forests and sweeps of
farmland and water meadows that broke them, down and down past the
habitations, assembled like an ants' nest on its side to the
uttermost depths of the river valley and the cincture of silver Dart
winding through the midst of it.
At a point where the road fell and climbed again through the
scattered dwellings there stood two cottages under the trees
together. They adjoined, and one was fair to see--well-kept and
prosperous, with a tidy scrap of garden before it and a little
cabbage patch behind. The straw of the roof was trimly cut and
looped heavily over the dormer windows, while above, on a brick
stack, four slates were set instead of a chimney pot. But the
neighbour cottage presented a forlorn appearance. It was empty; its
thatch was scabbed and crusted with weeds and blobs of moss; at one
place it had fallen in and the wooden ribs of the roof protruded. A
mat of neglected ivy covered the face of the cot and thrust through
broken windows into the little chambers. Damp and decay marked all,
and its evil fame seemed reflected in its gloomy exterior. For the
house was haunted, and since Mrs. Benjamin Bamsey had seen a
"wishtness" peering through the parlour window on two successive
evenings after the death of the last tenant, none could be found to
occupy this house, though dwellings in Buckland-in-the-Moor were far
to seek.
Now a man appeared in the road from the direction of the church. He
was of an aspect somewhat remarkable and he came from Lower Town, a
hamlet sunk in the Vale to the west. Arthur Chaffe combined many
trades, as a carpenter in a small village is apt to do. He attended
to the needs of a scattered community and worked in wood, as the
smith, in iron. He boasted that what could be made in wood, from a
coffin to a cider cask, lay in his power. And beyond the varied and
ceaseless needs of his occupation, he found time for thought, and
indeed claimed to be a man above the average of intelligence. His
philosophy was based on religious principle and practice; but he was
not ungenial for an old bachelor. He smiled upon innocent pleasure,
though the lines that he drew round human conduct were hard and fast.
He was eight and fifty, and so spare that the bones of his face gave
it expression. Upon them a dull, yellowish skin was tightly drawn.
He was growing bald and shaved his upper lip and cheeks, but wore a
thin, grey beard. His teeth were few and his mouth had fallen in.
His cheeks puffed out when he ate and spoke, but sank to nothing
under the cheek bones when he sucked his pipe. He had a flat nose,
and his long legs suggested an aquatic bird, while his countenance
resembled a goat and his large and pale brown eyes added to the
likeness. His expression was both amiable and animated, and he could
laugh heartily. Mr. Chaffe's activities were centripetal and his
orbit limited. It embraced Lower Town and Buckland, and occasionally
curved to Holne and outlying farms; but he was a primitive, and had
seldom stirred out of a ten-mile radius in his life. Had he gone
much beyond Ashburton, he had found himself in a strange land. He
employed three men, and himself worked from morning to night. His
highest flights embraced elementary cabinet-making, and when he did
make a piece of furniture on rare occasions, none denied that it was
an enduring masterpiece.
He left the high road now, approached the pair of cottages and
knocked at the door of the respectable dwelling.
Melinda Honeysett it was who appeared and expressed pleasure.
"So you've come then, Mr. Chaffe. What a man of your word you are!"
"I hope so, Mrs. Honeysett. And very pleased to do anything for you
and your father."
"Come in and sit down for five minutes. 'Tis a climb from Lower
Town. But people say you can fly so easy as you can walk, and a
hill's nought to you."
"We thin blades have the pull of the beefy ones in this country. I
sometimes think I'll start a pony; but I like to use my legs and
ban't often too tired."
"Will you have a drink and a piece of my seedy cake?"
"I will then and gladly. Milk for choice. How's the Governor?"
"Pretty middling for him. You must see him afore you go. You're one
of his pets."
"I'm none so sure of that. But 'tis a longful time since we met.
I've been busier than ever this summer. I surprise myself sometimes
what I get into twenty-four hours."
"I dare say you do."
Melinda brought the wayfarer refreshment. They sat in a pleasant
kitchen, whose walls were washed a pale ochre, making harmony with
various brass and copper articles upon the mantel shelf and dresser.
The floor was of stone, and in the alcove of the window some scarlet
geraniums throve. They spoke of neighbours, and Mr. Chaffe asked a
question.
"I hear from Ben Bamsey that his cousin have got two new men at
Falcon Farm, and foreigners both."
"So they are. One's youngish, t'other's middle-aged; and Joe says
they promise to be treasures. He's much pleased about them."
"Then they're gluttons for work without a doubt."
"So they are seemingly."
"How soft that chap do always fall," mused the carpenter.
"Because he's got the wit to choose where he will fall," answered
Mrs. Honeysett. "Joe Stockman has gifts. He's a master of the soft
answer."
"Because he knows it pays."
"Well, a very good reason."
"His cleverness and charity come out of his head, not his heart, Mrs.
Honeysett. He's the sort may cast his crumbs on the waters, but
never unless he sees the promise of a loaf returning."
"You don't like him."
"I wouldn't say I didn't like him. As a man of intellects myself I
value brains. He's a clever man."
"He's spoilt a bit. He gets round one you know. There's a great
power in him to say the word to a woman he always knows will please
her. I properly like him some days; then other days he drives me
frantic."
The gruff voice of Mrs. Honeysett's father intruded upon them. It
came from a little chamber which opened out of the kitchen and had
been converted into his bedroom. His lower limbs were paralysed, but
he had a vehicle which he moved by handles, and could thus steer
himself about the ground floor of his home.
"I hear Arthur Chaffe," rumbled the voice. "I'll see you, Arthur,
afore you go, and larn if you've got more sense than when you was
here last."
A gurgle of laughter followed this remark and the visitor echoed it.
"Ah! You bad old blid! No more of your sense, I promise you. We
know where your sense comes from!"
"Don't you charge too much for my new gate then--sense, or no sense."
"Whoever heard tell of me charging too much for anything, Enoch?"
"Widow Snow did, when you buried her husband."
Again the slow, heavy laughter followed; but Mr. Chaffe did not
laugh. He shook his head.
"Past praying for," he said.
Then he rose and suggested inspecting the old gate and making
measurements for the new one.
That matter settled and the price determined, Arthur Chaffe returned
to the cottage and found that Mr. Withycombe had travelled in upon
his little trolley and lifted himself into a large, dog-eared chair
beside the hearth.
He was a heavy man with a big, fresh face that had been exceedingly
handsome in his prime, but was now a little bloated and discoloured,
since fate had ended for the old sportsman his hard and active
existence. He had hunted the Dart Vale Foxhounds for thirty years;
then, maimed in the back by a fall, for five years he had occupied
the position of indoor servant to a master who was deeply attached to
him. Finally had come a stroke, as the result of the old injury, and
Enoch was forced to retire. He had now reached the age of sixty-six
and was a widower with two sons and one daughter. One boy was in the
Royal Navy, the other lived at home and worked in the woods.
Mr. Withycombe had grey eyes, a Roman nose and cheeks of a ruddy
complexion. He wore whiskers, but shaved his mouth and chin. He was
a laughing philosopher, admired for his patience and unfailing good
temper, but distrusted, because he permitted himself opinions that
did not conform to the community in which he dwelt. These were
suspected to be the result of his physical misfortunes; in reality
they were but the effect of his environment. An admiration amounting
to passion existed in the large heart of Mr. Withycombe for his
former master, and during those years when he worked under his roof,
the old fox-hunter had learned educated views on various subjects and
modified his own to match them. The Honourable Ernest Childe, of
Holne Chase, a lord of three manors, could neither do nor think wrong
in Enoch's opinion. He was the paragon, and the more nearly did his
fellow creatures take their colour from such a man and such a mind,
the better it must be for all--so Mr. Withycombe declared. Others,
however, did not agree with him. They followed parson rather than
squire, and while admitting that the latter's sterling practice left
little to be desired, yet suspected his principles and regretted that
his pew in church was invariably empty. They puzzled at the
discrepancy and regretted it, because it appeared a danger to the
rising generation.
Mr. Chaffe shook the heavy and soft hand that Enoch extended to him.
"And how's yourself?" he asked.
"Half dead, half alive, Arthur. But, thanks be, the half that
matters most is alive."
"And it be wise enough to feel patience for the weaker members."
"Now it do," admitted Enoch. "But I won't pretend. When this blow
first fell upon me and I knew that my legs would be less use in the
world than rotten wood, which at least be good for burning, then I
cursed God to hell. However, that's past. I've got my wits and now,
along of these spectacles, I can read comfortable again."
He pointed to a little shelf within reach of his hand where stood
various works.
"I could wish you'd read some books of mine, Enoch," said Arthur
Chaffe.
"So I will then--didn't know you'd got any books."
"Oh yes I have--Sunday reading."
"You chaps that limit yourselves to 'Sunday reading' get
narrow-minded," declared Withycombe. "For why? You only see one
side of life. I don't blame you, because you've got to do your work
on weekdays; but you'd find there's a lot of very fine books just so
good on Sunday as Monday. 'The Rights of Man,' for example. There's
a proper book, and it don't interfere with the rights of God for a
moment."
"Mr. Chaffe be going to ax seventeen and six for the gate and five
shillings for the hinges and lachet," said Melinda.
"A very fair price and I shan't quarrel with it."
He handed his tobacco pouch to the visitor. It was covered with
otter skin now grown shabby.
Arthur filled his pipe.
"We stand for different things, you and me," he said, "yet, thank
God, agree in the virtues. Duty's duty, and a man that's honest with
himself can't miss it."
"Oh yes he can, Arthur. There's plenty that be honest enough and
don't want to shirk, yet miss the road."
"Because they won't read the sign-posts."
"Now stop!" commanded Melinda. "Talk about something interesting.
How's 'Orphan Dinah'? Haven't seen her for a month."
"She's very well. Passed the time of day yesterday. Been helping in
the harvest. Ben Bamsey have had the best wheat he remembers. 'Tis
harvest thanksgiving with us Sunday week. And something out of the
common to thank for this year."
"When's the wedding? You'll know if anybody does--Ben's right hand
as you be."
"No, no; his wife's his right hand. But we'm like brothers I grant.
In fact, few brothers neighbour so close I dare say. No news of the
wedding; and that don't worry Ben. You know what Dinah is to him."
"Nearer than his own I reckon."
"Mustn't say that; but--well, now that the date is only waiting for
Dinah, Ben begins to feel what her going will be. No doubt we shall
hear soon. Faith Bamsey's at Dinah about it. She reckons it's not
fair to Johnny to keep him on the hooks longer."
"More it is."
"Well, I dare say you're right, Mrs. Honeysett. Dinah's the sort
that loves liberty; but the maids have got to come to it, and she's a
good girl and will go into matrimony fearless."
"Fearless enough," said Enoch. "If she'd been born in a different
station of life, how that creature would have rode to hounds!"
"She's more interesting than most young things in my opinion, because
there's rather more to her," explained Mr. Chaffe. "With most of
them, from the point of our experience, they are pretty easy to be
read, and they do what you expect from their characters oftener than
not. But she'll surprise you more than many grown-ups for that
matter."
"It's something that a man who knows human nature so well as you
should be surprised, Arthur," said the old hunter.
The other laughed at a recollection.
"You're pulling my leg I reckon--same as that sly publican, Andrew
Gaunter, at the Seven Stars. 'Ah!' he said to me, 'you're a marvel,
Chaffe; you get every man and woman's measure to an inch!' I told
him I wasn't so clever as all that, because none but God knows all
there is to know; but he swore he was right--and proved it by
reminding me I'm an undertaker!"
Enoch laughed.
"One for him sure enough. Funny word, 'undertaker.' A good chap is
Andrew Gaunter. Many a flip of sloe-gin I've had at his door when
hounds met that way. He'd bring it out himself, just for the
pleasure of 'good morning.'"
"You often hear the horn from here?"
"I heard it yesterday, and I finger my own now and again."
He looked up to where his hunting horn hung from a nail above the
mantel shelf.
"There's no music like it as I always say, though not a sportsman."
"Is it true old Sparrow be gone to the workhouse?" asked Melinda, who
loved facts concerning fellow creatures and reduced conversation to
personalities when she could.
"It is true," answered Chaffe.
"A sparrow as fell to the ground uncounted then," said Enoch, but the
carpenter denied it.
"You mustn't think that. What be the workhouse but a sign of the
everlasting mercy put in our minds by a higher power?"
"A bleak fashion of mercy, Mr. Chaffe," answered Melinda.
"Many never know happiness till they get there. Human life have
always been a hand to mouth business for most of us. It's meant to
be, and I don't believe myself that Providence likes us to look much
farther than the points of our noses."
"The great man is him that can, however," argued Mr. Withycombe.
"Him as looks a few yards deeper into the mirk of the future than we
can soon rises to be famous. He knows there can be no security
against nature; but, outside that, he sees there did ought to be
security between man and man, since we are reasoning creatures. And
he thinks reasoning creatures did ought to be reasonable and he tries
to help 'em to be--man and man and nation and nation."
"Good, Enoch. If everybody would fight to be friends as hard as they
fight for other things, peace would set in, no doubt."
"To do it, you must come with clean hands, Arthur; but all the
nations' hands are dirty. They look back into each other's histories
and can't trust. Man's a brigand by nature. It's the sporting
instinct as much as anything, and the best sporting nations are the
best fighting nations. That's why we're up top."
"Are we?"
"The Honourable Childe always says so. He has chapter and verse for
all his opinions."
"He'll drop in on the way home and tell you about a run now and
again, same as he did last year, I shouldn't wonder."
"No doubt he will, Melinda."
"A puzzling gentleman," declared Chaffe. "Righteousness and goodwill
made alive you may say; and yet don't go to church."
His daughter headed off her father's reply.
"What's this a little bird has whispered to me about Jane Bamsey?"
she asked.
"Can't say till I know the particulars."
"That my brother, Jerry, be after her."
"Haven't heard nothing. But you ought to know."
"I've guessed it. Jerry's moonstruck and always looking that way."
"I hope it ain't true," said Enoch. "I don't much care for that
maiden. She's spoiled, and she's shifty. She came to see us with
her mother. Hard hearted."
"She's no more than a kitten yet, father."
"Yes; but the sort of kitten that grows into a cat devilish quick. I
wouldn't wish it for Jerry's sake. He's a man likely to be under the
thumb of his wife, so I'd hope a different sort for him."
"Jane's too young for Jerry," declared Melinda. "He's over thirty
and she's but eighteen or so. Besides, when Dinah marries John and
goes, then Jane will have to turn to and be more to her mother.
She's terrible lazy."
Mr. Chaffe shook his head.
"They don't know what it will mean to that house when Dinah leaves
it."
"Her step-father does," answered Enoch's daughter. "Dinah's the
apple of his eye. But Mrs. Bamsey's looking forward to it on the
quiet."
"It's natural in a way. She's always been a thought jealous of her
husband's great love for Orphan Dinah. And so has Jane. She'll be
glad enough when Dinah's away. And it's up to her, as you say, to
fill the gap."
"Which she's not built to do," prophesied Mr. Withycombe.
"We must hope. With responsibility often comes the grace to
undertake it."
They chatted a little longer and then, promising the new gate in a
fortnight, Arthur Chaffe went on his way.
CHAPTER V
THE ACCIDENT
Though Lawrence Maynard was a man of intelligence far deeper than
Thomas Palk, yet the latter began to arrive at a juster conclusion
concerning his new life and his new master than did his fellow worker.
Nor was it experience of life that led the horseman to his judgment.
Experience of life has little to do with duration of life; and as a
gutter-snipe of eight will often know more about it and be quicker to
read character than a rural boy of fifteen, so, with men, it is the
native power to grind what life brings to the mill that makes the
student. Maynard had both seen and felt far more than Palk, yet in
the matter of their present environment, Thomas it was who divined
the situation correctly. And this he did inspired by that most acute
of prompters: self-interest; while precisely in this particular
Lawrence Maynard was indifferent. His interests, for one with the
greater part of his life still to live, were unusually limited. His
own life, by the accident of circumstances, concerned him but little.
Chance had altered the original plan and scope so largely that he was
now become impassive and so emptied of his old former apprehension
and appetite for living, that he did not at present trouble himself
to use the good brains in his head. The very work he had chosen to
do was not such work as he might have done. It was less than the
work he once did; but it contented him now. Yet his activities of
mind, while largely sharing an apathy from which it seemed unlikely
the future would ever awaken him, were not wholly sunk to the level
of his occupation. Sometimes he occupied himself with abstract
speculations involving fate and conduct, but not implicating humanity
and character.
So he took people at their own valuation, from indifference rather
than goodwill, and in the case of his new master, found this attitude
create a measure of satisfaction. He liked Mr. Stockman, appreciated
his benevolence and took him as he found him, without any attempt to
examine beneath the smiling and genial surface that Joe invariably
presented. He had proved exceedingly kind and even considerate. He
had, in fact, though he knew it not, wakened certain sentiments in
the younger man's heart and, as a result of this, while their
acquaintance was still of the shortest, moved by a very rare emotion,
Maynard challenged his master's friendship by the channel of
confidence. Nor did it appear that he had erred. The farmer proved
exceedingly understanding. Indeed, he exhibited larger sympathies
than he was in reality capable of feeling, for Mr. Stockman, among
his other accomplishments, had a royal genius for suggesting that the
individual who at any time approached him could count upon his entire
and single-hearted attention--nay, his devotion. He appeared to
concentrate on his neighbour's welfare as though that were the vital
interest of his own life; and it was only the harder-headed and
long-memoried men and women who were not deluded, but had presence of
mind to wait for results and compare Joe's accomplishment with his
assurance.
Thus, after a month at Falcon Farm, Lawrence Maynard honestly felt
something like enthusiasm for the master, while Thomas Palk failed of
such high emotion. Not that Thomas had anything to quarrel about
actively; but weighing Joe's words against his deeds, he had slowly,
almost solemnly, come to the conclusion that there was a disparity.
He voiced his opinion on a day when he and Lawrence were working
together on the great fern slopes under the Beacon. There, some
weeks before, the bracken had been mown down with scythes, and now
the harvest was dry and ready to be stacked for winter litter. They
made bales of the fern and loaded up a haycart.
"The man tighteneth," said Palk. "I don't say it in no unkind spirit
and I've nought to grumble at; but it ain't working out exactly same
as he said it was going to. I wouldn't say he was trying to come it
over me, or anything like that; but he's a masterpiece for getting
every ounce out of you. If he worked a bit himself, he wouldn't have
so much time to see what we was doing."
"Can't say he asks anything out of reason."
"No, no--more I do; but I warn you. He edges in the work that
crafty--here a job and there a job--and such a scorn of regular
hours. 'Tis all very well to say when our work's done we can stop,
no matter what the hour is; but when is our work done? Never, till
'tis too dark to see it any longer."
Maynard laughed.
"We must suit ourselves. It's a free country. I find him a very
understanding man, and friendly."
"So do I, so do I; but I mark the plan he goes on. 'Tis the same
with the hosses. I won't say it's not a very good plan for a farmer.
Feeds well and pays well and treats well; but, behind all that, will
have a little more than his money's worth out of man and beast."
"Can't say I've found him grasping."
"Then I hope to God I'm wrong and 'tis my fancy. Time will show.
I'm satisfied if you are; and if his daughter don't feel no call to
be uneasy, why for should us?"
"For my part I like work," declared Lawrence. "I may not have been
so keen once; but there's very little to my life but work. I've got
used to looking at work as about the only thing in the world."
"The first thing, not the only thing," answered Thomas. "There's
religion and, in the case of many people, there's their families and
the rising generation. We'm bachelors and ban't troubled in that
way; but I believe in regular hours myself, so far as you can have
'em in farming. I like to get away from work and just do
nothing--with mind and body--for a good hour sometimes. 'Tis a
restful state."
Palk started with a full cart presently, while Maynard began to
collect fresh masses of the dry fern and bind it. He found himself
well content at Falcon Farm. He was settling down and liked the
place and the people. He did not observe, or attempt to observe,
anything beneath the surface of his new neighbours; but they proved
agreeable, easy, friendly; they satisfied him well. He liked John
Bamsey; he liked Melinda Honeysett, and had visited her father and
found a spirit who promised to throw light on some of his own
problems.
Now he was to meet yet another from his new circle. He worked two
hundred yards above the road that ran slantwise across the hillside
to Buckland; and from below him now, whence the sound of a trotting
horse's footfall ascended, he heard a sudden, harsh noise which spoke
of an accident. Silence followed. The horse had ceased to trot and
had evidently come down. Maynard dropped his hay fork, tightened his
leather belt and descended swiftly to the hedge. Looking over into
the deep lane below he saw a pony on the ground, the shaft of a light
market-cart broken, and a girl with her hat crushed, her hair fallen
and a bloody face, loosening the harness.
She was a brown, young woman with a pair of dark grey eyes and a
countenance that preserved a cheerful expression despite her
troubles. She wore a tweed skirt and a white flannel bodice upon
which the blood from her face had already dropped. She was kneeling
and in some danger of the struggling pony's hoofs.
"Stand clear!" shouted Lawrence. Then he jumped the sheer eight feet
of the wall, falling for his own comfort on the mass of beech leaves
that filled the water-table below. The girl rose. She was filled
with concern for the pony.
"Poor chap; he's been down before. How's his knees? All my fault.
I got thinking and forgot the road was slippery."
"You're badly cut I'm thinking."
"It's nothing much. I fell on top of him when he came down. 'Twas a
buckle done it I expect."
The man freed the pony and pulled back the trap. The animal had not
hurt itself, but was frightened and in a mood to run away. The cart
had a shaft broken short off, but was not otherwise injured.
Its driver directed Lawrence.
"Thank you I'm sure. That comes of wool-gathering when you ought to
be minding your business. Serve me right. I'll take the pony--he
knows me. D'you think you could pull the trap so far as Buckland, or
shall I send for it? I can put it up there in a shed and send to
Lower Town for a new shaft."
"I'll fetch it along. Is your face done bleeding?"
"Very near. You'll be Mr. Lawrence Maynard I suppose?"
"So I am then. How d'you know it?"
"Guessed it. I'm Dinah Waycott. I expect my young man has told you
about me. 'Orphan Dinah' they call me. I'm tokened to John Bamsey,
the water-keeper, my foster-father's son."
He nodded.
"I've heard tell about you. John Bamsey often drops in at Falcon
Farm."
He pulled the trap along and she walked beside him leading the pony.
She spoke kind words to the creature, apologised to it and told it to
cheer up.
Maynard had leisure to observe her and quickly perceived the nature
of her mind and that outspeaking quality that had occasioned
argument. Ac their present meeting it took the form of a sort of
familiarity that impressed Lawrence as strange from a woman to a man
she had never met before.
"I was wishful to see you, because Johnny likes you. But he's not
much of a hand at sizing up people. Perhaps if he was, he wouldn't
be so silly fond of me."
This was no challenge, but merely the utterance of her honest
opinion. Nothing of the coquette appeared in Dinah. She had
received his succour with gratitude, but expressed no dismay at the
poor figure she cut on their meeting.
"He's a good chap," he said, "and terrible fond of you, miss."
Thus unconsciously he fell into her own direct way of speech. He did
not feel that he was talking to a stranger; and that not because he
had already heard so much about her, but because Dinah created an
atmosphere of directness between herself and all men and women. She
recognised no barriers until the other side raised them. There was a
frank goodwill about her that never hid itself. She was like a wild
thing that has not yet fallen in with man, or learned to distrust him.
"Are you a chap with a pretty good judgment of your fellow
creatures?" she asked. "You've got a thoughtful sort of face as if
you might be."
He smiled and looked at her.
"Your fellow creatures make you thoughtful," he answered.
"Don't they? Never you said a truer word! Your life all depends
upon the people in it seemingly."
"They make or mar it most times."
"Yes, they're the only difficult thing about it."
"If we could live it all to ourselves, it might be easy enough."
"So I think when I look at a squirrel. But I dare say, if he could
talk, he'd tell us the other squirrels was a nuisance, and cadged his
food and worried him."
"I dare say he would."
"I'm one of the lucky ones," she said.
"Ah!"
"Yes. If I could put my finger on a trouble, which I can't, I should
find it was of my own making."
"Like to-day?"
"This don't amount to a trouble--just an accident with nobody the
worse. Only a cranky mind would call this a trouble."
"You might have broke your neck, however."
"But I didn't, nor yet the pony's knees--my luck."
"You may have marked your cheek for life."
"And what does that matter? Suppose I'd knocked half my teeth down
my throat: that would have been something to worrit about."
"You're the hopeful sort. Perhaps that's your best luck--that you're
built to take a bright view, miss."
"Perhaps it is. Aren't you?"
"We may be built to one pattern and then life come along and unbuild
us."
"I wouldn't let life unbuild me."
He did not answer, and presently she asked him a question.
"What d'you think of Johnny Bamsey, Mr. Maynard?"
"Hardly know him well enough to say."
"You know him as well as he knows you--better, because Johnny will be
talking more than thinking, same as me. But you're not like that
seemingly. In fact, though he's took to you and sees you've got a
brain, he says you're rather glum for a young man."
"I expect I am to the eyes of my own generation."
"Why? People ain't glum for nought."
"Oh yes, they are--often for less than nought. It ain't life, it's
nature makes many downcast. You see chaps, chin-deep in trouble,
always ready to forget it and laugh with the loudest."
"So you do then."
"And others--prosperous men, with nothing to grizzle about--always
care-foundered and fretty."
"You'd say you was glum by nature then?"
"I wouldn't say I was glum--you've only got John Bamsey's word for
it. Miss Stockman wouldn't tell you I was glum."
"She likes you very much. She told me so when she was over to my
home last week. Soosie-Toosie's a woman quick to welcome a bit of
luck, because she don't get much, and she likes you, and Mr. Palk
also."
"I'm glad she does."
"And what d'you think of Johnny?"
"A very good chap I'm sure. Rather excitable, perhaps."
"He is, you might say a thought unreasonable sometimes."
"Never where you are concerned I'm sure."
"He's got the loveliest hair ever I saw on a man."
"Fine curly hair, sure enough."
"I believe temper always goes with that fashioned hair. I've noticed
it."
"I'm sure his temper is good most times."
"He's sulky if he's crossed."
"He's young. Perhaps he hasn't been crossed often."
"Never--never once in his life--until now. But he's a thought vexed
because I won't name the day."
"Who shall blame him?"
"Nobody. I'm sure I don't."
"I expect you will name it pretty soon, miss?"
"I expect so. How d'you like Cousin Joe?"
"Mr. Stockman? Very much indeed. I feel a lot obliged to him--a
kindly, understanding man. He looks at life in a very wise way, and
he's got a thought to spare for other people."
"I'm glad you like him. He's cruel lazy; but what does that matter?
It takes all sorts to make a world."
"Everybody tells me he's lazy. I shouldn't call him particular lazy
for his time of life. He's done a deal of work in the past."
"Glad you're so well suited. Where d'you come from, if I may ask?"
"Somerset."
They had reached Buckland, and Dinah hitched her pony to the hedge,
opened a gate and directed Lawrence to wheel the trap into a byre
close at hand.
"I'll tell Mr. Budge what's happened and he'll let father's cart bide
there for the minute. Then I'll take the pony and my parcels home."
"You're all right?"
"Never righter. And thank you, I'm sure--a proper good Samaritan. I
won't forget it; and if ever I can do you a good turn, I will."
"I'm sure you will. Very pleased to meet you, miss. And you see
doctor for that cut. 'Tis a pretty deep gash and did ought to be
tended."
"Foster-father'll put me right. And if you're in a mind to come over
one day to Sunday dinner, I hope you will. He'll be wishful to thank
you."
"No need at all. But I'll come some time, since you're so kind as to
offer."
"Mind you do then. I want for you to."
They parted and Lawrence returned to his work in the fern. He came
back as swiftly as he might, but the better part of an hour was past,
during which he had been absent. He found Thomas Palk and his
master. Joe had taken his coat off and placed it on a stone. He was
handling Lawrence's fork and assisting Thomas to fill the haycart.
As Maynard entered a gate beneath and ascended to the fern patch, Mr.
Stockman laboriously lifted a mass of litter up to Thomas on the
cart. Then he heaved a heavy sigh, dropped the fork and rubbed his
side.
He spoke to Lawrence as he arrived.
"Here's the man! Well, Lawrence, you've been taking the air I see;
but I can't help feeling, somehow, that it's a thought ill-convenient
in the midst of a busy working morning, with the dry litter crying to
be stored, that you should make holiday. I've filled the breach, of
course, as my custom is. I've been doing your work as well as I was
able--an old man, gone in the loins through over-work; but what d'you
think? What d'you think about it, my son?"
"There was a good reason, master."
"Thank God! I'm glad of that. I told Palk I hoped there was; for,
if I'd thought just for a thirst, or some wilful fancy to see a maid,
or suchlike nonsense, you'd forgot your duty, I should have felt a
lot cast down in my mind and wondered how I'd come to misread you.
And what was the reason? Work while you tell me."
The young man explained, and Stockman was instantly mollified.
"Enough said as to you. You could do no less. A female in trouble
is a very good excuse for leaving your duty. In fact you may say a
female in trouble is everybody's duty."
The silent man in the cart made a note of this admirable sentiment,
while Joe continued.
"To think that Orphan Dinah should let the pony down--such a very
wide-awake young thing as her! Dreaming about Johnny no doubt. And
hurt you say?"
"Miss had got a bad cut across her face; but she made nothing of it,
for joy the pony wasn't scratched."
"A nice maid. Too large-minded for safety some might think; but she
ain't. Hope she's not marked. Not that her face is her fortune by
any means; her fortune's in her heart, for by the grace of God her
heart is gold. But she's got a nice sort of face all the same. I
like a bit hidden in a woman myself--for the pleasure of bringing it
to light. But she's so frank as a young boy, and I dare say, to some
minds, that would be more agreeable than tackling the secret sort."
"She says what she means, master."
"She does, and what's a lot rarer even than that, she knows what she
means--so far as a human can. Many never do. Many in my experience
find the mere fact of being alive such a puzzle to them that they
ain't clear about anything--can't see clear and can't speak clear.
They go through their days like a man who've had just one drop too
much."
"Life be a drop too much for some people," said Lawrence.
"It is. Keep working, keep working. An hour lost is an hour lost,
even though you'd knocked off to help the Queen of England. Oh, my
poor side! There's a muscle carried away I'm fearing. Shouldn't
wonder if I was in bed to-morrow. What a far-reaching thing a
catastrophe may be! Orphan Dinah gets mooning and lets down her
pony. Then you, as needs you must, go to the rescue, and drop your
work and make a gap in the orderly scheme of things in general. Then
I come along, to see how we'm prospering, and forgetting my age and
infirmity, rush in to fill the gap. Then once more my rash spirit
gets a reminder from the failing flesh, and I'm called to suffer in
body as well as pocket. That's the way how things be always
happening. Nobody to blame, you understand, but somebody to pay.
Somebody's got to pay for every damn thing. Nature's worse than they
blasted moneylenders."
"I'll put my part right."
"Yes, exactly so, Lawrence; and somebody always do offer to put their
part right. Good men are always offering. But 'tis in the cranky
nature of things that oftener than not the wronger ban't the righter.
You can't call home sixty minutes of time, any more than you can
order the sun to stay in his tracks. And you can't right my twisted
thigh. So the harm's done for all eternity."
"The fern will be in to-night before milking."
"That's a brave speech, such as I should have spoken at your age,"
said Joe. "Now I must limp back afore I'm stiff, and see what my
daughter can do for me. I dare say a valiant bout of elbow grease on
her part may stave off the worst. If you use 'Nicholson's
embrocation'---the strength they make it for hosses--it will often
save the situation. Many a day when I've been bone-tired after
working from dawn till moon-up, I've refreshed the joints with
'Nicholson's'--hoss strength."
He left them, going slowly and relying much upon his stick. Then,
when he was out of ear-shot, Thomas spoke.
"What d'you think of that?" he asked.
"Did he do much work?"
"Pitched three forks of fern, or it might be four--not a darned one
more."
"He's a clever old man, however."
"I never said he weren't," answered Palk. "He's the cleverest old
man ever I saw. I'm only telling you us may find out he's too
clever."
"We'll get the fern in anyway."
Mr. Stockman had sat down two hundred yards from them by the grassy
track to the farm.
"He's waiting for me to give him a lift home," said Thomas.
CHAPTER VI
ON HAZEL TOR
John Bamsey was a youth who had not yet felt the edge of life. His
own good parts were in a measure responsible for this fortune, and
the circumstances destined to make trial of his foundations and test
what fortitude his character might command, were yet to come. He was
quick minded and intelligent, and his success had made him vain. His
temper was short, and in his business of water-keeper, he held it a
virtue to preserve a very obstinate and implacable front, not only to
declared evil-doers, but also against those who lay under his
suspicion.
He was superior in his attitude to his own generation and therefore
unpopular with it; but he set down a lack of friendship to natural
envy at his good fortune and cheerful prospects. He liked his work
and did it well. The fish were under his protection and no ruth
obscured his fidelity to them. Into his life had come love, and
since the course thereof ran smoothly, this experience had chimed
with the rest and combined, by its easy issue, to retard any impact
of reality and still leave John in a state of ignorance concerning
those factors of opposition and tribulation which are a part of the
most prosperous existence.
Dinah accepted him, after a lengthy period of consideration, and she
was affectionate if not loverly. He never stayed to examine the
foundation of her compact, nor could he be blamed, for he had no
reason to suppose that she had said "yes" from mixed motives. A girl
so direct, definite and clear-sighted as Dinah, seemed unlikely to be
in two minds about anything, and John, knowing his own hearty passion
and ardent emotions, doubted not that, modified only as became a
maiden's heart, she echoed them. Yet there went more to the match
than that, and others perceived it, though he did not. Dinah's
position was peculiar, and in truth love for another than John had
gone largely--more largely than she guessed herself--to decide her.
There was little sex impulse in her--otherwise her congenital
frankness with man and woman alike had been modified by it. But she
could love, for a rare sense of gratitude belonged to her, and the
height and depth of her vital affections belonged to her
foster-father, Benjamin Bamsey. Him she did love, as dearly as child
ever loved a parent, and it was the knowledge that such a match would
much delight him, that had decided Dinah and put a term to her
doubts. But she had become betrothed on grounds inadequate, and now
was beginning, as yet but dimly, to perceive it. Her disquiets did
not take any shape that John could quarrel with, for she had not
revealed them. She was honestly fond of him, and if she did not
respond to his ardour with such outward signs of affection as he
might have desired, his own inexperience in that matter prevented any
uneasy suspicion on his part. He judged that such reserve in love
was becoming and natural to a maiden of Dinah's distinction, and knew
not the truth of the matter, nor missed the outward signs that he
might have reasonably expected.
The beginning of difficulty very gradually rose between them, and
since they had never quarrelled in their lives, for all John's temper
and Dinah's frankness, the difference now bred in a late autumn day
gave both material for grave thought.
They met by appointment, strolled in the woods, then climbed through
plantations of sweet-smelling spruce, till they reached great rocks
piled on a little spur of the hillside under Buckland Beacon. Here
the granite heaved in immense boulders that broke the sweep of the
hill and formed a resting-place for the eye between the summit of the
Beacon and the surface of the river winding in the lap of the Vale
beneath.
Hazel Tor, as these masses of porphyry were called, now rose like a
ridge of little mountainous islets from a sea of dead heath and fern.
The glories of the fall were at an end, and on an afternoon when the
wind was still and the sky grey and near, pressing down on the naked
tree-tops, Dinah, sitting here with her sweetheart, chatted amiably
enough. The cicatrix on her cheek was still red, but the wound had
cleanly healed and promised to leave no scar.
Johnny, however, was doubtful.
"I won't say you won't be marked now."
"If kissing could make me safe, I should be."
"I wish you'd give me something to kiss you for; and that's the name
of the day next Spring we're to wed."
"Isn't it enough if we say next Spring?"
"Quite enough, if you mean next Spring. But I don't know whether you
do; and more do you know. And for that matter you never have said
next Spring. If you say the word, then you'll keep your word; but
you haven't, and patient though I am, I can't help wondering
sometimes why you don't."
"You're not the only one that wonders for that matter."
"Of course I'm not. Cousin Joe wonders every time I see him, and
father wonders, and mother does more than wonder. In fact it's
getting to be a bit awkward and unreasonable."
"I know it is, Johnny. I never thought it would be so difficult when
the time came."
"So you grant that the time has come--that's something."
"I do grant it. I dare say a man doesn't quite realise what a
tremendous thing it is for a girl to lose her liberty like this."
He was irritable.
"Do chuck that! I'm fed up with it. If you think what you call
liberty at the farm is better than living with me in your own house,
you must be a fool, Dinah."
"No," she said. "I'm right. Marriage cuts into a woman's liberty a
lot. It's bound to, and, of course, home along with foster-father
must be a much freer sort of life than home along with you."
"You are a cold-blooded little devil sometimes," he said. "What's
freedom, or slavery, or any other mortal thing got to do with a man
and woman if they love one another? You don't hear me saying I shall
lose my bachelor liberty."
"No, because you won't," answered Dinah. "I know you love me very
dear, and I love you very dear; but marrying a woman don't turn a
man's life upside down if he's a strong man and got his aims and
objects and business. He goes on with his life, and the woman comes
into it as an addition, and takes her place, and if all goes well, so
much the better, and if all don't, then so much the worse for the
woman--if the man's strong. A man's not going to let a woman bitch
up his ways if he's strong. And you are strong, and no woman would
spoil your show, because you wouldn't let her. But a woman's
different. Marriage for her be the beginning of a new life. She
can't take anything of the old life into it except her character and
her religion. Marriage is being born again for a woman. I've
thought of these things, Johnny."
"Well, what about it? If you know so much, you ought to know more.
Granted it don't always pan out well, and granted I'm a sort of man
that wouldn't be turned to the right or left, are you a sort of woman
that would be like to try and turn me? Are you masterful, or cranky,
or jealous of your fancied rights? If you'd been such a she as that,
should I have falled in love with you, or would you have falled in
love with me? People fall in love with character quite as much as
looks. And as we've grown up side by side, our characters were laid
bare to each other from the time we could notice such things."
She took him up eagerly.
"Now that's the very matter in my mind. I've been getting to wonder.
There's a lot in it, John. Do we know one another so well as we
think we do? And isn't the very fact that we're grown up under the
same roof a reason why we don't know each other so well as we might?"
"You're always for turning a thing inside out, my words included. I
say we must know each other as well as a man can know a girl, or a
girl a man. We was little children together, when nothing was hidden
between us, and grew up in perfect understanding which ripened at the
appointed time into love--all natural and right and proper. Of
course we know each other to the bottom of our natures; and so our
marriage can't fail to be a good one. Any jolter-head would see that
a man and a woman seldom come together on such a bed-rock of common
sense and reason as us. And knowing all that, 'tis pure cussedness
in you to argue different."
"You can be too near a thing to see it," she said. "I don't say we
don't understand each other beautiful, John; but look at it without
feeling--just as an interesting question, same as I do. Just ask
yourself if we're all you say, how it comes about that, despite such
a lot of reasons, I hang back from naming the date. You say you want
to know why. Well, so do I. What makes me refuse to name it--an
easy-going creature like me, always ready and willing to pleasure
anybody if I can? It's interesting, and it's no good merely being
cross about it. I don't want to fix the date. I don't feel no call
to do it."
"Then you ought."
"That's what I'm saying."
"And since you're well used to doing what you ought, it's about time
you let your duty master you."
"Granted. I allow all that. What I want to know is why I'm not so
keen to name the day and get to the day as you are?"
"Along of this silly fooling about losing your liberty I suppose. As
if a married woman wasn't a lot freer than a single one."
"Oh no, she isn't. The single ones was never so free as now. They
can do scores of things no married woman would be suffered to do for
a moment. That's because mothers and fathers care a lot less about
what happens to their daughters than husbands care what happens to
their wives. A daughter's good name be outside a parent's; but a
wife's good name is her husband's. So the unmarried ones are a lot
freer. There's few real parents nowadays be what your father is to
me."
"If you think such a lot of him and feel you owe him such a lot, why
don't you do what he wants you to do and fix the day?"
She did not answer, knowing well that old Mr. Bamsey, at the bottom
of his heart, little liked to dwell on her departure. Indeed, she
realised with growing intensity the reasons that had made her agree
to marry John; and she knew more: she was aware that John's father
himself had become a little doubtful. But the deed was done and
Dinah appreciated the justice of her sweetheart's demands.
They talked and he pressed and she parried. Then he grew angry.
"Blessed if you know what love is despite all your fine talk. A
little more of it, and I shall begin to think you're off the bargain
and haven't the pluck to say so."
For answer she put her arms round his neck and kissed him.
"It's all very well; but you leave me guessing too often: and I'm not
the sort that care to be left guessing. From a man I always get a
plain answer, and I never leave him till I have. I hang on like a
dog, and turn or twist as they may, they know they've got to come to
it. But you--it's rather late in the day to begin all over again and
ask you if you really love me, or not. It's putting a pretty big
slight upon me; and perhaps, if I wasn't a fool, I should see the
answer in that, without asking for it. For you wouldn't slight
me--not if you cared for me one quarter what I care for you."
He showed temper, and the girl made no very genuine attempt to turn
away wrath. She was in a wilful and wayward mood--a thing uncommon
with her; yet such a mood was capable of being provoked by Johnny
oftener than most people.
"I love your hair," she said, stroking it.
He shook his head and put on his cap.
"You're not playing the game and, what's a lot more, you know you're
not. It's outside your character to do
this--weak--feeble--mischievous. You know I smart a bit under it,
because--fault or not--I'm a proud man. How d'you think that's
likely to pan out in my feelings to you? Does it occur to you that
with my very keen sense of justice, Dinah, I might begin to ask
myself questions about it?"
She changed her manner and, from being idle and playful, gave him her
undivided attention. He had said something that rather pleased her
when he hinted that his own feelings might grow modified; but she
knew well enough that such a remark ought not to have pleased her and
was certainly not uttered to do so.
"There's a screw loose somewhere, Johnny," she said.
"Where then? And whose fault--yours, or mine? God's my judge I
didn't know there was a screw loose, and it's pretty ugly news, I can
tell you. Perhaps you'll let in a little more light, while you're
about it, and tell me what the screw is and why i'ts loose?"
"I wish I could. Oh Johnny, don't you feel it?"
"No, I do not. And if I don't, then it's up to you to explain, not
me."
"I don't know enough yet," she answered. "I'm not going to flounder
into it and make trouble that can never be unmade again. I'll wait
till I see a bit clearer, John. It's no use talking till we've
thought a thing out and got words for it. A row will often happen
just for lack of words to say what anybody really means. There is
something--something growing; but since you've not felt it, then it
can only be on my side. You shall know if it's anything, or nothing,
pretty soon. Feelings never stand still. They fade out, or else get
bigger. I love you very dearly, and, so far as we stand at present,
it's understood we are to be married in the Spring."
"Then why hang it up any longer? You love me and you'm tokened and
there's no reason why we shouldn't be wed and a great many reasons
why we should. But now a screw's loose, or so you say. But you
won't give it a name. Don't you see that instead of being yourself,
Dinah--famed for thinking straight and seeing clear and saying what
you mean--you're behaving like any stupid giglet wench, with no wits
and not worth her keep to anybody?"
"Yes; and that's why a screw's loose. If I can feel like I do, and
act away from my general plan, and dally with a thing--don't you see
there's something wrong with me?"
"Well, if you know it, get it right."
"I must do that for all our sakes. I must and will, John."
"You certainly must. And the sooner you put a name to it and let me
know what that name is, the better pleased I'll be. If I was the
fast and loose sort, or if I'd ever done anything since we hitched up
to give you a shadow of distrust, or make you look back in doubt,
then it would be different; but this I will swear, that no man ever
loved a woman better than I love you, or have been a better or truer
lover. I must say that for myself, Dinah, since you've given up
saying it."
"I did say it and I do say it. You're all right, and you've every
reason to be pleased with yourself, Johnny. You're a wonder. But
it's me. I'll work at myself. I can't promise more. I'll thresh it
out and try to find where I'm wrong; and if you can help me, I'll
tell you. It's not a happy thing; but at the same time it's not an
unhappy thing--not yet. I owe you a very great deal--only less than
your father. I'd sooner make anybody on earth unhappy before you;
but it's no good pretending, and I couldn't hide worry from you even
if I wanted to."
"Leave it then," he said, "and get it off your mind so quick as you
can."
They talked about other things, and for the most part chimed
harmoniously enough; but they did not always agree in their estimate
of other people, or in their views of action and conduct. Dinah
never conceded anything, nor pretended to see with his eyes if she
did not, yet sometimes she praised him if he put a point and changed
her own view by enlarging her vision of the subject.
John was in a better temper when presently the dusk fell and the
lovers, leaving Hazel Rocks, passed through a clearing, reached the
road to Buckland and presently climbed again to Falcon Farm, where
they were to drink tea with Susan and her father.
Soosie-Toosie had a heavy cold in her head and appeared more
unsightly than usual. Her large frame shook with her sneezes, and
Joe, while humorously concerned for her and anxious that she should
take steps to get well, soon dropped the humour for a little genuine
trouble on his own account.
"There's some people I catch cold from, and there's some I don't
catch cold from," he said, "just like some fires you catch heat from
and some you never can. But Soosie-Toosie's colds be of the catching
order. 'Tis the violence of her sneezes no doubt--like a
fowling-piece going off. And though a cold be nought to her and here
to-day and gone to-morrow, if I get 'em they run down the tubes and
give me brownkitis and lay me by for weeks."
"Never seen you look better, Cousin Joe," declared John. "You be
always at your fighting best when the woodcock comes back, so father
says."
"He will have his bit of fun. There's only one thing wrong about
your dear, good father, Johnny; and that is he ain't a sportsman.
For a man to live in the Vale and not be a sportsman is like for a
man to live by the sea and not care to go fishing. With a place in
his heart for a bit of sport, I do believe Ben Bamsey would have been
a perfect human. But as that's contrary to nature, no doubt the
sport had to be left out."
"He is perfect," said Dinah, "and I've often told him so."
"He'd never believe it if you did," said Susan; "he's much too good a
man to think he's good."
"As to that, my dear," answered Joe, "it's only false modesty and
silliness to pretend you'm not good, when you know perfectly well you
are. If I said I wasn't a good man, for example, it would be merely
fishing for compliments; and if Soosie-Toosie said she weren't as
good as gold, who'd believe her?"
"'Tis easy to be good if you're so busy as Soosie-Toosie and Johnny
and a few more," answered Dinah; "but how you can be so amazing good
with nothing on your hands, Cousin Joe? I'm sure that's wonderful."
"Nothing on my hands? you bad girl! Little you know. And me the
mainspring. You ax Susan if I've got nothing on my hands, or Thomas
here."
Lawrence Maynard was absent, but Mr. Palk took tea with the rest. He
had not so far spoken.
"You'm the head of the house," he said.
"And if my hand have lost its cunning, my head have not--eh, Thomas?"
"It have not," admitted Thomas.
"Father makes his head help his heels, don't you, father?" asked
Soosie-Toosie, following her question with an explosion.
"I should hope so; and do, for God's love, go out in the scullery
when you feel a sneeze coming, there's a dear! You be scattering the
evil germs around us so thick as starlings."
"I'm just going," she said, "they'll be done their tea in a minute;
then I'll gather the things and get away for the wash-up."
Dinah soon departed to help the sufferer; then Joe smoked and bade
the others do the like.
"'Twill lay Soosie's germs," he said.
They discussed Maynard, who had gone to see some cows for a neighbour.
"What he don't know about 'em ain't worth knowing," said Mr.
Stockman. "A tower of strength the man is going to be."
"Is he growing a bit more cheerful?"
"If he's not cheerful, there's a reason for it. But he's very
sensible, with a head rather old for his shoulders--eh, Thomas?"
"Made of sense, I reckon."
"And what is his opinion of me, Thomas, if I may ask?"
Mr. Palk was always rendered cautious at the hint of personalities.
He did not reply immediately, though there was no need to hesitate.
But he never replied immediately to any question.
"He thinks a great lot of you, master. He holds you to be a very
good man indeed."
"Then I shall think higher of his opinion than ever," replied Joe;
"and you may drop in his ear that I rate him high too, Thomas. All
well within reason, of course--he ain't indispensable--nobody is,
great or small. Still, I'm suited and I'm glad he is."
Thomas made no reply, but rose and went out. Then Joe addressed his
kinsman.
"Have you got the date out of her?"
Johnny shook his head.
"She allows it must be in the Spring, but holds off naming the time
any nearer."
"Not like her. We must all have a go at her. But if your father
can't do it, who can?"
"If I can't, who can? That's the question, I should think."
They argued Dinah's delay and presently she returned.
"Susan did ought to go to bed," she said. "See me down the hill,
Johnny; I must be off, else they'll wonder what's become of me."
CHAPTER VII
AT GREEN HAYES
To Dinah Waycott there came an experience familiar enough, yet
fraught with shock and grief to any man and woman of good will who is
forced to suffer it. By gradual stages the truth had overtaken her,
and now she knew that what in all honesty she believed was love--the
emotion that had made her accept John Bamsey and promise to marry
him--was nothing more than such affection and regard as a sister
might feel for a favourite brother. Their relations had in fact been
upon that basis all their lives. She remembered Johnny as long as
she remembered anything, for she had been but two years old when he
was born, and they had grown up together. And now, being possessed
of a mind that faced life pretty fearlessly, and blessed with clear
reasoning powers, Orphan Dinah knew the truth.
First she considered how such an unhappy thing could have happened.
She was young and without experience. She had never heard of a
similar case. And what most puzzled her was why the light had been
thrown at all, and what had happened to convince her that she had
erred. When she accepted her lover, most fully and firmly she
believed that her heart prompted. It did not beat quicker at his
proposition, and for a time she could not feel sure; but before she
accepted him she did feel sure and emphatically believed it was love
that inspired her promise. But now she knew that it was not love;
and yet she could not tell why she knew it.
For the usual experience in such cases had not proved the touchstone.
There was none else who had come into her life, awakened passion and
thus revealed the nature of her error with respect to John. No
blinding light of this sort had shone upon the situation. But
gradually, remorselessly, the truth crept into Dinah's brain, and she
saw now that what she had taken for love was really an emotion
inspired by various circumstances. Her step-father had desired the
match and expressed his delight at the thought; and since he was by
far the most real and precious thing in the girl's life, his opinion
unconsciously influenced her. Then, for private reasons, she desired
to be away from Benjamin Bamsey's home--that also for love of him.
The situation was complicated for Dinah by the fact that Jane Bamsey,
John's sister, did not like her and suffered jealousy under her
father's affection for his foster-daughter. Dinah was some years
older than Jane and far more attractive to Mr. Bamsey, by virtue of
her spirit and disposition, than Jane could ever be. Ben himself
hardly knew this, but his wife very clearly perceived it. She was a
fair woman and never agitated on the subject, though often tempted to
do so. But she was human, and that her husband should set so much
greater store upon Dinah than Jane caused her to feel resentment,
though little surprise. Astonishment she could not feel, for, though
the mother of Jane, she admitted that the elder girl displayed higher
qualities, a mind more loyal, a heart more generous. But Jane was
beautiful, and she could be very attractive when life ran to her own
pattern. Jane was not a bad daughter. She loved her mother and
worshipped her brother. She might have tolerated Dinah too, but for
the ever present fact that her father put Dinah first. This had been
a baneful circumstance for the younger's character; and it had served
to lessen her affection for her father. The fact he recognised,
without perceiving the reason. On the contrary, he held Dinah a very
precious influence for Jane, and wished his own child more like the
other. Friction from this situation was inevitable; and now Dinah,
considering the various causes that had landed her in her present
plight, perceived that not the least had been a subconscious impulse
that urged her, for everybody's sake, to leave Lower Town and the
home of her childhood. Thus she had deluded herself as well as
others, and declared herself in love with a man, while yet her heart
was innocent of love. For a long time she had been conscious of
something wrong. She had surprised herself painfully three months
after her engagement by discovering that her forthright mind was
seeing things in Johnny that she wished were different. This
startled her, and instinct told her that she ought not to be so aware
of these defects. Before they were engaged such things never clouded
her affection; but in the light of altered relations they did. She
grew to hate the lover's kiss, while the brother's kiss of old had
been agreeable to her. Her kiss had not changed; but his had. She
detected all manner of trifles, vanities, complacencies, tendencies
to judge neighbours too hardly. These things did not make Dinah
miserable, because her nature was proof against misery, and the
emotion excited in her by ill fortune could never be so described.
Indeed, under no circumstances did she display the phenomena of
misery. But she was deeply perturbed and she knew, far better than
Johnny could tell her, that serious reasons existed for her present
evasion and procrastination. She also knew, as he did, that she was
taking a line foreign to her character; but he did not guess the
tremendous discovery that, for the moment, caused his sweetheart to
falter and delay action.
He was in love, heart and soul, and Dinah understood that well
enough. No hope of any revelation existed for him. He poured all
his energy and quality into his plans for her future happiness. If
he could be unselfish, it was with her; if he could be modest, it was
with her. She awoke the best of him and influenced him as no other
power on earth was able to do. He saw her pleasant face beautiful;
he heard her pleasant voice as music; he held her laugh sweeter than
a blackbird's song. She knew his adoration and it increased the
threatening difficulties. But he was changing now, and the recent
evidence of his irritation on Hazel Tor, Dinah recognised as
perfectly natural and reasonable.
Still she hesitated before the melancholy conviction that she could
not marry John, and the vision of the family when they heard it. She
was waiting now in rare indecision; but she knew that such inaction
could only be a matter of a very short time. The problem touched
many, and she was aware that her change of mind would bring hard
words to her ears from various quarters. She began to be sorry, but
not for herself. She was concerned, first for John, and then for her
foster-father. She was also in a lesser degree regretful for Mrs.
Bamsey, and even for Jane; but she judged that their tribulation
would be allayed by two things: first, in the conviction that John
was well out of it; secondly, at the knowledge that Dinah herself
would leave Green Hayes, Ben Bamsey's farm. She could not stop after
the events now foreshadowed, and she felt tolerably certain that none
would desire her to do so. Thus she hung on the verge, but had not
taken the inevitable step upon a Sunday when Lawrence Maynard visited
Lower Town according to his promise and came to tea.
Green Hayes was "a welcoming sort of place," as the owner always
declared, though at first glance it did not seem so. The farmhouse
was built of granite and faced with slate, which caused it to look
sulky, but made it snug. A wide farmyard extended before the face of
the dwelling, and pigeons and poultry lent liveliness and movement to
it. A great barn, with a weathered roof of slate, extended on one
side of the yard, and orchards and large kitchen gardens arose behind
it; for fruit and vegetables were a feature of Mr. Bamsey's
production. He better loved planting trees than rearing stock.
Indeed, his neighbours denied him title to be farmer at all. But he
did great things with pigs and poultry, and he grew plenty of corn in
Dart Vale a mile below his home.
Maynard was welcomed and found that Dinah had made more of his past
succour than seemed necessary. He discovered also whence the young
woman had derived her directness of speech and clear vision, for Mr.
Bamsey displayed these qualities, though in a measure tempered by age
and experience. On the subject of himself he could be specially
clear. He did not mind who knew his failings.
He was a man of moderate height, grey bearded and grey headed. His
nose had been flattened by an accident in youth, but his face was
genial and his eyes, behind spectacles, of a pleasant expression. He
enjoyed humour, and a joke against himself always won his heartiest
laugh. His wife was larger than himself--a ponderous woman, credited
with the gift of second sight. She had been beautiful and was still
handsome, with regular features, a clear skin, and large, cow-like
eyes. Jane Bamsey, her daughter, a girl of eighteen, rejoiced in
more than the beauty of youth. She was lovely, but she had a
disposition that already made her beautiful mouth pout oftener than
it laughed. She was jealous of Dinah, though the elder girl
entertained no unfriendly emotion towards Jane. She admired her
exceedingly and loved to look at her for the satisfaction of her fine
curves, round, black eyebrows, lustrous, misty blue eyes and
delicate, dainty nose. It was not her fault that she pleased
Benjamin Bamsey better than his own child. Jane was spiteful, and
Dinah's direct methods, which often defeated the younger in argument,
never convinced her, but increased a general, vague feeling of
resentment, the more painful to Jane, because she was no fool, and
knew, at the bottom of her heart, that honest grounds of complaint
against Dinah did not exist. The real grievance lay in the fact of
her father's preference; but when, in a moment of passion, she had
flung this truth at Dinah, the elder disarmed her by admitting it and
also explaining it.
"If you thought for foster-father like I do, and loved him half as
well as what I do, you'd have nothing to grumble about, and he'd love
you so well as he loves me," said Dinah; "but you don't."
"I'd do all you do for him, and more, if you wasn't here," declared
Jane, and met an uncompromising answer.
"No, you wouldn't, or anything like what I do; and well you know it,
you pretty dear."
Mr. Bamsey thanked Lawrence heartily for his good offices in the past
on Dinah's behalf, and Faith Bamsey, his wife, echoed him.
"The blessing is she ain't marked," said Ben. "I much feared she
would be, for 'twas an evil cut, but such is the health of her blood
that she healed instanter, and now, you see nought but a red mark
that grows fainter every day."
The visitor regarded Dinah's face and admitted it was so.
"Wonderful," he said. "I never should have thought that ugly gash
would have cleared up so well."
"Nature's on the side of the young," replied Benjamin. "She spoils
'em you may say. Not that anything could spoil Dinah."
"You can, and you do," she said.
"Oh, no. 'Tis the other way round. You'd keep me in cotton wool if
you could. I'm feared of my life for Johnny that you'll make him
soft."
"And tell him he's not to go out and fight the poachers by night, and
silly things like that," added Jane.
"More likely offer to go out and help him fight 'em," said Maynard,
and Ben applauded.
"That's right! You know her better than Jane do seemingly. Dinah
won't stand between John and his duty--that's certain sure."
"No woman will ever come between my son and his duty," said Faith.
"There's some young men be born with a sense of duty, and some gets
it by their training and some, of course, never do. But John was
doing his duty when he was five year old--came natural to him."
"And what's the duty of a five year old, ma'am?" asked Lawrence. He
found himself easy and comfortable with the Bamseys.
"To obey his parents and trust in 'em first and last and always,"
answered Faith. "He was blessed with a very fine nature from his
birth, and nothing ever happened to make him depart from it."
"One of the lucky ones, that finds it easier to be good than anything
else."
"No, Mr. Maynard; you mustn't say that," answered Johnny's father.
"You may be as good as gold, but you can't escape the old Adam. God
Almighty don't make us angels, though he gives us the chance to
imitate them."
"In fact, nobody can get high virtues by nature," summed up Mrs.
Bamsey. "They've got to be worked for. And another thing--you can't
win to goodness and then sit down and say, 'I've got the Lord, so now
I'm out of the wood and safe for ever more.' That's not life.
Nobody's ever out of the wood, and them that think they stand be
often most like to fall. Things be sent to try our faith in God, and
He sends 'em Himself."
Dinah, with proleptic instinct, looked ahead at her own affairs and
wondered. Mrs. Bamsey, from whom moral principles flowed easily at a
touch, proceeded awhile and Maynard's spirits began to fall. He was
not religious and his own standards of conduct, upon which his past
had been directed, had resulted from innate qualities of mind, rather
than along the directions of dogma and creed. He perceived that Mrs.
Bamsey's ideas ran in fixed channels and felt glad when Benjamin,
upon some opinion of his wife, took up the conversation. She had
been saying, with regard to her son, that while he owed certain
qualities to herself, his father was also apparent in him. Dinah
supported her, but Benjamin was not so sure.
"No," he said. "I can't flatter myself that John has to thank me for
much. His mother stares out of him you may say, and all the best is
hers. But there's a very wicked side of me that John haven't got,
I'm glad to say. Leastways if he have, he's never let on about it."
Dinah laughed.
"Now I know what's coming," she said.
"And what might your wicked side be, Mr. Bamsey, if it ain't a
secret?" inquired Lawrence.
"No secret at all. I've got no secrets. Hate 'em. It's just a
queer bit of human nature."
"He's invented it," said Dinah. "It ain't true. He dreams it."
"It's very true indeed, and shows a weak spot where one didn't ought
to be," confessed Ben. "If you'll believe it, Maynard, I often wake
up of a night, somewhere about two o'clock, a changed man! Yes, I
do; and then the whole face of nature looks different, and I find
myself in a proper awful frame of mind against my fellow creatures.
I mistrust 'em, and take dark views against 'em, setting out their
wrongs and wickedness. At such times I'll even plan to sack a
harmless chap, and lash myself up into a proper fury, and think the
fearfullest things against man, woman and child. I'll go so far as
to cuss the cat, because she haven't caught a mouse for a week! If
the folk were to see me at such a moment, I dare say they wouldn't
know me."
"What d'you say, ma'am?" asked Maynard.
"I say nothing, because I'm always asleep," answered Mrs. Bamsey.
"Do it pass off pretty quick, master?"
"It do. I slumber again after a bit, and come daylight, you may say
butter wouldn't melt in my mouth. I don't write none of they rude
letters I've invented, and I don't sack nobody--not even the cat. I
wake up calm and patient with the neighbours and quite ready to
forgive 'em, as I hope to be forgiven. After such a night I'm mild
as old cider and only a bit tired."
"'Tis a sort of safety-valve I expect," suggested Lawrence.
"That's just what it is; and sometimes I've seen the like happen in
daylight with other people. If you can send your neighbours to hell
without them knowing it, it don't hurt them and comforts your nerves
wonderful sometimes."
"A very shameful thought, Ben," declared his wife, "and you oughtn't
to say such things."
"I know it's shameful. But I only tell the man these facts to open
his eyes and show him how much better Johnny be than his father."
"May he never have nothing to cuss about," hoped Lawrence.
"I don't see how he ever can, when he's got Dinah."
"Yes--when," said Jane Bamsey. "He's got to wait Dinah's pleasure
till the stroke of Doom seemingly."
Maynard had been admiring the younger girl. But he noticed that her
beauty was clouded by discontent. There chimed also a note in her
voice that carried with it slight, indefinite protest. His own voice
embraced the identical note; but he was not aware of that.
"No politics, Jane," said Mrs. Bamsey. "You never did ought to
strike into family affairs before a stranger."
"Mr. Maynard's not a stranger," argued Jane. "We're heard tell lots
about him from Johnny, and Dinah too."
"That's right," said Lawrence.
Benjamin Bamsey nursed an old Skye terrier and scratched its back
with a bunch of keys--a process the animal loved. He talked of dogs
and cattle awhile; then they all went to tea. Faith Bamsey asked
after Susan.
"She's quite recovered, ma'am. She was in a mind to come over
herself to-day, being wishful to see you; but her father wanted her
help. He's very busy with his figures this afternoon."
Faith shook her head.
"Just like him--to put off his duty all the week, then do it on the
Lord's Day, when he didn't ought."
"He went to worship in the morning, however, as he generally does."
"That's to the good then."
"Soosie-Toosie's one of the best women on this earth," said Dinah,
"only she's too much of a doormat. So cruel busy that she's never
got time to think what she owes herself."
This struck the visitor as very true, but he had never been greatly
interested in Susan. She was very unobtrusive and unchallenging in
every way.
"She likes it," said Jane. "She likes being driven about and never
getting even with her work."
"If work is prayer, her life is a prayer," said Mr. Bamsey.
"It's a prayer that never gets answered, then," replied Jane. "A
dog's life really, only Susan don't see it, more than any other dog
would, I suppose."
"Don't talk so free, Jane," urged her mother.
"She'll work herself to the bone and die afore her time I expect,"
continued Mrs. Bamsey's daughter. "Then very like you'll see her
ghost, mother."
This gave Lawrence an opportunity to inquire concerning Faith
Bamsey's famous gift.
"Is it true, as they tell, that you be a ghost-seer, ma'am?" he asked.
"I am," she replied placidly. "It runs in my family and I take no
credit for it."
"Never afeared?"
"Never. They come and they go. 'Tis just something in my nature
that lets my eyes see more than other people. There's animals have
the gift also, so it's naught to brag about. I'll see the spectrums
any time--just the ghostes of dead folk, that flicker about where
they used to live sometimes; and if I be that way by chance when they
be there, then I see 'em."
"And do they see you, ma'am?"
"I can't say as to that. I've never had no speech with them and they
don't take no notice of me. Sometimes I recognise the creatures as
people that lived in my time and memory; sometimes I do not. Only
last week I see old Noah Parsons hanging over New Bridge, just as he
did in life times without count, looking down over to see if there
was any fish moving. An old poacher he was--till he got too feeble
to do anything but right."
"And mother seed Lazarus Coomstock in Holne Wood not a month after he
was teeled*--didn't you, mother?" asked Jane.
* _Teeled_--buried.
"I did," answered Mrs. Bamsey. "I saw him outside his own house on
the day of the sale, with live neighbours at his elbows--for all the
world as though he'd come with the rest to bid for the things."
"A terrible queer gift," said Maynard. "Have you handed it on to
Miss Jane here, I wonder?"
"No," declared Jane. "I've never seen a ghost ana never want to."
"You be young yet. Perhaps when you get up to years of discretion
you'll see 'em."
"When Jane gets up to years of discretion, I'll give a party,"
laughed Ben; but Jane did not laugh.
"You always think I'm a fool, father; and you'll always be wrong,"
she snapped. Then she got up and left the room.
"You didn't ought to poke fun at her," said Faith. "You know she
don't like being thought a child--least of all by you."
"If you make jokes, you must take 'em," said Ben. "Jane's got a very
sharp tongue for her age and nobody doubts her wits; but if a father
can't make a laugh at the expense of his child--no, no--we mustn't
truckle under to Jane. Mayhap a good ghostey will teach her sense
some day."
"She's that wishful to please you always," murmured Jane's mother.
"Well, well, she can do most things she sets her mind to. I ban't a
man very difficult to please."
Lawrence struck in again. He had ignored these passages, and was
still considering Mrs. Bamsey's alleged second sight.
"Would you say that John has got your gift, ma'am?" he asked
"Time will show," replied Faith. "He's a godly, plain-dealer is
John, but I've never heard him say he's seen one."
"I hope he won't," said Dinah. "Because, in his business as
water-keeper, and looking out against trespassers and such-like, it
might confuse him and waste his time a lot, if he was to see shadow
people about by the river and think them poaching."
Her foster-father exploded at the absurdity of the idea; but neither
Lawrence nor Faith Bamsey saw anything amusing in it. Then Ben grew
serious and set down his old dog, which had returned to his lap after
tea was ended.
"There's church bell," he said, "and us be going. Have you
worshipped at our church yet, Maynard?"
The thin tinkle of bell music fell from the wooded height above Green
Hayes.
"No," said Lawrence. "I have not. I don't go to church."
Ben shrank, and his wife started and tightened her lips.
"Ban't you a Christian then?"
"Couldn't say as to that, ma'am; but I don't find church-going help
me, so I don't go."
"Dear, dear--that's bad," said Mr. Bamsey, while his wife put further
searching questions.
"Do you say your prayers, or do you not, if I may ask?"
"I say my prayers--yes."
She looked at him very suspiciously.
"We're bid to go," she said; "and you didn't ought to feel any doubt
as to whether you're a Christian or not, did he, Ben?"
"Certainly he did not," answered her husband. Then he brightened and
made a suggestion.
"You come along of us to-night. Won't hurt you, and you'll very like
catch a grain that'll sprout. That's the beauty of church-going:
'tis like rough shooting--you never know what you're going to flush.
And our parson's a man that abounds in plain truths. So like as not
he'll get one home on you."
"Come, Mr. Maynard," said Dinah.
"Certainly I will if I may," he replied. "I've no feeling for, or
against."
"If us can throw a light for your soul, you won't have come to tea in
vain," suggested Mrs. Bamsey.
"And have got supper by it in the bargain," added Ben, "for you'll
have to bide after."
"No, no--no occasion at all."
"Yes, you must," said Dinah. "They'll have finished at Falcon Farm
long afore you can get back."
Therefore Lawrence Maynard joined the party at evensong and sat
between Jane and Dinah. Jane was indifferent, but Dinah shared her
hymn-book with him. He did not sing, however, though it gave him
pleasure to hear her do so. She was devout and attentive; Jane was
not. He praised the sermon afterwards and told Mr. Bamsey that it
was full of sense. When supper had ended, he thanked them very
earnestly for their great kindness to a lonely man, and Benjamin
trusted that he would come again. Dinah also pressed him, and Jane,
who was now in a very fascinating and gracious mood, ordered him to
do so.
"If you don't, we shall think you don't like us," she said.
He was grateful, and left them in an amiable spirit.
They discussed him after he had gone, and Dinah praised him, but Mrs.
Bamsey felt dubious.
"He's rather a secret sort of man in my opinion," she said.
"He is," admitted Ben; "but he's secret by accident, not nature, I
believe. I took note of him. He's got a grievance against life I
reckon; but what it may be, of course, we don't know."
"I'll get it out of him," said Jane.
"No you won't, my dear," answered her father. "Dinah's more like to
than you."
"I don't want his secrets," declared Dinah.
"We'm often burdened with secrets we don't want," replied Ben. "It's
part of duty sometimes to listen to 'em; though I grant the folk most
ready to tell their secrets are often the hardest to help. Silliness
is a misfortune that little can be done for."
"He won't be in no hurry to tell his secrets, if he's got any,"
prophesied Mrs. Bamsey. "He's not that sort."
CHAPTER VIII
THE OLD FOX-HUNTER
Joe Stockman had tried a new haricot bean for his own table and was
now engaged in the easy task of shelling the brown husks and
extracting the pearly white seeds. It amused him and put no strain
upon his faculties. But he tired of it after ten minutes. He sat in
an out-house with a mass of the dried pods beside him, and as the
boy, Neddy Tutt, passed by, Joe's eye twinkled and he called.
"Look here, Ned--a-proper wonder--I'll show 'e something as no human
eye have ever seen since the beginning of the world!" he cried out,
and Neddy, agape, approached.
"Don't you be frightened," said Joe. "Won't hurt 'e."
Then under the lad's round eyes, he opened a bean pod and roared with
laughter. Neddy also grinned.
"Now you go about your business, my son," said his master, and then,
wearying of the beans, he stretched himself and looked out of doors.
The day was mild and still. Mr. Stockman went into his kitchen and
called Susan.
"Get on with they beans, there's a dear; I've been at 'em till my
fingers ache; and we'll have a dish to-night for supper if you
please. Such things be never so nice as when fresh and soft--far
better than boughten beans. And I'll poke round and see if I can
pick up a wood-pigeon to go with 'em. 'Tis soft by the feel of it
this morning and a little exercise won't do me no harm."
She nodded, and getting a gun, Joe disappeared with his dogs. He
skirted an outlying field, where Maynard and Palk were pulling
mangel-wurzel. Bending low they plodded along, with the rhythmic
swing and harmonious action proper to their work. Simultaneously
with each hand they pulled up two roots from the earth, then jerked
their wrists, so that the great turnips fell shorn of their foliage.
The roots dropped on one side, the leaves were thrown down on the
other, and behind each labourer extended long, regular lines--one of
mangel awaiting the cart, one of heavy leaves. Mr. Stockman praised
the roots, put a task or two upon Lawrence and Thomas for later in
the day, and proceeded into the woods. It was Saturday, and when
first they came, there had been a general understanding that on the
afternoon of that day leisure might be enjoyed at Falcon Farm as far
as possible; but slowly--so slowly that Lawrence had hardly remarked
it--the farmer appeared to forget this vague arrangement; indeed, he
exhibited a marked ingenuity in finding minor tasks for the later
hours of that day. Thomas Palk, who had less to occupy his mind than
his fellow labourer, was conscious of this fact, and when Joe had
proceeded after the wood-pigeons he pointed it out.
"His hand tightens," he said. "You may have marked it, or you may
not, and it don't matter to you seemingly, because you've got nothing
to do of a Saturday afternoon; but I have."
Lawrence conceded the fact.
"He likes his pound of flesh. But you haven't got anything to
quarrel with, Tom."
"I don't say I have."
"Best way is to tell him clear at the beginning of a week that you
want next Saturday afternoon off--then he knows and it goes through
all right."
"You might think it was the best way," answered Palk; "but it ain't,
because I've tried it. If you do that, he'll run you off your legs
all the week, and hit upon a thousand jobs, and always remind you
about Saturday, and say he knows as you'll be wanting to put in a bit
extra, owing to the holiday coming. Then he'll offer to do your work
o' Saturday afternoon, though of course there ain't none, and make a
great upstore about putting off a bit of pleasuring he'd planned for
himself."
Maynard laughed and stood up for a moment to rest the muscles of his
back.
"It'll take cleverer chaps than us to be even with him."
"A cruel, vexatious man, and knows how to balance the good against
the bad so clever that nobody in his senses would leave him,"
grumbled the elder.
They continued to pull the great golden roots from the earth, and for
a long time neither spoke. Then Palk, whose mind still ran on his
Saturday afternoon, explained that he had intended to meet a man at
Ashburton and would now be unable to do so.
"If that's it, don't bother. I'm free and I can do all he wanted,"
said Lawrence.
"If you can, then I'm obliged," answered the horseman. "It's
somebody I'm very wishful to see, because he married my sister.
She's dead, but she had a son, and I like to know, for his mother's
sake, how he's going on."
Maynard was not interested and they spoke no more. At the side of
the field they were building up the roots into a "cave"--packing them
together and then heaping earth upon them. The hour was early noon,
and at the end of the row they desisted, emptied the full cart at the
hedge-side and presently went in to dinner.
"I'm going to see that old hunter, Enoch Withycombe, again
to-morrow," declared the younger. "He's a queer man to meet.
Wonderful the learning he's gotten, along of being crippled and
nought much to do but read and think."
"Miss Susan says he's not a very good companion for you young men,
however."
"Why, Tom?"
"Along of his opinions."
"He's taught me a lot."
"That you may have to unlearn. They clever men are dangerous. I
don't like clever men. You never know where you are with 'em."
Mr. Stockman did not return for dinner and they ate it with Susan.
She was perturbed at the necessity of going to Ashburton for her
father.
"He wants half a dozen things, and I'm so properly busy here this
week-end that I don't know how I'll do it," she declared, unaware
that Thomas was going down.
Slowly it dawned over his mind that he might serve her. He
hesitated, for he dreaded making any original proposition. He felt
ready and even desirous to offer his services, but spoke not from
native caution. Maynard, however, helped him.
"Tom's going in," he said. "Can't he do it?"
"I've no right to trouble him," answered Soosie-Toosie.
"Why not, then? I'm sure he'll do anything he can."
"He might be busy on his own account?"
"He'll make time if he can save you trouble."
They debated the question as though Mr. Palk were not present. He
listened quite silently; but finally, when it became impossible not
to state his opinion on the point, he spoke.
"I will certainly do so," he said. "If you'll write them down, I
will carry out the items, miss."
"It's asking too much," hesitated Susan.
"It may be, or it may not," he answered. "But I'll do it--for you."
She thanked him very heartily. She was honestly most grateful.
"It's proper kind and will take a great weight off my mind, Mr. Palk."
"Set 'em down; and if there's anything to be carried, I'll carry it."
Susan evinced her gratitude, but repeated her fears that she was
asking too much. She was almost excited and forgot her dinner.
"There's the patterns from the tailor first. Father wants a new,
warm suit, and be hopeful Mr. West have got the same stuff as before;
but tailor will give you a little book of patterns, as will go in
your pocket I should think. And there's they cough drops made with
black currants for father, and his boots, that went to be mended, and
his new leggings."
"Nought for yourself?" asked Thomas.
"That'll be enough. What I want can wait."
"No," he said slowly. "If there's any chores for you, set 'em down.
In for a penny, in for a pound."
"A reel of thread at Miss Bassett's shop and a pound of loaf
sugar--but there, you've got enough without them."
"Put 'em down."
"And if tailor's shut, will you knock at the side door? 'Tis
understood I be coming."
"I'll knock at the side door if tailor's shut," promised Thomas. He
was really gratified at receiving this commission, but his vague,
subconscious emotion on the subject, even if he had desired to
declare it, was of a nature far too nebulous for any words.
He went and duly returned with the patterns for Joe's new suit, his
cough lozenges and the rest. Both Susan and Mr. Stockman expressed
the deepest thanks.
"Nevertheless, Thomas, another time it may be better, in my humble
judgment, if each of us does his appointed task," said the master.
"You see, if I may say so, it puts us out of our stride if you do my
daughter's lawful work, and Maynard does yours. I'm a great believer
in method, Thomas, as you are yourself, thank God; so I feel pretty
sure you'll put duty afore pleasure another time. And now I hope
you're going to take a spot out of my new bottle of whisky along with
me."
Mr. Palk replied nothing, but accepted the drink and hid his thoughts.
Next day Lawrence kept his engagement to see the old huntsman, and
their conversation advanced their friendship. Maynard was under a
common experience and had found that one man might charm his
confidence in one direction, while another could win him upon a
different plane. One string in him had vibrated to the geniality,
tolerance and worldly wisdom of his new master and he had responded
thereto; while the bed-ridden man in the valley served to awaken a
different interest and attract the young man on higher, impersonal
grounds. Enoch Withycombe was friendly and fearless. He loved
talking, for no other social activity remained to him, and he enjoyed
to retail the experiences of his life and the results of his reading,
both in season and out. He declared that there was no better way to
remember the things that he best liked in his past, and in his books,
than by restating them to any who would listen. Some indeed mourned
Enoch's opinions; but others were impressed by his acquired learning,
and humble men, though they failed to follow his arguments, felt
flattered that he should be at the trouble to discourse with them on
such large subjects.
Maynard had found a common bond, and with the enthusiasm of the young
went farther in some directions than the veteran was prepared to
follow. For Enoch had a great theory that nobody must move faster
than his wits could carry him, or accept any truth beyond his
intelligence to grasp and, if need be, explain again.
Thus it happened that while Joe Stockman knew most about Lawrence's
actual history, Mr. Withycombe alone learnt the result of the young
man's experience in terms of opinion and belief. The one had
sympathy and understanding for the objective events in Maynard's
life, the other listened to the subjective convictions arising from
those events. To-day Enoch's visitor indicated the nature of his own
ideas, in language that Mr. Withycombe felt was too definite.
Lawrence sat by the invalid's bed, for the day was cold and wet and
Enoch had not risen. Melinda was out for the afternoon, and Maynard
had undertaken to keep her father company and make the tea. Invited
to give his views on the eternal question, the young man did so.
"You can only judge of things by your own experience," he said. "You
must talk of life as you find it, I reckon, not as somebody else
finds it. It's what God Almighty does to us must decide our honest
view about Him--not what He does to our neighbours."
Enoch was alert at once.
"A doubtful view, but go on; I'll hear your argument first."
"My argument is that God Almighty have treated me like a cat treats a
mouse--that's my argument. Let me go a little way in hope, then down
comes His Hand again; let me think I'm clear and free of doubt and
difficulty and begin to get my breath and look round, and He pounces
again. Cruelty for certain, and makes you feel that what He taught
the cat to do, He thinks is a very good plan and worth copying."
"That's too ownself a view--too narrow far. You're not everybody."
"No; but I'm somebody; and if God makes a mouse, He ought to respect
it; and since He's made me, He ought to respect me, so long as I'm
respectable. I've got my rights, same as everything that comes in
the world. If you make a child, it's your duty to cherish it, and
think for it, and be jealous for it."
"But God don't make us like we make our children," said Enoch. "We
ain't His own flesh and blood, Maynard. With a child, the kinship's
closer. Our blood be in them and our faults, belike, are handed on.
In fact, 'tis a terrible serious thing, knowing yourself, to make a
child in your own image; and that's why Nature tickles us to do it
afore we've got the wits to think twice. But God--that's different."
"Why? Either He's our Eternal, loving Father, or He ain't? And
we're told He is. Then why don't He go one better than our good,
earthly fathers, Mr. Withycombe, and put a bit more of Himself into
us to start us safer? Have God ever neighboured with me? Have He
ever allowed for my weakness, or lent a hand to help me through the
dark places, or shown a light when I needed it most? Never. I've
had to go single-handed all my life. And, when I've done my best to
be straight and honest, has He ever patted me on the back and
rewarded me? Never. He's flung my pride and my blood in my face,
and showed up the past, when I hoped and prayed it was buried, and
landed me in new difficulties, when I thought by my own just acts I
had the right to suffer no more. He won't come between a man and his
past, or save your character from the tyrant things stuffed into it
by your havage."*
* _Havage_--ancestry.
"The sins of the fathers are visited on the children, my lad, because
the Lord's reasonable and can't strain His own laws for special
cases."
"Then He's weaker than man, who can do so. A just judge will often
strain a law in particular cases, when he knows that to enforce it
would be unjust. No God of justice would visit the sins of the
fathers on the children surely?"
"When you say 'justice,' you use a very big word. There's the
justice of Nature, which often looks unjust to our eyes, the justice
that makes the fittest to survive. Not the fittest in our point of
view, very likely. We fight Nature there, because what we understand
by 'fittest' be what makes for our own convenience and advancement.
But she's not out for us more'n anything else, and if she was to set
to work on our account, and banish our enemies, and serve our
friends, that wouldn't be justice from her point of view. And the
justice of God's the same as that, Maynard. You may be tolerable
sure He ain't out for us first and last and always. God's got a
darned sight more on His hands than Buckland-in-the-Moor, or the
world for that matter; and if our intellects was big enough to fathom
His job, or get an idea of the Universe and the meaning of the
Creator of the Universe, then we should see that His justice must be
something long ways different from ours. 'Tis a quality of sin that
it plays back and forth, like an echo, and every human knows that the
sins of the children be visited on the parents, quite as often as it
goes t'other way. Law's law."
"You wouldn't whip your child for showing the sins you put into him
yourself?"
"Yes, I would, if I could help whip 'em out of him by so doing. I
know a man, who told me he never felt his own sins come back to roost
so bitter cruel, as when he had to flog his son for committing the
same. These things are dark mysteries, you must know, and we can
only see 'em, not solve 'em. But you mustn't let your own faults and
misfortunes make you a sour man. That won't help you."
"It comes down to this," said Maynard: "either you end in believing
in God, or not. I can talk to you, because you're broadminded and a
thinker."
"Yes, it comes down to God, or no God," admitted Enoch. "And if you
do believe in Him, then it's no manner of use yelping at Him, or
whining at the way He treats you. You've got to knuckle under and
there's an end of it. And if you don't believe in Him, then it's
equally silly to snivel; because, if there's no God, then you might
as well be a hound and bay at the moon as talk hard words against
Him. There's a lot I read in my books that shows me the
free-thinkers ain't so much angry with God, as angry with their
neighbours for believing in Him. And what's the sense of that?"
"Do you believe in Him, if I may ask?"
"Most certainly I do. But once I did not. For a time I did in my
fox-hunting days. Then I was terrible frightened of Him and felt a
lot of fear when I saw good men suffer bad things. Then, when I was
smashed, I flung Him over, lock, stock and barrel, and didn't worry
no more. But now I believe in Him again."
"I believe in Him too," said Lawrence.
"Then believe in Him, and don't waste your wind and fret your wits
blaming Him, because He don't do to others as He teaches us to do to
others. If you believe, you must hold that His ways ain't our ways
and that He sees the end from the beginning and suchlike comforting
opinions. To believe in Him and think that you could go one better
than Him is silly."
"One thing's certain: you can't have it both ways."
"You never spoke a truer word," admitted Mr. Withycombe. "Foxhunting
taught me that afore you were born; and life didn't ought to hurt a
man that admits it. You've looked at life with seeing eyes no doubt,
and you must have seen lots of men treated worse than you, as well as
better. The machine treats the blades of grass much the same,
whether they be tall or short, and to be under the harrow, or under
the weather, is the common lot of us all. Only a man's self knows
his luck--not them looking at him from outside. One primrose be set
on the south side of the hedge, another on the north; but that never
puzzles me, or troubles them."
Maynard was very silent before this philosophy. The ideas came as
something new and the speaker's attitude of good-humoured, mental
superiority did not tempt him to explain the reason for his own
pessimistic attitude.
Presently Enoch challenged him.
"And what have you got to say against that?" he asked.
"Nothing at all. The point of view's everything, and if you, from
your bed of sickness, can feel all's for the best, I suppose I ought."
"There's all sorts of beds of sickness," answered Mr. Withycombe,
"and no doubt the highest wisdom would say that sickness of the body
is a lesser evil than sickness of the mind. But it's a very natural
thing that a young man like you should be more interested in your own
case than any other, and think it harder than any other. You all do;
I don't blame you for that. But, with your good wits and good health
and the world before you, there's no reason why you should let the
past make you too down-daunted, whatever it may have done to you.
There's always the future for a young man."
"The past can bitch up the future past praying for, however," argued
Maynard, and the hunter considered the statement.
"The future be at the mercy of the past in a manner of speaking I
grant," he said; "but a lot depends on whether we hurt ourselves in
the past, or was only hurt by other people. Of course bad blood in
our veins and vices can maim our future past praying for, as you say;
but, with an even-minded man like you, I should judge you'd always
been master of your past, and so ought to face the future more
hopeful than what you seem to."
Lawrence still felt no desire to go into details. He guessed that
Mr. Withycombe must be a great talker and knew not as yet whether
confidences would be sacred. Moreover, he was weary of the subject
and thought that the other might be.
"I dare say you're right. It may be a fool's trick always to keep
the past before your eyes and let it shadow the future. That is if
you can help it. But--however, you'll be pretty tired of me and my
affairs. The thing is to take big views."
"It is--and to take views that ain't got the figure of No. 1 stuck in
front of 'em, Maynard. The first thing to do, if you be going to set
up for a thinker, is to rule yourself out, and all you dread and
fear, and all you wish and desire. You've got to clear yourself out
of the way; and some can, and then, if they've got brains, they see
things clearer; and some can't, and that sort will never add a mite
to their own wisdom, or anybody's. Get me my tea now. Us'll drink
some tea. It's good of you and other men to be here now and again,
because it gives my daughter a chance to stretch her legs and get the
news. Now I should call her a sensible pattern of woman."
"So she is then. And a very popular woman, Mr. Withycombe."
"She's one that haven't let ill fortune sour her. No childer, and a
husband lost before his time. But there she is, fifty year old and
facing life and its duties and the dull task of a bed-ridden father,
all so quiet and seemly as need be. No grumbling--not a sigh. I'm
devilish cranky when the pain's bad; and though we can all be very
wise to our neighbours of a Sunday afternoon, like this, there's
times when we ain't very wise to our relations on weekdays. The
past--the past--small wonder we look back if it's been as good as
mine."
Maynard got the tea from the kitchen and arranged a bed-table for the
invalid.
"Fire's right for toasting," he said. "Shall I make some?"
"Do so. A good thought. You don't tell me the reasons for your dark
view of things and I don't want 'em--don't think it. But I'll ax you
something of a private nature, because you'll respect confidence. No
need to answer, however, if you feel it's none of your business. And
it certainly is not. But if you can reply in strict confidence,
young man, you'll pleasure me. Does Joe Stockman ever tell about
Melinda, or give his opinion upon her?"
"He does. He's got a mighty high opinion of her and says she's a
burning light and a lesson to all the women. He don't hide his
feelings. He was figuring up her age a bit backalong."
Enoch laughed.
"Ah! But you can't have it both ways, as we said just now. Master
Joe's always crying out about being an old man, but he don't want to
feel an old man, or look an old man where my Melinda's concerned. I
read Joe like a book I may tell you. He often thinks what a fine
thing it would be to wed Melinda; but he knows he couldn't make a
servant of her, like he does of his daughter."
"He's always been uncommon friendly to me," said Lawrence.
"Long may he continue so. You're a good man at your job I doubt not,
and he knows it. But--well, enough said."
Maynard sat another hour with the old man and the talk drifted to
fox-hunting.
When Melinda returned, she found her father in the best of tempers
and the tea things cleared away and washed up.
"My!" she exclaimed. "What a husband you'll make some of these days,
Mr. Maynard!"
"And he's going to come again," said Enoch. "He's promised. We'll
set the world right between us afore we've done--him and me. And
next time you go up over to Falcon Farm, you've got to take the man a
book. I can't put my hand on it for the minute; but he's got to read
it."
"You let what my father says go in at one ear and out at the other,"
warned Melinda. "He's a dangerous old man and we all know it."
"You won't fright him," declared Enoch. "He's going to be a great
thinker some day, same as me!"
Then Lawrence went his way.
CHAPTER IX
A HOLIDAY FOR SUSAN
The church of St. Peter's at Buckland-in-the-Moor has a fine waggon
roof and a noble little oak screen. The windows are mostly of
uncoloured glass and the light of day illuminates the building
frankly. It stands, with its burying ground round about it, on a
little plateau uplifted among sycamore and pine. A few old tombs lie
in the yard with others of recent date; but for the most part, on
this January day, the frosty grass glittered over the mounds of
unrecorded dead. The battlemented tower, sturdy and four square,
rose in the midst of meadows at a step in the great slope from the
Beacon. Trees surrounded the gap, ascending above and falling below
in their winter nakedness. It was a place of peace and great
distinction, marked by the fine quality of the human care devoted to
it.
The five bells rang through the frosty morning, and Melinda
Honeysett, with her brother, Jerry Withycombe, stood by the parapet
of the burying ground and looked across the valley, where Lower Town
lay far beneath upon the other side. It glimmered pale grey amidst
its dim orchards and ploughed lands, and beyond it Dartmoor flung out
ragged ridges from south to north, clean and dark under the low sun.
Beneath was a gorge where the land broke and fell steeply to the
junction of the Webburn Rivers at Lizwell Meet; and so still was the
day in the interval of the bell music, that Jerry and his sister
could hear the sister waters mingling and sending a murmur upward.
The man's eyes sought the roof tree of Green Hayes, which made a
respectable splash above the lesser habitations of Lower Town; and
Melinda knew very well of whom he was thinking. Jerry resembled his
father, the old fox-hunter. He was large and finely put together,
but he lacked his father's intelligence and possessed no great
individuality of character. At present he was in love, and the fact
transformed him, lent its own temporary qualities and lifted him into
a personality.
"If you'd only see it, Jerry, you'd understand she's too young and
selfish to make any man happy yet awhile," said Melinda. "I don't
say she won't be a good wife some day, when she's properly in love
with a man, and cares for him well enough to put him first and his
wishes and welfare above her own. That may come to her; but it
haven't yet. She's young for her age and not wife-old up till now,
however you look at her."
"She ain't young for her age."
"Yes she is--and a cat-handed, careless girl about the house. Never
got her thought on her work, as her mother will find out when Dinah
goes."
"Well, I shan't be no damn good in this world without her," answered
Jerry frankly. "That's a cast iron certainty; and she haven't turned
me down yet, whether or no."
"She don't take you serious, however."
"She don't take nothing serious. She's built that way. And I don't
take nothing serious but her. We'd neighbour very well, and her
father haven't got a word against me, knowing I'm Church of England
and a good character."
"Nobody's got nothing against you," said Mrs. Honeysett. "I should
think not--nor yet against anybody of the name. Lord knows I don't
blame you for falling in love with the girl--or any man. She's a
lovely creature, and where she came from exactly among they homely,
nice people, who can say? A proper changeling; and if one believed
the old stuff you might say she was a changeling. Only the fairy
stories all made it clear they fairy-born girls weren't no good for
humans."
"She ain't a fairy; but she's the only creature in the world that's
any good to me."
"Well, you study her character when you're along with her, and don't
let yourself be thrown all in a mizmaze by her looks. She ain't a
very contented girl, remember."
"She would be if Dinah was away. 'Tis beastly hard on John, Dinah
not saying the word. And I wouldn't suffer it if I was him."
"You wait. You don't know what you'd suffer, or what you wouldn't.
The thing to find out for you is Jane's idea of your opinions and
prospects. They like a man to know a bit and be wiser than them."
"She's as clever as they make 'em and sharp as a needle. 'Tis no
good my pretending to be cleverer than her, because she knows I
ain't."
"Don't you eat humble pie all the same. She's not the sort to take
that in a very loving spirit. God help the man she masters."
They were still talking when a pair approached from Falcon Farm. Mr.
Palk was a steadfast churchgoer and to-day he had brought Susan
Stockman.
"Wonders never cease!" cried Melinda. "How did you get off to
worship, Soosie?"
Susan was excited at her rare adventure.
"Father's away. He's gone down to a friend at Kingsbridge for a day
or two's shooting. Decided yesterday and went off in the afternoon,
and Mr. Palk and Mr. Maynard was quite content to let dinner look
after itself and be a thought late."
"Why not? 'Tis less than human of Joe to keep you moiling Sunday
morning. I've told him so for that matter."
"But he always comes himself," said Susan, "and he likes his dinner
uncommon well Sunday."
Melinda shook her head.
"'Tis no good being religious if we won't let other people be," she
answered. "Your soul did ought to be more to your father than a hot
Sunday dinner."
The gaunt woman smiled.
"Well, here I be to-day anyway; and the walk, which Mr. Palk kindly
allowed me to take along with him, have rested me wonderful."
"Very proud I'm sure," said Thomas.
They returned together after the service, and Mrs. Honeysett could
not fail to notice that Susan's adventure had done her good. For a
time her anxious eyes harboured a little rest. But her Sunday gown
did not please Melinda.
"You ought to get yourself a new dress and a thicker jacket," she
declared. "You could put your finger through that old thing and the
moths be got in the neck of it."
"I hardly ever want go-to-meeting clothes," explained Susan, and the
other woman grew mildly indignant.
"You be so meek as a worm, Soosie-Toosie. No doubt a very Christian
virtue; but it do make me a thought wild off and on. Not a word
against your father, of course, but a man's a man, and 'tis their
nature to put on us; and 'tis our duty to see they don't. You've got
to watch the best of 'em like a cat watches a mouse, else they'll
come between you and your rights. The creatures can't help it. They
be built so, like all the other male things. It's deep in 'em; and
we've got to get it out. Why, I'll flare out against my own father,
love him as I do, and a bed-lier though he is, if I find he's
forgetting I'm flesh and blood and thinking I'm a machine. Once let
'em think we're machines and it's good-bye to our self-respect for
evermore. We're no more machines than they be."
Mr. Palk nodded vigorously to himself at these sentiments, but he did
not speak.
"I know my place," said Susan.
"That's just what you do not, and you'll make me cross in a minute
and undo the good of church. You're a reasonable creature, ain't
you?"
"I hope so, Melinda."
"You've got a soul, ain't you?"
"I believe so. It's a poor come-along-of-it if I haven't."
Susan looked almost frightened.
"Very well then, act according. You wouldn't cling after the next
world so frantic if you was having a better time in this one. That's
cause and effect, that is, as my father would tell you. It's your
feeling for getting back a bit of your own after you be dead. If
your Maker had meant you to be a donkey and a beast of burden, He'd
have made you one."
"We're taught to bear other people's burdens, my dear."
"Yes, but we ain't taught to do other people's work--not if they can
do it themselves."
"I only do my own work, Melinda."
"Not a chance! You do a cook's work and an all-work's work and
you're a sewing machine thrown in, not to mention washing for three
men and a boy, and all the thousand odd jobs from sun-up till you
drop in your bed."
Mr. Palk could not contain himself.
"Gospel!" he said. "Gospel!"
"To do their work for 'em is to encourage our neighbours in
selfishness and laziness; and Lord knows such vices don't want
encouraging in the men," continued Melinda.
"What would you do if you was in power?" asked Susan. "What could
you do for that matter?"
"I'd strike," replied the elder. "I'd strike for a maid-of-all-work
first. I'd tell your father I was his daughter. He wants reminding."
"He's terrible fond of me, however. He looks to me if he scratches
his finger."
"And right to do so, seeing he's got no wife. I'm not saying he's
not a very fine man indeed, because we all know he is; but I'm saying
you ought to help him to be finer still and open his eyes to a fault
he could cure if he was minded to. What do you think, Mr. Palk?"
But, at a direct question, Thomas subsided. His caution thrust upon
his private feelings and kept him quiet. He shook his head.
"Least said, soonest mended, ma'am. I wouldn't go for to offer an
opinion--though I might have my views. A man's a right to his views,
haven't he?"
Melinda snorted.
"See how they take sides against us!" she said.
But this Thomas would not allow.
"I won't take no sides, though you're made of sense
and--and--well--there 'tis."
They parted presently and Susan proceeded homeward with the labourer.
They spoke very little, but, apropos of some remark from Mr. Palk,
Susan committed herself to the opinion that animals were very
backward in their minds.
"They be," admitted Thomas. "Their ignorance is something awful.
Take a cat, generally counted a clever creature. He's been catching
mice since creation, no doubt, and yet don't know to this day what a
mouse be called!"
With such reflections they beguiled their journey and each was
cheered in a subconscious fashion by the companionship of the other.
Thomas framed a sentiment and nearly spoke it. He had it on his
tongue to hope that Mr. Stockman might be inspired oftener to go away
for a week's end; but he felt it unwise to commit himself to such a
strong wish and therefore kept it hidden.
Soosie-Toosie, for her part, felt some increase of well-being from
her religious exercises.
"You shan't suffer, you men," she said, as they entered the wicket
gate. "Give me fifteen minutes and 'twill all be hotted up."
CHAPTER X
TALKING WITH DINAH
On a public holiday in early spring, Joe Stockman suddenly declared
an urgent necessity to communicate with Arthur Chaffe at Lower Town
on the subject of some hurdles.
"And if you saw your way to take the air in that direction, Maynard,
I shall be more than a bit obliged," he said.
Susan mildly protested.
"'Tis a holiday, father, and Mr. Maynard's bound for pleasuring, be
sure," she said.
"I know, and I hope he is," answered her father, "but I thought
perhaps he might be taking a bit of a walk and would so soon go that
way as another. 'Tis no odds, of course, if not convenient. I must
meet a few men in Ashburton myself--more business than pleasure,
however--else I'd ride down."
"I'll go then," suggested Susan. "I'm wishful to see Faith Bamsey."
Lawrence, however, declared himself very willing to go.
"I'm not for the fair," he said, "and would just so soon walk down to
the carpenter as anywhere else. I've got no use for revels."
"I'm much to blame, mind you," confessed Joe. "I heap blame on
myself, because I did ought to have written to Chaffe on the subject
a month ago; but it slipped my memory along of my rheumatism, and
being so busy helping you chaps afterwards to spread muck on the
land. Then I was with the shepherd a lot too, and so on. But
Chaffe's always got a little stock of seasoned hurdles in his big
store, and he can send me just so many as ever he likes up to fifty
yards of 'em; and if he can cart them up to-morrow, the better
pleased I'll be. And if he can't, I must get 'em elsewhere, bitter
sorry as I shall feel to do so. Make that clear, Lawrence. And say
I'm blaming myself a good bit about it. I ought to have given Arthur
time, I allow--wonder though he is."
Accordingly the cowman set out for Lower Town and took his holiday on
foot. The day was fine, and he told Soosie-Toosie that he should not
be back before milking. She was taking no pleasure herself, but glad
to devote the day to some spring cleaning. Palk and the boy, Neddy
Tutt, had started at daybreak for the old home of Thomas near Newton
Abbot. Maynard had spent a second Sunday afternoon with the Bamseys,
and now he called there on his way to Mr. Chaffe with Susan's message
for Faith. But Mrs. Bamsey was from home with Benjamin. They and
Jane had driven early to Ashburton and were taking holiday. Dinah
had not gone, and she answered the door when Lawrence knocked. She
was surprised to see him.
"I never!" she said. "Why ain't you gone to the fair?"
"No use for fairs. Why ain't you for that matter, miss?"
"No use for them either. I'm under the weather a bit. Come in and
have a tell. There's nobody home but me."
Their acquaintance had ripened a little, for Dinah came to Falcon
Farm sometimes with messages. Lawrence admired Dinah's
straightforward mind, but was puzzled at some things about her; while
she, inspired by her step-father's opinion, that the man had some
hidden grievance against life, found him interesting. She did not
think he had a grievance, for he was not particularly gloomy with her
or anybody else; but she had found him reticent concerning himself
and he never spoke about his own experiences, or earlier existence,
though she had invited him to do so.
"Where's Johnny?" asked the visitor.
"Fairing--or so he said; but if truth's known I expect he's to work.
He often gives out he's away when he isn't. He's catched a chap once
or twice like that."
"Ah! He knows his business. I expect he's down on the water
somewhere. I should have guessed, now, you would have been up to his
plans and going to take him his dinner by the river presently."
Dinah was rather aghast at this pleasantry. It argued an intimate
knowledge of lovers' ways on the part of the other.
"You might think so," she said. "And often I have for that matter.
But we're out--my fault, too."
"Never!"
"Yes--and that's why I say I'm under the weather."
"Well, Miss Susan wants Mrs. Bamsey to lend her the cheese press.
We're going to have a try at cheese-making. Mr. Stockman's got an
idea the thing be well worth trying; and Miss Susan wants to come
over and have a tell about it and learn Mrs. Bamsey's wisdom. And
the clutch of chickens be ready for you."
"Didn't you hear me say I was under the weather?"
"Twice. Yes. Sorry. It'll come right. Lovers' quarrels be naught."
"What have you heard Cousin Joe say about me and Johnny?"
"D'you want to know?"
"I do then."
"He says you're not treating John fair, and that it's a very black
mark against you not fixing up the wedding."
"So it is, and nobody knows it better than me."
"You've got your reasons, no doubt."
"God knows if I have."
He said nothing, and she asked a curious question.
"Be you faithful, Mr. Maynard?"
"I hope so."
"I can talk to you. Funnily enough I've wanted to talk to you for a
month, but held off. And now's the chance. I can trust you?"
He was a little uneasy.
"Don't you tell me anything you'll be sorry for."
"I'll tell you this. Johnny's sworn he won't see me no more till I
name the day. And his people are on his side--very properly. And
why don't I name the day? Can you answer that?"
"No, I can't--nor anybody else but your own self I should think."
"What's love like?"
"You did ought to know."
"So I did; and that's the trouble. I did ought to know; but I don't.
Only I know this bitter clear: I'm not in love with Johnny. And it's
hurting me and it's wrong."
He was sorry for her, but not astonished to learn the truth. Indeed
he had already guessed it. Others also suspected it. Susan had
spoken plainly on the subject one night to her father.
"'Tis whispered you took him for Mr. Bamsey's sake."
"No, I can't be let off like that. I wouldn't have done that, though
it helped me to decide, of course. But I took him, because I thought
I did love him, and now, after keeping company just on a year, I know
I do not. Now you're a man that understands things."
"Don't you fancy that. None on God's earth is more puzzled about
things than me. I've had a puzzling life I may tell you."
"I haven't. Till now my life's been as clear as sunshine. But
now--now I'm up against a pretty awful thing, and it's cruel hard to
make up my mind. Was you ever really in love?"
"Never mind me."
"Was you ever in doubt, I mean?"
"Never."
"I don't ask for rudeness, but reason. There's nobody you can ask in
my life, because they be all biased. I'm not thinking of myself--God
judge me if I am. I'm just wondering this: Can I be the right down
proper good wife Johnny deserves to have if I don't love him? And
the question that's so hard is, ought I to marry him not loving him?
Not because of my feelings, but because of his future. Think if you
was him, and loved a woman as truly as he loves me, and you had to
say whether you'd marry her and chance the fact she didn't love you,
or, knowing she didn't, would give her up."
"That's not how it is, though. Johnny don't know you don't love him.
He don't know what you're feeling. I judge that by what he says,
because he often drops in and talks openly, finding all on his side."
"What would you do?"
"If I wanted to marry a woman and she'd said 'yes,' but afterwards
found herself mistook, I shouldn't love her no more."
"Then you don't know much about love."
"Very likely I don't."
"It's a selfish thing. If I was in love, I'd be like Johnny--and
worse. A proper tigress I expect."
"Are you in love?"
"No, I swear I'm not. Not with anybody. I've growed up, you see,
since I said 'yes' to John. I was a child, for all my years, when I
said it. Growing up ain't a matter of time; it's a matter of chance.
Some people never do grow up. But I have, and though I don't know
what it would be like to fall in love, I know parlous well I'm not,
and never was. And it comes back just to what I said. Would it be
better for Johnny to marry him not loving him, because I've promised
to do so, or would it be better for him if I told him I wasn't going
to? That's the question I've got to decide."
"You'll decide right," he said. "And you don't want other people's
views. You know."
"I know what I'd like to do; but just because my own feeling is
strong for telling him I won't marry him, I dread it. Of course
he'll say I'm only thinking of myself."
"You can't be sure what he'll say."
"Yes, I can: I know him."
"If he knew you didn't love him----"
"He'd only say he'd larn me how to later. But he wouldn't believe
it."
"If you was to hold off much longer, he'd chuck you perhaps."
"Never. I'm his life. He says it and he means it."
"But to marry him would be your death?"
She nodded.
"Yes, I think."
"Perhaps you're wrong, however."
"Very likely. My first thought was to tell him how it was with me
and leave it to him. But I know what he'd do. He'd only laugh at me
and not take it serious, or let me off."
"You are thinking for yourself then?"
"I suppose I am."
"It's natural. You've got your life to live."
"Be sporting," she said. "Don't think of me and don't think of him.
Put us out of your mind and just say what you'd do if you was me."
He felt a little moved for her. It is pathetic to see a resolute
creature reduced to irresolution. The manhood in him inclined
Lawrence to take her part against the man. It seemed an awful thing
that her life should be ruined, as it must be if she married one she
did not love. He liked Dinah better than Johnny, for the latter's
arrogance and rather smug and superior attitude to life at large did
not attract Maynard.
"It's never right under any circumstances for a woman to marry a man
she does not love," he said.
"You think so?"
"I do--I'm positive."
"Even if she's promised?"
"Your eyes are opened. You promised because you thought you loved
him. Now you know right well you don't. A proper man ought to bend
to that, however much it hurts. And if you still think it's your
duty to marry him, I say duty's not enough to marry on."
"It's hurting me fearfully, and there's something awful wrong about
it. They want me away from here--Mrs. Bamsey and Jane--that's
natural too. Though why I'm confiding in you I don't know.
Something have drove me to do it. But I know you'll be faithful."
"I wish I could help you, miss. I can only say what I think."
"You have helped me I reckon. You've helped me a lot. I was half in
a mind to go and see Enoch Withycombe; but he's old, and the young
turn to the young, don't they?"
"I suppose they do; though I dare say the old know best, along of
experience."
"The old forget a lot. They always begin by telling you they
remember what it was to be young themselves; but they don't. They
can't. Their blood runs slower; they're colder. They've changed
through and through since they were young. They can't remember some
things."
"I dare say they can't."
"Will you come for a walk with me one day and show me that stone you
was telling about--the face?"
"You remember that?"
"Yes; you was going to say more about it the last Sunday you was
here; then you shut up rather sudden."
The idea of a walk with Dinah had certainly never entered Maynard's
head. He remained silent.
"D'you think it would be wrong, or d'you only think it would be a
nuisance?" she asked.
"It's a new notion to me. I'd like to pleasure you and it wouldn't
be a nuisance--far from it I'm sure; but as to whether it would be
wrong--it would and it wouldn't I fancy. It couldn't be wrong in
itself; but seeing you're tokened to another man, you're not free to
take walks with Dick, Tom, or Harry. No doubt you see that."
"John wouldn't like it?"
"Certainly he wouldn't. You know that."
"Would you mind my walking with another man if you was engaged to me?"
"Yes, I should, very much indeed; especially if I was in the same fix
that John Bamsey is."
"Poor John. There's such a thing as liking a man too well to love
him, Mr. Maynard."
"Is there?"
"I'm beginning to feel--there--I've wasted enough of your time. You
won't go for a walk with me?"
"I'd like to go for a walk with you."
"I'll ask you again," she said. "Then, whether I marry John, or
don't marry John, there'll be no reason against."
"I quite understand."
"To see that face on the stone. You'll find Mr. Chaffe in his
workshop. Holidays are naught to him. Good-bye. Truth oughtn't to
hurt honest people, ought it?"
"Nothing hurts like truth can, whether you're honest, or whether
you're not."
He went forward turning over with mild interest the matter of the
conversation. He was little moved that she should have asked him to
go for a walk. From any other young woman such a suggestion had been
impressive; but not from her. He had noticed that she was never
illusive and quite unpractised in the art of lure, or wile. The
stone he had mentioned was a natural face carved by centuries of
time, on the granite rocks of Hey Tor, some miles away. He had
mentioned it in answer to a remark from Benjamin Bamsey, and then,
for private but sufficient reasons he had dropped the subject. His
connection with the stone belonged to a time far past, concerning
which he was not disposed to be communicative. That she should have
remembered it surprised him. But perhaps the only thing that had
really interested her was the fact he dropped the subject so suddenly.
He fell to thinking on his own past for a time, then returned to
Dinah. That she could confide in him inclined him to friendship. He
admired her character and was sorry for the plight in which she found
herself. He hoped that she might drop Bamsey and find a man she
could love. He was aware that her position in her step-father's
house held difficulties, for the situation had often been discussed
at Falcon Farm. Whether she decided for John, or against him, it was
probably certain she would leave Green Hayes; and that would mean
distress for Benjamin Bamsey. He was sorry for all concerned, but
not inclined to dwell over-much on the subject. His own thoughts
were always enough for him, and his experience had tended somewhat to
freeze the sources of charity and human enthusiasm at the fount. He
was not soured, but he was introspective to the extent that the
affairs of his fellow creatures did not particularly challenge him.
Thus it was left for Thomas Palk to see the truth of the situation at
Falcon Farm; Lawrence had never troubled to realise it for himself.
It seemed improbable that he would be woven into the texture of other
lives again. Indeed, he had long since determined with himself that
he would never be.
Arthur Chaffe was making a coffin.
"The dead can wait for no man," he said. "A poor old widow; but I'm
under her command for the moment; and she shall have good work."
Lawrence told the matter of the hurdles and Mr. Chaffe promised to do
what he could.
"Joe treats time with contempt," he declared. "He did ought to have
told me long ago; but I always reckon with the likes of him. I think
for a lot of people and save them from their own slow wits. Not that
Stockman's got slow wits. His wits serve him very well indeed, as no
doubt you've found."
"He's a good farmer and a kind-hearted sort of man."
"So he is, so he is. You'll not hear me say a word against him."
"Yet a few do."
"They do. But mind you, when he says he worked as a young man, it's
true. He did work and took a long view, so now you find him as he
is. But he never loved work for itself, same as I do. Work never
was meat and drink to him; and when it had got him what he wanted, he
was very well content to play and let others work for him. And
knowing well what work means, nobody he employs will ever deceive him
on the subject."
"He sees that we earn our money. But he's fair."
"Ah! To be fair with your neighbour is a great gift. Few are, and
who shall wonder? Now Joe's a man who takes a generous view of
himself. But 'tis better to be hard on yourself and easy with other
people--don't you think?"
"A fine thing, to be hard on yourself, no doubt," admitted Lawrence.
"Yes, and them who are hardest on themselves will often be easiest
with their neighbours. But that's a high position to reach, and few
can."
"It's very easy in my opinion not to judge other people. But when
life demands you to judge, then the trouble begins."
"When our own interest comes in, we often make a mess of it and judge
wrong," admitted Mr. Chaffe. "And what I always say to anybody in a
fix is this: to get outside the question and think how it would be if
it was all happening to somebody else. If you've got the sense to do
that, you'll often be surprised to find the light will shine. And
you'll often be surprised, also, to find how much smaller the thing
bulks, if you can wriggle out of it yourself and take a bird's-eye
view."
"I expect that's true."
"Oh yes, it's true. I've proved it. A thing happens and you're chin
deep in it. Then you say to yourself, 'Suppose I was dead and
looking down on this job from my heavenly mansion, how would it seem
then?' And if you've got the intellects to do it, then you often get
a gleam of sense that you never will while you're up against the
facts and part of 'em. It's like the judge trying a case, without
having any interest in it beyond the will that right shall be done."
"Men haven't the gift for that."
"They have not; yet even to try to do it stills passion and breeds
patience and helps religion."
"Very good advice, no doubt."
"This coffin will go along early to-morrow morning, and I'll bring
half the hurdles this week in two or three loads; and tell Joe the
price be up a thought since last year. He knows that as well as I
do."
Maynard noted the instructions in a little pocket-book and presently
departed. He took a meal of bread and cheese and cider at the inn
hard by, then set out on an extended round, walked to Widecombe,
tramped the Moors, watched the swaleing fires, that now daily burned
upon them, and did not return home until the hour of milking.
CHAPTER XI
NEW BRIDGE
On New Bridge, over Dart, stood Dinah with the sun warm upon her
face, while a first butterfly hovered on the golden broom at water's
edge. She had sent a message to Johnny by his sister that she would
meet him here, and now, while she waited, she speculated on the
difference between the beauty of the May day and the ugliness of what
she was about to do. But she had decided at last, and having done
so, she could only wonder why it had taken her so many weeks to reach
a decision. To her direct instincts delay had been a suffering and
produced a condition of mental bad health; but it was not for her own
sake that she had delayed, and she knew now that her hesitation had
been no kindness to Johnny, though endured largely out of affection
for him. She was convinced, beyond possibility of doubt, that her
regard could not be called love and she had determined with herself,
as she was bound to do, that to marry under such circumstances would
be no marriage in any seemly interpretation of the contract. She had
the imagination to know, however, that what was beaten ground to
her--a way exploited a thousand times by day and sleepless night--was
no such thing for him. He had said that he would have nothing more
to do with her until she named the day, and he was coming now under
expectation of hearing her do so. Instead he must learn that the day
could never be named.
She was full of sorrow, but no fear. Dinah had long discounted the
effect of the thing she was called to do. She did not expect anybody
to be patient, or even reasonable, save her step-father.
Johnny appeared punctually, with his gun on his shoulder. They had
not met for more than a month, but he ignored the past and greeted
her with a kiss. She suffered it and reflected that this was the
last time he would ever kiss her.
"At last," he said. "I've hated this job, Dinah; and you'll never
know how much I hated it; but what could I do?"
"I don't know, Johnny. You could have wondered a bit more why I held
off perhaps."
"And didn't I wonder? Didn't I puzzle myself daft about it? I don't
know now--such a downright piece as you--I don't know now why you
hung back. It wasn't natural."
"Yes it was--everything's natural that happens. It couldn't happen
if it wasn't natural--old Arthur Chaffe said that once and I
remembered it."
"If it was natural, then there was a reason," he answered, "and I'd
like to hear it, Dinah--for curiosity."
"The reason is everything, John. I didn't know the reason myself for
a good bit--the reason why I held away from you; and when I did, I
was so put about that it seemed to alter my whole nature and make me
shamed of being alive."
"That's pretty strong. Better we don't go back then. I'll ask no
questions and forget. We'll begin again by getting married."
"No; the reason you've got to hear, worse luck. The reason why I
behaved so strange was this, John: I'd made a terrible
mistake--terrible for both of us. I thought the love that I had for
you, and still have for you, and always shall, was the love of a
woman for the man she's going to wed. Then, like a cloud, it came
over me, denser and denser, that it was not. Listen--you must
listen. I examined into it--give me that credit--I examined into it
with all my senses tingling night and day. I never worked so hard
about anything after I'd got over my first fright. And then I saw
I'd slipped into this, being young and very ignorant about love--much
more so than many girls younger than me; because I never was
interested in men in the way they are. I found that out by talking
to girls, and by the things they said when they knew I was tokened to
you. They looked at marriage quite different from me, and they
showed me that love is another thing altogether seen that way than as
I'd seen it. They made me terrible uncomfortable, because I found
they'd got a deep understanding that I had not got about it; and they
laughed at me, when I talked, and said I didn't know what love meant.
And--and--I didn't, Johnny. That's the naked truth."
He was looking at her with a flushed face.
"Get on--get on to the end of it," he said.
"Be patient. I'm bitter sorry. We was boy and girl for so many
years, and I loved you well enough and always shall; but I don't know
nothing about the sort of love you've got for me. The first I heard
about it was from Jane. She knows. She understands far deeper about
what love is than I do. I only know I haven't got it, and what I
thought was it didn't belong to that sort of love at all. Haven't
you seen? Haven't you fretted sometimes--many times--because I
couldn't catch fire same as you, when you touched me and put your
arms round me? Didn't it tell you nothing?"
"How the devil should it? Women are different from men."
"Not they--not if they love proper. But how could you know
that--you, who was never in love before? I don't blame you there;
but if you'd only compare notes with other men."
"Men don't compare notes as you call it about sacred things like
love."
"Don't they? Then they're finer than us. Women do. Anyway I found
out, to my cruel cost, I was only half-fledged so far as you were
concerned."
"I see. But you needn't lie about it--not to me. You loved me well
enough, and the right way too. You can't shuffle out of it by
pretending any trash about being different from other girls. You
loved me well enough, and if you'd been on-coming like some
creatures, I'd have hated you for it. That was all right, and you
knew what you were doing very well indeed. And you're lying, I say,
because it wasn't women have brought you to this. It was men. A man
rather. Be plain, please, for I won't have no humbug about this.
You've found some blasted man you hanker after and think you like
better than me. And it's not the good part in you that have sunk to
any such base beastliness; it's the bad, wicked part in you--the part
I never would have believed was in you. And I've a right to know who
it is. And I will know."
"Hear me then, Johnny. May God strike me dead on this bridge, this
instant moment, if there's any man in the world I love--or even care
for. I tell you that I've never known love and most likely never
shall. 'Tis long odds it be left out of me altogether. And I can't
marry you for that good reason. I didn't come to it in a hurry. For
one of my nature I waited and waited an amazing time, and for your
sake I hoped and hoped I'd see different, and I tried hard to see
different. I thought only for you, and I'm thinking only for you
now. It would have been far easier for me to go on with it than
break. Can't you see that? But afterwards--you're a quick man and
you're a man that gives all, but wants all back again in exchange for
all; and rightly so. But what when you'd found, as find you must,
that I'd not loved you as you thought? Hell--hell--that's what it
would have been for you."
"You can spin words to hide your thoughts. I can't. You're a
godless, lying traitor--and--no--no--I call that back. You don't
know what you're saying. Have some mercy on a man. You're my all,
Dinah. There's nothing else to life but you! Don't turn me down
now--it's too late. You must see it's gone too far. You can't do
it; you can't do it. I'm content to let it be as it is. If you
don't love me now, I'll make you love me. I'll--all--I'll give all
and want nothing again! It's cruel--it's awful--no such thing could
happen. I believe you when you say there's not another man. I
believe you with all my heart. And then--then why not me? Why not
keep your solemn oath and promise? If anything be left out of you,
let me put it in. But there's nothing left out--nothing. You're
perfect, and the wenches that made you think you wasn't ban't worthy
to black your boots. For Christ's sake don't go back on me--you
can't--it wouldn't be you if you did."
"Don't make it worse than it is, dear John. I'm proud you could care
for me so well; but don't you see, oh, don't you see that I can't act
a lie? I can't do it. Everything tells me not to do it. I'm in a
maze, but I know that much. I must be fair; I must be straight. I
don't love you like that. I thought I did, because I was a fool and
didn't know better. It can't be. I'm fixed about it."
For a moment he was quiet. Then he picked up his gun, which he had
rested against the parapet of the bridge. His face was twisted with
passion. Then she heard him cock the gun. For a moment she believed
that he meant to shoot her. She felt absolutely indifferent and was
conscious of her own indifference, for life seemed a poor possession
at that moment.
"You can kill me if you like," she said. "I don't want to go on
living--not now."
He cursed her.
"Lying bitch! Death's a damned sight too good for you. May your
life be hell let loose, and may you come to feel what you've made me
feel to-day. And you will, if there's any right and justice in life.
And get out of Lower Town--d'you hear me? Get out of it and go to
the devil, and don't let me see your face, or hear your voice in my
parents' home no more."
A market cart came down the hill and trundled towards them, thus
breaking into the scene at its climax. John Bamsey turned his back
and strode down the river bank; Dinah hid her face from the man and
woman in the cart and looked at the river.
But the old couple, jogging to Poundsgate, had not missed the man's
gestures.
The driver winked at his wife.
"Lovers quarrelling!" he said; "and such a fine marnin' too. The
twoads never know their luck."
With heavy heart sat Johnny by the river under great pines and heard
the rosy ring-doves over his head fluttering busily at their nest;
while Dinah leant upon the parapet of the bridge and dropped big
tears into the crystal of Dart beneath her.
CHAPTER XII
AFTERWARDS
The shock of Orphan Dinah's sudden action fell with severe impact in
some directions, but was discounted among those of wider discernment.
The mother of John had seen it coming; his father had not. In a
dozen homes the incident was debated to Dinah's disadvantage; a few
stood up for her--those who knew her best. In secret certain of
John's acquaintance smiled, and while expressing a sympathy with him,
yet felt none, but rather satisfaction that a man so completely armed
at all points, so successful and superior, should receive his first
dose of reality in so potent a shape.
The matter ran up and down on the tongues of those interested. His
mother and sister supported Johnny in this great tribulation, the
first with dignity, the second with virulence, hardly abated when she
found herself more furious than John himself.
For after the first rages and intemperate paroxysms in which Jane
eagerly shared, she fancied Johnny was cooling in his rage; and, such
are the resources of human comedy, that anon her brother actually
reproved Jane for some particularly poignant sentiments on the
subject of Dinah. He had set her a very clear-cut example in the
agonised days of his grief; but presently, to the bewilderment of
Jane, who was young and without experience of disappointment, John
began to calm down. He roughly shut up the girl after some poisonous
criticism of Dinah, and a sort of alliance into which brother and
sister had slipped, and into which Jane entered with full force of
love for John and hate for Dinah, threatened to terminate.
Jane lessened nothing of her fervid affection for John, however, and
it remained for another man to explain what seemed to her a mystery.
He was not a very far-seeing, or competent person, but he had reached
to the right understanding of Johnny's present emotion.
With Jerry Withycombe Jane fell in beside a track through the forest,
where he was erecting a woodstack, and since their relations were of
the friendliest and Jane, indeed, began to incline to Jerry, she had
no secrets from him and spoke of her affairs.
"What's come to them I don't know," she said. "Father's plucking up
again, and I can see, though Dinah's trying to get a place and clear
out, that he'll come between and prevent it very likely. Mother's at
him behind the scenes, but God knows what they say to each other when
they go to bed. You'd think Dinah wouldn't have had the face to bide
in the house a day after that wickedness; but there she is--the
devil. And John ordered her to go, too, for he told me he had."
"It's your father," answered Jerry. "My sister was telling about it.
Melindy says that Mr. Bamsey's troubled a lot, and though he knows
Dinah has got to go, he's taking it upon himself to decide about
where she shall go and won't be drove."
"I see through that; mother don't," said Jane. "Father only cares
for Dinah really, and he thinks, in his craft, that very like, given
time, things may calm down and her be forgiven. That's his cowardly
view, so as he shall keep her. But nobody shan't calm down if I can
help it. I won't live with the wretch, and so I tell John. Men
ban't like us: they don't feel so deep. They're poor things in their
tempers beside us. A woman can hate a lot better than a man. Why,
even Johnny--you'd never believe it; but you'd almost think he's
cooling a bit if it was possible."
"He is," answered Jerry. "And why not? What the hell's the good of
keeping at boiling point over what can't be helped? Especially if,
on second thoughts, you begin to reckon it can be helped."
"What d'you mean by that?" asked Jane.
"Why, you see John's a very determined sort of customer. He's never
took 'no' for an answer from anybody, and he's got an idea, right or
wrong, that a man's will is stronger than a woman's. I thought so,
too, till I got to know what a rare will you've got. But there it is
in a word; not two days agone I met Johnny, and he said where there
was life there was hope."
Jane gasped.
"That's what be in his head then! That's what made him stop me
pretty sharp when I was telling the truth about her?"
Jerry nodded.
"Very likely it might have been. In fact, he ain't down and out
yet--in his own view, anyway. You see, as John said to Lawrence
Maynard, and Maynard told me, 'If Dinah ain't got no other man in
sight, she's what you may call a free woman still.' And I believe
that John be coming round to the opinion that Dinah may yet live to
see she was wrong about him."
Jane stared and her thoughts reeled.
"D'you mean to tell me that a man like my brother could sink to think
again of a girl that had jilted him?" she flamed.
"Don't you turn on me," protested Jerry. "It ain't my fault men are
like that. You know John better than I do. But it wouldn't be
contrary to nature if he did want her still. A man in love will
stand untold horrors from a woman; and though it may make you,
looking on, very shamed for him--still, life's life. And I believe,
if John thinks he can get Dinah back, he'll come down off his perch
yet and eat as much dirt as she likes to make him."
"It's a beastly thought--a beastly thought!" cried Jane. "But he
shan't--he never shall have her now if I can prevent it. I'd be a
miserable woman if I had to suffer her for a sister-in-law now."
Jerry saw danger in this attitude.
"I always feel just like you feel," he said, "but for God's love,
Jenny, don't you go poking into it. It's a terrible good example of
a job where everybody had best to mind their own business. You let
John do what he's minded to do. Men in love be parlous items, and if
he's still that way, though wounded, then 'tis like a wild tiger a
man have fired at and only hurt. He's awful dangerous now, I
shouldn't wonder; and if he wants her still and counts to get her,
God help anybody who came between. He'd break your neck if you tried
to: that I will swear."
But Jerry was more perturbed at the vision he had conjured than Jane.
For his information she was able to give facts concerning the other
side.
"If that's what John's after, he's only asking for more misery then,"
she said. "I hope you're wrong, Jerry, for I should never feel the
same to John if I thought he could sink to it; but anyway he needn't
fox himself that she'll ever go back on it again. That much I'm
positive certain. Cunning as she is, I can be more cunning than her,
and I know all her sorrow about it and pretended straightness and
honesty was put on. She weren't sorry, and she never was straight,
and I've sworn before to you and will again, that she's got somebody
else up her sleeve."
"Who then?" asked Jerry Withycombe.
"I can't tell you. Lord knows I've tried hard enough to find out;
but I haven't--not yet. Only time will show. It's a man not worthy
to breathe the same air with John you may be sure. She was too
common and low ever to understand John, and his high way of thinking;
and she'd be frightened to marry such a man, because she knows she'd
always have to sing small and take a second place. She's a mass of
vanity under her pretences."
"We all know you don't like her; and more don't I, because you
don't," answered Jerry. "But if you are positive sure she'll never
come round to Johnny again, it might be truest kindness to tell him
so. Only for the Lord's sake do it clever. You may be wrong, and if
there's a chance of that, you'd do far better to leave it alone."
"I'm not wrong; but all the same I shall leave it alone," said Jane.
"What mother and me want is for her to get out of the house, so as we
can breathe again. It's up to father, and father's going to have a
bad time if he stands against mother."
"Dinah won't stop, whether your father wants for her to or not,"
prophesied Jerry.
But a few evenings after this meeting, the situation was defined for
the benefit of Jane and her mother and, with Dinah out of the way at
Ponsworthy, her foster-father endeavoured to ameliorate the existing
strain. He had confided his difficulties to Arthur Chaffe and been
counselled to speak plainly. Indeed, at his wish, the carpenter
joined his circle and supported him.
Mr. Bamsey tried to conceal the fact that Arthur had come to help
him, for his friend not seldom dropped in to supper; but on this
occasion Faith felt aware of an approaching challenge and was not
surprised when, after the evening meal, her husband led the
conversation to Dinah Waycott.
"Arthur's my second self," he said, "and I know he'll lift no
objection to listening, even if he don't see with our eyes."
"You needn't say 'our eyes,' father," replied Jane, quick to respond.
"Me and mother----"
But her mother stopped her. Mrs. Bamsey was all for law and order.
"Listen, and don't talk till you're axed to," she said.
"Give heed to me," began Ben. "There's been growing up a lot of fog
here, and Arthur, the friend that he be, was the first to mark it.
He pointed it out to me, all well inside Christian charity, and what
I want to do is to clear it off this instant moment, now while Orphan
Dinah's out of the way. We stand like this. When she threw over
Johnny, because her eyes were opened and she found she couldn't love
him in a way to wed him, John ordered her out of Lower Town. Well,
who shall blame him? 'Tweren't vitty they should clash, or he should
find her here in his parents' home. She was instant for going, and
though you think I withheld her from doing so, that ain't fair to me."
"You do withhold her, father," said Faith Bamsey quietly.
"No, I do not. I come to the subject of Dinah from a point you can't
grasp. For why? She was left to me by my dead first as a sacred and
solemn trust. Mind, I'm not letting my affection for Dinah darken my
reason. I grant I'm very fond of her, and I grant what she's done
haven't shook my feelings, because, unlike you, mother, I believe
she's done right. My heart's bled for my own--for your great trouble
and for John's. Nothing sadder could have come to shake John's
faith, and for a time I was fearful for John. The devil always knows
the appointed hour when a soul's weakest, and, coward that he is,
'tis in our worst moments, when life goes wrong and hope's slipping
away, that he times his attacks. We all know that; and you remember
it, Jane. For he forgets neither the young nor the old. But John
has justified his up-bringing; and the mother in him is bringing him
back to his true self."
"You may think so; but----" began Jane.
She was, however, silenced.
"Hear me, and if you can throw light after, Jane, we'll hear you,"
continued Mr. Bamsey. "I say what I think and believe. My trouble
be still alive for John; but my fear be dead. So that leaves Dinah.
Her wish and will is to be gone. She's seeking a proper and fitting
place--neither too low nor too high. She'd go into service
to-morrow--anywhere; but I won't have that."
"And why for not, father?" asked Mrs. Bamsey; "your first was in
service once."
"That's different," he answered. "You must see it, mother. The
situation is very tender, and you must remember my duty to the dead.
Would Jane go into service?"
"No, I would not," answered Jane; "not for anybody. I'd go on the
street first."
Mr. Chaffe was shocked.
"Do I hear you, Jane?" he asked.
"God forgive you, Jane," said her father; then he proceeded.
"My foster-daughter is a much more delicate and nice question than my
own daughter; and mother, with her sharp understanding, knows it.
From no love for Dinah I say so. She's a sacred trust, and if she
was a bad girl, instead of a good one, still she'd be a sacred trust.
I'm not standing here for my own sake, or for any selfishness. I've
long been schooled to know she was going, as we all hoped, to Johnny.
And go she must--for her own sake--and her own self-respect. And if
anybody's fretting about her biding here, it's Dinah's self. But the
work she must go to is the difficulty, and that work has not yet been
found in my opinion. Her future hangs upon it and I must be head and
obeyed in that matter."
"She's turned down such a lot of things," said Jane.
"She has not," replied Mr. Bamsey. "She'd do anything and take
anything to-morrow. She was at me to let her go for barmaid to the
Blue Lion at Totnes. And I said, 'No, Dinah; you shan't go nowhere
as barmaid while I live.' And I say it again, meaning no disrespect
to the Blue Lion, which is a very good licensed house."
"She's of age, and if she was in earnest, she could have gone,
whether you liked it or not," said Jane.
Mr. Bamsey grew a little flushed and regarded his daughter without
affection.
"You would--not Dinah," he answered. "Dinah looks to me as her
father, and she won't do nothing I don't hold with, or take any step
contrary to my view. That's because she's got a righter idea of what
a girl owes her father than you have, Jane."
"And what is your view, father?" asked Mrs. Bamsey.
"You know, mother. I want for Dinah to go into a nice family, where
the people will receive her as one of themselves, and where she'll
take her place and do her proper work and go on with her life in a
Christian manner, and not feel she's sunk in the world, or an
outcast, but just doing her right share of work, and being treated as
the child of a man in my position have a right to expect to be
treated."
"You won't find no such place, father," said Jane.
"I hope we shall. She's out to Ponsworthy with Mrs. Bassett to-day;
and the Bassetts are God-fearing people in our own station of life."
"If she was to go there, she'd only be nursemaid to four young
children," declared Faith.
"Then, if that's all there is to it, she won't go there," answered
Ben.
"And what if nothing to suit your opinions can be found, father?"
asked his wife.
"Then--then she'll be forced to stop here, I'm afraid, my dear."
"And what if I said I wouldn't if she did?" flashed out Jane.
"There's some questions beneath answering, Jane, and that's one of
them," replied Mr. Bamsey.
In the pause that followed, Mr. Chaffe, who had been smoking in the
chimney corner of the house-place where they sat, addressed the
family.
Jane, however, did not stop to listen. She began to remove the
supper things and came and went.
"Ben's so right as he can be in my opinion, and if you think, you'll
see he's right, Faith," said Arthur. "He founds what he says upon
the fact that Dinah has done the proper thing to give John up; and if
you could only see that, instead of blaming her and thinking hardly
of her for so doing, you'd admit she was not to be punished for what
she done. We all make mistakes, and though I don't know nothing
about love from personal experience, I've seen it working in the
world, for good or ill, these fifty years very near. And a tricky
thing it is, and Dinah ain't the first that thought she was in love
when she wasn't, and won't be the last. There's some would have gone
on with it and married Johnny just the same, for one reason and
another; but in my humble judgment a girl who can marry a man she
doesn't love, for any reason, be little better than a scarlet woman.
And when Dinah found there weren't love on both sides, very properly
she owned up and said so."
Faith Bamsey listened quietly.
"I've pretty well come to that myself, Arthur," she said. "I may say
I go that far now. It was a burning shame, of course, as Dinah
couldn't make up her mind months and months ago; but when I tell her
that, she says she didn't know her mind. And so not a word against
her. She's a saint and worthy of all praise, and I dare say we ought
to kiss her feet and bless her. But what next? That's all I humbly
want to know? Ben, you see, is very jealous indeed for Dinah; but,
on the other side, I like John to be free to come and go from his
mother's home; and you won't say that's unnatural. But while she's
here, angel though she may be, come John can't; and that's not
unnatural either."
She smouldered bitterly under her level speech and self-control.
"All good--all good," declared Mr. Chaffe. "And if I may speak for
Ben, I should say he grasps the point as firm as you do, Faith.
Dinah's wishful to go; she'd go to-morrow if it was only to be a
goose-girl; but that wouldn't be seemly, and you can leave Ben to do
his duty in that matter and not let any personal feelings interfere.
In fact the more he cared for Dinah, the more he would see she must
go out into the world now, for the sake of all parties. The rightful
place will be found for her, and I always say that when people do
their part up to the point where they may fairly look to Providence
to go on with it, then Providence be very quick to take up the
running. And if Providence don't, it's because our part have not
been done right."
"This very night," said Ben, "Dinah may come back in sight of work at
Ponsworthy."
"There remains John," continued Mr. Chaffe, "and John's gone through
the fire very brave indeed by all accounts, without a crack, thank
God. You've every right to be proud of him; and his turn will come.
The Lord tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, and no doubt his future
mate will be along in due course for his comfort and uplifting."
Dinah returned a few minutes later and she expressed a desire to go
to Ponsworthy; but Mrs. Bamsey's prediction was correct: her work
with the Bassetts must be that of a nurse and no more.
"Providence haven't spoke yet then," said Mr. Bamsey; "but as Arthur
very truly says, we've reached a point when we may fairly count to
hear a seasonable word afore long; and doubtless we shall do."
Mr. Chaffe presently went home. But for all his smooth speeches,
none knew better than he where the fret and difficulty began; and he
was aware that it would never end while Dinah remained at Green Hayes.
"If nought's done, in less than no time, she'll make a bolt," he
reflected. "She's that sort of woman; and for all us can say, it may
be the will of Providence to cut the knot in that manner. I hope
not, however, for 'twould be a bitter blow to Ben and fill his old
age with sorrow."
He was so impressed with this dark possibility that he decided to see
Dinah at the first opportunity and warn her against it.
"A very curious, puzzling thing," thought Mr. Chaffe, "that the price
for well-doing be often stiffer than the price for bad. But the good
man should keep in mind that the credit side be growing for all he
suffers. If we can't trust the recording angel's book-keeping, who
should we trust? The wicked may flourish like the green bay; but the
end of the green bay be fire, come soon, or come late."
He passed a neighbour in the darkness going home and published his
reflection.
"Be that you, Nicholas Gaunter? So it is then. And here, on my way,
I was filled with a great thought, Nicholas."
Mr. Gaunter--a hedge tacker of low repute--had drunk too much beer;
but not too much not to know it. He concealed his error and Arthur
failed to observe the truth.
"A oner for thoughts you be, Mr. Chaffe," he said.
"Yes--they come; and it just flashed over my mind, Nicholas, that
goodness breeds life and a good deed can't perish out of the land;
but the payment of evil is death--sure and certain."
"Only if you done a murder," said Mr. Gaunter.
"Pass on, Nicholas, pass on. The thought be too deep for your order
of mind I'm afraid," replied the older man.
CHAPTER XIII
JOE ON ECONOMICS
On a June evening Lawrence Maynard fell in with Dinah at Buckland,
near the cottage of the old huntsman. Accident was responsible for
their meeting, and they had not seen each other since the girl's
engagement was at an end. Now the cowman was on his way to spend an
evening with Enoch Withycombe, while Dinah intended to visit Falcon
Farm and beg Susan and Mr. Stockman to interest themselves on her
account and find her work.
"I can't get anything to do that will pleasure foster-father," she
said. "He's so hard to please where I'm concerned, and he don't
quite see so plain as I do that it's bad for me and everybody else my
biding there."
"I dare say it is."
"Where's your black armlet what you wore for your dead master in
Somerset?" she asked.
"I've left it off now with these new clothes."
She nodded.
"I'm going to see Cousin Joe and Susan. She's always been terrible
kind to me. So has he for that matter. How have they took this? If
they're very much against me, perhaps I'd best not go."
"It's interested 'em a lot. They've heard John's side mostly,
because he comes up over now and again. But they keep fairly open
minds about it."
"They don't know why I done it?"
"Yes. I ventured to say a word or two. No business of mine; but I
just went so far as to explain that I'd seen you last bank holiday,
and you told me what you thought to do, and why."
"Thank you I'm sure."
"No call for that. Common fairness. Mr. Stockman's very good to me
and lets me talk if I've a mind to. He's a far-sighted, fair man, or
so I find him."
"They won't jump down my throat, then?"
"Not likely. I'm going in to have a tell with Mr. Withycombe now.
He's poorly, and a neighbour cheers him up and makes him forget his
pains."
"What did he think about it, Mr. Maynard?"
"He thought you was right, I believe."
"I'm very glad of that. And what did you think?"
"You know what I thought, miss. I thought you was dead right."
She kept silent for a moment. Then she spoke.
"I wish to God Johnny would see it."
"He will--some day. He don't yet. He----"
Maynard stopped. She put her hand on his arm eagerly.
"Is there anything I could do or say to help him, should you think?
If there was, I'd do it if it killed me."
"Nothing much to help him I should reckon."
"What was you going to say when you stopped?"
"Nothing worth saying--at least, something better not spoken for the
minute."
She considered this.
"Please tell me if it can help him," she begged.
Now it was his turn to weigh his thoughts and the thing he had on his
lips. He decided that he ought to tell her.
"It's this, then. They think at Falcon Farm that, if Johnny is
patient, things may yet come right."
Dinah was cast down.
"Oh, I'm sorry they talk like that. Why do they?"
"Because they've seen him and not you, perhaps."
"I don't reckon I'll go now," said Dinah, but continued, before he
could advise: "Yes, I will. I must. If there's any feeling like
that about, it's only right they should know. I'm not the sort to
play with a chap, and it's cruel to let Johnny think I am. But does
he?"
"I dare say not."
They talked for another ten minutes. Then she prepared to go up the
hill.
"You've done me good," she said, "and I'm very glad I met you. And
I'd like to meet you again, please. D'you mind that walk I wanted to
go? Will you take it now?"
He hesitated.
"Not if you don't want."
"It's like this, Miss Waycott. If there's a ghost of a chance that
you go back to Johnny Bamsey, then I'd rather not, because it
wouldn't be vitty and might add to trouble. So if you're in
doubt--even a hair's breadth--we'd better wait."
"I'm not in doubt. I wouldn't have given myself all the hateful
grief of doing it, nor yet him, if I hadn't made up my mind. I kept
my mouth shut so long as there was a shadow of doubt--and long after
there was no doubt for that matter. And you can tell 'em so at
Falcon Farm, or anywhere."
"Then I'll be very pleased to take a walk any Sunday if you've a mind
to."
"Sunday week then, if I don't find work before. I'll meet
you--where?"
He considered.
"If 'tis fair and offering a fine afternoon, I'll be--but that's too
far. If we're going to Hey Tor Rock, it's a long way for you anyhow."
"How if I was to come to dinner at Falcon Farm first?" she asked, and
he approved the suggestion.
"A very good thought, then we can start from there."
"Sure you don't mind?"
"Proud."
They parted then and Dinah, cheered by the incident of this meeting,
went on her way.
She liked Maynard, not for himself, but his attitude to life. Yet,
had he been other than himself, she had probably not found him
interesting. He was always the same--polite and delicate minded.
Such qualities in an elderly man had left her indifferent; but, as
she once said to him, the young turn to the young. Maynard was still
young enough to understand youth, and it seemed to Dinah that he had
understood her very well. She was grateful to him for promising to
take the walk. He would be sure to say sensible things and help her.
And she wanted to tell him more about her own feelings. Life had
unsettled her, and she was learning painful rather than pleasant
facts about it. She began dimly to fear there must be more painful
than pleasant facts to learn. Several desires struggled with
her--the first to see Johnny again and be forgiven and resume a
friendly relation, if that were possible. His sustained anger she
could not comprehend; and if, as she began to hear, her old lover
still hoped to make it up, the puzzle became still greater.
She reached Falcon Farm with two determinations: to talk to Johnny
and declare that she could never change again; and to ask herself to
dinner, for the sake of the walk with Lawrence Maynard. To make any
mystery of the walk had not occurred to her, or him. She did not
even think that anybody might put any particular interpretation upon
it.
When she reached the farm on the hill, Joe Stockman and Thomas Palk
had been for an hour in conversation. It was an evening when in good
heart and more than usually amiable, Joe had offered his horseman a
"spot of whisky" from his own bottle, and Thomas, accepting it, had
cautiously entered upon a little matter for some time in his mind.
Susan sat at the table mending her father's socks, while the men were
by the hearth, for the kitchen fire never went out at Falcon Farm and
Joe always found it agreeable after sun-down, even in high summer.
Mr. Palk crept to his theme with great strategy. He spoke of the
price of commodities in general and the difficulties that confronted
even a bachelor with a good home and satisfactory work.
"The thought of a new black coat do make you tremble nowadays," he
said.
"Then put the thought away from you, Thomas," advised Mr. Stockman.
"I'm often wishful for little comforts myself, as is natural at my
time of life; but I say to myself, 'The times are hard and these
ban't days to set an example of selfishness.' The times are lean,
Thomas, and we've got to practise the vartue of going without--high
and low alike."
"Everybody knows one thing: that everybody else did ought to be
working harder," said Susan. "You hear it all round. Where I go, up
or down, I always seem to find men loafing about saying the people
did ought to be working harder."
"True for you, Soosie-Toosie. I've marked the like. 'Tis all very
well for Thomas here to say the prices be cruel; but the question is,
'Why are they?' And I'll tell you for why. Labour says Capital
ought to give more; and Capital says Labour ought to work harder; and
so they both stand chattering at each other like magpies and saying
the country's going to the devil. Whereas, if they'd take a lesson
from us of the land and put their backs into it with good will, the
sun would soon come from behind the cloud. If each man would mind
his own business and not waste his time judging his neighbour and
envying him, we'd get a move on. You don't find the professional
people grizzling and whining for more money--doctors and lawyers and
such like. Nor farmers neither."
"No," said Thomas, "because their job pays and they fetch in the cash
and have enough to put by. I'd be so cheerful as them if I could
make so much. I'd work like hell pulling mangel if I could get half
as much by it as a dentist do pulling teeth. And the great puzzle to
me is why for should pulling teeth be worth a fortune and pulling
mangel deny me a new Sunday coat?"
"Never heard you to say such a foolish thing afore, Thomas," answered
Joe. "My dear man, you voice the whole silly staple of Labour when
you say that. And I always thought you was above the masses in your
ideas, as we all are to Buckland--or most of us. A thing is only
worth what it will fetch, Thomas, and the root of our trouble at this
minute is because Labour is forcing Capital to pay it more than it
did ought to fetch."
"Labour's worth what it can get," ventured Susan, and her father
rebuked her.
"A very wicked thought and I'm sorry you can sink to it," he said.
"It's that opinion and a weak Government that's ruining the kingdom.
Look at it, Thomas. Here's a man has three pounds a week for doing
what an everyday boy of fifteen could do as well. That's false
economy to begin with, because that man can't honestly earn three
golden pounds in a week. He haven't got the parts to do it. And if
millions of men are getting more than they can earn, what's
happening?"
"They must have the money to live," said Thomas.
"For the moment they must," admitted his master, "and they're getting
it, but where half their time be wasted is in wrangling over keeping
it. The fools won't work, because they're afraid of their lives if
they do, their wages will come down; and they don't see, so
kitten-blind they are, that the very best thing that could happen to
them would be that their wages should come down. For what would that
mean? It would mean things was returning to their true values, and
that a pound was in sight of being worth twenty bob again."
"That's it," answered Thomas. "If three pound be worth only thirty
shilling, they must have three pound."
"Listen to me, my son. Would you rather have three pound, worth
thirty shilling, or two pound, worth forty? You'd rather have two
worth forty; and when Labour sees that two worth forty be better than
three worth thirty, then, very like, Labour will set to work to make
two worth forty again. That's what their leading men know so well as
me; but they're a damned sight too wicked to rub it into the rank and
file, because 'twould ease Capital so well as Labour and they've no
wish to do a stroke for Capital or the nation at large. They be out
for themselves first and last and always. And while the people be so
busy fighting for money that they ain't got time to earn it, so long
the English sovereign and the world at large will have to wait to
come into its own."
"And meantime three pound be worth less than thirty bob; and that's
what interests me most for the minute," said Mr. Palk.
"Don't look at it in a small way, Thomas. Don't darken counsel by
thinking of number one," urged Joe. "That's what everybody's doing,
God forgive 'em. You preach work, in season and out, for at this
gait the younger generation will never know what work means. They be
hungering to eat without working, and that means starvation for all.
Paper's only paper, Thomas, and gold's always gold, till man ceases
to think in the pound sterling. So what we want is to get back on to
the sure ground of solid gold and establish ourselves again as the
nation with the biggest balance at the bank. But us must take these
high questions in a high spirit, and not let little things, like a
new black coat, blind the sight."
"You speak for Capital, however," murmured Mr. Palk. "I can't
withstand 'e, of course, because I haven't been aggicated; but----"
"I speak for Labour quite so much as for Capital," declared Mr.
Stockman. "I began life as a labouring boy and I'm a labouring man
still, as you can vouch for. I'm only telling Labour, what it don't
know and won't learn, that if it worked harder and jawed less, it
would be putting money in its pocket. As things are it's a child
yowling for the moon."
"Then I suppose I be," said Thomas, "for I was going to put it to
you, man to man, that it would be a Godsend to me if you could lift
me five bob, or even three."
Soosie-Toosie cast a frightened glance at Mr. Palk and another at her
father; but Joe was smiling.
"More money--eh? Now that's a great thought, Thomas--a very great
thought. Fancy! And why for, Thomas, if I may ask without making a
hole in my manners?"
"For my dead sister's boy," said Mr. Palk. "There's no money,
because his father's out of work and I'm very wishful to lend a hand
on his account."
"And very creditable to you, Thomas; and how comes it his lawful
father's out of work?"
It was at this moment, to the joy of Susan, that Dinah knocked at the
door. She leapt up and thankfully brought the visitor back with her.
Mr. Stockman, too, was pleased.
"Company, Thomas," he said. "We'll take this subject up at another
time. Don't think I'll forget it. I never forget anything, for
though the body's weak, worse luck, the mind is clear. Dinah, I
see--and why not? You'll always find friends here, Orphan Dinah."
Thomas emptied his glass and disappeared, while Dinah plunged into
the first object of her visit.
"I'm glad you haven't throwed me over for what I've done," she said.
"Far from it," replied Mr. Stockman. "Is Soosie-Toosie the sort that
judges, or be I?"
"We're only terrible sorry for all parties, Dinah," said Susan; "and
we hope it will come smooth again."
"So do I," answered the younger; "but not the way you mean, Soosie.
For it to come smooth is for John to understand I didn't do a wicked
thing, only a mistaken thing. And I had to put the mistaken thing
right."
She went over old ground and made it clear that none must expect her
to go back.
"I hope I'll live to see John happily wedded," she said. "And I
never shan't be happy, I reckon, till he is."
"And what about you?" asked Joe. "What's the truth, Dinah?"
She explained that she was not constituted to love.
"I'm like Soosie," she said. "Us be the sort that's happier single."
But Miss Stockman laughed.
"You're a good few years too young to tell like that, Dinah. You
wait till all this here storm be blowed over and 'tis calm weather in
your mind again. You'm born to be married to the right one. If he
don't come along, then, with your experience of making a mistake, you
never will be married I dare say; but 'tis any odds he will come
along I expect."
Dinah, however, shook her head.
"A mistake like what I've made be a very shattering thing," she said.
"I wouldn't have the nerve to go into it no more. There's a lot of
unmarried women wanted to carry on the work of the world nowadays."
"And always was," declared Joe. "There's plenty of the sensible sort
about, like Soosie-Toosie, who know where they stand and be helping
on the world very nice indeed. And though some, here and there, may
cast a side glance at marriage, it's often because they don't know
when they be well off. However, education's opening their eyes a
good deal. The deepest minded sort, such as Susan, don't marry; and
even them that do wed put it off a good bit because they see in their
wisdom it's better to have a certainty to go to than a hope; and
better to be the mother of two than ten. I understand these things,
I may tell you, and the moment the world gets wise and puts war away
for ever, then us won't hear no more from the parsons about breeding,
and the populations will go down and prosperity will go up. A time
is coming when a man with ten children will be a disgrace and a
quiverful a proper laughing-sport."
"I dare say it will," agreed Dinah.
"Yes--the women will see to that. There was a time when a labouring
man bred like a rabbit, in hopes that his dutiful childer would keep
him out of the workhouse at the end; but that time's past. The poor
women begin to see, like the better-most females, that child-bearing
ain't the only use for 'em and not the best fun in the world anyhow."
They promised her to remember her need for work, and Joe undertook to
see a friend or two at Ashburton who might be able to find it. Then,
thanking them very heartily, she asked a question.
"May I come to dinner Sunday week?"
They approved, and Joe hoped by that time he might be able to report
progress.
"I've got another reason," she explained. "Mr. Maynard is a very
understanding man and he's promised to go for a walk and show me a
stone on the moor I'm wishful to see."
Susan was interested.
"Lor, Dinah!" she said.
Mr. Stockman appeared to be buried in thought for a moment.
"Did he ask you, or did you ask him to go for a walk, Orphan Dinah?"
he inquired.
"I asked him. I asked him a long time back and he wouldn't go,
because he reckoned Johnny wouldn't like it. But I wanted to see the
stone, and I wanted to hear Mr. Maynard talk, because he's a very
sensible chap and has said several things that did me good. And so I
asked him again, and he's got no objection--not now."
"He's a very sensible man as you say," declared Joe, "a more sensible
man for his years I haven't met. In fact he's old for his years--for
various reasons."
"Would you have any objection, Cousin Joe?" asked Dinah.
He considered.
"No," he decided. "I wish John could have been of the party, I'm
sure; but since that's off for all time, then there's nothing wrong
in your taking a walk with Maynard. Nor would there be any harm in
any case. I know all about Maynard. He's all right; and, of course,
if you asked him to go for a walk, Dinah, he couldn't very well
refuse to do so."
"He's a very seeing man," said Dinah, "and he thinks a lot of you,
Cousin Joe."
"And why not?"
"He might marry himself," said Susan.
"He's not the sort to hurry it," answered the girl. "He don't care
for women overmuch seemingly."
Dinah drank a cup of milk and presently set out to walk home. Susan
admired her courage.
"Nothing daunts you," she said. "I wouldn't go down through the
woods in the night by myself for the world."
"Night's got no more to it than day," declared the other. "I like
it--specially when you have such a lot of trouble on your mind."
She met Maynard returning home, but did not stop more than a moment.
"I'm coming Sunday week," she said, "and Cousin Joe's got no
objection to us going out walking."
"Good night, miss. I hope we'll have a fine day for it. Can't go
else," he answered.
"How's Mr. Withycombe?"
"Suffering a good bit I'm sorry to say."
"I'm sorry, too."
Lawrence had forgotten the question of the walk while with the old
huntsman. Now he considered it and was glad that Dinah had spoken
about it in her open fashion. He apprehended pleasure from it, yet
doubted a little. There hung a shadow over his
reflections--something to which he could not have set a word. In so
much that the shade should hover over his own thoughts it amused him,
and assured that it could not cloud Dinah's, he dismissed the
futility from his mind.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FACE ON THE ROCK
The day came for Dinah's walk with Lawrence Maynard, and though the
sky lowered at dawn, before noon the wind had travelled north of west
and there was no longer any fear of rain.
They set out, climbed the Beacon and advanced by those rolling
stretches of heath and stone that extend to the north of it.
John Bamsey had been to see the Stockmans, and it seemed that his
mother, or sister, had now made it plain to him that Dinah would
never change her mind.
"He's taking it ill," said Lawrence. "He's not standing up against
what he's got to suffer in a very good spirit."
"Us must pray that the right one will come along," answered Dinah.
They talked but little on their way, reached the White Gate, held to
the winding road awhile, then returned to the moors and presently
stood looking down into the deserted quarries of Hey Tor.
"I'll show you the face on the rock when we turn," he said. "I
wanted for you to see this first. A very interesting place and known
to me since I was a boy."
Thus he opened a measure of the confidence he designed for her. All
the truth about himself he did not propose to tell; but there were
things that he could trust to her; and he meant to do so. His
purpose was vague and sprang from no deep emotion. He thought only
to distract her mind, perhaps amuse her, and for a time arrest the
melancholy flow of her thinking. For she was not cheerful and as yet
no outlet for her life and energies had been discovered. Benjamin
Bamsey proved obdurate in the matter of her future, and there was
come a new and painful element into the life at Green Hayes.
They sat and looked into the quarry. The weathered place was hung
with ferns and heath. Deep, green pools lay in the bottom of it and
a ring-ousel sat and sang his elfin song, perched on a rusty fragment
of iron, driven into the granite by men long since in their graves.
"This was my playground and a place of magic to me when I was a
child," said Lawrence, to the surprise of the listener.
"I thought you was a foreigner," she said.
"No. But let everybody else go on thinking so, please. I want it a
secret, though it's of little consequence really. I was born a mile
from here. The cottage where I lived with my family is a ruin
now--I'll show it to you--and me and a little sister used to play on
the heath and make our games. They're all gone except that sister.
She married and went to Australia. The rest are dead."
"You'm a lonely man then?"
"Used to it. It's only my childhood that the face on the rock comes
into, and this deserted quarry. I met a gentleman here once, who
told me all about the place. He knew its history and cared for such
things. And his talk put great thoughts in my head, for I was
thirteen by then and full of ideas already. I got 'em from my
mother. She was better bred and born than father and wishful to see
me higher than a labourer some day."
Dinah threw herself into his narrative.
"To think of that," she said. "How terrible interesting everybody
is, the moment you begin to know the least bit about 'em!"
"I suppose they are. Not that there's anything interesting in me.
Only I often catch myself turning back to when I was a boy. The
gentleman told me that a lot of the stone cut out from this place is
in London now. London Bridge be made of it, and part of the British
Museum too. And I never forgot that. I envied those stones, because
it seemed to me it would be better to be a bit of London Bridge than
what I was."
"What a queer thought," murmured Dinah.
"'Tis a queer thought, but true, that there's plenty of dead stones
doing better work in the world than plenty of live men. I used to
dream like that when I was a nipper, but I soon had to earn my
living, and then there was an end of dreams. Poor folk haven't got
no time to dream."
"And not much to dream about most times."
"Plenty to dream about," he assured her, "but we pay our leaders to
do the dreaming for us; then, when they've fixed up the dream, they
come to us to turn the dreams into reality."
"You'd like to be doing something better than milking cows perhaps?"
"No, I shouldn't--not now. I had ideas, but life knocked 'em out of
me."
"Not at your age, I'm sure. You talk as if you was old."
"The heart knows its own bitterness, and a head like mine knows its
own weakness," said Lawrence. "If things had gone as I expected, I
should never have thought of large questions, and been quite content
with the business of running my own life. But things happened to
change my outlook and make me think. Then I found I'd got a poor set
of brains. I'd just got brains enough to know I was a long way
nearer a fool than lots of other men; and I'd just got eyes to see
the gulf between. And yet to wish you'd got more brains is only a
fool's wish, come to think of it, for the pattern of a man's brain
ain't of his own choosing. I suppose nobody's satisfied with what
he's got."
"You must be a pretty clever sort of chap to think such things at
all," answered Dinah. "And you're a good man, and most times the
good ones ain't the right down clever ones. You can't help seeing
that."
"For a long time, owing to one thing and another, I was a chap
overcome by life," confessed Maynard. "Things fell out that properly
dazed me; and it was not till then I began to see the real meaning of
life at all. It's much the same with John Bamsey at this minute.
While all went smooth, he never saw much beyond the point of his own
nose, and never wanted to; then came trouble, and we'll hope it will
make his mind bigger when the smart dies. For trouble's no use if it
don't do that. Anyway life made me take larger views for a bit. A
storm clears the air. Then with time, I settled down again, same as
I am now."
"Contented?"
"As near content as I'm ever likely to get. I've simplified my life
to the limits. I said to myself, 'Since you can't have what you
wanted, have nothing.' And I have nothing."
"That cuts both ways, I reckon," declared Dinah; "you escape a lot of
bother, but you lose a good few things that make life better, don't
you?"
"To cut a loss is a very wise deed," he answered. "So it seemed to
me anyway. That may be wrong, too, in some cases; but if you've got
no choice, then you must. Now let me show you where I was born, if
you're not tired."
Presently, in the valley far beneath these downs, where the hillside
fell to the north and a stream ran in the bottom of a woody coomb,
Maynard pointed to a little building. It stood where the land began
to ascend again and climb to those rugged piles of granite known as
Hound Tor Rocks.
"D'you see that ruin alongside the green croft beside the edge of the
woods? That was a fair-sized cottage twenty years ago. My father
worked at Hedge Barton, near by, and we lived there till he died.
Then we scattered."
Dinah regarded the spot with interest.
"To think of that," she said.
"My playmate was my sister Milly," continued Lawrence. "We were the
eldest, and after us came two girls, who both died. Then my mother
was with child again, and that brings me to the face on the rock,
what you want to hear about."
Dinah, as her custom was, had flung herself entirely into these
interests of another being. She had an instinct to do this: it was
no art, but a natural impulse in her. At this moment nothing on
earth seemed more important and desirable to know than these passages
from the boyhood of Lawrence Maynard.
"Such things bring you home to my mind," she said. "Now I'll have a
better idea about you; and then you'll be more interesting."
He laughed at that.
"Not very interesting, even to myself, so it's sure I can't be to
anybody else," he answered. "Now we'll take Hey Tor Rock on our way
back. It'll throw a bit of light on one or two things you've asked
me."
They approached the granite bosses of the tor and stood presently
beside it, where high on the cliff above them a face bulked enormous
and stared into the eye of the westering sun.
The chisels of Nature carve slowly on granite, but once a masterpiece
has been wrought, it will outlast many generations of mankind. Such
things chance out of slow mouldings, or by sudden strokes. They may
be the work of centuries, or the inspiration of a moment--plastic,
moulded by patient Time, as the artist models his clay, or
glyphic--struck with a blow of lightning, or earthquake, from the
stone.
The great rock idols come and go, and haunt lonely cliffs, crown
lonely heights, gaze out upon the surges of lonely seas. To Nature
these whimsical figures, near enough to man to challenge him, are but
faces in the fire, peeping to-day from the flux, and cinders again
to-morrow; but, to the short-lived thing they imitate, they endure,
while his own generations lapse.
This giant's head was smaller than the Sphinx and of an antiquity
more profound. The countenance lacked majesty and was indeed
malignant--not with the demoniac intelligence of man-cut fiends, such
as "Le Stryge" on Notre Dame, but rather with the brutish, semi-human
doubt and uncertainty of a higher ape. So the Minotaur might have
scowled to seaward. The expression of the monster trembled on the
verge of consciousness; it suggested one of those vanished beings
created near the end of our hundred thousand years' journey, after
man's ancestors descending from the trees set forth on the mighty
march to conscious intelligence.
The face belonged to the forefathers of the neolithic people: it
burlesqued hugely those beetle-browed, prognathous paleoliths of old
time, and for them, perchance, possessed an awe and sublimity we
cannot grant it to-day.
But it had challenged a boy and girl, who were still many thousands
of years nearer to prehistoric ancestors than their parents. For
children still move through the morning of days, and through minds
ten and eleven years old the skin-clad dreamers and stone men were
again reflected and survived.
Now Dinah heard with what force the discovery of the stone Titan had
struck upon the boy and girl.
"A new baby was coming," said Lawrence, "and sister and me were each
given a bit of food and told to run out on the moor and play till
nightfall. That pleased us very well and we made our games and
wandered and picked hurts.* And then I suddenly found yonder face
and shouted to Milly and made her see it too. It excited me a lot,
and Milly always got excited when I did. She said 'twas like father,
but I said, 'No, 'tis a lot grander and finer than father.' Then she
was frighted and wanted to run away; but I wouldn't have that. 'He'd
blow out of his mouth and scat us to shivers if we ran,' I told her.
I took pleasure in giving great powers to the monster, and wondered
if he was good, or wicked. And little sister thought he must be
wicked, but I didn't see why he should be. 'Perhaps he's a good
'un,' I said; and then I decided that he might be good. Milly was
for sloking off again, but my child's wits worked, and I very soon
lifted up the stone into a great, powerful creature. 'Us'll say our
prayers to him,' I told Milly, but she feared that also. 'I never
heard of nobody saying no prayers except to Gentle Jesus,' answered
Milly to me. 'The Bible's full of 'em,' I told her. 'How would it
be if we offered to be his friends?'"
* _Hurts_--whortleberries.
"Tempted your little sister to turn heathen!" exclaimed Dinah.
"Yes, and she soon fell. I minded her how we had once prayed with
all our might to Gentle Jesus to kill father, because he wouldn't
take us to a circus as had come to Bovey. 'Gentle Jesus have got His
Hands full without us,' I said to Milly. 'He haven't got no time to
think about two little squirts like us. But this here great creature
might be a good friend to us; and nobody the wiser!'"
"You was a crafty little boy."
"No craft, only a queer twist of the brain. I smile sometimes,
looking back, to see what thoughts I'd gotten. But child's thoughts
die like flowers. We can never think 'em again when we grow up.
Milly held out a bit, yet she never withstood me very long. She was
only afraid that Gentle Jesus would hear tell about it and punish us;
but I said, 'Not Him. If harm comes, I'll take the blame. And we
won't put anything very hard upon this monstrous old rock till we
know how strong he be.' We thought then what we should pray for, and
Milly had a bright idea. 'Ax him to make the new baby a boy,' she
advised, and I agreed, for we was very wishful to have a boy home,
and so was our mother. Then Milly had another thought. 'What be us
to call him?' she asked me. 'Something terrible fearful,' I
said--'the fearfullest thing we can think upon.' We strove after the
most dreadful words we knew, and they were our father's swear-words.
'Let's call him "Bloody,"' I said; and Milly thought we ought to say
'Mr. Bloody.' But I told her 'Mister' was a name for a gentleman,
with nothing fierce or grand to it. 'We'll call him "Bloody" and
chance it,' I said; and so we did. I prayed to the stone then. I
said, 'Dear Bloody, please let mother's new babby be a boy. Amen';
and Milly done the same; and when we got home in the dimpsy light,
all was over and father eating for the first time that day. There
had come a little boy and mother was happy. Milly whispered to me,
'That's one for him!'"
Dinah laughed with delight. Her own troubles were for the time
forgotten.
"I'll mind that story so long as I live," she said, gazing up at the
iron-black, impassive features above her.
"That's not all, though. We got terrible friendly with our great
idol, and then, a week later, the baby fell ill and seemed like to
die. For the nurse that waited on mother had come from
whooping-cough and the poor child catched it afore it was five days
old. We were in a terrible upstore about that, and I minded this
rock; and when a day came and the little one was at his last gasp, me
and Milly went up and stood here, where we sit now. I said we must
bring offerings, but us hadn't nothing but my knife and Milly's pet
bunny rabbit. But such was the fearful need, we determined to
sacrifice both of 'em; and we did. Lord knows how we could, but I
killed her little rabbit for 'Bloody,' and I dropped it and my knife
in that cleft below the rocks at his feet. We used to call 'em his
paws. The rabbit and my knife went down there, and we asked for our
new-born brother, and prayed the creature to save him alive. And we
wept a good bit, and I remember Milly felt glad to see me cry as well
as her. We went home a lot comforted--to find the baby was dead."
He broke off and the listener expressed sorrow.
"You poor little things--to think of you trotting back together--to
that! I could cry for 'e now."
"We cried for ourselves I warrant you. We was terrible upset about
it, and I properly gnashed my teeth I remember. Savage I was, and
loved to hear father damn to hell the nurse that had done the
mischief. 'Douglas Champernowne' the poor child was called. My
mother doted on high-sounding names. And the day he was buried, my
sister and me roamed on the moor again in our black after the
funeral, bewailing our loss; and it was Milly that called my mind to
our stone god, for I'd forgot all about him just then. 'There he
is--aglaring and agrinning!' she said, and I looked up and saw we'd
come to him without thinking. It had been raining all day, and his
face was wet and agleam in evening sunlight. We liked him that way,
but now I turned my hate on him and cursed him for a hard-hearted,
cruel devil. 'Beast--hookem-snivey beast!' I yelled up at the tor;
'and I wish to God I was strong enough to pull you down and smash
your face in!' Milly trembled with fear and put her arms around me,
to save me, or die with me if need be. But I told her the idol
couldn't hurt us. 'He can only kill babbies,' I yelled at him. Then
I worked myself up into a proper passion and flung stones and mud at
the rock, and Milly, finding our god helpless, egged me on. We made
faces and spat on the earth and did everything our wits could hit on
to insult him. Then, tired out, we turned our backs on him, and the
last he heard was my little sister giving him the nastiest cut of
all. 'We be going back to Gentle Jesus now,' screamed Milly."
Maynard ceased and lighted his pipe.
"It's a sad, lovely story. I don't wonder you come and have a look
at the face sometimes. So shall I now. May I tell it again?" asked
Dinah.
"No, miss, don't do that--I'd rather none heard it for the present.
I've my reasons for not wishing to be linked up with these parts."
"Call me 'Dinah,' and let me call you 'Lawrence,'" she said. From
her this was not a startling suggestion. Indeed she had already
called him "Lawrence" sometimes.
"If you like," he answered. "It's easier. We see a good many things
the same."
"I suppose we do. And did you and Milly go back to 'Gentle Jesus'?"
"Certainly we did; and I'll make bold to say she never left Him no
more."
"But you--you ain't exactly a Christian man, are you? When did you
change?"
He looked into the past and did not answer for a moment.
"I don't know," he said at last. "It's hard to tell sometimes when
we change. Them that come to the penitent bench, or what not, know
to an hour when they was 'saved,' as they call it; but them that have
gone the other way, and heaved up anchor, and let their reason steer
the ship and their faith go astern--such men can't always answer
exactly when the change came. Sometimes it's just the mind getting
bigger and the inner instinct dropping the earlier teaching; and
sometimes things happen to shake a man for ever out of his hope and
trust."
"A very sad thought," she said.
"It's always sad to see a thing fall down--whether it's a god or a
tree. The sound of the woodman's axe be sad to some minds."
"It is to me," said Dinah.
He looked up at the features above them, carved on the mass of the
tor. Beyond swung out Rippon's granite crown against the sky, and
nearer stretched miles of wild and ragged heath. Then, in long,
stone-broken curves the moor rose and fell across the western light
to Honeybag and Chinkwell and huge Hameldown bathed in faint gold.
The sun kneaded earth with its waning lustres until matter seemed
imponderable and the wild land rolled in planes of immaterial
radiance folding upon each other. The great passages of the hills
and dales melted together under this ambient illumination and the
stony foreground shone clear, where, through the hazes, a pool
glinted among the lengthening shadows and reflected the sky. Quartz
crystals glittered where the falling rays touched the rocks, and as
the sun descended, great tracts of misty purple spread in the hollows
and flung smooth carpets for the feet of night.
For a moment "Bloody" seemed to relax his brutal features in the
glow. Sunset lit a smile upon the crag, and nature's monstrous
sculpture appeared to close its eyes and bask in the fading warmth.
"It would be a pity if ever Hey Tor were thrown down, as I wanted to
throw it, when I was that little angry boy," said Lawrence.
She put out her hand to him.
"Don't you fling over God," she said very earnestly.
"I hope never," he answered.
After they had talked awhile longer he looked at his watch.
"Half after seven," he exclaimed.
They set off for home and she asked for another tale.
"Tell me what happened to you when you went out into the world," she
begged; but this he would not do. He made no mystery, but definitely
declined.
"You've heard enough about me, I reckon. Speak of yourself a bit."
She obeyed and described her life in childhood, while he listened to
the simple story, interested enough.
He reminded her of his desire as their walk ended and they reached
the door of Falcon Farm.
"Don't say nothing of my past in this, or tell the tale of the rock
again, Dinah. I'm not wishful for the people to know anything about
me."
She promised.
"I can keep secrets," she assured him.
CHAPTER XV
BEN BAMSEY'S DOUBTS
As the summer advanced, Jane Bamsey let it be known that she proposed
to wed Enoch Withycombe's son, Jerry. For some time her parents
refused to believe it, but as Jane persisted and brought Jerry to see
them, they began to accept the fact. Benjamin felt hopeful of the
match, while Jane's mother did not. In the first place she was
disappointed, for while a fine and amiable man, of good repute, not
lacking in respect, Jerry could not be considered a very promising
husband. He was too old; he was only a woodman and would always
remain a woodman. Mrs. Bamsey held that a daughter of hers should
have looked higher.
Jane, however, now declared her undying love, and, for the moment, it
was undoubtedly true that she did love and desire the son of the
huntsman better than anything in the world. She did not share her
parents' estimate of him but perceived possibilities and believed
that, with her help and supported by the dowry she expected to bring
him on their marriage, Jerry would prove--not her head, but her right
hand. For Jane had her own private ambitions, and though they
staggered Jerry when he heard them, such was his devotion that he
agreed to propositions for the future inevitably destined to upset
his own life and plunge it into a wrong environment. Their absurdity
and futility were not as yet apparent to him, though Jane's ideas
from anybody else had been greeted with contempt. They embraced a
radical change in his own existence that had been unbearable to
contemplate save in one light. But that light his sweetheart
created; and when she described her ambitions to leave Dart Vale and
set up a little shop in town, Jerry, after some wondering protests,
found that the choice might actually lay between this enterprise and
Jane herself. Therefore, he did not hesitate. He stated his case,
however, when she agreed to marriage on her own conditions.
"Away from trees, I'm much afraid I should be but a lost man,"
declared Jerry.
"And in the country, I'm but a lost woman," replied Jane. "I'm sick
of trees, and fields too."
She had never hinted at the possibility of accepting him at all
before the occasion of these speeches; and it was natural that no
stipulation could long daunt Jerry in the glorious hour of success.
Jane was actually prepared to accept him at last, and since life with
Jane in a dungeon had been better than life without her under any
conditions whatsoever, Jerry, after a display of argument that lasted
not five minutes, agreed to her terms, and found his sweetheart on
his knees, his arms round her, the astounding softness of her cheek
against the roughness of his own.
How far Jane might be looking ahead, neither her future husband, nor
anybody else knew; but one guessed; and since it was Enoch Withycombe
who received this spark of divination, he kept it to himself for the
present. Now the invalid spoke to Jane's father, who came to see him
upon the subject; but both old men considered the situation without
knowledge of the facts, because Jane, with greater insight than Jerry
and shrewd convictions that her terms would meet with very hearty
protests from her lover's family, if not her own, had counselled
Jerry, indeed commanded him, to say nothing of their future
intentions until the marriage day was fixed.
"And how's yourself, Enoch?" asked Benjamin, as he smiled and took
Mr. Withycombe's hand.
"Middling, but slipping down, Ben. The end's getting nearer and the
bad days getting thicker sprinkled in the pudding. I shan't be sorry
to go."
"Well, well, if you ban't, there's a cruel lot will be when you do,"
said Mr. Bamsey. "And often and often I catch myself asking if the
deaders do really go at all. Married to Faith, as I am, I can't help
but feel we've got a cloud of witnesses round about. How it may be
in other places, of course, I can't say, but there's no doubt that
the people who drop around here, hang about after; and if you've got
Faith's amazing gift, they ban't hidden. She see widow Nosworthy
last week, down by the stile in 'five acre,' where there's a right of
way. She was standing there, just like she used to stand time
without count waiting for her drunken son of a night, to steer him
past the pond to his home. I say naught, however, whatever I may
think."
Mr. Withycombe showed a little impatience.
"'Tis no good prattling about ghosts to a man who'll damn soon be one
himself," he said. "As you very well know I don't believe in 'em,
Ben; and if us understood better, we'd be able to prove, no doubt,
that your wife don't see nothing at all, and that the ghosts be in
her own mind's eye and nowhere else. Not a word against her, of
course. I respect her very much. But' second sight,' so to call it,
be just a thing like gout, or bad teeth--handed down, and well inside
nature, like everything else. I don't believe in no future life
myself, but I don't quarrel with them that do. I'm like my old
master--large-minded, I hope. And if another life there is, then
this I will swear, that the people as be called home have got their
senses, and the next world have its duties and its upper ghosts set
over the unknown country to rule and direct it. You can't suppose
that everybody's on his own there, to moon about and poke about, like
a lot of birds, with no law and order. When the men and women go out
of this world, they've done with this world, and I never will believe
they be allowed back, to waste our time and fright the silly ones and
talk twaddle to people in dark rooms and play senseless tricks we'd
whip a child for."
"Leave it," said Ben. "I go largely along with you, and for that
matter my wife herself thinks no more of it than her power to make
butter."
"How's Johnny?"
"Got a lot more silenter than he was. Comes and goes; and he's civil
to Dinah now, but don't see her alone. Us be a bit hopefuller about
him, but not her. In fact Dinah's one of the things I be come to
tell about. I'm a bit afeared in that quarter. I might see a ray of
light where she's concerned; but John, being what he is, the light,
even if there is any, looks doubtful."
"Leave him then. You want to talk of this here match between my
Jerry and your Jane."
"I do. I'm very wishful to hear you speak out on the subject, Enoch.
For myself, being a great believer that marriages are made in heaven
and 'tis only our human weakness mars 'em on earth, I'm always
willing to hope the best and trust true love. And true love they've
gotten for each other I'm very sure indeed, though I wish they was
nearer of an age."
"What does Faith Bamsey say?"
"It don't so much matter as to her. She's a right to her opinions,
and seldom we differ, but in this affair, to be honest, we don't see
eye to eye. In marriage, the woman be more practical than the man."
"I'll tell you what she says, Ben. She don't like it. All her
reasons I cannot tell: one I'm dead sure about. It's a come-down for
her Jane to marry Jerry. I grant that. I've told Jerry so too."
"Perfect love casteth out any such thought," said Mr. Bamsey.
"It may cast it out, but it will come back. In some girls it
wouldn't. In Jane it will. Jane's on powerful good terms with
herself, as you'll grant. The toad knows she's a beauty, and she
knows a lot else--a lot more than Jerry knows for that matter."
"You don't like her," said Mr. Bamsey.
"I do not; and she don't like me."
Ben was silent.
"She came up to tea Sunday, and I seed 'em side by side. She's sly
and she's making Jerry sly. How the devil she's larned such an open
sort of creature as Jerry to keep secrets I don't know. But secrets
they've got. I dare say they'll be married. But I agree with Faith
Bamsey that it won't come to overmuch good. I don't think Jane is a
very likely pattern of wife."
"She's young and there's bright points to her. She wasn't saucy nor
anything like that I hope?"
"Oh no--butter wouldn't melt in her mouth."
"What does Melinda think about her?"
"Melinda thinks better of her than what I do. She didn't before the
match, but now, womanlike, she's all for it."
"That's to the good then. They talk of late autumn."
"Have you asked your girl where she thinks to live?"
"We haven't raised that yet."
"I did, and she put me off. There's things hidden. What are you
going to give her?"
"Five hundred pound, Enoch."
"Don't, Ben. Keep it against their future. That's a hugeous lot of
money and Lord knows what she'd do with it. I hope you haven't told
her no such thing."
"My only daughter must have a good start. It's none too much; she
knows about it."
Mr. Withycombe considered.
"Then I'll tell you what she's doing, Ben. She's marrying for money!
Yes, she is. Not Jerry's, because he won't have a penny till I die,
and then he can only have one-third of the lot, which ain't much.
But Jane's marrying for your money, and I'll lay my life that she's
going to spend it, thinking that there'll be plenty more where that
comes from."
"You mustn't say such things. She knows the value of money better
than most."
"Then have it out and learn what's in their minds. They've no right
to secrets if you're going to pay the piper and start 'em in that
generous way. Keep her money and let her have the interest on it and
no more, till you see how they get on."
"Secrets there didn't ought to be I grant," said Benjamin. "But,
mind you, I'm not allowing there are any. You may be mistook."
"Then find out where they be going to live and how Jane thinks to
handle that dollop of cash," warned Mr. Withycombe. "You've a right
to know: it's your duty to know, and your wife will tell you the
same. And don't let Jane throw dust in your eyes. She's a tricky
piece, like most of them beauties. I wish she'd took after the
pattern of Orphan Dinah."
"So do I," admitted the other. "And now, to leave this, I'd like to
speak a word about Dinah, because there's some things you may know
bearing upon her that I do not. I'm struck with doubt, and I've been
keeping her on along with me for two reasons. Firstly, because the
right sort of place in my opinion don't offer."
"It never will," said Enoch. "Truth's truth, and the truth is you
can't part from her."
"No, you mustn't say that. She's a very great deal to me, but I
ban't selfish about her. I'm thinking of her future, and I don't
want her placed where her future will be made dark and difficult.
There's a lot to consider. And while I've been considering and
withstanding Faith, here and there, and Dinah also for that matter,
there's drifted into my mind the second point about Dinah. And
that's in my mind still. But I begin to feel doubtful, Enoch,
whether it's very much use for us old people to worry our heads as we
do about the young ones. This generation will go its own way."
"Pretty much as ours did before them no doubt," answered the sick
man. "We ancient folk love to bide in the middle of the picture so
long as we can, and when I was a lot younger than now, yet not too
young to mark it, I often thought it was rather a sad sight to see
the old hanging on, and giving their opinions, and thinking anybody
still cared a damn for what they said, or thought."
"Yes, only the little children really believe in us," confessed Mr.
Bamsey; "and that's why I say we squander a good bit of wisdom upon
the rising race, for they'll go on rising, for good or evil, without
much troubling their heads as to whether we approve, or don't. They
put education before experience, so, of course, what we've got to
offer don't appeal to 'em. But Dinah--she does heed me, and now
there's come a shadow of a suspicion in my mind about another man for
her. That's why I'm so content to mark time a little and get hard
words for doing it. She don't know herself, I believe, and very like
the man don't know yet. Or he may know, and be biding his time. But
more than once or twice--more, in fact, than she guesses--Dinah, when
she's been talking to me, have named a certain person. I very near
warned her against it, for women's ears are quicker than ours, and if
Jane and my wife had marked it, evil might have risen out of it at
once. But Dinah says a lot more in my hearing than in theirs and
they don't know so far. And, as I tell you, Dinah herself don't
know. But the name echoes along. In a word, what do you think of
Maynard at Falcon Farm? You know him better than I do, though the
little I've seen of the man leads me to like him. He's a sensible
soul and none too cheerful--rather a twilight sort of man you might
say; but that's a way life have with some of the thinking sort. It
turns 'em into their shells a bit."
"He's a kindly, well-meaning chap and old for his years," said
Withycombe. "I should say he's not for a wife."
"How d'you know?"
"I don't know. We never talk about himself, nor yet myself. He
gives me his company sometimes and we tell about pretty high matters,
not people. He's got a mind, Ben."
Melinda Honeysett joined them at this moment and entered their
conversation.
"He's got a mind, no doubt," said Mr. Bamsey. "But he's also got a
body, and it would be unnatural in a young, hearty man of his years,
prosperous too I suppose, because, with his sense, he's sure to have
put by a bit--it would be unnatural, I say, if he'd never turned his
thoughts to a home of his own."
Enoch spoke to his daughter.
"Here's Ben trying to hatch up a match for Dinah," he said.
"No, no--too wise, I'm sure," answered Melinda.
"Far too wise," declared the visitor. "But if such a thing was
possible in fulness of time, it would cut a good many knots, Melindy."
"Dinah likes freedom now she's got it, I believe, and I wouldn't say
she was too fond of children neither," answered Enoch's daughter.
"They never like children, till they meet the man they can see as
father of their own children," answered Ben; "and if Dinah ever said
she didn't want 'em, that's only another proof that she never loved
poor John."
"The love of childer be knit up with other things no doubt," admitted
Enoch.
"There's lots love childer as never had none, like myself," answered
Melinda.
"True, my dear. There's lots love game as never shot it. But the
snipe you brought down yourself be always the one that tastes best.
A mother may love her own children, or she may not; but it depends
often enough on the husband."
It was Mrs. Honeysett's father who spoke.
"There's some child-lovers who only wed because that's the way to get
'em," he continued. "Such women don't think no more of the husband
than the doctor--I've known such. But perfect love of childer did
ought to begin with the perfect love of the man that got 'em. Take
me. I had but three, but they were the apple of my wife's eye,
because they was mine as well as hers."
"My brother, Robert, be coming home presently," said Melinda. "My
sailor brother, Mr. Bamsey. How would you like him for Dinah? I'm
sure she'd make a proper wife for him. He's like Jerry, only quicker
in the uptake. But not so clever as father."
"Wouldn't like Dinah to marry a sailor man," confessed Ben. "I know
Robert is a fine chap; but they've got a wife in every port. A
sailor sees a lot more than the wonders of the deep."
Mr. Withycombe laughed.
"He ain't that sort, I promise you," he said.
"The point is, in strictest confidence, Melindy," explained Ben,
"that I believe, though she scarce knows it herself, Dinah's
interested in the Falcon Farm cowman. She's seen him off and on and,
in my ear alone, speaks of the man. And your father here has nought
but good to say of him."
"He's not for a wife, so Joe tells me. He was naming him a bit
agone," answered Melinda, "and he said that the most comforting thing
about him, and Mr. Palk also, was that they were cut out for the
bachelor state for evermore. Perhaps you'd best to name that to
Dinah. Though, for my part, I should hope it would be years after
her last adventure afore she ever dared to think upon a man again."
"So it would be--so it would be in the course of nature," granted
Ben. "No doubt you're right; and yet--there it is. He seems to
attract her--against her own reason I dare say."
"When that happens, it means love," declared Enoch.
Melinda spoke like a woman. She was fond of Dinah, but had been
exceedingly sorry for Johnny.
"Queer--sure enough," she said. "If Dinah, now, was to feel drawn to
a man as hadn't any use for her, it would be fair justice in a manner
of speaking, wouldn't it, Mr. Bamsey?"
"In a manner of speaking I dare say it might, Melindy," he admitted.
"But I'll not hear Dinah tongue-handled over that no more."
"I'll sound Lawrence on his next visit," promised Enoch. "But he's
very shy where his own affairs are concerned."
"And another thing be certain," added Melinda, "Joe Stockman would be
terrible put about if he thought any such doings as that was in the
wind."
Then Mr. Bamsey went his way, as doubtful as when he came.
CHAPTER XVI
SUNDAY
Jerry and his sweetheart wandered together along the lane from
Buckland on an afternoon when Jane had been visiting the Withycombes.
The sun beat down through the trees and even in the shade it was too
hot to tempt the lovers far.
"We'll climb up the Beacon a little ways and quott down in the fern,"
said Jerry, "and I'll smoke in your face and keep the flies off."
Jane, however, objected.
"I'm going to Hazel Tor I reckon, and then to Cousin Joe's for tea.
We'll meet John at Hazel Tor. Shall we tell him our secret plans,
Jerry?"
"I don't care who knows it. If you feel there's no more need to hide
up what we've ordained to do, then tell everybody."
"There's every need to hide up for that matter. Only Johnny's
different from others. Me and Johnny are pretty close pals and
always were. He won't mind us having a shop in a town. I've often
told him I was set on the thought of a shop."
"The doubt will lie with me," said Jerry. "I know very well my
father and Melindy and everybody will say I ban't the sort of man to
shine at a shop."
"There's shops and shops," answered Jane, "and it's a very difficult
question indeed to decide what to sell. If we sold some things you'd
be a lot more useful than if we sold others. But there's a lot of
things I wouldn't care about selling."
They had already debated this matter many times, and never failed to
find it attractive.
"There's certain goods ruled out, I know," he said. "You don't hold
with butching, nor yet a fish shop."
"Nothing like that. I won't handle dead things," declared Jane. "It
lies in my mind between three shops now. I've brought 'em down to
three. There's a shop for children's toys, which I'd very much like,
because new toys be clean and bright and interesting to me; but you
wouldn't be much use in that."
"I should not," admitted Jerry.
"Then," continued Jane, "there's a green-grocer's; and there's a
great deal to be said for that, because we should have father behind
us in a manner of speaking, and he'd let us have tons of fruit and
vegetables at a very small price, or no price at all I dare say."
"Only if he comes round, Jenny. You grant yourself he'll little like
to hear you be going to spend your capital on a shop."
"He'll come round when he sees I'm in earnest. And it might help him
to come round if we took a green-grocer's. But I'm not saying I'd
specially like a green-grocer's myself, because I shouldn't. 'Tis
always a smelly place, and I hate smells."
"All shops have their smells," answered Jerry. "Even a linen draper
to my nose have a smell, though I couldn't describe it in words."
"They have," admitted she. "And the smell I'd like best to live in
be tobacco. If I'd only got myself to think for, it would be a
tobacco shop, because there you get all your stuff advanced on the
cheap, I believe, and if you once have a good rally to the shop, they
bring their friends. And it's quite as much a man's job as a
woman's."
"My head spins when I think of it, however," confessed Jerry. "The
only shop I see myself in is the green-grocer's, and only there for
the cabbages and potatoes and such like. The higher goods, such as
grapes and fine fruits, would be your care."
Jane shook her head.
"Half the battle is to feel a call to a thing," she said, "same as I
felt a call to you. And as I'll be shopwoman most of the time, it's
more important as I shall be suited than you."
"Certainly."
"There's more money moving among men than women: you must remember
that too," continued Jane. "Men have bigger views and don't haggle
over halfpennies like women. A green-grocer's be a terrible shop for
haggling; but with tobacco and pipes and cigars, the price is marked
once for all, and only men buy 'em, and the clever shop women often
just turn the scales and sell the goods. I've watched these things
when I've been in Ashburton along with father, or Johnny; and I've
seen how a pleasant, nice-spoken woman behind the counter, especially
if she's good-looking, have a great power. Then, again, the
bettermost sort of men go into a tobacconist; but never into a
green-grocer. Buying vegetables be woman's work."
"I can see you incline your heart to tobacco," said Jerry. "And so,
no doubt, it will be tobacco; but I must work, and if there's no work
for me in our shop, then I'll have to find it outside our shop. Lots
of women keep a shop and their men do something else."
"Why not?"
"Us may say the lot's pretty well cast for tobacco then. Shall us
tell Johnny to-day and get his opinion?"
"I'll see what sort of frame he's in," replied Jane. "He's been dark
lately, because he's getting slowly and surely to know that Dinah
Waycott ain't going back on her word. It makes me dance with rage
sometimes to think that John can want her still, and would forgive
the woman to-morrow if she offered to take up with him again."
"Love's like that, I dare say," guessed Jerry. "It'll sink to pretty
well anything."
"Well, I hate to see it--a fine man like my brother. He comes and
goes, and they've made it up and are going to be friends; at least,
father thinks so--as if anything could ever make up a job like that.
If I was a man, and a woman jilted me, I know when I'd make it up.
I'd hate her to my dying day, and through eternity too."
"You oughtn't to say things like that, Jane."
"It ain't over yet," she continued. "I shouldn't wonder much if
there was an upstore before long. Dinah can't keep secrets and she's
shameless. There's another in her eye as I have told you--talk of
the devil!"
They were abreast of Falcon Farm and a man descended from it by a
path to the main road as Jane spoke. Maynard was on his way to
Buckland. He met them and gave them "good day" pleasantly enough.
Jerry responded and praised the weather, but his sweetheart did not
speak.
"Your brother be coming up to tea at the farm," said Lawrence.
"I know that," was all Jane answered, and he went his way without
more words.
"There!" she exclaimed, when he was out of earshot.
"Why did you say 'talk of the devil'?" asked Jerry. "Surely nobody
have a quarrel with that chap? My father says he's a very proper
sort and a lot cleverer than you might think."
"I dare say he is a lot cleverer than some people," answered Jane;
"but he ain't a lot cleverer than me. He's a tricky beast, that's
what he is, and us'll know it presently."
Jerry was much astonished.
"I never! You're the first person as I've heard tell against him.
Joe Stockman thinks the world of him. What have he done to you? If
you have got any fair thing against the man, I'll damn soon be
upsides with him."
"I'll tell you this," she replied. "I believe Dinah's hanging on at
home and letting father have his way, not because she cares two
straws for father really. She's a heartless thing under all her
pretence. But she's on that man's track, and she's too big a fool to
hide it from me. And him that would look at her, after what she done
to Johnny, must be a beast. And I hope you see that if you're not
blind."
Jerry scratched his head and stared at her.
"I'm sure I trust you be wrong, Jenny. That would be a very
ill-convenient thing to happen, because Farmer Stockman would be
thrown very bad."
"What does he matter? Can't you see the insult to John? And can't
you see that, if they be after each other on the quiet, it must have
been Maynard that kindiddled Dinah away from John in the first place?
What I believe is that he came between Dinah and John, and got round
her, and made her give John up."
"For God's sake don't say such things," begged Jerry. "Don't you
rush in like that, or you'll very likely wish you hadn't. 'Tis too
fearful, and you can't tell what far-reaching trouble you might make
if you was to tell John such a thing. Him being what he is, you
might land him--Lord knows where!"
She considered this.
"You're right so far I suppose; all the same I've had it on the tip
of my tongue to whisper this to John and bid him watch them."
"Don't then--for the Lord's love, don't," implored Withycombe. "It
would be playing with fire. If she's given over John once for all,
then let him think no more about the woman. 'Tis no good spying, nor
nothing like that. It ain't your business; and for that matter, it
might be the best thing to happen for somebody to get hold of Dinah,
and marry her, and take her far ways off. John have got to come to
it, and when he found she loved somebody else, surely that would show
him 'twas wasting his time to grizzle any more about her."
"I'll thank you to look at it different, Jerry," said Jane sharply.
"If I hate a man, for very good reasons, then you ought to do the
same. I can see into things a lot deeper than what you can, as
you've always granted, and I can see into Maynard. He's the silent,
shifty sort, deep as a well--and I won't have you sticking up for him
against me, so now then."
Jerry whistled.
"I've nothing for, or against him," he answered slowly. "I scarcely
know the man, but there's my father and others speak well of him; and
I'm always wishful to think well of everybody, unless there's a
reason against."
"I'm the reason against then," she declared, "and you've got to put
me and my opinions first, I should hope. I'm a kindly creature
enough, God knows, and ban't quick to think evil."
"Certainly not," admitted Jerry.
"But I look to you to pay me the respect due," she continued, "and if
I tell you a man's doubtful, then 'tis for you to believe me and act
according."
"I will," he promised. "We'm all doubtful for that matter. Us will
speak and think of the man as we find him. We needn't go out of the
way to make trouble."
"I ban't one to make trouble," she retorted; "but, next to you,
John's more to me than anybody, and I won't stand by and see him
wronged by that hateful woman, nor yet by that man, if I can stop it."
Jerry felt this attitude unreasonable, but decided the subject had
better be dropped.
"If wrong's done, I'll help to right it, that I'll swear," he
promised.
"I'd right it myself," she said. "If I could prove the man had stole
her from my brother, I'd lie behind a hedge for him!"
"Do shut up and stop telling such dreadful things," he answered
roughly. "'Tis hateful to hear such words from your mouth--Sunday
and all. I won't have it, Jane. What the hell's the matter with
you?"
They were silent for a time; then having reached Hazel Tor, Jerry
helped his sweetheart to climb the great rocks. Soon they were
perched high on the granite, and Jane opened a white and blue
parasol, while he stretched his vast limbs at her feet and smoked his
pipe. His elephantine playfulness and ideas on the tobacco shop won
Jane's smiles presently, and at heart Jerry regretted the moment when
his future brother-in-law ascended through the pine-trees from the
river and joined them.
The fret and sting of his hopeless quest had marked John Bamsey, and
now he was come to the knowledge that no hope remained. His dream
dissolved. Until now he had defied reason and lived on shadows spun
of desire. He had sunk beneath his old pride and returned to Dinah's
hand. He had not grovelled; but he assumed an attitude, after the
passing of the first storm, that astonished his family. And Dinah it
astonished also, filling her with fresh pain. He had hung on; he had
asked her to forgive his words upon the bridge; he had returned into
the atmosphere of her and gone and come from home as before.
Dominated by his own passion, he had endured even the wonder in his
mother's eyes, the doubt in Jane's. Dinah could not be explicit to
him, since he had been careful not to give her any opportunity for
the present. But, under his humility, he had bullied her. The very
humility was a sort of bullying, and she felt first distracted and
then indignant that he should persist. To him she could not speak,
but to Faith Bamsey and Jane she could speak; and to the former she
did.
Mrs. Bamsey therefore knew that Dinah was not going to marry John,
and in her heart she was thankful for it; while none the less
indignant that John's perfections should have failed of fruition for
Dinah. She resented Dinah's blindness and obstinacy, and felt
thankful, for John's sake, that the girl would never be his wife. As
for Jane she had never shared her brother's whispered hope that Dinah
would return to him. She hated Dinah, and while hot with sympathy
for her brother, rejoiced that, sooner or later, her father's
foster-daughter must disappear and never be linked to a Bamsey.
Johnny's present attitude, however, she did not know; and it was left
for this hour amid the tree girt rocks of Hazel Tor to teach her.
She longed to learn what he would say if any other man were hinted of
in connection with Dinah. She much wanted Johnny to share her
opinion of Dinah, and now, ripened for mischief by the recent sight
of Maynard, she prepared to sound Johnny. Jerry suspected what was
in her mind and hoped that she would change it. They spoke first of
their own secret, and informed John, after exacting from him promises
of silence.
He was moody and his expression had changed. Care had come into his
face and its confidence had abated. He had always liked to talk, and
possessed with his own wrongs, of late, began to weary other ears.
To his few intimate friends he had already spoken unwisely and salved
the wounds of pride by assuring them that the rupture was not
permanent. He had even hinted that he was responsible for it--to
give the woman he designed to wed a lesson. He had affected
confidence in the future; and now this was not the least of his
annoyances, that when the truth came in sight, certain people would
laugh behind his back. Upon such a temper it was easy to see how any
mention of another man in connection with Dinah must fall; and had
Jane really known all that was tormenting her brother's mind, at the
moment when it began to feel the truth, even she might have
hesitated; but she did not.
John considered their dreams of a shop without much sympathy and
doubted their wisdom.
"You're a woodman and only a woodman--bred to it," he declared.
"What the mischief should you make messing about among shops and
houses in a town? You know you'd hate it, just so much as I should
myself, and you know well he would, if he don't, Jane."
"You forget his feeling for me, Johnny," explained his sister. "It
wouldn't be natural to him I grant; but there's me; and what's my
good be Jerry's good when we'm married."
"You ought to think of his good, too, however. I shouldn't hide this
up. You'd do well to talk to mother before you do anything."
"You don't think father will change about the five hundred pound?"
asked Jane. "'Twas fear of that kept us quiet."
"No; he won't change. I was to have had the same."
"And so you will have," she said. "'Tis only a question of time."
"You'll get one as feels for you, same as Jane feels for me,
presently," ventured Jerry.
"And Dinah Waycott will get hell," added Jane; "and I dare say it may
happen to her afore so mighty long, for that matter."
Jerry shrank, for Jane's brother fastened on this.
"What d'you mean?" he asked, and she was glad he did.
"Nothing, Johnny; only I've got eyes. I ban't one to think evil; but
I can't help being pretty quick where you are concerned. You're next
to Jerry, and I shan't be a happy woman till you're a happy man, and
you know it."
"What then, Jane?"
"We met Lawrence Maynard walking down the road a bit ago."
"And if you did?"
She dared greatly.
"I suppose you haven't ever heard his name along with hers?"
"'Hers'? D'you mean Dinah's? No, by God--nor any other man's! If I
did----Out with it. What are you saying, Jane?"
To hear him swear made Jerry wonder, for John had never sworn in the
past. The woodman, regarding him very anxiously, now perceived how
his face and the tone of his voice had altered. That such phenomena
were visible to Jerry's intelligence argued their magnitude.
"She went for a long walk with him a few weeks back," said Jane.
"She made no secret about it. He took her to see a stone out Hey Tor
way."
"Did he? And why didn't you tell me?"
"I was going to; but I waited to see if there was more to tell.
There is no more than that--not yet."
Johnny fell silent. His mind moved quickly. Love had already begun
to suffer a change, half chemical, half psychological, that would
presently poison it. Such passion as he had endured for Dinah would
not fade and suffer extinction in Johnny's order of mind. He came to
the ordeal untried and untested. He had till now been a thief of
virtue, in the sense that he was good and orderly, peace-loving and
obedient by native bent and instinct. He fitted into the order of
things as they were and approved them. Nothing had ever happened to
make him unrestful, to incite class prejudice, or to foment
discontent with his station. He had looked without sympathy on the
struggle for better industrial conditions; he had despised doubt in
the matter of religion. He was born good: his mother had said the
Old Adam must surely be left out of him. But now came the shock, and
pride prevented John from admitting his failure to anybody else;
pride, indeed, had assured him that such a man as he must have his
own way in the end.
He debated the past, and his self-respect tottered before his
thoughts, as a stout boulder shakes upon its foundations at the
impact of a flood. He stared at Jane and Jerry unseeing, and they
marked the blood leap up into his face and his eyes grow bright.
This idea was new to him. What Jane said acted perilously, for it
excused to himself his gathering temper under defeat and justified
his wrath in his own sight.
"Be careful," he said. "D'you know all it means you'm saying, Jane?"
"For God's sake, unsay it, Jenny," urged her sweetheart. "You can't
know--nobody can know."
"If any other man thinks he'll have that woman----"
John said no more; but his own thoughts surged up and seemed to be
bursting his head. A mountain of wrongs was toppling down upon him.
He forgot his companions; then became suddenly conscious of their
eyes staring into his. He looked at them as though they had been
strangers, started up, went down the rocks at a pace to threaten his
neck and then was gone through the trees, plunging straight ahead
like a frightened animal.
Jerry Withycombe declared great alarm; Jane only felt the deepest
interest.
"Now you've done it," said the man.
"So much the better," she answered. "It was bound to come. I'm
glad."
Meantime Maynard, musing on Jane Bamsey's curt attitude, had reached
Buckland to spend an hour or two by invitation with Enoch Withycombe.
"Time drags for you sometimes I expect," said Lawrence.
"No, I wouldn't say time drags," declared the sick man. "Time don't
run more than sixty minutes to the hour with me, though I can't say
it runs less, like it does for the young and hale and hearty people.
Give me a new book and life don't drag. And there's always memory.
I've got a very good memory--better than many who come to see me I
reckon. My mind keeps clear, and I still have the power to go over
my great runs with hounds. And I don't mix 'em. I can keep 'em
separate and all the little things that happened. You'd think they'd
get muddled up; but they do not."
"That's wonderful," said Lawrence.
"Yes, I can shut my eyes and get in a comfortable position and bring
it all afore me and feel my horse pulling and my feet in the
stirrups. And once or twice of late I've dreamed dreams; and that's
even better, because for the moment, you're in the saddle
again--living--living! When I wake up from a dream like that, I make
a point of thanking God for it, Maynard. I'd sooner have a dream
like that than anything man can give me now."
"They're terrible queer things--dreams," declared the younger. "I've
had a few of late. They take hold of you when your mind's more than
common full, I reckon."
"Or your stomach--so doctor says. But that's not right. I've
stuffed once or twice--greedy like--just for the hope that when I
went to sleep I'd be hunting, but it never did anything but keep me
awake. No, dreams hang on something we can't understand I reckon;
and why the mind won't lie down and sleep with the body, sometimes,
but must be off on its own, we can't tell. But there's things said
about dreams that ban't true, Lawrence. I read somewhere that you
never see the faces of the dead in dreams. That's false. You do see
'em. I saw my brother none so long ago--not as he was when he died,
but as a little boy. And dreams be very reasonable in their
unreason, you must know, for I was a little boy too. I saw his young
face and flaxen hair, and heard him laugh, and we was busy as bees
climbing up a fir-tree to a squirrel's dray in a wood. A thing, no
doubt, we'd done in life together often enough, sixty years agone;
and 'twas put into my dream, and I woke all the better for it."
"Don't you get no sad dreams?" asked Lawrence.
"They come too. They leave you a bit down-daunted, I grant. And
some be lost, because you can't call 'em home when you wake up.
You'll dream a proper masterpiece sometimes and wake full of it; and
yet, for some mysterious working of the brain, 'tis gone, and you try
to stretch after it, but never can catch it again. I woke in
tears--fancy! Yes, in tears I woke once, long ago now; and for the
life of me I didn't know what fetched 'em out of my eyes."
"Perhaps you'd had a cruel bout of pain while you was asleep?"
"No, no; pain don't get tear or groan out of me. I'll never know
what it was."
He broke off suddenly, for a previous speech of his visitor gave him
the opening he desired.
"You said just now you'd been dreaming, along of your mind, that was
more than common full. Was it anything interesting in particular on
your mind, or just life in general?"
"Just life as it comes along I reckon."
Enoch regarded him.
"You be looking ahead, as you've the right to do. You're a man a
thought out of the common in your understanding. You don't want to
work for another all your life, do you?"
"I never look much ahead. Sometimes the past blocks the future, and
a man's often less ambitious at thirty than he was ten years before.
I don't particular want a home of my own. A home means a lot of
things I've got no use for."
"Pretty much what some of the maidens think," said Enoch with craft.
"For them a home means a man; and for us it means a woman, of course,
because we can't very well establish anything to be called home
without one. Orphan Dinah wants badly to be off, so Ben Bamsey, her
foster-father, tells me. And yet he's in a quandary; because he
feels that if a happy home were in sight for her, he'd far sooner she
waited for it, a year or more, than left him to go somewhere else."
"A very reasonable thought. But these things don't fall out as we
want 'em to."
They fenced a little, but Lawrence was very guarded and committed
himself to no opinion of Dinah until Enoch, failing in strategy,
tried a direct question.
"What do you think of Orphan Dinah as a woman?" he asked.
"I like her," answered the other frankly. "Since you ask, there's no
harm in saying I think she's a very fine character. She haven't
shone much of late, because there was a lot of feeling about what she
done; and it's been made the most of I can see by women, and some
men. But she's made it clear to me and to you, I hope, that she did
right. She's built on a pretty big pattern and she's had a lot to
put up with, and she's been very patient about it."
"A bit out of the common you'd say?"
"I think she is."
"I may tell you, for your ear alone, Maynard, that she thinks very
well of you."
Lawrence tightened his lips.
"No, no--don't you say that. She don't know me. I dare say, if she
was to, she'd feel different."
"Dinah can't hide herself from her foster-father's eyes," explained
Enoch. "She don't try to for that matter, and Ben sees that there's
something about you that interests her; and you've told me there be
something to her that interests you. And what follows? I'm only an
old man speaking, and you mustn't take offence whether or no."
"There's no offence," answered Lawrence. "You'd not offend anybody.
But I'd rather not have any speech about it, Mr. Withycombe."
Enoch had said all he desired to say and learned all he wanted to
learn.
"And quite right and proper," he answered. "These things are very
safe where they belong, and I wouldn't rush into a man's private
affairs for money."
"You've been a very good friend to me and made my mind bigger,"
declared Lawrence. "A man that can preach patience from your bed of
pain, like you do, did ought to be heard. It ain't easy I should
reckon."
They talked of Enoch's books and his master, who had lately been to
see him.
"There's one who fears not to look the truth in the face," said the
huntsman. "He told me things that only I say to myself, because the
rest are too tender to say them. Doctor looks them, but even he
won't say them out. But master could tell me I'd soon be gone. He
believes in the next world, and don't see no reason in the nature of
things why there shouldn't be fox-hunting there."
Another visitor dropped in upon Mr. Withycombe. It was Arthur Chaffe
in his Sunday black.
"If one's enough at a time, I'll be off," he said, "and fetch up
again next Sunday."
But Enoch welcomed him.
"I'm in good fettle, Arthur, and be very willing to make hay while
the sun shines."
Arthur, however, doubted.
"You'm looking so grim as a ghost, my old dear," he answered, "and so
white as a dog's tooth."
Mr. Withycombe laughed.
"You be a cheerful one for a death-bed, sure enough," he answered.
"There's no death, Enoch, and you know it so well as what I do."
"And you an undertaker! Mind you deal fair and square with me,
Chaffe; for death, or no death, 'tis as certain as life that I shall
want some of your best seasoned elm afore very long."
But Mr. Chaffe steadied the conversation.
"You be quiet, Enoch," he said. "This is the Lord's Day and us
didn't ought to be joking, like as if 'twas Monday."
The hunter took up the challenge and they went at it again, in the
best of humour, till Melinda returned and gave the three men tea.
They spoke of Dinah and gave examples of her quality and difference
from other young women. Mrs. Honeysett tended rather to disparage
her of late, having been influenced thereto in certain quarters; but
Arthur Chaffe supported Dinah, and Lawrence listened.
He presently, however, quoted.
"Long ago, before she had to break with poor Bamsey, I remember a
word she said to me," he remarked. "It showed she knew a bit about
human nature and was finding out that everybody couldn't be relied
upon. She asked me if I was faithful. It seemed a curious question
at the time."
"And you said you was, no doubt?" asked Melinda.
"We must all be faithful," declared Arthur Chaffe. "Where there's no
faith, there's no progress, and the order of things would run down
like a clock."
"The world goes round on trust," admitted Mr. Withycombe, "and the
more man can trust man, the easier we advance and the quicker.
'Faithful' be the word used between us in business and it wasn't the
one we fixed upon for nothing. 'Yours faithfully' we say."
"Yes, oftener than we mean it, God forgive us," sighed Mr. Chaffe.
"'Tis often only a word and too few respect it. Us have all written
so to people we hate, and would like to think was going to be found
dead in their beds to-morrow. Such is the weakness of human nature."
"We must be civil even to enemies," said the sick man.
"I wonder," mused Melinda. "It's a bit mean to hide our feelings so
much."
"Warner Chave was a fine example," answered Mr. Chaffe. "Foes he had
a plenty, as such a straight and pushing chap must; but he never
quarrelled with man or mouse. He never gave any living soul a straw
to catch hold of. His simple rule was that it takes two to a
quarrel, and he'd never be one; and he never was. Why! He got on
with his relations even!"
"How?" asked Maynard.
"Never criticised 'em. Such was his amazing skill that he let them
live their lives their own way, and treated 'em with just the same
respect he showed to everybody else."
They enjoyed tea in a cheerful temper, and Arthur Chaffe had
continually to remind them it was Sunday.
Then he prepared to depart and Maynard left with him. In the high
road they, too, separated, for their ways were opposite.
"I laugh, but with sorrow in my heart," said Arthur, "for that dear
man be going down the hill terrible fast to the experienced eye. We
shall miss him--there's a lot of Christian charity to him, and I only
wish to God he'd got the true Light. That's all he wants. The heart
be there and the ideas; but his soul just misses the one thing
needful."
"I hope not," said Maynard. "He's earned the best we can wish for."
"It may come yet," prophesied Arthur. "It may flash in upon him at
the last. Where there's life, there's hope of salvation. Us must
never forget that the prayers of a righteous man availeth much,
Maynard."
"And the life of a righteous man availeth more, Mr. Chaffe," answered
Lawrence.
"That we ain't told," replied the elder. "We can only leave the
doubter to the mercy of his Maker; and there's many and many got to
be left like that, for doubt's growing, worse luck. Us say 'sure and
certain hope' over a lot of mortal dust, when too well our intellects
tell us the hope ban't so certain nor yet sure as us would like to
feel."
He perked away on his long, thin legs, like a friendly stork, and
Maynard set his face upward for his home.
CHAPTER XVII
DINAH
Though circumstances had of late baffled Dinah Waycott and tended
sometimes to beget a reserve and caution foreign to her; though she
found herself hiding her thoughts in a manner very unfamiliar and
keeping silent, where of old she would have spoken, or even allowing
by default an opinion to pass unquestioned as hers which of old she
would have contradicted; there was still no confusion in her mind
when she communed with herself. Therefore, when she found that she
stood face to face with a new thing, she pretended no doubt as to the
name of it. Bewilderment, none the less, filled her mind, and
elements of joy, that might be supposed proper to such an experience,
could not at present live with the other more distracting sensations
her discovery awakened. Something like dismay she did feel, that any
such paramount event should have overtaken her at this stage in her
life; for Dinah was not insensitive, though so plain-spoken, and now
painfully she felt this was no time to have developed the burning
preoccupation that already swept into nothingness every adventure and
emotion of the past.
There had happened a precious wonder beyond all wonders, but Dinah
felt angry with herself that, under present conditions of stress and
anxiety, any loophole existed for such a selfish passion. It had
come, however, and it could not stand still; and selfish she had to
be, since the good and glory of the thing must be shared with none at
present.
Silent, however, she could not be for long. There was one to whom
she never feared to talk and from whom she had no secrets. To him,
her foster-father, Dinah had taken every joy and sorrow, hope and
fear since she could talk. Only once, and that in the matter of his
own son, John, had she hidden her heart from Ben Bamsey, yet found it
possible to show it to another.
She remembered that now; and it was that same 'other,' who, from the
first, had possessed a nameless quality to challenge and arrest
Dinah. Gradually he had occupied a larger and larger domain in her
mind, until he overwhelmed it and her gradual revelation was
complete. For gradual it had been. Together they walked once more
at her wish, after their first long tramp, while, agreeably to the
invitation of Mr. Bamsey, Lawrence Maynard again visited Green Hayes
upon a Sunday afternoon. Then, indeed, under the eyes of Jane and
her mother, Dinah had hidden her heart very effectually, and even
made occasion to leave the house and go elsewhere before Maynard's
visit was ended; but she knew by signs in her body and soul that she
was in love. The amazing novelty of her thoughts, the
transfiguration they created in her outlook upon all things, the new
colours they imparted to any vision of the future, convinced her that
there could be no doubt. Against this reality, the past looked
unreal; before this immensity, the past appeared, dwarfed and futile.
That cloudy thing, her whole previous existence, was now reduced to a
mere huddled background--its only excuse the rainbow that had
suddenly glowed out upon it.
She was honestly ashamed that love could have happened to her at this
moment and thrust so abruptly in upon her sad experience with Johnny.
It seemed, in some moods, callous and ungenerous to allow such
wayward delights and dreams to enter her heart while well she knew
that his was heavy. But, at other times, she would not blame
herself, for her conscience was clear. Maynard had meant nothing to
her when she gave up her first lover, and it was no thought of him,
or any man, that had determined her to do so.
Her love at least was pure as love well could be, for she did not
know that he returned it; sometimes, at first, she almost hoped he
would not. But that was only in the dim and glimmering dawn of it.
Love cannot feed on dreams alone. She put it from her at first, only
to find it fly back. So she nursed it secretly and waited and
wondered, and, meantime, strove to find a way to leave Green Hayes.
But still Ben opposed her suggestions, and then there came a time
when, from the first immature fancy that to love him secretly,
herself unloved, would be enough, Dinah woke into a passionate desire
that he should love her back again. Now she was mature,
accomplished, awake and alert, lightning quick to read his mood, the
inflexion of every word he uttered when he was beside her, the
faintest brightening of his eyes, his dress, his walk, the
inspiration of every moment.
She could not help it. Often she returned dull and daunted, not with
him but herself; and as she began to know, from no sign of his but by
her own quickened sex endowment that he cared for her, she grew faint
and ashamed again. He had taught her a great deal. He seemed to be
very wise and patient, but not particularly happy--rather unfinished
even on some sides of his experience. There were a great many things
he did not know, and he seemed not nearly as interested in life as
she was, or as desirous to have it more abundantly. Johnny had
evinced a much keener appetite for living and far greater future
ambitions than Maynard. Lawrence was, in fact, as somebody had said,
"a twilight sort of man." But it was a cool, clear, self-contained
twilight that he moved in, and he appeared to see distinctly enough
through it. Dinah thought it was twilight of morning rather than
night. She imagined him presently emerging into a wonderful dawn,
and dreamed of helping him to do so. She checked such fancies, yet
they were natural to her direct temperament, and they recurred with
increasing force. Her native freedom of mind broke down all barriers
to private thinking, and sometimes she longed for him; then she
chastened herself and planned a future without him and found it not
worth remaining alive for. She began to sleep ill, but hid the
signs. She plotted to see Maynard and was also skilful to conceal
the fact that she did so. He always welcomed her, sometimes with a
merry word, sometimes with a sad one. The milch cows grazed upon the
moor now, and once or twice, sighting them a mile off upon her way
home, Dinah would creep near and wait for Lawrence and the sheep dog
to round them up and turn them to the valley for milking. She would
hide in a thicket, or behind a boulder, and if he came would get a
few precious words; but if Neddy Tutt appeared, as sometimes
happened, then she would lie hid and go her way when he was gone.
She knew now that Maynard cared for her; but she discounted his every
word and granted herself the very minimum. She was fearful of hoping
too much, yet could not, for love's sake, hope too little. She
longed to set her mind at rest upon the vital question; and at last
did so. Making all allowance, and striving to chill and belittle his
every word, she still could not longer doubt. He was often difficult
to understand, yet some things she did now clearly comprehend. She
had already seen a man in love, and though the love-making of Johnny
differed very widely from that of Lawrence, though indeed Lawrence
never had made a shadow of love to her, yet she knew at last, by
mental and physical signs that curiously repeated Johnny's, he did
love her.
She hugged this to her heart and felt that nothing else mattered, or
would ever matter. For a time she even returned to her first dream
and assured herself that love was enough. He might tell her some
day; he might never tell her; but she knew it, and whether they came
together, or lived their lives apart, the great fact would remain.
Yet there was no food in any such conclusion, no life, no fertility,
no peace.
She came to Ben Bamsey at this stage of her romance, for she hungered
and thirsted to tell it; and to her it seemed that her foster-father
ought to know. She came to him fresh from a meeting with Lawrence,
for she had been, at Mr. Bamsey's wish, with a message to Falcon
Farm, and she had met Maynard afterwards as she returned over the
foothills of the Beacon.
The year was swinging round, and again the time had come for scything
the fern, that it might ripen presently for the cattle byres.
He stopped a moment and shook hands with her.
"Just been up to see Soosie-Toosie," said Dinah. "Terrible sorry Mr.
Palk's cut his hand so bad."
"Yes; it'll have to go in a sling for a bit. He thought it would
mend and didn't take no great count of it, and now it's festered and
will be a fortnight before it's all right."
"I wish I could help," she said. "If you was to do his work and Mr.
Stockman would let me come and milk the cows for a week----"
"No, no--no need for any help. Tom can do a lot. It's only his left
hand and master's turning to. He says if he can't do the work of
Tom's left hand, it's a shame to him."
"Did Mr. Palk get his rise he was after?"
"He did not, Dinah. But Mr. Stockman put it in a very nice way.
He's going to raise us both next year. And you? Nothing turned up?"
She shook her head.
"A funny thing among 'em all they can't find just the right work. I
wish you was away from Green Hayes."
She had told him all about her difficulties and he appreciated them.
He thought a great deal about Dinah now, but still more about
himself. He had been considering her when she appeared; and for the
moment he did not want to see her. His mind ebbed and flowed, where
Dinah was concerned, and he was stubborn with himself and would not
admit anything. He persisted in this attitude, but now he began to
perceive it was impossible much longer to do so. If Dinah had read
him, he also had read her, for she was not difficult to read and
lacked some of the ordinary armour of a woman in love with a man. He
knew time could not stand still for either of them, yet strove to
suspend it. Sometimes he was gentle and sometimes he was abrupt and
ungenial when they met. To-day he dismissed her.
"Don't you bide here now," he said. "I'm busy, Dinah, and I've got a
good bit on my mind too."
"I'm sorry then. You ask Soosie if I shall come and milk. That
would give you more time. Good morning, Lawrence."
He had seen how her face fell.
"I wish I could think of a way out for you. Perhaps I shall. I do
have it on my mind," he said. "But there's difficulties in a small
place like this. Pity you ain't farther off, where you could breathe
easier."
For some reason this remark cheered her. She left him without
speaking again and considered his saying all the way home. The
interpretation she put upon it was not wholly mistaken, yet it might
have surprised the man, for we often utter a thought impelled thereto
by subconscious motives we hardly feel ourselves. He did not for the
moment associate himself, or his interests, with the desire that
Dinah should go away, yet such a desire really existed in him,
though, had he analysed it, he had been divided between two reasons
for such a desire. He might have asked himself whether he wished her
out of her present difficult environment in order that his own
approach to her should become easier and freer of doubtful
interpretation in the mouths of other people; or he might have
considered whether, for his own peace, he honestly wished to see
Dinah so far away that reasonable excuses should exist for dropping
her acquaintance. Between these alternatives he could hardly have
decided at present. He lagged behind her, for love seldom wakens
simultaneously, or moves with equal pace on both sides. He might
continue to lag and fall farther behind, or he might catch her and
pass her. He was at a stage in their approach when he could still
dispassionately consider all that increase of friendship must imply.
He hardly knew where the friendship exactly stood at the moment.
Actual irritation sometimes intervened. He suffered fits of
impatience both with himself and her. Yet he knew, when cool again,
that neither was to be blamed. If blame existed, it was not Dinah's.
She went home now, and after dinner on that day, found opportunity to
speak with her foster-father. They were cutting oats and she
descended to the valley field beside Ben and made a clean breast of
her secrets, only to find they were not hidden from him. He treated
her as one much younger than she really was, and seeing that she was
indeed younger than her age in many particulars of mind, this process
always satisfied Dinah and made her feel happier with Ben Bamsey than
his family, who made no such concession, but, on the contrary,
attributed qualities to Dinah she lacked.
"Foster-father," she said, "I'm wishful to have a tell and here's a
good chance. I be getting in a proper mizmaze I do assure 'e."
"You must be patient, my little dear," he answered.
"I've been patient for six months, though it's more like six years
since I changed about poor Johnny. And other people, so well as I,
do feel I'd be better away."
"Have I ever said you wouldn't be better away, Dinah? I know only
too well how it is. But a father can look deeper into life than his
child. I'm wide awake--watching. I understand your troubles and try
to lessen 'em where I can."
"If you wasn't here, I'd have runned away long ago. For a little
bit, after that cruel come-along-of-it, I wouldn't have minded to
die. Now that's passed; but you, who never did such a thing, can't
tell what it is to know that you're fretting and galling two other
women. And Mrs. Bamsey and Jane have a right to be fretted and
galled by me. I can well understand, without their looks, how I must
be to them; and 'tis a sharp thorn in your flesh to be hated, and
it's making me miserable."
He had not guessed she much felt this side of the position.
"You'm growing up, I see, like everybody else," he said. "I forget
that I can't have it both ways, and can't have you a loving, watchful
daughter and a child too. And if you can think for me, as you do so
wonderful, then you'm old enough to feel for yourself, of course.
Still you'm so parlous young in some ways, that it ain't strange I
still think of you a child in everyway. I suppose you must go and I
mustn't find nothing against no more. And yet----"
He broke off, his mind upon Maynard.
While he was hesitating and wondering whether he should name the man,
Dinah saved him the trouble.
"Only this morning coming home from Falcon Farm I met
Lawrence--Lawrence Maynard and he--even he, an outsider so to say,
said he thought I'd be better far ways off. And I well know it. I
didn't ought to be breathing the same air as Johnny. It ain't fair
to him, especially when you know he's not taking it just like I meant
it. And I wouldn't say it's right, foster-father."
He, however, was more concerned for the moment with the other man
than his own son.
"Johnny's beginning to understand. His good sense will come to help
him," he answered; "but when you say 'Lawrence Maynard,' Dinah--what
do you say? Why for has he troubled his head about your affairs?"
"You like him?" she answered.
"Granted. And so do you seemingly. And how much do you like him?
Do you like him as much as I think you do, Dinah?"
She was astonished but pleased.
"I'm glad you ask me that; but I hope Mrs. Bamsey and Jane----?"
"So do I. No, they haven't marked nothing; or if they have, they've
hid it from me very close. But Faith wouldn't hide nothing. Tell
me."
She hesitated.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"I think you care about the man."
"I love him then."
"Ah!"
"It sounds a fearful thing spoke out naked. But truth's truth, and
I'm very thankful to tell you. Don't you call it wicked nor nothing
like that. It only happened a very little while--not till long, long
after I dropped Johnny. But it has happened; and now I know I never
loved dear Johnny a morsel."
He reflected.
"The man himself told you to go--Maynard, I mean? What was in his
mind when he said that?"
"I've been wondering. It ought to have made me sad; but it hasn't.
Ought it to have made me sad?"
"Has Lawrence Maynard----? What about his side?"
"I don't know--yet I do. There's some things you feel. I don't
think I could have loved him if I hadn't known he loved me first.
Could I?"
"He's never said it, however?"
"A man's eyes and ways say things."
"Don't you talk like this to anybody but me, Dinah," urged Mr. Bamsey.
"Not likely. Is it wrong?"
"I'm moving in the matter; I'm moving," he answered. "You can't hide
much from me, and already I've had Maynard in my thoughts."
"You haven't?"
"Yes. I've seen a very good, common friend. And I'll tell you this.
I sounded Mr. Withycombe--the bed-lier. The young man often goes of
a Sunday to see him, and Enoch thinks well of him. But more than
that. He's spoke cautious with Maynard, and Maynard likes you. He
granted you was out of the common, in fact a remarkable pattern of
woman."
She had his arm and her own tightened upon it.
"Foster-father!"
"So enough said. And now you'll understand why I'm marking time.
The rest be in the hands of God. You keep out of his way for a
bit--Maynard, I mean; and we'll watch how it goes."
"Nothing else matters now," she said.
"A lot matters now; but what matters be up to him."
"I didn't think it was possible to be so happy as I be this minute,
foster-father."
"Put it out of your mind, however, so far as nature will let you. We
be groping in the dark."
"No, no--it's all light--all light now."
"So far as he's concerned, we be in the dark," he repeated. "No
doubt the time's near when he'll offer for you, Dinah. And then he's
got to come to me. I remember the first evening he was to Green
Hayes, and seemed a thought under the weather and a little doubtful
about his Maker. I said he'd got a grievance against life, and I
must hear all about that grievance, if such there is."
"You'll never hear anything but the truth from him. He wouldn't do
anything that you wouldn't like. I'm feared of him in a way. He's
very strict and very stern sometimes. He's not what you call easy on
wrongful doing. He's better'n me."
"That no man ever was, or will be," said Ben. "I'm very glad you
came to me with this; for if you'd hung off much longer, I'd have had
to see the man. Now I shan't, and I'm not sorry. We know where we
stand, because you'm so open-minded, thank God, along with me. But
we don't know--at least we can't be sure we know--where he stands.
It's up to Mr. Maynard to unfold his feelings. And for sure he very
soon will."
"And why should you reckon he advised me to be off from here so soon
as I could?" asked Dinah again. "Queerly enough I liked him for
saying it, and yet--yet you might think there might be a frosty
reason."
"There might be. Time will show. You can't be off till we've found
the proper place for you to be off to. Now you run home about your
chores. Mother wants you in the garden. There's the last lot of
rasps to be picked. I didn't count on no more, but I was surprised
to see enough to market yet."
She ran up the hill and he descended to a field of heavy oats. The
weather after a spell of sunny days began to break up and Mr. Bamsey
hoped to get his crop off the ground before it did so. But his mind
was not on his oats. He believed that Dinah must indeed leave him
now, and guessed that Maynard would think it wise to abandon his
present work and take her far away. Mr. Bamsey knew what this must
mean for him. He did not disguise from himself that he loved Dinah
better than anything on earth, while blaming himself unfeignedly for
doing so.
CHAPTER XVIII
MAYNARD
Mr. Stockman, having decided that sea air and a fortnight of rest
were desirable to fortify him against another winter, had been absent
from his home and was only recently returned. He had visited a
friend, who farmed land in the neighbourhood of Berry Head, above
Brixham, and he declared himself very much better for the change of
scene and companionship. He related his adventures, told how he had
trusted himself to the sea on more than one occasion in a Brixham
trawler, and also expatiated in Soosie-Toosie's ear upon a woman whom
he had met--the daughter of his friend.
"Mr. King has but one stay-at-home child, like me," he said, "and I
could wish you were able to see the way Ann King runs her father's
house. Not a breath against you, Susan--you know how I thank my God
every night on my knees for such a daughter; but there's a
far-sightedness and a sureness about Ann as I don't remember to have
marked in any other female."
"How old might she be?" asked Susan.
"Older than you by ten years I dare say; but it's not so much that as
her way of dealing with life and her sure head. The Elms Farm is
bigger than ours and mostly corn. They grow amazing fine wheat, to
the very edge of the cliffs; and Ann King reigns over the place and
the people in such a way that all goes on oiled wheels. She's always
ahead of time, that woman--bends time to her purpose and never is run
about, or flustered. A great lesson to a simple man like me, who
never seems to have enough time for his work."
Mr. Palk heard these things. There was growing between him and Joe a
shadow of antagonism. So faintly did this contest of wills begin
that neither appreciated it yet.
"And how many females do Miss King have at her word of command,
master?" asked Thomas, his subconscious self up in arms as usual when
Susan was even indirectly assailed.
Joe stared blandly at him.
"Hullo! I didn't know you was there, Thomas. I was talking to my
daughter, Thomas, not you, if you'll excuse me; and if you've got
nothing on your hands for the moment, perhaps you won't mind having a
look over the harness and reporting to me to-morrow. I was put about
when I came home to see a bit of rope where there did ought to be
leather, Thomas. You know what I mean."
"I was going to name it," answered Mr. Palk.
"Good; I'm sure you was; we'll go over the lot at your
convenience--to-morrow perhaps. I admire you a lot for making shift
and saving my pocket. It shows a spirit that I value in a man; but
we must keep our heads up, even under the present price of harness if
we can; and when we've had a tell over it, I'll go down to saddler at
Ashburton and put it to him as an old customer."
Joe returned from his holiday full of energy. He had to-day been at
a sale of sheep at Hey Tor village and was tramping with Maynard by
road behind fifty fine ewes from a famous breeder. He discoursed of
sheep and his man listened without much concentration.
They trudged together behind the raddled flock with a sheep-dog
attending them.
"The rare virtue of our Dartmoors is not enough known," declared Mr.
Stockman. "In my opinion, both for flesh and coat, there's no
long-wooled sheep in the world to beat 'em and few to equal 'em. Yet
you'll find, even to this day, that our Devon long-wools be hardly
known outside the South Hams and Cornwall. Mr. King had a friend
from Derbyshire stopping at Brixham--a very clever man and wonderful
learned in sheep; but he knew naught about our famous breed. They
did ought to be shown at all the big shows all over England, and
then, no doubt, they'd come into their own, and some of us who rears
'em would earn our just reward."
"That class ought to be included in all important shows certainly,"
admitted Lawrence. "At their best they can't be beat."
"And they ought to be shown in their wool," added Mr. Stockman. "The
difficulties ought to be got over, and it should be done for the
credit of the county, not to say Dartmoor."
They debated this question till the younger man wearied of it and was
glad when a farmer on horseback overtook them. He had been a seller,
and he approved of Joe's opinions, now repeated for his benefit.
Maynard walked a little apart and found leisure to think his own
thoughts. They revolved about one subject only, and reverted to it
with painful persistence.
He was in love with Dinah Waycott and knew that she was in love with
him. The something that was left out of her made this all the more
clear, for she relied on no shield of conventions; she had a way to
slip a subject of the clothes it generally wore, in shape of speech.
She had exerted no wiles, but she could not be illusive, and the
obvious qualities of Dinah which had appealed to Johnny's first love
had also, for different reasons, overwhelmed Maynard. Many men by
these very qualities in her would have been repulsed. Experienced
men might have missed those elements in Dinah that, for them, make a
woman most provocative and desirable; but in the case of this man,
his own experience of life and his personal adventure combined to
intensify the charm that her peculiar nature possessed. He had known
nothing like her; she contrasted at almost every possible point with
what he had known; she shone for him as an exemplar of all that was
most desirable in feminine character. He could not believe that
there were many such women, and he doubted not that he would never
see such another. He had tried to adopt a fatherly attitude to Dinah
and, for a considerable time, succeeded. The view he took of her at
their first acquaintance, when she was betrothed to John Bamsey,
persisted after the breaking of the engagement; but the very breaking
of the engagement enlarged this view, and the freedom, that could no
longer be denied to her after that event, had improved their
knowledge of each other until both learned the same fact. Then
Maynard could play a fatherly friendship no more, nor could the
figment of an elder brother serve. He loved her and she loved him.
A thing he had never considered as possible now complicated a life
that for seven years he had striven with all his might to simplify;
and the new situation extended far beyond Dinah, for it was
calculated to alter his own agreement and undertaking with himself.
These covenants had been entered into with himself alone.
Circumstances had long ago combined, at a certain period of his
early, adult life, to change the entire texture of existence, deflect
its proposed purpose and throw down the goal he set out to attain.
And with the changes wrought in temporal ambitions had come others.
Life thus dammed ceased to flow. His future collapsed and in its
place appeared a new purpose, if negation could be called a purpose.
That had sufficed, though at a cost of mental corrosion he did not
guess; but now it seemed that a closed book was thrown open again and
he stood once more facing outlets to life that even implied
happiness. His existence for seven years, it appeared, had not been
a progression, but a hiatus. Yet he knew, even while he told himself
this, that it must be a delusion and a juggle with reality; since no
man can for seven years stand still.
There was need for a jolt forward now, and the problem appeared
simple enough as to the thing he must do, but shattering when he saw
it done. He was deeply agitated, yet through the inexorable shot a
thread of unexpected hope and beauty. To cut this thread, which had
crept so magically into the grey fabric of existence and touched the
days of his crepuscular life with the glimmering of an unguessed
sunrise, promised to be a task so tremendous that it was not strange
he hesitated. For did any vital necessity exist to cut it? He could
not immediately convince himself, and every natural instinct and
impulse combined to cry out against such a necessity.
He had reached an attitude of mind, and that long before he met Dinah
Waycott, which now suffered no shock from the personal problem. He
had dealt in generalities and pondered and meditated on human conduct
in many aspects. The actual, present position, too, he had debated,
and even asked himself how he might expect to act under certain
circumstances. But the possibility of those circumstances ever
arising had not occurred to him, and now that they had done so, he
saw that his view and his judgment were only one side of the question
in any case. The visionary figure of a woman had turned into a real
one, and as such, her welfare and her future, not his own, instantly
became the paramount thing. What he might have deemed as sudden
salvation for himself, namely, a good and loving woman in his life,
took another colour when the woman actually appeared. The temptation
now lay in this. He knew Dinah so well, that he believed, from her
standpoint, she might look at the supreme problem as he did; and for
this very reason he delayed. Reason argued that, did Dinah see eye
to eye with him, no farther difficulty could exist, while if she did
not, there was an end of it; but some radical impulse of heredity, or
that personal factor of character, which was the man himself, fought
with reason at the very heart of his being and made the issue a far
deeper matter for Maynard now.
The horseman left Mr. Stockman and galloped forward, while Joe
regarded his retreating figure with mild amusement and turned to
Lawrence.
"Did you hear that?" he asked, and the other replied that he had not.
"I've vexed him--just the last thing ever I meant, or intended. It's
a funny world. If you mind your own business and stick to it, the
people say you're a selfish, hard-hearted creature, with no proper
feeling to humans at large. And if you seek to mind other people's
business, and serve 'em, and help the folk along, and lend a hand
where you may, then they lift their voices and call you a meddling
Paul Pry and a busybody and so on. That man's just told me to look
after my own affairs, because I went out of my way to give him a
valuable tip about his!"
"More fool him," said Maynard. "The fools are the hardest to help."
"Nothing but the people themselves keep me from doing a great deal
more good in the world than I might," declared Joe. "The will is
there, and I think I may say the wit is there; but my fellow
creatures choke me off."
"They're jealous of your sense I reckon."
"No doubt some be, Lawrence. But 'tis cutting off your nose to spite
your face, when you quarrel with a man who might be useful, just
because you hate to think he's got a better brain than you have."
"A very common thing."
"Not a mistake of the wise, however. For my part I've lived long
enough to see that jealousy, look at it all round, is the feeblest
and silliest vice we humans suffer from. There's nothing to it but
wretchedness and wasted energy. Jealous I never could be of any
living creature, I assure you."
But though Joe despised jealousy, such was his humour, that within an
hour, for the sake of personal amusement he sought to awake the
futile flame in another breast.
Melinda Honeysett was waiting at Falcon Farm when the men returned,
but she had come to see Lawrence Maynard, not Mr. Stockman. He,
however, entertained her while his man was looking after the sheep.
Indeed, he insisted on Melinda joining him in a cup of tea. He had
not seen her since his return from Brixham, and now the rogue in Joe
twinkled to the top and he began to enumerate the rare qualities of
Miss King. He knew that Melinda regarded herself as holding a sort
of proprietary right over him, and he much enjoyed this shadowy
bondage and often pretended to groan under it. But now he launched
on the task of making Melinda jealous for his private entertainment.
With Soosie-Toosie the enterprise had failed. She humbly accepted
the accomplishments of Ann King and praised her genius so heartily
that Joe soon dropped the subject; but for Melinda it came as a new
idea, and this enthusiasm on Mr. Stockman's part for a paragon at
once unknown and eligible, caused Mrs. Honeysett just that measure of
exasperation her first male friend desired to awaken.
"My!" said Melinda, after listening to the glowing story of the
farmer's daughter, her virtues, her resource, her financial ability
and her practical knowledge of affairs; "I didn't know there were any
angels to Brixham. Do she fly about, or only walk, like us common
women?"
"No, she walks," said Joe, delighted at his instant success; "but
even in walking she never wastes a footstep, like most of us. Never
wastes anything, and yet not close. Just a grasp of all that matters
and a large scorn for all that don't. And as to being an angel,
Melinda, you may say she is that--just in the same sense that you and
Soosie-Toosie and all nice women are angels. Only that. She's a
thorough human woman and, simply judged as a woman, a very fine piece
indeed."
Mrs. Honeysett laughed somewhat harshly.
"Don't you drag me and Susan in. I'm sure he needn't do that, need
he, Soosie? Such poor creatures as us--not worthy to hold a candle
to this here Jane King."
"Ann King," corrected Joe.
"You and me will go and take lessons, and ax her to teach us how to
look after our poor fathers," said Melinda to Miss Stockman. "We're
such a pair of feckless, know-naught fools that it's time we set
about larning how a parent did ought to be treated. And, by the same
token, I must get back to mine. He's bad and getting worse. I only
came to see Maynard, because father wants to have a tell with
him--to-night if possible. Poor father's going down hill fast
now--all, no doubt, because I've not understood how to nurse him and
tend him and live my life for him alone. If he'd only had Ann King
to look after him, I dare say he'd be well again by now."
Joe, greatly daring, pushed the joke a little deeper.
"You mustn't say that. There's nobody like you to look after a sick
man, Melinda, and I'm sure Miss King couldn't have done it very much
better and steadier than you have. But perhaps it might be a clever
thought to invite her up along. I dare say she'd make time to pay us
a visit, if I told her as you and Soosie-Toosie were very wishful to
make her acquaintance and gather in a bit of her far-reaching sense.
She's always as willing as I am myself to throw a bit of light."
"Ax her to come then," said Mrs. Honeysett. "'Twill be a great
blessing for me and Susan to go to school to her. And something to
see a really wise creature in Buckland, because we'm such a lot of
God-forsaken zanies here--men and women alike."
She rose breathing rather deeply.
"No tea, thank you," she said. "I've changed my mind. I'll go home
and pray for the light of Ann King to fall on my dark road. And when
she comes along, you ask her if she'll give a poor, weak-minded widow
a little of her sense. Tell her I'm one of they women that thinks
the moon be made of green cheese, will 'e? And say I believe in
pixies, and charms for warts, and black witches and white witches and
all that. And you can add that I was one of them idiots that always
gave men credit for nice feeling and good sense and liked to believe
the best about some men and stuck up for 'em, even when I heard 'em
run down and laughed at. Tell her all that; and say as I'm going to
give certain parties a rest in future, because, though a poor worm
and not worthy to be seen alongside her, yet I've got my pride, like
the cleverest of us. And give Lawrence Maynard father's message,
Soosie, if you please."
"Come back, you silly gosling!" shouted Joe; but Melinda did not come
back. He laughed very heartily, yet not loud enough for the
departing woman to hear him.
"Lord! To think now!" he said. "I've took a proper rise out of her,
eh?"
"You have," admitted Susan ruthfully. "And if you done it on
purpose, it weren't a very clever thing to do. Melinda's fiery, but
a good friend and a great admirer of yours, father. Now you've vexed
her cruel."
"You never larn all there is to know about a female," he said. "I
meant to get her wool off--just for a bit of honest fun; but I can't
say as I ever understood she felt so deep how clever she was. She's
a vain, dear creature."
"It weren't that," explained Susan. "She ain't vain, though she
knows her worth, and so do everybody else know it; but what she is
proud of, naturally, be your great fondness for her. She knows you
put her first, and she knows you're a clever man and wouldn't put her
first if there wasn't a reason. And her father be going to die
presently and--and God knows what's in her thoughts, of course. And
then to hear that Miss King be worth all the women you've ever seen
in your life put together, and be the top flower of the bunch, and
such a wonder as was never seen by mortal man--why, of course,
Melinda took it to heart a bit. Who wouldn't?"
"You didn't," said Joe.
"No, I didn't, because I know my place, father. I'm not so clever as
Melinda. I'm a poor thing, though well intending. But Melinda's a
fine thing and you know in your heart that a virgin woman, like Miss
King, however clever she be, couldn't teach Melinda nothing about how
to look after a man."
"Fun be thrown away on you creatures," said Joe. "You're terrible
thick-headed where a joke's the matter, Soosie; but I did think as
Melinda was brighter."
He turned to Palk, who had just entered for his tea. Thomas had
heard the word thick-headed applied to Susan.
"Did you ever know a woman as could see a clever bit of fun, Tom?"
The horseman reflected.
"Women's fun ban't the same as ours," he answered. "No doubt they've
got their own pattern of fun. But there ain't much time for Miss
Stockman to practise laughing in this house."
"Ah! You can be so comical as any of us when you'm in a mind for it,
Thomas," said his master.
CHAPTER XIX
LIGHT OF AUTUMN
Sent to find granite and bidden to choose a boulder that would split
out, so that needful stone posts might be fashioned from it, Lawrence
Maynard climbed the Beacon and loitered here and there, examining the
great stones that heaved their backs or sides from the earth. For
the master of Falcon Farm was a Venville man and claimed moor rights
extending over stone and turbary.
Lawrence marked certain masses and thrust in sticks beside them, that
presently Joe Stockman might himself ascend and determine, from his
better knowledge, which blocks would yield the needful pillars. For
the farmer was skilled in granite and declared it to be a
good-natured stone in understanding hands.
Lawrence was mastered by his own thoughts presently, and with the
pageant of late autumn flung under his eyes, he sat down where a
boulder protected him from the fierce wind and brooded. From time to
time the vision of things seen broke in.
Upon this canvas, so hugely spread, Nature painted her pictures in
punctual procession, and in some measure Maynard valued them.
Indeed, under the present stress and storm that unsettled the weather
of his mind, he found himself more pervious than of old to the
natural impressions of the Vale.
To-day a north wind shouted overhead, drove the scattered clouds
before it and hummed in organ notes upon the great mass of granite
that capped the Beacon. Then copper red ribbons of beech fell
broadly into the depths below--and, against their fire, the
plantations of the pine wove darker patterns, where they descended in
a gradual arc over the shoulders of the hills, until the air and
space wrought magic upon their distances and swept them together in
one glowing integument for the low lands. There it was as though a
mighty tiger skin had been flung down upon the undulating earth, so
rich in orange-tawny and russet were the forest reaches, so black the
slant shadows thrown by the low sun at spinney edge, along the
boundary of hanging woods, or where open fields broke horizontally
into the kingdom of the trees. There shone green meadows against the
flame of the fall around them; and the ploughed fallows heightened
colour by their contrast. They intruded their tessellate designs,
wrought out in a network of squares and triangles and rhomboidal
forms; they climbed the hills, penetrated the valley depths and
ceased only where the upland ramparts barred their progress with
heath and stone. Shadows flew to dim the splendour and then again
reveal it; nor was the clarity of the air purchased without cost, for
unseen moisture drenched it and sometimes took shape of separate
storms, sweeping in a low, grey huddle over the earth they hid, yet
divided by great sunny spaces. They drew their veils over half a
league of the land at a time, then dislimned and vanished again. And
far away, beyond the last peaks and saliencies southward, stretched a
horizon of dazzling and colourless light, where sea girdled earth and
Devon rolled dark against the liquid brilliance of the Channel lifted
beyond it.
The Vale, with its river winding through the midst, was a frame for
these far-away passages of light and darkness--a setting and
boundary, rich but restrained; for under the sleight of distance, the
glories of the colour, each touch a tiny leaf of gold or crimson,
were cooled and kneaded with shadow and tempered by the blue November
air.
To appreciate the detail of the spectacle, the throb and palpitation
of so much fire, it had been necessary to descend among the forest
glades, where were revealed the actual pigments of all this splendour
and the manner of Nature's painting, touch by touch. Thence the
scene, whose harmonies rang so subdued from the height of the Beacon
above, resolved itself into a riot of colour. Larch and ash were
already grey, and the lemon of the birch, the gold of the elm flashed
out against the heavier bronzes and coppers of oak and beech. The
wood smoke that rose so thinly seen from aloft, here ascended from a
fire in a column of gentian blue under the sunshine, purple against
shadow. Carpets of colour extended where the trees broke--textures
of scarlet whortle and crimson blackberry, bright ivy, jewels of moss
and glittering dead grass. The spindle flashed its fruits, and
aglets and haws sparkled beneath it on briar and bough. There, too,
the sheltered fern had not been beaten flat as on the open heaths
above. It rose shoulder high, delicate in dead but unbroken
filigrees, with many a spider's gossamer and iridescent web twinkling
rainbows upon its amber frondage. The dusky regiments of the
conifers intensified the blaze. Green, or glaucous green, or of a
solid darkness, they massed, and, against them, stems of maiden
birches leapt upward to the last of their foliage, like woodland
candlesticks of silver supporting altar-flame within these far-flung
sanctuaries.
Intermittently Maynard allowed his thoughts to dwell upon these
things spread under his eyes; and he even dipped sometimes into the
communion of the trees and pictured all that lay beneath him; he
could spare a moment to reflect upon the ceaseless battle under the
splendour, and how every tree of these countless thousands had fought
through half a century for its place in the sun. But for the most
part his reflections turned upon himself, though unconsciously the
outward pageant became enwoven with the inward gloom, as long
afterwards he discovered.
He had taken life in an uncompromising spirit of old; he had
displayed a strength of purpose and a grip of his own values in some
measure remarkable for a man, at that time barely beyond his
majority. And now, into a life that he had deemed cut away once and
for all from all further human complexities, was come this unexpected
and supreme problem. Yet such rifts and gleams as had of late been
thrust through his grey existence must now be shut out. For a time
he considered with himself whether this should be so; but he weighed
Dinah's fate more tenderly in the balance than his own. For him,
indeed, the facts did not preclude possibility of actual temptation;
but he had yet to learn how they would affect her. Had he cared to
take consolation there, he might have done so; but what had
encouraged hope in another man, discouraged him. His temptations
were not proof against his principles, and he foresaw that more than
a narration of facts might be necessary when the day came for bare
speech with Dinah. The necessity for any return to the past had
never been anticipated by Maynard; but he had long seen now that one
certainly involved the other. The need for confession troubled him
little; the time of trial must come with Dinah's reception of his
confession. He hoped that she might take such an instant decision
that deeper distresses would be avoided; and yet the very hope seemed
cowardly to him; and sometimes he felt a desire above or below his
own view of rectitude. What promised distress in one mood opened the
gates to a new and a blessed life in another.
He was come, however, to the inevitable place of open dealing: he
must tell her all that still remained hidden from her. With a sense
of relief he felt that more could not be done until that position had
been reached; and for the present he put away from himself any
thought of what would follow his revelation in her mind, or the great
final decision that must be called for from his own.
Then he dropped his affairs for a little while and let the sense of
the immense and outspread earth drift into his thoughts. It
heartened him and inspired him to a dim resolution that a man might
glean something from the purposes of a world so large and splendid,
so that he, too, should rise worthy of his place in it, and largely
and splendidly order his own part amid the great scheme of things.
But he guessed all the time that such poetry only played over the
surface of forthcoming events. It had less power of reality, than
the bubbles on a wave to influence its way. The final pattern of
things lay deep within himself. No man or woman could ever alter the
terms of his own destiny, or change the principles under which he
willed to live. So he imagined.
CHAPTER XX
THE HUNTER'S MOON
The thought of their next meeting was in the minds of both Dinah and
Lawrence, and the girl also guessed that they had reached a position
only to end in one way. Even so, her own unconscious desires were
running before the facts. It is certain that she had gone a little
farther along the road of love than he had; but only because upon her
path there were no obstacles and she could not guess, or imagine, the
hindrances lying upon his. She knew that he loved her and conceived
of no reason why he should not tell her so. She had, of course, come
to lift him into the supreme reality of her existence.
She waited for him and began to wonder at the delay. Sometimes,
indeed, as time passed and for two weeks they had not met, a shadow
fell upon her; but it was fleeting. She could not long doubt of him
even in the small hours, when life was at its lowest.
The days began to close in and winter was at the door again before he
spoke. Then only chance precipitated the event, when, to the
unhidden joy of both, they met in the street at Ashburton, on a
Saturday afternoon of late November.
Any passing fear that Dinah might have felt vanished before his look
as he shook her hand, and he was inspired to action by the pure
happiness that lighted her face and shone without restraint upon it.
"I was going to write to you to-morrow if you'll believe me," he
said. "But this is better. Are you free?"
"Yes. I've come in to do some chores for Mrs. Bamsey."
"And I'm running errands for Falcon Farm. Neddy Tutt's milking this
evening. How would it be if we were to have a cup of tea together?"
"I'd love it. Lord! I am thankful to see you, Lawrence! Sometimes
I began to think I never was going to no more."
"You had to see me once more, anyway. Where shall we go out of the
way, so as I can talk?"
"Anywhere you please."
He considered.
"There's a little teashop in Church Street with a back parlour. I've
been there once or twice, but they don't know nothing about me. We'd
have the room to ourselves I reckon. I must go to gunsmith for the
governor and get a hundred cartridges. Then I'm free."
"I never thought I was in for such a treat when I woke up this
morning," said Dinah.
"No treat, my dinky maid. I wish to God it was a treat. I've got a
lot on my mind when I look at you."
"A shared trouble soon grows light," she said; yet his heavy voice
chilled her. They walked side by side, and to walk by him cheered
Dinah again. The cartridges awaited Lawrence and in twenty minutes
they were at the little eating-shop in Church Street. It was a
languishing establishment, out of the beaten track. A woman behind
the counter smiled at Maynard and recognised him.
"A pot of tea and some bread and butter and cake, missis," he said;
then he entered a small parlour behind the shop. The woman lighted a
gas jet over their heads, in the corner that Lawrence chose farthest
from the door. Presently she brought a tray with their tea upon it,
and then she left them. The time was past four.
"Will you pour the tea, Dinah?"
"Yes, I will then," she said. "Be you happy to see me, Lawrence?"
"You know it. I'd sooner see you than anything in the world. Shall
I tell her to light a blink of fire? She would. 'Tis a thought cold
in here."
"No, no; I'm not cold. Talk--talk to me. Let me hear you talk."
He leant across and took her hand.
"Let me hold it a minute. I like to feel it. You know a bit of what
I'm going to tell you; but only a terrible little bit. I wish there
was no more than that to tell."
She held his hand tightly.
"I love you. I've known it a long time, Dinah. That's the little
bit I think you know. If that was all----"
"It is all--all on earth that matters to me," she said quietly. "And
I did know. I wouldn't believe myself for a long time; but it was
vain fighting against it. If it happens to you, you must know. I
wouldn't have doubted, perhaps, if I hadn't loved you back so fierce.
That made me doubt, because it seemed too good to be true and a long
way past my deserving. Now the rest don't signify. Nothing's so big
as knowing you love me, Lawrence."
"The bigger thing is that it can't be."
She shrank and he felt her hand grow limp. He took his from it and
considered how to begin speaking. Meantime she spoke.
"That's a hard thing--not a bigger thing," she said quietly; "it
can't alter what is."
"You must hear from the beginning. If I'd ever thought this would
happen, I'd have gone long ago. But it came like a thief, Dinah."
"Same with me. Go on--tell why not--quick."
"I'm married," he said.
She bent her head and leant back and shut her eyes.
"That's the only thing that could come between you and me. I'm
married. It's a mad tale, and I was the madman, so most people said.
Maybe you will, too; maybe you won't. I shall know in a minute.
Yet, if I thought what I was going to say would make you hate me, I
wouldn't say it. But it won't do that."
She was looking at him with wet eyes.
"How could I hate you? Love's love. I'd see a way to love you
through it if you killed her."
"When I went into the world after father died, I was took by a
relation of my mother's at Barnstaple, you must know; and there was
that in me that made for getting on. I done very well, and when my
mother's sister, who had a little dairy, found the sort I was, she
reckoned to do me a good turn and suit herself also. By twenty years
old I knew the business inside out and all that goes to it; and when
I was twenty-one, my aunt, who was a widow, bargained with me to let
her go out and drop the shop and be paid a regular income for her
lifetime. When she died I was to have all. It worked very well for
a year and a half, and I found I'd got a turn for the business, and
opened out a bit, and bought a few cows for myself and even had
thoughts of going higher up into the middle of the town and starting
a bigger place and having a department for teas and refreshments and
so on.
"But that wanted a woman, and then, just at the right moment as it
seemed, a woman came along--the very woman on all the earth for the
business. It looked as if Providence was out on my side and nothing
could go wrong."
"You loved her?"
"I did. Yes, I loved her, Dinah. I wouldn't have thought twice
about marrying any woman I didn't love."
"I suppose you wouldn't."
"No more than you could. She was called Minnie Reed, and she came to
live not far ways off from where my aunt lived. She was twenty and
had a widowed mother along with her, and they didn't lack for means.
My old lady took to Mrs. Reed and didn't think it amiss when,
presently, I began to make chances for seeing Minnie. In a way it
was her great cleverness, more than herself, that took me first. I
was all for cleverness at that time, Dinah--all for knowledge and
learning; and I found, a good bit to my surprise, that Minnie Reed
had got a lot more book learning than any young creature I'd ever
come across before. Her mother explained she'd been educated above
her station and so on; and she certainly had. Her very speech was
nice--far ways above what you'd expect. And from admiring her
cleverness, I got to admire her. She had a bit of money too--a
thousand pounds put away in a very fine investment. Her mother told
my aunt that; and she took good care to tell me; because my old lady
was as thick as thieves with Mrs. Reed by now, and they both wanted
to see Minnie married to me.
"Looking back I can't say much about what I felt. I only knew I was
very wishful to win her if possible, and I soon found she was quite
agreeable. Always pleasant, cool, collected she was. She liked me
and had an easy, friendly manner; yet I'll swear she always held
herself a cut above me. She never said so, perhaps she didn't even
think so, but unconsciously she let me feel, somehow, that was in her
mind. Not that I cared. I was in a stage to her then that I thought
so too. My havage was of no account, and I felt she was superior,
along of education and natural quick wits. An old head on young
shoulders she had. I do believe most honest that she cared for me,
and felt happy to think she was going to share my life and push on my
business. But from the day we got tokened she didn't turn half so
much to love-making as work. And I wasn't the soft, cuddling sort
neither; and if anything could have drawed me to her more than I was
drawed, it would have been the fashion she set to mastering my
business and all its details. She took it up with all her wits, and
soon showed that she was a masterpiece at it. She liked business and
she had a head for saving. She understood more about money than I
did, though I thought myself pretty clever at it. But I felt a gawk
beside her, and she soon showed me how to make more. In fact, her
thoughts soared higher than mine from the start, and I knew I'd have
such a right hand in that matter as few men in my position could ever
have expected.
"I think I knew my luck, and it suited me very well, as I say, that
she didn't want a lot of love-making, for I was busy as a bee and not
given to that sort of thing. And she was on the cold side too--so I
reckoned. In fact she made it clear in words. For she'd thought
about that, like most subjects. She held the business of love-making
and babies and so on was only a small part of life, and that men
thought a lot too much about that side of marriage and took women too
seriously. She said certain things with an object, and gave me an
opening to ax a few questions; but I was too green to take up the
hint, and she said afterwards that she thought I agreed with her.
"We were married and started in the train for our honeymoon. We was
going to Exeter for a week and then coming home again, for neither of
us had much use for honeymooning, but felt full of business.
"We had a carriage to ourselves by the kindness of the guard--a
Barnstaple man. And we talked. And when I got out of the train at
Exeter, I left her; and I've never seen her again and never shall.
She was a stranger woman to me for evermore."
He was silent for a time, but Dinah said nothing.
"It was her work, not mine. She'd got a dim sense of what she owed
me, I suppose, or else a fear of something. Yet, looking back, I
often wondered she troubled to tell me the truth, for she knew well
enough I was much too inexperienced and ignorant to have found it
out. She might have lied. Perhaps it was a case where a lie would
have been best--if a lie's ever best. Anyway it's to her credit, I
suppose, that she told me. Not that she would have done so if she'd
known how I should take it. She reminded me of her nest-egg and how
I'd asked her how she came by it, and how she'd said an uncle left it
to her under his will. 'That's not true,' she said to me. 'And I
don't want to begin our married life with a secret between us,
specially as it happens to be such a trifle. I dare say some fools
would pull a long face,' she said, 'but you ain't that sort, else
you'd never have fallen in love with me.' Then she told me that for
two years she'd been the mistress of a gentleman at Bristol--a rich,
educated man in business there. He'd kept her till he was going to
be married, and they parted very good friends and he gave her a
thousand pounds. He'd used her very well indeed and never talked any
nonsense about marrying her, or anything like that. It was just a
bargain, and he had what he wanted and so had she. Then she bent
across the carriage and put her arms round my neck and kissed me.
But she kissed a stone. I kept my head. I didn't go mad. I didn't
curse or let on.
"I put her arms off me and bade her sit down and let me think; and
all the passion I felt against her kept inside me. I was man enough
for that. She looked a pretty thing that day. In pink she was, and
if ever a man could swear he looked at a virgin, he might have sworn
it afore her grey eyes.
"I told her it was all up; and she kept her nerve too. A funny sort
of scene for any onlooker, to watch a newly-married man and woman
starting on their honeymoon and lost to all but a future bargain.
Guard looked in and had a laugh sometimes when the train stopped, and
we ruled our faces and grinned back at him.
"She began by trying hard to change me. She poured out a flood of
reasons; she used her quick brains as she'd never used them afore.
But she kept as keen and cool as a dealer to market, and when she
found I wasn't going on with it, she bided still a bit and then asked
me what I was going to do.
"That I couldn't tell her for the minute. 'Us'll begin at the
beginning,' I said, 'and have every step clear. You've got my name
now, and you're my wife in the law, and you've got your rights. And
I shan't come between you and them. But my love for you is dead. I
don't hate you, because, I suppose, women are mostly built like you
and I won't waste my strength hating you. You've gone. You're less
to me now than the trees passing the window. You'll live your life
and I'll live mine,' I said to her; 'but you're outside mine in
future and I'm outside yours.'
"'That can't be,' she said. 'I've got a claim, and if you turn me
down, though I pray to God you won't--but if you do, you've got to
think of my future as well as your own.' I granted that and promised
her she need not trouble for herself. Being what I am, for good or
evil, I saw very quick this blow would fall on me, not her. She
wouldn't miss me so long as everything else was all right, and my
feelings were such that I wasn't particular mindful of myself, or my
ruined hopes at that minute. I got a sudden, fierce longing to cut a
loss and be out of it. And that first driving impulse in me--to get
away from her and breathe clean air--stuck to me after twenty-four
hours had passed. Once knowing what she'd been, my love for her went
out like a candle. That may be curious, but so it was. I didn't
fight myself over it, or weaken, or hunger for her back. Never once
did I. She was gone and couldn't have been more gone if she'd
dropped dead at my feet. All my passion was a passion to get out of
her sight.
"She tried with every bit of her cleverness to change me. Yes, she
tried hard, and I saw the wonder of her brains as I'd never even yet
seen them. She made a lot clear. She scorned the thing we call sin.
She said to give a man what she'd given was no more than to give
another woman's baby a drink from her breast if it was thirsty. She
talked like that. She said she never loved the man as she loved me,
and she prayed very earnest indeed for me to take a higher line and
not be paltry. But it was all wind in the trees for me and didn't
shake me by a hair."
He stopped for a moment and Dinah asked him a question. She had
followed him word by word, her mouth open, her eyes fixed upon his
face.
"If she'd told you before instead of after, would it have made a
difference?"
"Yes, it would," he said. "God's my judge, it would have made all
the difference between wanting her and loathing her. I'm the sort of
man that could no more have brooked it than I'd willingly touch a
foul thing. That may be silliness and a narrow understanding of
life. Where women are concerned, I may have wanted better bread than
is made of wheat--I don't know and I don't care; but that's me. And
nothing could change me. She tried hard enough--part for my own
sake, I do believe, and part for hers. She was wonderful and I'll
grant it. She knew me well enough to waste not a minute of her time
in coaxing, or tears, or any foolery. She just kept to the argument
as close and keen as a man, and if she was feeling as much as me,
which ain't likely, she certainly didn't show it.
"She said a strange thing--bare-faced it seemed to me then, but I
dare say in strict fairness to her, I might have been shook by it.
She reminded me that it was what that blasted, rich man had taught
her had made her what she was. She said he'd lifted her above her
class and woke up her brains and educated her with books and lessons;
and that what had drawn me was just what she had to thank him for.
She said, 'You'd never have looked at me twice for myself. A pretty
face means nothing to you. It was my sharpened sense took you; and
now you turn round and fling me off for just what made you marry me.'
Cunning as a snake she was--the wisdom and the poison both. Or so it
seemed to me. But what she said didn't alter the facts. Nothing
could alter them, and I wasn't built to take any man's leavings.
"She worked at me till we were very nearly to Exeter. Then she
stopped and said it was up to me to say what I intended. And I told
her as to that she needn't fear, because I'd do all that was right,
and more. Her talk, you see, had done this much. It made me
understand that from her point of view--hateful though it was--she
had her rights. And so I bade her take her luggage to one inn and
I'd go to another; and next day I wrote to her that she'd get a
letter from me when I'd looked all round and decided what was proper
to do. She left me still hoping; I could see that. But she didn't
hope no more when she got my letter."
"You never went back on it?"
"Only once, for five minutes, that first night in bed, turning over
my future life and hers. For five minutes a thought did creep in my
mind, and for five minutes it stuck. It was such a thought as might
have been expected I dare say--a sort of thought any man might think;
but it stank in five minutes, and I shook it out. And the thought
was how would it be if I said to her she must give up her nest-egg
and get rid of it for evermore, and then I---- But what real
difference did that make? None."
"Perhaps she wouldn't have let it go," said Dinah.
He nodded. It was another woman's view.
"Perhaps she wouldn't. She earned it--eh? Anyway the idea was too
dirty for me. Next morning I wrote and said what I was going to do.
It was pretty definite and that was where people said I was mad; but,
looking back, I can swear I'd do pretty much the same again. The
thought was to be quick--quick and away and out of it. Everything
I'd done up to then tumbled down that day. It was all gone
together--not only her, but everything. I dare say that was curious,
but that's how I felt. I only asked for the clothes on my back, and
to get away in 'em and never see a bit of the past no more and begin
again."
"You'd feel like that."
"I did. I took a line she couldn't quarrel with. She made a fight;
but business was her god, and though I was a fool in her eyes, that
didn't make her inclined to play the fool. She hadn't to drive a
bargain, or any such thing. I cut the ground from under her feet,
threw up the lot, handed her over the business, lock, stock and
barrel, and was gone, like a dead man out of mind, so soon as I'd
signed the proper papers."
"She let you?"
"She couldn't do no otherwise, and as what I planned was well within
her sense of what was right and proper, she made no question. She
pointed out that she'd lost a good bit in any case with a mystery
like this hanging over her; and she also wrote, when all was fixed
up, that she hoped I'd live to change my mind and come back to her
and very thankful she would be if I was to. I dare say she truly
thought I would.
"We were in Exeter for a week and came and went from a lawyer's--but
never there together. I ordained to give her what I'd got and leave
her to do as she pleased. She was sorry I saw it like that; but the
sense of the woman never allowed nothing to come between her and
reason. The lawyer tried to change me too. He was a very kindly
man. But it went through. She took over the dairy and carried on my
engagements to my aunt, and no doubt developed the shop same as I
meant to. She gave out I'd gone away for a bit and might be back in
a month. I don't suppose anybody ever heard more, and when I didn't
come back, she had a search made for me all very right and regular;
but I'd gone beyond finding, and she carried on; and no doubt the
nine days' wonder died in course of time. Only my aunt knew I'd gone
of my own accord; but why I'd gone, only one creature beside my wife
ever knew; and that was her mother; and I doubt not she sided with
her daughter. I dare say there's a lot more the other side could
tell; but I made a clean cut. I dropped every creature and began
again out of their reach. That's the story of me, Dinah. I've most
forgotten many of the details myself now. It's seven and a half
years agone. I saw in a North Devon paper my old aunt was dead, and
so Minnie's free of them payments and standing alone. Half my
savings she had also."
There was silence between them for more than a minute. Then Dinah
spoke, went back to his first word and asked a question.
"D'you call that being married?"
"Yes--that's my marriage. There ain't much more to tell. I was for
going to Canada, and started unknown with fifty pounds of money,
which was all I kept. I was going to get a state-aided passage from
London and begin again out there. It sounds a big thing to fling
over the whole of your life, like as if you was taking off a suit of
old clothes; but it didn't seem big to me then--only natural and
proper. I comed even to like it. But chance willed different, and
the accident of meeting a stranger in the train kept me in England
after all. Chance done me a very good turn then. A farmer got in
the train at Taunton and between Taunton and Bath, fate, or what you
like to call it, willed I went to that man. We got talking, and I
told him I was going abroad, being skilful at cows and the butter and
milk business. He got interested at that and reckoned I might be
such a man as he needed; but I said plainly that I was cutting
losses, and my past must bide out of sight, and I'd best to go
foreign in my opinion. By that time, however, he'd got a fancy he'd
trust me. He was a very good man and a judge of character, which
most good men are not in my experience. I found after that he was a
rare sort of chap--the best and truest friend to me--such a man as
inclined me slowly to think the better of the world again. He only
asked me one question and that was if, on my honour, I could tell him
I'd done no dishonest or wicked thing from which I was trying to
escape. And I swore by God I had not. He believed me, and when, a
day or two later, I told him the whole story, he didn't say whether
in his judgment I'd done right or wrong, but he granted that I'd done
right from my point of view and thought no worse of me for it. I
hesitated a bit at his offer; but I liked him, somehow, from the
first, and I was cruel tired, and the thought of getting to work
right away was good to me. Because I knew by then that there was
nothing like working your fingers to the bone to dull pain of mind
and make you sleep.
"My life with him is another tale. I look back upon it with nothing
but content. I did well by him, and he was as good as a father to
me. It's near eighteen months ago he died, and his two sons carried
on. Very nice men, and they wanted me to stop; but I couldn't bide
when the old chap dropped out. He left me two hundred pounds under
his will, Dinah; and his sons didn't object that I should take it,
for they were well-to-do and liked me. Then I saw Joe's
advertisement in the paper and had a fancy to come back alongside
where I was born."
"And Mrs. Maynard never found you?"
"No; but she isn't Mrs. Maynard. Maynard's not my name and Lawrence
ain't my name."
She sighed.
"Man!" she said, "you be sinking and sinking--oh, my God, you be
sinking out of my sight! I thought you was one creature, and now you
be turning into a far-away thing under my eyes."
"I don't feel like that. I'm Lawrence Maynard to myself, Dinah.
T'other be dead and in his grave. My name was Courtier. There's
some of the family about on Dartmoor yet. My great-grandfather was a
Frenchman--a soldier took in the wars more than a hundred year ago.
And the moor folk traded at the war prisons to Princetown, so he got
to know a good few at prison market. Then he was tokened to a
farmer's daughter, and after the peace he married her and stopped in
England and started a family."
"What's your other real name then?"
"Gilbert, same as my father."
"Us must be going," she said.
"Shall I tell her to hot some more tea for you?"
"No--I don't want no tea."
He drank his cold cup at a draught and pressed her to eat a little;
but she shook her head.
"I'll see you home by New Bridge and then get up back through the
woods, Dinah."
"I can travel alone."
"No, you mustn't do that."
She said very little during the long tramp through a night-hidden
land. The darkness, the loneliness, the rustle of the last dead
leaves and the murmur of the wind chimed with her thoughts. She
seemed hardly conscious of the man at her side. He strove once or
twice to talk, but found it vain and soon fell into silence. At New
Bridge Dinah spoke.
"You'll always be 'Lawrence' to me," she said. "Tell me this. When
are you going to see me again, after I've thought a bit?"
"Like you to want to. We can meet somewhere."
"You love me?"
"Yes; as I never thought I could love anything. But how should you
love me any more?"
She did not answer immediately. For some distance they walked by the
river. Then they reached a fork of the road where their paths
divided; for here Dinah climbed to the left by a steep lane that
would bring her to Lower Town and home, while Maynard must ascend
into the woods.
They stopped.
"Will you do this?" she said. "Will you put the story of your life
before Enoch Withycombe?"
"Why, Dinah?"
"To get his opinion on it--all--every bit."
"Yes, if you like."
"I do like. I'm very wishful to know what a man such as him would
say."
"If he's well enough, I'll see him to-morrow. It's been in my mind
to tell him about myself before to-day."
"I wish you had."
"He shall hear it. I set great store by his sense. He might----
Can you get home from here? I'll come with you if you like."
"No."
"You've forgiven me?"
"I'll think and think. Be there anything to forgive?"
"I don't know. And yet I do. Yes--you think--then you'll find
you've got to forgive me for ever loving you, Dinah."
"You're life--you're life to me," she said. "Don't say small things
like that. I'm only being sorry for all you've had to suffer all
these years and years. I'll go on being sorry for you a long time
yet. Then I'll see if I'm angry with you after. I can only think of
one thing at a time."
She tramped up the hill and he stood, until her footfall had ceased.
Then he went his own way and had climbed to within half a mile of
Buckland, when a strange thing happened. He heard the winding of a
hunter's horn. Through the darkness, for all listening ears at Holne
or Leusden, Buckland or the neighbour farms and hillsides to hear,
came the melodious note. It rang out twice, clear and full; and
kennelled hounds a mile distant caught it and bayed across the
night--a farewell, good to the heart of Enoch Withycombe if he had
heard them.
CHAPTER XXI
FUNERAL
Enoch Withycombe had always promised to sound his horn again in sight
of his end, and three days after he woke the echoes of the Vale he
died. On the night that his music vibrated over hill and valley for
the last time, Melinda had pushed his chair to the cottage door.
When Lawrence called on the following Sunday afternoon, though he sat
for a while beside his bed, the old hunter had already drifted into a
comatose state, and the story Maynard had hoped to tell was never
heard by him.
A bitter grey day dawned for a funeral attended by unusual mourners.
The dead sportsman's master had made a promise and he kept it.
Hounds did not meet that day; but the master, the huntsman and the
whipper-in both clad in pink, and two brace of hounds were at the
grave side--a bright flash of colour in the sombre little crowd that
assembled.
Melinda Honeysett and her brother, Jerry, were chief mourners, while
behind them came the fox-hunters; and of those who followed, some
took it amiss to see such an addition to a funeral; while others held
it most seemly and fitting.
Indeed for many days afterwards the question was heavily debated, and
Arthur Chaffe and Ben Bamsey, who were both at the grave side,
considered squire and parson alike to blame for an impropriety; while
Joe Stockman, who came with Susan, Maynard and Thomas Palk, highly
approved of the innovation. John Bamsey and Lawrence were among the
bearers. They had also helped to carry the dead man from his home to
the grave, for it was a walking funeral. Half a dozen private
carriages followed it, and Melinda was bewildered to arrange the many
gifts of flowers that came to her from her father's old friends of
the countryside.
"Fox-hunters have long memories seemingly," said Jerry to his sister,
as they read the cards attached to wreath and cross.
After the funeral was ended and when Enoch lay beside his wife, on
the north of the church tower beneath a naked sycamore, it happened
that Maynard found Dinah Waycott beside him in the press of the
people. She had come with the Bamseys and, knowing that he would be
there, now reached his side, bade him "good day," and unseen put a
letter into his hand.
For a moment he picked up the thread of their conversation, where
they had left it on the night by Dart River a week before.
"I couldn't tell him--he was too far gone next day," he said quietly,
taking her letter.
"No matter," she answered, and then moved away.
The crowd drifted down the lanes and up the lanes. The men in pink
mounted their horses and rode away with the hounds. Enoch's old
master also departed on horseback, as did a dozen other men and
several women. Soon only Melinda and Jerry were left to see the
grave filled in and dispose the wreaths upon it. Mr. Chaffe kept
them company. He cheered them by saying that never in his long
experience, save once, had he known any man of the people enjoy such
splendid and distinguished obsequies.
"A magnificent funeral despite the hounds," he said, "and Buckland
did ought to be proud of it. There was a journalist from a Plymouth
newspaper there, Jerry, so you'll be able to keep a printed history,
with all the names, for future generations of your family to read
aloud."
But Jerry was weeping and paid no heed; while his sister also, now
that the strain had passed and the anticlimax come, hid not her tears.
Soosie-Toosie, her father and the two labouring men walked home
together and Joe uttered a vain lament.
"A thousand pities the man's sailor son, Robert, couldn't be there,"
he said. "It would have been a fine thing for him to see what his
father was thought of. And he'd have supported Melinda. She stood
up very well and firm; but I know she'll miss him a terrible lot--her
occupation gone you may say; for there's nobody leaves such a gap as
an invalid that's called for your nursing for years. When the place
is suddenly emptied of such a one, you feel as if the bottom was
knocked out of your life, same as I did when my wife went."
Joe was in a mood unusually pensive and his daughter felt anxious.
She tried to rally him, but failed.
"I'm looking forward," he said. "In that great rally of neighbours
there was a lot of old blids from round about--a good few up home
eighty years old I shouldn't wonder; and such was the bitter cold in
the churchyard that you may be certain death was busy sowing his
seeds. I hope to God I be all right, and I thank you for making me
put on my heavy clothes, Soosie."
Palk walked behind them and talked fitfully to Maynard.
"'Twill ruin Christmas," said Thomas. "He was a famous man and
there'll be a gloom fall over the place now he's dropped out."
"It won't make any difference," answered the younger.
"It may make a valiant lot of difference, and that nearer home than
you think for," answered Palk.
But Maynard shook his head.
"There's nothing in it. Joe won't offer for her--Mrs. Honeysett--if
that's what you're thinking; and if he did, 'tis doubtful if she'd
take him. I've heard her tell about him to her father."
"And what did she tell?"
"Nothing but good. She knows his worth and all that. But Enoch
didn't set very high store on master. I wondered why sometimes."
"Did you? I lay he knew him better than what you do. And he knew
this--that a man who worked his only child like Stockman works his
would make his wife a proper beast of burden."
"Everybody's selfish. I dare say when the news of the rise reaches
us presently, you'll think better of him."
Then Stockman called Lawrence and Susan fell back to the horseman.
"He wants to tell Maynard about some ideas he's got, and it will
distract his mind to do so," she explained.
"Be master under the weather about Mr. Withycombe, or is he only
pretending?" asked Thomas bluntly.
"He's a very feeling creature is father," answered the woman. "He
didn't care much for poor Mr. Withycombe, and Mr. Withycombe never
quite saw father's good points, like most of the people do; but
father's down-daunted to-day. 'Tis a landmark gone; and death's
death; and he's fearful that another old person here and there may be
took presently, along of the cruel cold in the churchyard."
"The wind curdled down off the Beacon like knives," admitted Palk.
"Mrs. Honeysett kept her face very steady."
"She did. But she's a brave creature."
"She've got the cottage for her life, however."
"Yes. Squire's left it to her for naught, so long as she likes to
bide there."
"A deep thought--how long she will bide there."
"Yes, it is. Jerry will be gone, come presently; but she'll have a
neighbour. There's a widow man and his daughter took the
cottage--the haunted house that joins hers. He's a new gardener to
Buckland Court and don't fear ghosts."
"So I heard tell."
They were silent and then Thomas, now on very friendly terms with
Susan, asked a question.
"Will it make a difference to Mr. Stockman, Mrs. Honeysett being set
free of her father, miss?"
"I couldn't tell you, Tom. I've axed myself that question. But I'm
not in father's thoughts."
His caution made him hesitate to speak again, but he knew that
another question would go no farther than his listener.
"And if I may venture to put it, would you like to see him wed, miss?"
Susan slowed her steps that no sound of their voices might reach Joe.
Her eyes were on his back as she answered.
"Yes, I think I would. A wife would add to his peace and comfort."
"She might add to yours."
"She might; but I'm not troubling as to that. Still, if she was a
nice woman, I dare say she would."
"A wife--nice or otherwise--would open your father's eyes," declared
Thomas. "In all respect I say it; but where you be concerned, he's
got to make such a habit of you, and got to take you so terrible much
like he takes his breakfast, or his boots, or any other item of his
life, that it would be a very good thing for his character if he
found out what you was."
"He don't undervalue me I hope," answered Susan. "Because a man
don't say much, it don't follow he don't feel much, Thomas."
"But he do undervalue you cruel, and for that reason I'd be very
pleased indeed if he was to get a woman for himself. Because no
female he'm likely to find will show your Christian power of taking
everything lying down. In fact no woman as ever I heard tell about
can rise to such heights in that partickler as you; and your father
have got so used to you, like a good pixy about the place, ready and
willing to work night and day; and if he was up against another
woman, he'd very soon have the surprise of his life."
"If a wife was so fond of him as what I am, she'd treat him so
faithful as what I do," argued Soosie-Toosie; but Thomas assured her
that she was mistaken.
"Don't think it," he said. "No wife ever I heard tell about would
drudge for nought same as you. However, I be going beyond my
business, and no doubt you'll tell me so. But 'tis only on your
account, I assure you."
"I know it, Tom, and I thank you for your good opinion. But father's
built in a higher mould than you and me. He's born to command, and
I'm born to obey. Us generally do what's easiest, to save trouble;
and if he was to marry again, he'd still be born to command, and any
woman, knowing him well enough to take him, would understand that."
"They might, or they might not," argued Mr. Palk. "When a man goes
courting, he hides a lot in that matter and, strong though the
governor may be, there's women very well able to hold their own
against any man born; and Melindy Honeysett is one. But it may
happen. The mills of God may be grinding for it; and then master
would look at you, and the scales would fall from his eyes I expect."
As soon as he was alone, Lawrence Maynard read the letter from Dinah.
It was the first time he had ever seen her writing, and he found it a
large, free hand with a hopeful slope upwards at the end of each line.
But the note was very brief. She committed herself to no opinions
and only begged Lawrence to come to her in Lizwell Woods, a mile or
two from her home, on the following Sunday afternoon.
"I'll be where the Webburn rivers run together, so soon after three
o'clock as I may," she said.
CHAPTER XXII
AT WATERSMEET
Dinah was first at the tryst and doubted not that Maynard would come.
The lonely, naked woods swept round her and she sat on a fallen trunk
not far from where the Webburn sisters shot the grey forest with
light and foamed together beneath the feet of trees. The day was
dull and windy with rain promised from the south. Withered beech
leaves whirled about Dinah's feet in little eddies, then rushed and
huddled away together in hurtling companies--with a sound like a
kettle boiling over, thought Dinah. Her mind was not wholly upon
Maynard, for Joe Stockman's gloomy prophecy had come true in one case
and Mr. Bamsey was indisposed from a chill caught at the funeral. As
yet they were not concerned for him; but he had grown somewhat worse
since the preceding day and Faith had sent Jane to fetch the doctor.
Jane never declined a commission that would take her into Ashburton.
A smudge of black appeared in the woods and Maynard stood on the east
bank of the river. Dinah rose and waved to him; then he ascended the
stream until a place for crossing appeared. Here he leapt from stone
to stone and was soon beside her. They wandered away and he found a
spot presently, where the ground was dry with fallen needles from a
pine above it.
"Sit here," he said, "a little while."
She had not spoken till now, save to tell him her foster-father was
ill. But when they sat side by side, with the bole of the great pine
behind them and its lower boughs sweeping about them to the ground,
she answered all the questions he wanted to put in one swift action.
For a moment she looked at him and her face glowed; and then she put
her arms round his neck and kissed him.
"Dinah--d'you mean it?" he said. "Oh, d'you mean all that?"
"I want you; I can't live my life without you, Lawrence."
"After what I've told you?"
His arms were round her now and he had paid her fiercely for her kiss.
"What is marriage? I've been puzzling about it. I've been puzzling
about it for years, for it seems years since you told me you was
married. And if you knew what I'd been feeling, or how I fought not
to kiss you at the funeral, you'd be sorry for me. But you've only
been sorry for yourself I expect, you selfish man."
He did not answer. He had released her, but was still holding one of
her hands.
"I'd make you a good wife, Lawrence," she said.
"By God you would!"
"And what is marriage then? Why d'you tell me you're married to
her--any more than I'm married to John Bamsey--or anybody?"
"Marriage is a matter of law, and a man can only marry one wife."
"And what's a wife then?"
"The woman you are married to--she that's got your name."
"Would you say your wife was married?"
"Certainly she is."
"A widow then?"
"Not a widow if her husband is alive."
"Then why d'you say that Gilbert Courtier died when Lawrence Maynard
came to life? If Gilbert Courtier's dead, then his wife is a widow."
Her literal interpretation was not a jest. He perceived that Dinah
presented no playful mood. She was arguing as though concerned with
facts, and not recognising any figurative significance in what he had
told her about himself. For a moment, however, he could hardly
believe she was in earnest.
"If it was as easy as that," he said.
"How d'you feel to it then?"
"I feel to it as you do, with all my heart. God knows what I
want--one thing afore all things and above all things: and that's to
have you for my own--my own. And whether I can, or can't, my own you
will be from this hour, since you want to be my own, Dinah."
"And I will have it so. You're my life now--everything."
"But you can't make me less than I am. It's no good saying that
Gilbert Courtier's dead; and though I change my name for my own
comfort, that's not to change it against the facts."
"D'you want to go back to it then?"
"Not I. I'll never go back, and 'tis no odds to me what I'm called;
but a wife's a wife, and my wife must stand safe within the law--for
her own safety--and her husband's honour."
She stared at this.
"D'you feel that?"
"I do, Dinah."
"That things like safety, or the law, matter?"
"To you--not to me."
"What do I know about the law--or care? D'you think I'm a coward?
You've only got one name for me, and ban't the name I love best in
the world good enough? Who else matters to you, if you're Lawrence
Maynard to me? And what else matters to you if I love you? Words!
What are words alongside the things they stand for? I want you, same
as you want me. And whose honour's hurt?"
"You feel all that?"
"Not if you don't. But you do."
His own standards failed for the time and he said somewhat more than
he meant. Such love as Dinah's, such certainty as Dinah's, made
doubt, built on old inherited instincts, look almost contemptible.
Trouble of old had shaken these deep foundations; now happiness and
pride at his splendid achievement similarly shook them.
"Yes I do," he said. "There's naught else on God's earth; I'd let
all go down the wind afore I'd lose what I've won. I can keep off
words as easy as you; and the word that would come between me and
such love as I've got for you was never spoke and never will be.
Words are dust and can go to the dust. But----"
He had recollected a fact beyond any power of words to annul.
"There's a hard and fast reality, Dinah, and we've got to take it
into account, for it can't be argued down, or thought away."
"Then let it go--same as everything else have got to go. There's
only one thing matters, I tell you, and we feel the same about it.
Love's far too strong for all other realities, Lawrence. There's
only one reality: that you and me are going to live together all our
lives. What fact can stand against that? If facts were as big as
the Beacon, they're naught against that fact. You be my own and I'm
your own, and what else signifies?"
"You make me feel small," he said, "and love so big as that would
make any man feel small, I reckon. And for the minute I'll put away
the ways and means and machinery, that always have to be set running
when a man wants to wed a woman."
"What's machinery to us? We didn't love each other by machinery and
us shan't wed by machinery."
"Us can't wed without machinery."
"You say that! Ban't us wed a'ready? Be the rest of it half so fine
as what brought us together, and made us know that our lives couldn't
be lived apart? Ban't you wed to me, Lawrence?"
"I am," he said, "and only death will end it. But there's more than
that for you; and so there's got to be more for me. And if I'm going
to be small now and talk small, it's for you I do, not for myself.
You're a sacred thing to me and holy evermore mind."
"And you be sacred to me," she said. "You've made all men sacred and
holy to me; and you've made me feel different to the least of 'em,
because they be built on the same pattern as you. I swear I feel
kinder and better to everybody on earth since I know you loved me so
true."
"It's this, then--a bit of the past. When I first came here I felt,
somehow, that in Stockman I'd had the good luck to hit on just such
another as my old master up country. He seemed to share the same
large outlook and understanding, and I found him a man so friendly
and charitable with his neighbours that I told him about myself, just
like I told the other; and he was just the same about it--generous
and understanding. In fact, he went further than my old master, and
agreed with me right through, and said it was a very manly thing to
have done, and that if more people had the pluck to cut a loss, the
world would go smoother. He praised me for what I'd done, and I
remember what he said. He said, 'To let sleeping dogs lie be a very
wise rule; and to let sleeping bitches lie be still wiser.' But I
know a lot more about Joe Stockman now than I did then; and though
I've got no quarrel with him, yet, if the time was to come again, I
wouldn't tell him. He'd never tell again, or anything like that; but
he knows it, and if I was to say to him that I held I wasn't married
and wanted another, he'd laugh at me."
Dinah admitted that Mr. Stockman was a serious difficulty.
"What would trouble him wouldn't be that; but the thought of losing
you," she said. "That would make him nasty, no doubt, and quick to
take a line against you."
"Joe knows about Barnstaple. He said to me once, 'Good men come from
Barnstaple; my father did.' He has relatives up that way. But I
only told him I knew the place; I never said I'd come from there."
She was silent for a moment staring straight before her with her
elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands.
"All this means," he continued, "that we can't do anything small, or
cast dust in people's eyes about it, even if we were tempted to,
which we're not. For the minute we must mark time. Then we'll see
as to the law of the subject and a good few things. All that matters
to me is that you can love me so well as ever, knowing where I stand,
and don't feel no grudge against me."
But she was not sentimental and his general ideas did not interest
her. She had gone far beyond generalities. Her only thought was
their future and how best and quickest it might be developed and
shared.
"As to doing anything small, nothing's small if the result of it is
big," she said. "There's no straight wedding for us here anyway,
since Cousin Joe knows, but Buckland ain't the world, and what we've
got to satisfy be ourselves, not other people. I hate to hear you
say we'll see about the law. People like us did ought to be our own
law."
"We've got enough to go on with, and we've got ourselves to go on
with--everything else is naught when I look at you."
"If you feel that, I'm not afeared," she said. "That means firm
ground for me, and all the things that balked and fretted me be gone
now."
They talked love and explored each other's hearts, very willing to
drop reality for dreams. They were a man and woman deeply, potently
in love, and both now made believe, to the extent of ignoring the
situation in which they really stood. Time fled for them and the
early dusk came down, so that darkness crept upon them from every
side simultaneously. Rain fell, but they did not perceive it under
the sheltering pine. They set off anon and went down the river bank.
"Now we must go back into the world for a bit," said Dinah, "and
we'll think and see what our thoughts may look like to each other in
a week. Then we'll meet here once more, unbeknown'st. For I reckon
we'd better not moon about together in the sight of people overmuch
now. If Joe knows about you--and yet perhaps that's to the good in a
way, because he knows you be straight and honest, so he'd feel I was
safe enough, and only laugh at the people if they told him you and me
were friends beyond reason."
Maynard wondered to see how quickly Dinah's mind moved, and how she
could see into and through a problem as it arose. But he approved
her opinion, that they had better not be seen too often together.
Yet they did not separate before they ran into one who knew them
both. Thomas Palk met them on a woodland road below Watersmeet.
He stood at the edge of an ascent to Buckland.
"Hullo, Tom! What's brought you out this wet evening?" asked
Maynard, and the elder explained that he had been to Green Hayes for
news of Mr. Bamsey.
"Master was wishful to hear tidings," he said. "And I had naught on
hand and did his pleasure. The doctor was along with Benjamin Bamsey
when I got there; so I be taking home the latest."
"And what is it, Mr. Palk?" asked Dinah.
"Bad," he answered. "He's got a lung in a fever and did ought to
have seen doctor sooner."
"Good night, then. I must be gone," she said, and without more words
left the men and started running.
Palk turned to Lawrence.
"I shouldn't wonder if Bamsey was a goner," he prophesied. "If the
breathing parts be smote, then the heart often goes down into a man's
belly, so I believe, and can't come up again. And that's death."
The other was silent. For a moment it flitted through his mind that,
if such a thing happened, it might go far to simplify Dinah's hold
upon the world and make the future easier for them both; but he
forgot this aspect in sympathy for Dinah herself. He knew that
danger to her foster-father must mean a very terrible grief for her.
"He's a hard, tough old chap. He'll come through with such care as
he'll get. But Stockman said as that biting day might breed trouble
among the grey heads. He was right."
He talked with a purpose to divert Tom's mind from the fact that he
had met him walking alone with Dinah; but he need not have felt
apprehension: Mr. Palk was immersed in his own thoughts, and no
outside incident ever influenced his brain when it happened to be
engaged with personal reflections.
"Stockman always looks ahead--granted," he answered as they climbed
the hill together, "and for large views and putting two and two
together, there's not his equal. But self-interest is his god,
though he foxes everybody it ain't. For all his fine sayings, there
is only one number in his mind and that's number One. He hides it
from most, but he don't hide it from me, because the minute you've
got the key to his lock, you see how every word and thought and deed
be bent in one direction. And under his large talk of the greatest
good to the most, there's always 'self' working unseen."
"You ain't far out, yet in honesty there's not much for you and me to
quarrel with," said Maynard.
"When you say that, you'm as ownself as him. And if you and me was
everybody, I wouldn't feel what I do. He don't quarrel with us,
though he often says a thing so pleasant and easy that you don't know
you're cut, till you find the blood running. But we ain't everybody.
He may see far, but he don't see near. He's fairly civil to us,
because he don't mean to lose us if he can help it; but what about
her as can't escape? How does he treat his own flesh and blood?"
Maynard was astonished. He had not given Thomas credit for much wit
or power of observation. Nor had he ever concerned himself with the
inner life of the farm as it affected Susan.
"Would you say Miss was put upon?" he asked.
"God's light!" swore Mr. Palk. "And be you a thinking man and can
ask that? Have you got eyes? If Orphan Dinah had to work like her,
would you ax me if she was put upon?"
The challenge disturbed Lawrence, for it seemed that Thomas had
observation that extended into the lives of his neighbours--a gift
the younger man had not guessed.
"What's Miss Waycott to do with it?" he asked.
"Naught. Nobody's got nothing to do with it but master. And he's
got everything to do with it; and he's a tyrant and a damned
slave-driver, and treats her no better than a plough, or a turnip
cutter."
They were silent and Thomas asked a question.
"Have you ever heard tell they port-wine marks be handed down from
generation to generation, worse and worse?"
"No, I never did."
"I heard Stockman tell Melindy Bamsey they was."
"I dare say it might be so."
"And yet again, when the subject come up at Ashburton, a publican
there said that if a man or woman suffered from such a thing they was
doomed never to have no children at all. He said he'd known a good
few cases."
"A woman might," answered Lawrence, "because, if they're afflicted
that way, they'd be pretty sure to bide single. But it would be a
nice question if a marked man couldn't get childer. I wouldn't
believe anybody but a doctor on that subject."
Thomas turned this over for ten minutes without answering. Then the
subject faded from his mind and he flushed another.
"What about our rise?" he said.
"We'll hear after Easter."
They discussed the probable figure. Maynard seemed not deeply
interested; but Palk declared that his own future movements largely
depended upon Mr. Stockman's decision.
CHAPTER XXIII
IN A SICK-ROOM
Dinah could not think of her foster-father all the way home. Though
deeply concerned, her thoughts left him fitfully to concentrate on
Lawrence Maynard. She felt a little puzzled at a streak of mental
helplessness that seemed to have appeared in him. Just where it
appeared most vital that he should know his own mind, she could not
help feeling he did not. He groped, instead of seeing the way as
clearly as she did. For him, what he had to tell her seemed serious;
for her, as she now considered it, the fact that Mr. Stockman knew
Maynard was married sank in significance. She found that it was only
because Lawrence regarded it as grave, that she had done so. That it
made a simple situation more complex she granted; but it did not
alter the situation; and if it was impossible to be married at
Buckland, there would be no difficulty, so far as she could see, in
being married elsewhere.
She had examined the situation more deeply, however, before she
reached home and perceived that Lawrence, after all, was not groping,
but rather standing still before a very definite obstacle. They
could not be married at Buckland; but could they be married anywhere
else without first vanishing far beyond reach and hearing of
Buckland? For him that was easy; for her impossible, unless she
deliberately cut herself off from her foster-father and, not only
that, but prevented him from knowing where she might be. For it was
idle to tell him, or anybody, that she had married Maynard, while Mr.
Stockman could report from Maynard's own lips that he was already
married.
Now indeed Dinah's soul fainted for a few moments. She hated things
hid; she loved events to be direct and open; but already some need
for hiding her thought, if not her actions, had become imperative and
now she saw a complication arising that she had never taken into
account: the collision between Lawrence and Ben Bamsey. What might
be right and honest enough to her and her lover--what was already
clean and clear in her mind, and would, she did not doubt, be
presently equally clean and clear to Lawrence--must emphatically be
neither righteous nor thinkable to the generation of Mr. Bamsey.
None else indeed mattered; but he did. Great vistas of time began to
stretch between her and her lover. He retreated; but the gathering
difficulties did not daunt her since the end was assured.
For a season life was now suspended at the bedside of an old man, and
Dinah returned home to plunge at once into the battle for her
foster-father's existence. It was a battle fought unfairly for her,
and not until the end of it did Dinah discover the tremendous effect
of her exertions on her own vitality; for she was in a position false
and painful from the first, being called at the will of one very sick
to minister to him before his own, and to suffer from the effects of
his unconscious selfishness, under the jealousy of the other women
who were nearer to him.
Ben rapidly became very ill indeed, with congestion of the lungs, and
for a time, while in the extremity of suffering, his usual patient
understanding deserted him and facts he strove to keep concealed in
health under conditions of disease appeared. They were no secret to
Faith Bamsey and she was schooled to suffer them, being able the
easier so to do, because she was just and knew the situation was not
Dinah's fault. Indeed they created suffering for the girl also. But
to Jane, her father's now unconcealed preference for Dinah, his
impatience when she was absent and his reiterated desire to have her
beside him, inflamed open wounds and made her harsh. Her mother
argued with her half-heartedly, but did not blame her any more than
she blamed Dinah. She knew her husband's armour was off, and that he
could not help extending a revelation of the truth beyond her heart,
where she had hoped it was hidden; but she was human and the fact
that everybody, thanks to Jane, now knew that she and her own child
were less to Benjamin than his foster-daughter, distressed her and
sometimes clouded her temper.
One only stood for Dinah and strove to better the pain of her
position. Tossed backward and forward still, now, when at last he
was minded to accept the situation and admit to his own mind the
certainty he could never win her, a ray of hope flushed wanly out of
the present trouble; a straw offered for him to clutch at. John
Bamsey came to Green Hayes daily, to learn how his father did, and he
heard from Jane how Dinah was preferred before his mother or herself.
Then inspired by some sanguine shadow, he took Dinah's part, strove
to lessen the complication for her and let her know that he
understood her difficulties and was opposing his sister on her
account.
He quarrelled with Jane for Dinah's sake and told Dinah so; and she
perceived, to her misery, how he was striving yet again to win her
back at any cost. Thus another burden was put upon her and she found
that only in the sick-room was any peace.
Mr. Bamsey much desired to live, and proved a good patient from the
doctor's point of view. A professional nurse, however, he would not
have and, indeed, there was no need. All that could be done was
done, and it seemed that the crisis was delayed by the sleepless care
of those who tended him. He was not unreasonable and sometimes
solicitous both for his wife and Dinah. He desired that they should
take their rest and often demanded Jane's attention, for the sake of
the others; but, as he reached the critical hours of his disease, his
only cry was for Dinah and his only wish appeared to be that he
should hold her hand. Thus sometimes she had to sit beside him while
his wife did nurse's work. The torture was sustained; and then came
a morning when, still clear in his mind, Mr. Bamsey felt that he
might not much longer remain so. He then expressed a wish for his
family to come round him, while he detailed his purposes and
intentions.
John was also present at this meeting, and when Dinah desired to
leave them together, he and not his father bade her stop.
"You're one of us," he said. "Sit where you are and don't leave go
his hand, else he'll be upset."
The sufferer had little to say.
"'Tis all in my will," he told them. "But I'm wishful to speak while
I can; and if mother has got anything against, there's time to put it
right. All mine is hers for her life--all. But I'll ax her, when
each of you three come to be married, to hand each five hundred
pounds. That won't hurt her. She'll bide here, I hope; and
presently, when Jane weds, it would be very convenient if Jerry was
to come here and go on with the farm. But if mother wants to leave
here, then she can sublet. And when mother's called, the money's to
be divided in three equal portions for Dinah and John and Jane."
He stopped, panting.
"Heave me up a bit, Dinah," he said.
Nobody spoke and he looked into their faces.
"Well?" he asked impatiently.
"That will do very right and proper, my dear," answered Faith.
"Don't you think no more about it. A just and righteous will I'm
sure."
But Jane had left the room and her father observed it.
"Have that woman anything against?" he asked.
"No, no--a very just and righteous will," repeated his wife
soothingly. "I could wish you'd trusted me with the capital, father;
but there--I'm content."
"I put you first, Faith."
"I've put you first for five and twenty years."
"You ban't content?"
"Well content. Rest now. Us'll go and leave you with Dinah Waycott."
She tried to resist using Dinah's surname, but could not. Then she
left the room.
"I've done what I thought was my duty, John," said Mr. Bamsey.
"You've never done less. I'm very willing that Dinah should share.
So's mother I'm sure."
"Try and get a bit of sleep now, my old dear," said Dinah. "And
thank you dearly--dearly for thinking on me; but--no matter, you get
off if you can. Will you drink?"
He nodded and she gave him some warm milk.
"I'll drop the blind," she said and did so.
In her thoughts was already the determination to forego any legacy
under any circumstances. She longed to tell Jane that she meant to
do so.
Mr. Bamsey shut his eyes and presently dozed. The steam kettle made
a little chattering in the silence, but the sick man's breathing was
the loudest sound in the room.
He slept, though Dinah knew that he would not sleep long. To her
concern John began talking of what had passed.
He proceeded in undertones.
"Don't think I don't approve what father's done. I do; and I wish to
God you'd take two-thirds--mine as well as your own--in fulness of
time. Which you would do, Dinah, if you came to me. Why can't you
see it?"
"Why can't you, John?"
"What is there for me to see? Nothing, but that you don't know your
own mind. Haven't I been patient enough, waiting for you to make it
up? What's the good of going on saying you don't love me, when you
know I've got love enough for me and you both? Can't you trust me?
Can't you judge the size of what I feel for you, by the line I've
took for very near a year? You loved me well enough back-along, and
what did I ever do to choke you off? You can't tell me, because you
don't know. Nobody knows. You bide here, and you understand I'm not
changed and won't be blown away by all the rumours and lies on
people's tongues; and you can let me live on in hell--for what? You
don't know If you had a reason, you'd be just enough to grant I ought
to hear it."
"Don't say that, Johnny. You never asked me for a reason more than I
gave you from the first. I told you on New Bridge that I was bitter
sorry, but I found my feeling for you was not the sort of love that
can make a woman marry a man. And that was the sole reason then.
And that reason is as good now as ever it was."
"It's no reason to anybody who knows you like what I do. Haven't you
got any pity, or mercy in you, Dinah? Can you go on in cold blood
ruining my life same as you are doing--for nothing at all? What does
a woman want more than the faithful love and worship of a clean,
honest man? Why did you stop loving me?"
"I never began, John; and if you say that reason's not enough,
then--then I'll give you another reason. For anything's better than
going on like this. To ask me for pity and mercy! Can't you see
what you're doing--you, who was so proud? D'you want a woman to give
herself up to you for pity and mercy? Be you sunk to that?"
"I'm sunk where it pleased you to sink me," he said; "and if you knew
what love was, pity and mercy would rise to your heart to see anybody
sinking that you could save."
"I do know what love is," she answered. "Yes, I know it now, though
I never did till now. When I begged you to let me go, I didn't know
anything except what I felt for you wasn't what it ought to be; but,
since then, things are different; and I do well know what love is."
"That's something. If you've larned that, I'll hope yet you'll come
to see what mine is."
"You can't love a man because he loves you, John. You may be just as
like to love a man who hates you, or love where mortal power can't
love back--as in your case. Where I've got now be this: I do love a
man."
"You thought you loved me. Perhaps you're wrong again and was right
before."
"I love a man, and he loves me; and nothing on God's earth will ever
keep us apart unless it's death."
"So you think now. I've heard some talk about this and gave them
that told it the lie. And I'm most in the mind to give you the lie.
I can't forget all you've said to me. It's hard--it's horrible, to
think you could ever speak such words to anybody else."
She smiled.
"I don't want to be cruel; I don't want to be horrible, John. But
what I've ever said to you was naught--the twitter of a bird--the
twaddle of a child. How could I talk love to you, not knowing love?
You never heard love from me, because I didn't know the meaning of
the word till long after us had parted for good and all. Find a
woman that loves you--you soon might--then you'll hear yourself
echoed. I never echoed you, and that you know very well, because I
couldn't."
"Who is he?"
She expected this and was prepared. None must know that she loved
Lawrence Maynard--least of all John Bamsey. He would be the first to
take his news red hot to Falcon Farm and Joe Stockman. The necessity
for silence was paramount; but she voiced her own desire when she
answered.
"I wish to Heaven I could tell you, Johnny. Yes, I do. I'd like
best of all to tell you, and I'll never be quite, quite happy, I
reckon, until you've forgiven me for bringing sorrow and
disappointment on you. 'Tis not the least of my hopes that all here
will forgive me some day; for I couldn't help things falling out as
they have, and I never wanted to be a curse in disguise to
foster-father, or any of you, same as I seem to be. You can't
tell--none of you--how terrible hard it is; and God's my judge, I've
often wished this dear old man could have turned against me, and
hated me, and let me go free. But he wouldn't send me out and I
couldn't go so long as he bade me stop."
"You're wriggling away from it," he said. "Who's the man? If
there's any on earth have the right to know that much, it's me."
"So you have--I grant it. And if it ever comes to be known, you'll
be the first to hear, John. But it can't be known yet awhile, for
very good reasons. My life's difficult and his life's difficult--so
difficult that it may never happen at all. But I pray God it will;
and it shall if I can make it happen. And more I can't tell you than
that."
"You hide his name from me then?"
"What does his name matter? I've only told you so much for the pity
you ask. I needn't have gone so far. But I can see what knowing
this ought to do for you, John, and I hope it will. You understand
now that I care for a man as well, heart and soul and body, as you
care for me. And for Christ's sake let that finish it between us. I
hate hiding things, and it's bitter to me to hide what I'm proud
of--far prouder of than anything that's ever happened to me in all my
born days. So leave it, and if there's to be pity and mercy between
us--well, you're a man, and you can be pitiful and merciful now,
knowing I'm in a fix, more or less, and don't see the way out at
present. It's a man's part to be merciful, so be a man."
The turning point had come for him and he knew that his last hope was
dead. This consciousness came not gradually, but in a gust of
passion that banished the strongest of him and exalted the weakest.
Hate would now be quickly bred from the corpse of his obstinate
desires, and he knew and welcomed the thought.
"Yes," he said, "you'm right; it's for men to be merciful. No woman
ever knew the meaning of the word. So I'll be a man all through--and
there's more goes to a man than mercy for them that have wickedly
wronged him."
He forgot where he stood and raised his voice.
"And I'll find him--maybe I know where to look. But I'll find him;
and there won't be any mercy then, Dinah Waycott. 'Tis him that
shall answer for this blackguard robbery. I can't have you; but, by
God, I'll have the price of you!"
He woke his father, and Ben, choking, coughed and spat. Then he
heaved himself on his arms and pressed his shoulders up to his ears
to ease the suffocation within.
Dinah ministered to him and John went from the sick-room and from the
house.
CHAPTER XXIV
"THE REST IS EASY"
Ben Bamsey survived his illness and had to thank a very pains-taking
doctor and most devoted nurses for his life. He was unconscious for
four and twenty hours, and during the fortnight that followed the
crisis remained so weak, that it seemed he could never regain
strength sufficient to move a hand. Then he began to recover. He
prospered very slowly, but there were no relapses, and the definite
disaster left by his illness remained unknown to the sufferer himself
until the end of his days. Nor did other people perceive it until
some months had elapsed. The physician was the first to do so, but
he did not speak of it directly, rather leaving Ben's own circle to
discover the change and its extent. The doctor had feared early; but
it was not a fear he could impart.
Meantime it became known to those who had already bidden farewell to
the master of Green Hayes that he would live; and not one of all
those known to Mr. Bamsey but rejoiced to learn the good news.
On a day some time after Christmas, while yet the sick man's fate was
undetermined and it could not be said that he was out of danger,
Lawrence Maynard went down to Green Hayes, that he might learn the
latest news. Life ran evenly at Falcon Farm and Mr. Stockman's first
interest at present was his kinsman. Now Lawrence brought a
partridge, with directions from Joe that it was to be made into broth
for Mr. Bamsey.
He saw Ben's wife and heard the morning's news, that her husband was
now safe and would recover.
Faith looked haggard and pale, and Maynard expressed a fear that the
ordeal must have been very severe. She admitted it, but declared
that such relief as all now felt would be a tonic and swiftly restore
them.
"We're about beat," she said, in her usual placid fashion. "We've
worked hard and, between us, we've saved my husband with the doctor's
help. That man's a miracle. I've got a very great respect for him.
You'd best to come in and rest yourself before you go back."
He entered, in secret hope of seeing Dinah, whom he had not met for
several weeks. Once, however, she had written him a brief note to
say that she was well.
Faith Bamsey spoke of Ben and praised his fortitude.
"If he'd wavered, or thrown up the sponge for an hour, he'd have
died; but so long as he kept consciousness he determined to live, and
even when he thought and felt positive he must go, he never gave up
doing the right thing. He won't be the same man, however; we mustn't
expect that. He'll be in his bed for a month yet and can't hope to
go down house for six weeks. He mustn't think to go out of doors
till spring and the warm weather; then it remains to be seen how much
of his nature he gets back."
She entertained Maynard for half an hour, while he drank a cup of
tea. She did not share Jane's suspicion and dislike of him and felt
no objection to the idea of his wedding Dinah and removing her from
Lower Town. She was almost minded in his quiet and inoffensive
presence to raise the question, and went so far as to tell him Dinah
had driven to Ashburton that afternoon. But he showed no apparent
interest in the fact and Faith did not continue on the subject. She
could be generous, however, in the blessed light of Ben's promised
recovery, and she admitted that Dinah had been of infinite value in
the sick-room. Indeed Mrs. Bamsey did not hide from herself that
Dinah had doubtless made the difference between life and death for
her husband; and since she desired above all things that Ben should
live, some of her dislike was softened for the time. She wished her
away very cordially, but knew the hour of Dinah's departure must now
be protracted indefinitely, for no question could at present be put
to her foster-father.
With her personal anxieties ended, Faith Bamsey found it possible to
consider other people again.
"I've never had time to think of what Enoch Withycombe's death meant
yet," she said, "because it brought such a terrible time to us. But
now us can lift up our heads and look round at other folk again and
inquire after the neighbours. Melinda was down axing after my
husband a bit ago, but I didn't see her. Jerry comes and goes. I
hope Melinda gets over it. To nurse a father all them years and then
lose him, must have left her stranded in a manner of speaking."
"Mrs. Honeysett comes to see Miss Susan and farmer sometimes."
"I warrant. Would you say Cousin Joe be looking in that direction
now she's free?"
Maynard shook his head.
"I wouldn't. I don't reckon Mr. Stockman will marry again. He's
very comfortable."
"Yes--one of them whose comfort depends on the discomfort of somebody
else, however."
"So people seem to think. It's a hard home for Miss Susan; but it's
her life, and if she's not a cheerful sort of woman, you can't say
she's much downcast."
"No--she dursn't be cast down. He wouldn't stand cast-down people
round him. Mind to say I'm greatly obliged for the bird, and I hope
Ben will eat a slice or two presently. I'll come up over and drink a
dish of tea with them afore long. I'm properly withered for want of
fresh air."
"I dare say you are, ma'am."
"I saw Enoch Withycombe last week," she said. "The old man was
standing down in the Vale, not far from the kennels--just where you'd
think he might be. And always seeing him lying down, as we did, it
gave me quite a turn to mark how tall his ghost was."
To see a dead man had not astonished Faith; but the unremembered
accident of his height had done so.
"How did he look, Mrs. Bamsey?" asked Maynard.
"I couldn't tell you. The faces that I see never show very clear.
You'm conscious it is this man, or this woman. You know, somehow,
'tis them, but there's always a fog around them. They don't look the
same as what living people look."
"The haunted house that adjoins Mrs. Honeysett's is taken at last,"
he said. "Mr. Chaffe has been up over a good bit putting it to
rights, and they've stripped the ivy and are going to put on a new
thatch. It's a very good house really, though in a terrible state,
so Mr. Chaffe told master."
"I've heard all about it," she answered. "There's a new gardener
come to Buckland Court--a widow man with a young daughter. And he
don't care for ghosts--one of the modern sort, that believe naught
they can't understand. And as they can't understand much, they don't
believe much. So he's took it."
"Harry Ford, he's called," added Lawrence. "A man famous for
flower-growing, I believe."
"I'm glad then. I hate for houses to stand empty."
He asked after Jerry.
"I met your young people back-along, and I'm afraid Miss Jane have
put me in her black books--why for I don't know very well. I suppose
they'll wed come presently?"
Again Mrs. Bamsey was tempted to speak, but felt it wiser not to do
so. She ignored Maynard's first remark and replied to the second.
"Yes; they'll be for it now no doubt. After Easter perhaps; but not
till my husband is strong enough to be at the church and give Jane
away of course. Jerry's come into a bit of money since his father
died. They must have their ideas, but they're close as thieves about
the future. All I can hear is that they be wishful to go away from
here come they're married."
"Folk like to make a change and start life fresh after that."
"I suppose they do."
He talked a little longer and it was impossible for Faith to feel
dislike or anger. Had he come between her son and his betrothed--had
he been responsible for the unhappy break, she would have felt
differently; but she knew that he was not responsible and she
perceived that if he indeed desired to marry Dinah, the circumstance
would solve difficulties only ignored by common consent during her
husband's illness. She had not heard what John said to Dinah in the
sick-room and supposed that now her son must appreciate the
situation, since he had quite ceased to speak of Dinah. His purpose,
avowed in a passion, had not overmuch impressed Dinah herself, for it
was outside reason and she doubted not that Johnny would be ashamed
of such foolish threats in a cooler moment. But, none the less, she
meant to warn Lawrence and now an opportunity occurred to do so.
For Maynard availed himself of Mrs. Bamsey's information, and hearing
that Ben's foster-daughter was gone to Ashburton, knew the way by
which she would return home and proceeded on that way. He had not
seen her since the Sunday afternoon at Lizwell Meet; neither had he
written to her, doubting whether it might be wise to do so and
guessing that her whole life for the present was devoted to the
sufferer.
He left Mrs. Bamsey now and presently passed the workshops of Arthur
Chaffe at Lower Town, then sank into the valley. By the time he
reached New Bridge, Dinah had also arrived there and he carried her
parcels for half a mile and returned beside the river.
She was beyond measure rejoiced to see him and he found her worn and
weary from the strain of the battle; but its victorious issue went
far already to make her forget what was passed. She talked of Mr.
Bamsey and gave Maynard details of the sick-room and the alternate
phases of hope and despair that had accompanied the illness. To her
these things bulked large and filled her thoughts; but he was well
content, because Dinah adopted an implicit attitude to him that
indicated beyond doubt her settled consciousness of their relation.
She spoke as though they were lovers of established understanding.
She seemed to take it for granted that only an uncertain measure of
time separated them.
This much she implied from the moment of their meeting and presently,
when they approached the parting place, she became personal.
"Don't think, for all I'm so full of dear foster-father, that you've
been out of my thoughts, Lawrence," she said. "You was there all the
time--the last thing in my mind when I went to get an hour or two of
sleep, and the first thing when I woke. You ran through it all; and
once or twice when he was rambling, he named your name and said you
was a very good sort of man--civil and thoughtful and peace-loving.
And I told him you were; and he hoped we'd come together, for he said
he could trust me with you. He wasn't far from himself when he said
it, but only I heard; and whether he ever named you in his fever
dreams when I wasn't there--to Jane, or Mrs. Bamsey--I don't know.
They never let on about it and so I hope he didn't."
"I've just seen his wife," he said. "She's long ways happier for
this great recovery. She's sensible enough. She looked a few
questions, but didn't ask them, and you're not bound to answer looks."
Then Dinah told him of John's threats and how he had again begged her
to wed.
"I felt things was at a climax then; and I told him straight out that
I knew what love was at last. I was gentle and kind to the poor
chap; but he wasn't gentle and kind to me. He wanted to know the
man, and that, of course, I couldn't tell him, though dearly I longed
to. But things being as they are, I can't name you, Lawrence, though
'tis terrible hateful to me I can't. I said to Johnny 'twas no odds
about the man for the present, and then he lost his temper and swore
he'd find him out and do all manner of wicked deeds to him. Only his
rage, of course, and nothing to trouble about, but so it is and I
meant for you to know."
He considered and she spoke again.
"It makes me mad to think all we are to each other have got to be
hid, as if we was ashamed of it instead of proud--proud. But Cousin
Joe would abide by the letter against the spirit no doubt. He'd tell
everybody you was married if we blazed out we were tokened; and now
Mr. Withycombe's dead, there's not any in the Vale that would
understand."
"Certainly there is not, Dinah--or beyond the Vale I reckon."
"All's one," she said. "In my eyes you're a free man, and just as
right to find a mate as a bird in a tree. Yes, you are. I know what
marriage means now, and I know what our marriage will mean. For that
matter we are married in heart and soul."
"It's good to hear you say so," he answered. "My love's so true as
yours, Dinah; but there's more mixed with it."
"Away with what be mixed with it! I won't have naught mixed with it,
and no thought shall think any evil into it, Lawrence. You couldn't
think evil for that matter; but men be apt, seemingly, to tangle up a
straight thought by spinning other thoughts around it. And I won't
have that. What be your thoughts that you say are mixed with the
future? Can you name them? Can you think 'em out loud in words and
look in my face while you do? I lay you can't! But, for that
matter, I've been thinking too. And what I think mixes with what I
feel, and makes all the better what I feel."
In her eagerness Dinah became rhetorical.
"I was turning over that widow at Barnstaple," she said--"the woman
called Courtier, married to a dead man. And I was wondering why I
thought twice of her even while I did so; for what be she to me? Not
so much as the grass on the field-path I walk over. And what be she
to you more than the dead? Be she real, Lawrence? Be she more real
and alive to you than Gilbert Courtier, in his grave, beyond sight
and sound of living men for evermore? Let the dead lie. You'm
alive, anyway, and free in the Eye of God to marry me. And what
matters except how soon, and when, and where?"
"You're a brave wonder," he said, "and the man you can love, who
would miss you, must be a bigger fool than me. What's left be my
work--and a glorious bit of work I reckon."
"Easy enough anyway."
"For the things to be done, easy enough I doubt not; for the things
to be thought, none so easy. Them that sweep fearless to a job, like
you, have got to be thought for. And love quickens a man and makes
him higher and deeper and better--better, Dinah--than himself--if
love's got any decent material to work upon and the man's any good.
And pray God that will turn out to be so in my case. A bit ago, when
first I came here, I'd have gone bare-headed into this--same as you
want to. But I've larned a lot from a dead man since I came to
Falcon Farm. Withycombe looked deeper into life than me, being
taught by his master and his own troubles and also out of books so to
do. He steadied me here and there, and maybe it was for this great
business that the words were put in his mouth. And it's that that be
mixed with what I feel for you. God knows it don't lessen the love;
but it--how shall I say--it lifts it a bit--into sharper air than a
man breathes easy. I ban't going to be selfish if I can help it.
We're young and the world's before us. But afore we come together, I
want you to be so strong and sure-footed that nothing shall ever
shake you after, and naught that man can do or say----"
"Oh, my dear heart!" she cried, "what do you think I'm made of?"
"I know--I know. It's what I be made of, Dinah darling. I've got to
find that out."
"Let me show you then. You don't frighten me, Lawrence. I know what
you're made of, and I know if I know naught else, you won't be a
finished thing till you share what I'm made of. We be halves of one
whole as sure as our Maker fashioned the parts; and that you
know--you must know. And I tell you the rest is easy, and you know
it's easy so well as me."
He said no more. In her present mood it must have only hurt to do
so, and every human inclination, every reasonable argument, every
plea of common sense and justice prompted him to acquiesce
whole-heartedly. But something other than reason possessed his mind
at that particular hour. For the moment he could not smother
thoughts that were selfless and engaged with Dinah only.
After a silence he answered her last words.
"Yes, I know it," he said. "If the rest goes that way, then the rest
is easy enough."
"What other way can it go, unless like our ways to-night--mine up one
hill--alone--yours up another hill--alone?"
"Never, by God! I'm only a man."
"And my man! My man!"
They talked a little longer, then parted, where they had parted on a
previous great occasion. But they did not part until Maynard had
made her promise to meet him again and that quickly.
"You'll be a lot freer now," he said.
"I shall and I shan't too, because all the fighting for foster-father
have made me closer than ever to him somehow. There's such a lot of
different loves in the world seemingly. I love the dear old man with
my whole heart--every bit of it. He can't do nor say nothing I don't
love him for--he's an old saint. And I love you with my whole heart
too, Lawrence. I properly drown in love when I think of you; and I
can almost put my arms round you in my thoughts, and feel we ain't
two people at all--only one."
They kissed and went their ways, and he considered all that she had
said even to the last word. The thought of these things in
themselves rejoiced him. To run away with Dinah and vanish from this
environment would not be difficult. Indeed he had already traversed
the ground and considered the details of their departure. He would
give notice a month before they disappeared, and while his going
might be orderly enough, Dinah's must be in the nature of a surprise.
He considered whether they should leave in such a manner that their
names would not be associated afterwards; but it seemed impossible to
avoid that. It mattered little and not at all to her. In any case
the details were simple enough; there was nothing whatever to prevent
their departure when they chose to depart. To Canada, or Australia,
they might go when they willed, and he had retraced the old ground
and reconsidered the question of state-aided passages and his own
resources, which were ample for the purpose.
But not with these things was Maynard's mind occupied when he left
Dinah. He was not a man of very complex character, and the
independence of thought that had marked the chief action of his life
had never been seriously challenged until now. He had been guided by
reason in most questions of conduct and never recognised anything
above or outside reason in the action that led him to desert his wife
on their wedding day; but that same quality it was that now
complicated reason and made him doubt, not for his own sake or well
being, not of the future opened for him by the immense new experience
of loving Dinah, but by the consequences of such a future for Dinah
herself. Here reason spoke with a plain voice. His wits told him
that no rational human being could offer any sort of objection to
their union; and the tribal superstitions that might intervene, based
on the creed morals under which his nation pretended to exist, did
not weigh with him. What did was the law of the land, not the
religion of the land. Under the law he could not marry Dinah, and no
child that might come into the world as a result of their union would
be other than a bastard. That would not trouble her; and, indeed,
need not trouble anybody, for since Gilbert Courtier, as Dinah had
said, no longer existed for them, and was now beyond reach as
completely as though indeed he lay in his grave, there could be none
to rise and question a marriage entered into between him and
Dinah--in Canada, or elsewhere. But there were still the realities
and, beyond them, a certain constituent of his own character which
now began to assert itself. There persisted in his soul a something
not cowardly, but belonging to hereditary instincts of conscience,
mother-taught, through centuries. It made Lawrence want to have all
in order, conformable to the laws of the world and his own deeply
rooted sense of propriety. He had no desire to run with the hare and
hunt with the hounds: he knew that for nothing you can only get
nothing, but he longed, before all else, that the inevitable might
also be the reputable, and that no whisper in time to come should
ever be raised against his future wife. The desire rose much above a
will to mere safety. It was higher than that and, indeed, belonged
to Maynard's ethical values and sense of all that was fitting and
good of report among men and women. It echoed the same influence and
radical conception of conduct that had made him leave his wife on his
wedding day; and the fact that no such considerations controlled
Dinah, the truth that she regarded the situation on a plane of more
or less material reality and felt no sympathy with his shadowy
difficulties, promised to increase them. He hardly saw this himself
yet, but though he felt that she was right, yet doubted, in that
secret and distinctive compartment of his inner self, whether she
might be wrong. He was, for the moment, divided between agreeing
with her utterly and feeling that he must allow no natural instinct
and rational argument to let him take advantage of her. And when he
looked closer into this, a new difficulty arose, for how could he
ever make Dinah understand this emotion, or set clearly before her
comprehension what he himself as yet so dimly comprehended?
Her grasp of the situation was clear and lucid. From the moment when
she had said in the teashop, "D'you call that being married?" he
guessed how she was going to feel, and how she would be prepared to
act. Nor would the suggested confession to dead Enoch Withycombe
have made any difference to Dinah, whatever view the old hunter might
have held. Dinah's heart was single, and while now Maynard longed
with a great longing to find his own heart seeing eye to eye with
hers in every particular, he knew that it did not, and he could not
be sure that it ever would. He regarded the situation as lying
entirely between her and himself, and entertained no thought of any
possibility that others might complicate it, either to retard, or
determine the event. She had, indeed, told him of John Bamsey's
threats, but to them he attached no importance. From within and not
from without must the conclusion be reached.
CHAPTER XXV
JOHN AND JOE
John Bamsey now threatened to run his head into folly. He was an
intelligent man; but out of the ferment that had so long obscured his
vision and upset his judgment, there had been developed a new thing,
and a part of him that chance might have permitted to remain for ever
dormant, inert and harmless, was now thrust uppermost. He developed
a certain ferocity and a sullen and obstinate passion bred from sense
of wrong, not only towards Dinah, but the unknown, who had supplanted
him with her. For that he had been supplanted, despite her assurance
to the contrary, John swore to himself. Thus, indeed, only could
Dinah's defection be explained; and only so could he justify his
purpose and determination to treat this interloper evilly and rob
him, at any cost, of his triumph. He built up justification for
himself, therefore, and assured himself that he was right, as a man
of character, in taking revenge upon his unknown enemy. He convinced
himself easily enough and only hesitated farther because his rival
continued to be a shadow, to whom his sister alone was prepared to
put a name. She resolutely swore that Maynard was the man, and she
declared that her father had mentioned him and Dinah together, more
than once, when rambling in his fever dreams.
This brought John, from a general vague determination to stand
between Dinah and any other man, to the necessity for definite deeds
that should accomplish his purpose; and when he considered how to
turn hate into action, he perceived the difficulty. But the folly
and futility he declined to recognise, though his reason did not omit
to force them upon him and declare that any violence would be vain.
There was still a measure of doubt whether Maynard might be the
culprit, and while now practically convinced, John took occasion,
when next at Falcon Farm, to satisfy himself and learn whether Susan,
or her father, could add certainty to his suspicion. It seemed
impossible that, if such an intrigue were progressing, Joe Stockman
should have failed to observe it.
He inquired, therefore, and learned more than he expected to learn.
John ascended from his work at dusk of a March evening. The sky was
clear and the wind, now sunk, had blown from the north all day. The
weather had turned very cold again after a mild spell, and already,
under the first stars, frost was thrusting its needles out upon the
still woodland pools.
From Hazel Tor arrived young Bamsey, and though tea was done at
Falcon Farm, Susan brewed another pot and Joe listened to Johnny and
spoke very definitely upon the subject of his concern.
"You say there's a murmur come to your ear that Orphan Dinah be
tokened in secret, John; and as for that I know naught. It's a free
country and she's a right to be married if the thought pleasures her;
but when you ax if my cowman be the other party to the contract, then
you ax me what another busy-body here and there have already axed,
and I can say to you what I've said to them. Melindy was also
wondering, and more than her; but I'll tell you most certain sure.
Lawrence Maynard is a very understanding chap and I admire his parts
and consider him, between ourselves, as about the best I've ever had
in my employment. He thinks a lot of me also, as I happen to know,
and he don't keep no secrets from me. 'Tis his fancy, perhaps, that
I've got my share of intellects and know enough to be useful to the
rising generation; but so it is, and he've come to me many a time
with such cares as the young have got to face, being gifted with the
old-fashioned idea that the wisdom of the old may be worth the
trouble of hearing. That's a tip for you, Johnny, I dare say. And I
can tell you that Maynard, though a kindly and reasonable creature,
as would do any man, woman, or child a good turn, have no thought
whatever of marrying. He's not for marriage--that's a cast-iron
certainty; and you might so soon think Thomas Palk would venture--or
even sooner. Tom have a poor pattern of mind that inclines him to
discontent. My reading of him is that he might take the plunge if he
was to find a big enough fool to go in with him."
"I wouldn't say that," argued Susan. "Thomas ain't blind to women,
father. I've heard him say things as showed he marked their ways."
"Mark their ways the male must," replied Joe. "Their ways be
everywhere, and they are half of life, and we admire 'em, according
as they do their appointed duty, or shiver at 'em, when they get off
the rails and make hateful accidents for the men, as often happens.
But that's neither here nor there, and, be it as it will, of one
thing you can clear your mind, Johnny. If there's any man after
Dinah, it ain't my cowman, no more than it's my horseman, or anybody
else I know about."
"He may be throwing dust in your eyes, however," argued John Bamsey.
"My eyes be growing dim, worse luck, along of using 'em to work as I
would year after year--just for love of work; but they ain't so dim
that the rising generation can throw dust in 'em yet. And now, since
you seem so busy about it, let me ax in my turn what it matters to
you anyway? We've all granted you had very hard luck, because Dinah
changed her mind; but she did, as women be built to do, so what's the
matter with you, and why be you making this upstore about her and her
plans?"
"Because no living man shall have her while I'm above ground,"
answered the younger. "She's ruined my life, for nothing but
cold-blooded wickedness and without any decent reason. And there is
a man, and I'll find him. And Jane says it's Maynard."
"Then Jane's a damned little fool," answered Joe; "and you're a
damned big one, if you can talk like that."
"It's wicked, John," declared Soosie-Toosie. "You ought to let the
dead past bury the dead, I'm sure. And Jane is wicked too, and
didn't ought to want for other women to be miserable, now she's going
to be happy herself."
"'Tis a bee in your bonnet, John; and you'd best to get it out afore
it stings you into foolishness," advised Joe. "You're talking evil
nonsense and very well you know it. You mustn't think to spoil a
woman's hopes of a home because she ain't got no use for yours. Be
there only one girl in the world? Don't you properly tumble over the
wenches every time you go into Ashburton? If you want to be married,
set about it, and whatever you do, mind your own business, and don't
talk about marring the business of other people--else you'll end by
getting locked up."
Soosie-Toosie also rated the sufferer.
"And you brought up as you was, John," she said. "And thought to be
the cleverest young man out of Lower Town. There's no rhyme nor
reason in any such bad thoughts; and even if it was Lawrence Maynard,
what quarrel have you got with him? Dinah's free and all the world
to choose from, and if she's found a man she likes better'n she liked
you, 'tis very ill-convenient for you to thrust between 'em. And no
man worth his salt would stand it."
"Don't you talk," he answered roughly. "You don't know nothing about
what it is to love and then be robbed. Love, such as I had for
Dinah, be a thing too big for you neuter women to understand, and
it's no more sense than a bird twittering for you to say anything on
the subject. Dinah was mine, and if she's gone back on that, she's
the wicked one, not me; and I'll do what I will."
"Don't you call Soosie-Toosie names anyhow," warned Joe. "She tells
you the truth, John, and you'm making a very silly show of
yourself--so funny as clown in a circus, my dear. And most men would
laugh at you. But me and Susan are much too kind-hearted to do that.
And as to Soosie being a neuter creature, that's great impertinence
in you and I won't have it. And thank God there are neuter
creatures, to act as a bit of a buffer sometimes between the breeders
and their rash and wilful deeds. A pity there ban't more of 'em, for
they're a darned sight more dignified and self-respecting than most
of the other sort, and they do more good in the world nine times out
of ten. You pull yourself together, John, else no decent girl will
have any use for you. They want balance and common sense in a man,
and something they can look up to and trust. All of which you had;
so you get back to your proper mind and mend your manners and your
way of speech."
"What better than that Dinah should come by a husband and get out of
Green Hayes?" asked Susan. "You know very well it would be a good
thing for all parties, and, I dare say, you'd very soon feel better
yourself if she was out of your sight for good and all. And if
there's a man ready and willing, it would be a most outrageous deed
for you, or anybody, to try and stop it."
"Never heard better sense," declared Joe. "That's turning the other
cheek that is; and if you find a female that's half as fine a
Christian as Soosie--neuter or no neuter--you'll get more luck than
you deserve."
John, however, was not minded to yield. He talked nonsense for half
an hour, explained that he had been wickedly wronged and marvelled
that they were so frosty and narrow as not to see it. He opened a
spectacle of mental weakness, and when he was gone, Joe took somewhat
gloomy views of him.
"Us'll hope the poison will work out," said Susan. "But who could
have thought it was there?"
"I look deeper," answered her father. "Yesternight I met Chaffe, and
he whispered to me, under oaths of secrecy, which you'll do well to
keep, Susan, that Ben Bamsey won't never be the same again. His
body's building up, but Arthur, who's very understanding and quick,
fears that Ben's brain have took a shock from this great illness and
be weakened at the roots. It weren't, even in his palmy days, what
you might call a first class brain. He was a sweet-tempered, gentle
creature with no great strength of mind, but so kindly and generous,
that none troubled whether he had big intellects or no. Sometimes he
did rage up wildly against injustice and wrong; and perhaps, if we
understood such things, we should find he hadn't handed down to John
such good wits and clear sight as we thought he had. Johnny was
always excitable and a terror to a poacher and doubtful blade. And
now it looks as if he was going to be a terror to himself--if nobody
else."
"He'm so unforgiving," said Susan. "If he goes on like this, folk
will very soon think they see why Dinah threw him over. 'Tis so
silly to be obstinate over such a job. Surely, when a female tells a
man she haven't got no use for him, that did ought to be a plain hint
of her feelings."
"There be them whose memories are merciless," said Mr. Stockman.
"God pity that sort, for they need it. If your memory's so built
that it can't pass by a slight, or wrong, or misfortune, you have a
hell of a life and waste a lot of brain stuff and energy. They can't
help it; they stand outside time and it don't act on 'em. There are
such people; but they're as rare as madmen--in fact hate, or love,
that won't die decent is a form of madness; and that's how it is with
Johnny."
"He ought to pray about it, didn't he? A parlous, withering thing
for the chap."
"So it is, and I wish he could get it drawed out, like we draw out a
bad tooth. For such torments foul the mind, and naught does it
quicker than love carried beyond reason. That's one thing you'll
always have to be thankful for, Soosie--one among many, I hope--that
you was never tangled up with a man. 'Neuter' the rude youth called
you; but that ain't the word, and even if it was, there can't be no
sting to it seeing the shining angels of God be all neuters and our
everlasting Creator's a neuter Himself."
"'Tis quite enough to have a soul; and you can't be a neuter ezacally
if you've got that," said Susan.
"More you can then. And every human woman should take her
consolation out of the thought," declared Joe. "Even the
caterpillars turn into winged creatures, and when a left female be
disposed to envy the wives and mothers, let her remember she's as
safe for her wings and crown as the best of 'em and safer than many;
and more likely to be happy up over when her time comes; for the
larger the family, the more chance for black sheep among 'em; and
where's the woman in heaven will have such peace as you, if she's
always fretting her immortal soul out over some lost boy or girl in
t'other place?"
These consolations, however, awoke no answering enthusiasm in
Soosie-Toosie.
"I've heard Melindy say she didn't miss a family; but nature's
nature," she answered, "and 'tis a great event to have bred an
immortal creature, whether or no."
"When you say 'Melindy,' you lead my thoughts into another
direction," declared the farmer. "To be plain, she's in my mind.
She'll be a terrible lonely one for the future--unless---- In fact
I'm turning it over."
This matter interested Soosie-Toosie more than most, for her own
views were clear. She would have welcomed Mrs. Honeysett at Falcon
Farm and believed that, from her personal point of view, such an
advent must be to the good; but she felt by no means so sure whether
it would result in happiness for her father.
"I could, of course, have her for the asking, if that was all that
stood to it," mused Joe. "She'd come, and there's another here and
there who'd come. Then I say to myself, 'What about you?'"
"No, you needn't say that. Your good's mine and I'm very fond of
Melindy. She'd suit me down to the ground, father. You need only
think of yourself; and the question is whether the sudden strain of
another wife would interfere with your liberty."
"I know. You may be sure I shall look all round it. I've been
married; but marriage in youth is far ways different from wedding in
sight of seventy. If I was a selfish sort of man, I might take the
step--for my own convenience--like David, and a good few since him;
but I put you first, Soosie, and I'm none too sure whether a
character like Melinda might not cut the ground from under your feet."
"She wouldn't do that. I know my place. But, of course, it would be
terrible sad to me if she was to cut the ground from under yours,
father."
"She's wonderful," admitted Joe. "But, on the whole, she ain't
wonderful enough to do that. My feet be a lot too sure planted for
any woman to cut the ground from under 'em, Soosie. However, 'tis a
bootless talk--feet or no feet. I'm only mentioning that she'd come
if I whistled--just a pleasant subject to turn over, but no more."
He smiled at his own power and Susan admired him.
"She would come, not being a fool and knowing the man you are; and if
you want her, you can put out your hand and take her; but there's a
lot would go with Melinda besides herself, if you understand me."
"What?" asked Mr. Stockman.
"I don't mean her bit of money; I mean her strong character and far
reaching ideas and steadfast opinions."
"And think you I don't know all that? But such a man as me might
very well rub off the edges of a woman's mind where they was like to
fret."
Thus Joe, albeit he had not the smallest present intention of
offering marriage to Melinda, liked to ponder on the thought that
this fine woman would take him. The idea tickled his fancy, and
Susan knew it; but she had not the discernment to perceive that it
was only an idea--a vision from which her father won greater
entertainment than the reality could promise.
CHAPTER XXVI
MR. PALK SEEKS ADVICE
An observer of life has remarked that it is pleasanter to meet such
men as owe us benefits, than those to whom we owe them. When,
therefore, Thomas Palk appeared one Saturday afternoon in the
workshop of Arthur Chaffe at Lower Town, the carpenter, guessing he
came for gratitude, was pleased to see him. It was a half holiday,
but Mr. Chaffe ignored such human weaknesses. He held that the
increased demand for shorter working hours was among the most evil
signs of the times, failing to appreciate the difference between
working for yourself and other people in this regard.
Thomas plunged into an expression of gratitude immediately while the
carpenter proceeded with his business.
"We've got our rise, master, and Mr. Stockman named your name and
said we had to thank you for the size of the lift--me and Maynard,
that is. And hearing that, I felt it was duty to do it."
"And thank you also, Thomas. Few remember such things. Joe's a
wonderful man and, like yourself, ain't above giving credit to them
who earn it."
"He wouldn't have gone so far single-handed."
"Don't say that. I only pushed him along the road he was taking.
The employer be always reluctant to see things are worth what they'll
fetch, except when he's selling his own stuff. But the Trades Unions
be bent on showing them. A world of changes, as poor Enoch used to
say. Not that he had much use for Trades Unions. He'd read about
the Guilds of the old days and held they was powerfuller and better
for some things. And they thought of the workmanship: Trades Unions
only think of the worker. What I call workmanship, such as you see
in this shop, I hope, be a thing of the past, save among old men like
me. But the joy of making be gone."
"There's some things have got to be done right and not scamped,
however."
"True; the work on the land must be done right, or the face of the
earth will show it. There's only one right way to drive a furrow, or
milk a cow. You can't scamp and 'ca'canny' when you'm milking a cow,
Thomas. But the joy of the workmanship be gone out of work in the
young men. Wages come between them and the work of their hands, and
while the bricklayer jaws to the hodman, the bricks go in anyhow.
Patience be the first thing. Human nature's human nature, and 'tis
no use wanting better bread than's made of wheat."
"If everybody was patient," said Mr. Palk, "then the hosses, and even
the donkeys, would come into their own no doubt. But patience be too
often mistook for contentment; and when the masters think you'm
content, they be only too pleased to leave it at that."
"Yet impatience is the first uprooter of happiness," argued Mr.
Chaffe. "Take a little thing like habits. Only yesterday a
particular nice, clean old woman was grumbling to me because her
husband's simple custom was to spit in the fire when he was smoking;
and sometimes he'd miss the fire. A nasty vexation for her no doubt;
but not a thing as ought to cast a shadow over a home. Our habits
are so much a part of ourselves, that it never strikes us we can
worry our friends with 'em; but if you consider how the habits of
even them you care about often fret you, then you'll see how often
your little ways fret them."
"No doubt 'tis well to be patient with your neighbour's habits, so
long as they'm honest," admitted Mr. Palk.
"Certainly; because if you don't, you'll set him thinking and find
you'll get as good as you give. Patience all round be the watchword,
Tom, and it would save a power of friction if it was practised.
Nobody knows where his own skeleton pinches but himself, and to rate
folk harshly may be doing a terrible cruel thing and touching a raw
the sufferer can't help."
"Like Ben Bamsey," said the horseman. "'Tis whispered he've grown
tootlish since his famous illness. That'll call for patience at
Green Hayes."
"True love's always patient, my dear. Yes, the poor old man be
sinking into the cloud, and the only bright thought is that he won't
know it, or suffer himself. But them with brains will suffer to see
him back in childhood. Yet he was always a childlike man and none
the worse for it. The light's growing dim, and doctor says he'll
fade gradual till he don't know one from another. And then, such is
human nature, his family will change gradual too, and forget what he
was, and come slow and sure to think of him as a thing like the
kettle, or washing day--just a part of life and a duty and not much
more."
"Better he'd died."
"You mustn't say that. He may very like have a stroke and go soon,
doctor says; but he'll live so long as he's useful here to his Maker.
He'll be a reminder and a lesson and a test of character. His wife
will see he don't come to be just a shadow, like a picture on the
wall--so will I, so far as I can. He's been a very great friend of
mine and always will be, wits or no wits."
Mr. Palk, impressed with these opinions, was inspired to ask a
question that had long troubled him. He had never made a very close
confident of Maynard, feeling the man too young, and also doubting
his ideas on various topics; but here was a Christian of general
esteem and one older than himself. He debated the point while a
silence fell, save for the noise of Arthur's plane.
"Tell me this," he said suddenly. "By and large would you reckon
that if a man sees a wrong thing being done--or what seems a wrong
thing in his eyes--did he ought to seek to right it? It ain't his
business in a manner of speaking; and yet, again, wrong be
everybody's business; and yet, again, others might say it weren't a
wrong at all and the man's judgment in fault to say it was wrong."
Arthur cast down his plane and pondered this somewhat vague
proposition. But his quick mind, even while considering the case,
found a subconscious way of also speculating as to what lay behind
it. He knew everybody's affairs and was familiar with a rumour that
Maynard secretly paid court to Dinah Waycott. For some reason he
suspected that this might be in the mind of Maynard's fellow-worker.
"You put the question very well, Tom, and yet make it a bit difficult
to answer," he said. "For it ain't a straight question, but hemmed
about with doubt. If you was to say you saw wrong being done and
asked me if you ought to try and right it, than I should answer you
that it was your bounden duty to try to right it and not let anything
come between. But you ban't sure in your mind if it is wrong being
done, so that's the point you've got to fasten on and clear up; and
until I know more of the facts of the case, I couldn't say more than
that you must be sure afore you set about it."
Thomas Palk considered this speech and did not immediately reply,
while Arthur spoke again.
"Have you heard anybody else on the subject, or be it a thing only
come to your own notice? Mind I don't want to know a word about
it--only to help you, or, if it ain't you yourself, whoever it may
be."
"It is me," answered the other. "And I see what I take to be a wrong
thing going on. I don't feel no doubt myself; but I can't say as
anybody else but me seems to see it. And if I was to up and say I
thought so, which I ban't at all feared to do, I might open his eyes,
or I might not."
"Would you be harming anybody if it was took in a wrong spirit?"
"It didn't ought to."
"There's no anger to it, nor nothing like that, Thomas?"
"Not a bit. I'm very friendly disposed to all concerned."
"Mind--don't you answer if you don't want; but is there a woman in
it, Thomas?"
Mr. Palk considered.
"If there was?"
"Then be terrible careful."
"There is--and that's all I be going to tell you," answered Mr. Palk,
growing a little uneasy.
The carpenter doubted not that here lay direct allusion to Dinah and
Lawrence; but he had no motive, beyond inherent curiosity, for going
farther into that matter then. Indeed, he saw the gathering concern
of Mr. Palk and sought only to put him at his ease.
"You're not a boy," he said. "And you have got plenty of experience
of human nature and a Christian outlook. I should fall back on my
religion if I was you, Tom, for you can trust that to lead over the
doubtfullest ground. You're not a joker-head, as would rush in and
make trouble along of hasty opinions; and if you think what's doing
be wrong, and if you think a word in season might do good and make
the mistaken party hesitate afore he went on with it, then, in my
judgment, you'd do well and wisely to speak. But keep the woman in
your mind and do naught to hurt her."
Mr. Palk expired a deep breath of satisfaction at this counsel.
"So be it," he said. "I'll do it; and for the sake of a female it
will be done."
"Then you won't have it on your conscience, whether or no, Thomas."
"'Tis my conscience be doing of it," said Mr. Palk; "it can't be
nothing else."
Nevertheless he felt a measure of doubt on this point. His motives
were beyond his own power of analysis.
"I might come and let you know the upshot one day," he said.
"You'll be welcome, and all the more so if I can do you a good turn,"
promised Mr. Chaffe; then Thomas went his way.
There now awaited him a very formidable deed; but he was determined
not to shrink from it, while still quite unable to explain to himself
the inspiration to anything so tremendous.
CHAPTER XXVII
DISCOVERY
Circumstances swept Thomas to action sooner than he had intended and,
though slow of wits, he was quickened to grasp an opportunity and
essay his difficult and dangerous adventure. He had convinced
himself that conscience must be the mainspring of the enterprise and
assured his mind that, with such a guide, he might feel in no doubt
of the result. Even if he failed and received the reward that not
seldom falls to well doing, he would be able to sustain it when he
considered his motives.
There came an occasion on which Joe Stockman declared himself to be
ill in the tubes; and as the fact interfered with certain of his own
plans, it caused him much depression and irritation. Indeed he was
greatly troubled at the passing weakness and took care that Falcon
Farm should share his own inconvenience. He railed and was hard to
please. He reminded Palk and Maynard of their rise and hoped they
would not imitate the proletariat in general and ask for more and
more, while doing less and less. He criticised and carped; and while
the men suffered, his daughter endured even more than they. It was
possible for Lawrence and Thomas to escape to their work, and since
Joe held the open air must not for the present be faced, they were
safe for most of their time; but Soosie-Toosie found herself not so
happily situated and when, after dinner on a wet and stormy day in
early May, her father decided that he must have a mustard and linseed
poultice that night, a bottle of brown sherry and a certain lozenge
efficacious for the bronchial tubes, despite the atrocious weather,
she gladly consented to make the journey to Ashburton.
"'Tis too foul for you to go. Better let me," ventured Thomas, when
the need arose; but Mr. Stockman negatived his proposal.
"The weather's mending as any fool can see," he said, "and if it
comes on worse, you'd best to take a cab home, Susan. 'Twill be the
doctor to-morrow if I ban't seen to; and Lord He knows how such as me
can pay doctors, with wages up and prices down same as now."
"I'm wishful to go," answered his daughter. "You bide close by the
fire and I'll be gone this instant moment. Washing up can bide till
I come back."
"If the pony wasn't in sight of foaling, you could have took the
cart," answered Joe; "but that's outside our powers to-day. And I
wouldn't ax you if I didn't think a breath of air would do you good.
I know what 'tis to pine for it."
"It will do me good," she answered, and soon was gone, through lanes
where the mad, spring wind raved and flung the rain slantwise and
scattered fields and roads with young foliage torn off the trees.
Thomas Palk saw her go and his heart grew hard. He proceeded with
his work for an hour, then the ferment within him waxed to boiling
point and he prepared to strike at last. He went indoors, changed
his wet jacket and entered the kitchen, where Joe sat sighing and
gurgling over the fire with a tumbler of hot whisky and water beside
him.
"You!" he said. "God's light! Be you feared of the weather too?"
"You know if I'm feared of weather, master. But I be taking half an
hour off. There's naught calling for me special and I'm going over
some weak spots in the stable timber where we want fresh wood. The
big plough hoss chews his crib and us must run a bit of sheet tin
over it I reckon; and there's dry rot too. But I want a word, and
I'll be very much obliged to you if you'll bear with me for a few
minutes."
"I bear with life in general, including you, Thomas; so speak and
welcome," answered Mr. Stockman, "though I hope it's nothing calling
for any great feats of mind on my part. When I get a cold in the
tubes, it withers my brain like a dry walnut for the time being."
Thomas felt rather glad to know this. It might mean that his master
was less able to flash retort.
"No, no," he said. "I couldn't put no tax upon your brain--ain't got
enough myself. 'Tis a small matter in one sense and yet in another a
large matter. Lookers on see most of the game, as they say; and
though I ban't no nosey-poker, and far too busy a man, I hope, to
mind any business but my own, yet, there 'tis: I live here and I
can't but see us did ought to have another female servant under this
roof."
"And why for, Thomas, if you'll be so good as to explain?" asked Mr.
Stockman.
"Now we be coming to it," answered the horseman. "And I beg you in
Christian charity to take it as it is meant--respectful and as man to
master. But there 'tis: the reason why for we want another woman
here is that there be a lot too much for one woman to do. And that
means, as I see it, that Miss Stockman's doing the work of two women.
And such things be easily overlooked, especially in her case, because
she's a towser for work and don't know herself that she's got far too
much upon her. She's just slipped into it, and 'tis only by looking
at the affair from outside you see it is so; and through nobody's
fault in particular but just by chance; yet certainly she's doing
more than a human creature ought; for her work's never ended. You
say you done the work of ten in your palmy days, master, so perhaps
it don't fret you to see her doing the work of two at least; but the
female frame ban't built to do more than a fair day's work, and in my
humble opinion, as a friend of the family and proud so to be, Miss
Susan's toiling a lot harder than be safe for her health; and I feel
cruel sure as some day the strain will tell and she'll go all to
pieces, like a worn-out engine. Not that she'd ever grumble. This
very day she'll be properly drowned out afore she comes home; and I
dare say will be too busy working at you when she comes back to put
off her wet clothes, or think of herself. But there it is; I do
believe she moils and toils beyond the limit, and I point it out and
hope you'll take it as 'tis meant, from a faithful servant of the
family. And if it was the other way round and I had a girl I was
making work too heavy--from no unkindness, but just because I'd got
used to it--if it was like that and you called my attention to it,
I'd be very thankful, master."
"Capital, Thomas," said Mr. Stockman. "Never heard your tongue flow
so suent afore. You go on and say all you feel called to say, then
I'll answer you, if you'll allow me."
"That's all," answered Palk. "And I hope all well inside civility
and my place. And, as man to man, I do pray you won't be put about
nor yet feel I've said a word beyond my duty."
Joe appeared quite unangered and indeed only mildly interested. He
sipped at his glass; then lighted his pipe and drew at it for half a
minute before he replied.
"Every man has a right to do and say what he feels to be his duty,
Thomas. And women likewise. It's a free country in fact--or so we
pretend--and I should be very sorry to think as you, or Maynard, or
the boy even, was bound to endure my tyrant manners and customs a
minute longer than your comfort could put up with 'em. But that cuts
both ways, don't it? An all-seeing eye like yours will grant that?"
"I ain't got an all-seeing eye, master. 'Tis only the point of view.
And of course we could go if we was wishful to go, which we are not
I'm sure. But a man's daughter be different. She can't go very
well, can she?"
"She cannot," admitted Mr. Stockman. "And I've yet to hear she's
fretting to do so. This place is her home, and she's stood at her
father's right hand ever since he was doomed to widowhood. And I may
be wrong, of course, but I've always laboured under the opinion she
loved her parent and was proud and pleased to be the crown of his
grey hairs. She can't well desert me, as you say. But in your case,
Thomas, the position is a bit otherwise. You can go when you please,
or when I please. 'Tis well within your power to seek other work,
where your kind heart won't be torn watching a daughter do her duty
by a sick father; and 'tis well within my power to wish you to go.
And I do wish it. I'm wishing it something tremendous this moment."
Mr. Stockman smiled genially and continued.
"In a word, fine chap that you are and a willing worker, with good
methods and worthy of my praise--which you've had--I'm going to get
along without you now, and so we'll part Monday month, if you please.
And delighted I shall be to give you a right down good character for
honesty and sound understanding--where the hosses are concerned."
Mr. Palk had not expected this. He was much bewildered.
"D'you mean it, master?" he asked, with eyes not devoid of alarm.
"I do, my dear. I never meant anything with a better appetite. A
great loss, because with one like me--old and stricken before my
time, along of working far too hard, which was a foolish fault in my
generation--it was a comforting thing to feel I'd got a hossman in
you worthy of the name. You be the pattern of a good, useful sort,
that's dying out--worse luck. But when you said you wasn't a
nosey-poker, Thomas, you said wrong, I'm afraid; and a meddlesome
man, that has time to spare from the hosses for the women, and
thrusts in between parent and child, be very much against the grain
with me. And though, of course, you may be quite right, and know
better how to treat and cherish a grown-up daughter than a stupid
creature like me--and you a bachelor--yet even the worm will turn,
Thomas. And, worm though I am, I be going to venture to turn.
You're great on the point of view; and so will I be: and, from my
point of view, I can see you haven't got enough work to do in this
little place. You must go in the world and find a bigger and a
harder job, that won't leave you time for other people's business,
which at best be a kicklish task and avoided by men of much wits as a
rule."
"I meant well, master."
"And don't you always mean well? Why, you're the most well-meaning
man, after myself, I ever had the luck to meet, Thomas. But you've
fixed a gulf to-day, and I feel terrible sure we shan't suit each
other no more. So we'll part friends Monday month."
Joe spoke with far greater cordiality than when raising Mr. Palk's
wages six weeks before. He beamed graciously on Thomas and lighted
his pipe again.
"The talk be at an end now, because I mustn't strain my tubes," he
said. "And I'll beg you not to return to the subject. Both me and
my God are very well satisfied with the way I brought up
Soosie-Toosie, and so's she; and if she feels there's anything on
this earth I can do for her, to make her home a happier place, rest
assured she'll ax me herself. She's my master-jewel and always will
be, though she'll never know all I've done for her, because no child
ever can know the heights and depths of a good father's love. 'A
good father,' mark me, Thomas."
"Monday month then, master?"
"If quite convenient to yourself."
Then Palk went out into storm and gathering dusk. The woods of
Buckland waved grey through the gloaming and rain swept them heavily.
The wind shouted over the granite crown of the Beacon; sheep and
cattle had crept down from the high land and stood in the shelter of
walls and woods.
Thomas considered with himself. He was in a state as perturbed as it
was possible for such a stolid spirit to be; but he remembered that
the innocent cause of this revolution was now returning heavy laden
up the long hill from the market town.
He decided that he would go and meet Susan. His upheaval took the
form of increased solicitude for Miss Stockman.
"She shall hear the fatal news from me--not him," he reflected.
He set off and presently sighted the woman tramping up the hill in
the rain. Under the wild weather and fading light, she looked like
some large, bedraggled moth blown roughly about. Her basket was full
and her left arm held a parcel in blue paper. It was the only spot
of colour she offered. They met, greatly to her surprise.
"Good Lord!" she said. "Have father put more chores on you? Be you
going to Ashburton?"
"I am not," he answered. "I came out with my big umbrella to meet
you."
She was fluttered.
"How terrible kind! But 'tis no odds. I be bone-wet."
Nevertheless, Mr. Palk unfurled a large, faded, glass-green umbrella
over her.
"Give me the basket," he said, "and I'll walk betwixt you and the
weather. I come for more reasons than one, Susan. Something's
happened while you were to town and I'd sooner you heard it from me
than him."
"Nought gone wrong with father?"
"That's for others to say. But something have gone parlous wrong
with me."
She started and hugged her blue paper parcel closer. It contained
the bottle of brown sherry.
"I hope not, I'm sure."
"In a word, I'm sorry to say I leave Falcon Farm Monday month. It
have fallen with a terrible rush upon me--and my own fault too. I
can't tell you the reason, but so it is. The master's sacked me; and
every right to do so, no doubt, in his own eyes."
Miss Stockman stood still and panted. Her face was wet with rain;
her hair touzled; her hat dripping.
"Be you saying truth?" she asked, and fetched a handkerchief from her
pocket and dried her face.
"Gospel. I done a thing as he took in a very unkind spirit I'm sorry
to say."
The blue parcel trembled.
"Going--you? Never!"
"Monday month it have got to be."
"Why for? What have you gone and done? It must have been something
properly fearful, for he thought the world of you, behind your back."
"To my face, however, he did not--not this evening. And as to what I
done, I hope he won't feel called to name it in your ear. It was a
very dangerous task, as I reckoned when I started on it; but I felt
drove--Lord knows why! I meant well, but that don't amount to much
when you fail. No doubt he'll get somebody he likes better; and he
won't withhold a good character neither."
"This be a cruel come-along-of-it," she said blankly. "I couldn't
have heard nothing to trouble me more, Thomas. You was the bestest
we've ever had to Falcon Farm--and kindness alive."
"Thank you I'm sure. We've been very good friends. And why not?"
"I can't picture you gone. 'Twas a rit of temper. I'll speak to
father."
"Don't you do that. There weren't no temper, nor yet language. He
meant it and he's an unchanging man."
"Whatever did he say? What did you do? I will know! It shan't be
hid. Perhaps 'tis only his tubes fretting him."
"No--nothing to do with his tubes. He was well within his rights.
Not that I'll allow he was right, however."
"Why can't you tell me what it is then? If you want to stop--but
perhaps you don't?"
He considered.
"I never thought to go, and I never wanted to go less than what I do
at this minute, seeing you cast down. I be very much obliged to you
in a manner of speaking for not wanting me to go."
She looked up drearily at him and sniffed.
"We never know our luck," she said. "Not you, but me."
To his intense amazement he perceived that Susan was shedding tears.
She shook her head impatiently and it was not rain that fell from her
face. If a small fire can kindle a great one, so surely may a drop
of water swell into a river.
Light began to dawn in the mind of the man and it much astonished him
by what it revealed there. He was, in fact, so astounded by the
spectacle that he fell into silence and stared with mental eyes at
the explanation of the mysteries that had long puzzled him. His next
remark linked past with present.
"Be damned if I don't begin to know now why for I done this!" he said
with a startled voice. "I've wondered for weeks and weeks what was
driving me on, and I couldn't put no name to it, Susan; but 'tis
coming out in me. Shut your mouth a minute and let me think."
She kept silence and they plodded on. At the top of the hill a gust
caught the umbrella and it was in peril. Thomas turned it against
the wind.
"Come under the lew side of the hedge," he said. "I thought 'twas
conscience driving at me--but I begin to see it weren't. There's a
wonder happening. Fetch in here under the trees a minute."
She followed him through a gap at the summit of the hill and they
left the road for the partial shelter of spruce firs. They escaped
the wind, but the rain beat from the branches upon Mr. Palk's
umbrella.
"You're a woman of very high qualities and a good bit undervalued in
your home--so it seems to me. You're the light of the house, but
'twas left for others to find that out seemingly--not your father.
He's a man with a soft tongue, but a darned hard heart--to say it
respectful."
"I'm naught and less than naught. But I was always pleased to
pleasure you," she answered.
"The light of the house," he repeated. "And 'tis the light be far
more to the purpose than the candlestick. I can speak to you
straight, Susan, because I'm ugly as sin myself and not ashamed of
it. I didn't have the choosing of my face, and my Maker didn't ax me
what I'd like to look like come I grew up. And same with you. But
you be a living lesson to us other plain people, and show us that the
inside may be so fine no thinking man would waste a thought on the
outside."
Susan was not concerned with his philosophy: she had fastened on a
question of fact.
"You're not particular ugly, Thomas. I've seen scores plainer.
You've got a very honest face and nice grey eyes if I may say so."
"Certainly you may say so, and I'm very well content as you've been
to the trouble to mark the colour of my eyes. 'Tis a way women have.
They always know the colour of their friends' eyes. And if my face
be honest in your opinion, that's good news also. And as for your
eyes, if they was in a prettier setting, they'd well become it."
Susan grew a dusky red, but kept to the point.
"If you can say such things as that, surely you can tell me why
you're going?"
"I meddled--I--but leave the subject. 'Tis all dust and ashes afore
what's stirring in my head now--now I know why I meddled. You'd like
me to bide at Falcon Farm seemingly?"
"I should then. You've got nice ways, and--and you've always been
amazing pitiful to me."
"Where would your father be if you left him?"
"I'll never leave him. He knows that."
"How old might you be?"
"Thirty-five--thirty-six come October."
"Some say port-wine marks are handed down, and again some say they
are not. And if you was to hand it down, you'd hand down what's
better too, I shouldn't wonder."
She did not answer, but gasped and stared in front of her.
"Look here," he said. "Now I see so plain why for I done this, why
the mischief shouldn't you? 'Twas done because I've risen up into
loving you, Susan! I want you--I want to marry you--I'll take my
dying oath I do. It have just come over me like a flap of lightning.
Oh, hell!"
The bottle of wine had trembled dangerously in Soosie-Toosie's arm
before; now it dropped, broke on a stone, and spread its contents at
their feet. The sweet air suddenly reeked of it. But Susan ignored
the catastrophe.
"Me! Me! My God, you must be mad!"
"If so, then there's a lot to be said for being mad. But I ain't. I
see the light. I've been after you a deuce of a time and never
grasped hold of it. I didn't think to marry. In fact my mother was
the only woman I ever cared a cuss about till I seed you. And no
doubt, for your part you've long despaired of the males; but you'm a
born wife, Susan; and you might find me a very useful pattern of
husband. I love you something tremenjous, and I should be properly
pleased if you could feel the same."
"'Tis beyond dreaming," she said regarding him with wild eyes. "'Tis
beyond belief, Thomas."
"It may be," he admitted, "but not beyond truth. We can make it a
cast-iron fact; and 'tis no odds who believes it, so long as it
happens."
"You be above yourself for the minute. Your face is all alight.
Best to think it over and go to church and let a Sunday pass. I
can't believe you really and truly mean it."
"God's truth I do then."
"Father--did I ought to put love of you afore love of him, Thomas?"
"Certainly you did ought, and you've got the Bible behind you. If
you love me, then you did ought to put me afore every damn thing, and
cleave to me for ever after. Say you'll do it, like a dear woman. I
want to hear you say it, Susan. 'Twill cheer me up a lot, because
I've never had the sack afore in my life and don't like the taste of
it. I be feeling low, and 'twill be a great thing to get back on
farmer afore I go to bed to-night."
She was suspicious at once.
"You ban't doing this out of revenge, however?" she asked.
"For naught but love--that I'll swear."
"To be loved by a fine man--a go-by-the-ground creature like me!"
"And never no female better fit for it."
"I'll take you, Thomas; but if you change your mind after you've
slept on it, I shan't think no worse of you. Only this I'll say, I
do love you, and I have loved you a longful time, but paid no
attention to it, not understanding."
"Then praise the Lord for all His blessings, I'm sure."
He held her close in his arms and they kissed each other. She clung
to him fervently.
"Now, if you'll take the basket, I'll go back and buy another bottle
of sherry wine," she said.
"Not at all. But we mustn't shatter the man at one blow. He'll want
more than pretty drinking when he hears about this. I'll traapse
down for another bottle, and you go home under my umbrella; and
change every stitch on you, and drink something hot, else you might
fall ill."
"Ah! That's love! That's love!" she said, looking up at him
wet-eyed.
"No--only sense. I'll show 'e what love be so soon as I know myself.
You get home, and say as you dropped your bottle and was just going
back for another when I met you, on my way to Ashburton, and offered
to get it. And on the whole us'll keep the fearful news for a few
days till he's well again. 'Twill be more merciful."
"You'm made of wisdom, Tom. 'Tis a great relief to keep it from
father a bit till I've got used to the thought."
"Kiss me again then," he answered, and put his arms round her once
more.
"There's a brave lot of 'e to cuddle whether or no."
"'Tis all yours I'm sure, if you really want it, dear Thomas."
"I be coming to want it so fast as I can, woman!"
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE LAW
For Dinah Waycott the sole difficulty of her position began to clear
itself; and since she was now convinced that she and Lawrence saw the
future with the same vision, she felt that future approach quickly.
It seemed, however, that for her, pure joy could only be reached
through sorrow, and on an occasion of meeting Maynard upon the moor,
she said so.
"Nothing ever do run quite smooth, and out of my misfortune my
fortune comes. For it's only a terrible sad thing that be clearing
the road for us and leaving nobody in my life to think of but you."
She had assumed somewhat more than her lover at this point, and in a
sense, taken the lead.
"Your foster-father?" he said.
"Yes; it's a pretty dark cloud against my happiness, and if it was
only for that, I'd be glad to be gone. You can't say yet he don't
know me; but you can say he very soon won't. We seem to slip away
from him according as he cared for us. He don't know Jane no more at
all, and asks her what he can do for her when she comes in the room.
But he knows Johnny off and on, and he knows me off and on too. His
wife he still knows, and I can see it's life and death to her that he
shall go on knowing her; because it will be a great triumph for her
if, when he's forgot everybody, he still remembers her."
"I dare say it would be."
"I'd have been jealous as fire that he shouldn't forget me, if it
hadn't been for you. But not now. I won't be sorry to leave him
now, and just love to remember what he was to me. To think I could
ever say that! It's cruel sad, poor old dear."
"There's a bright side, however," he answered. "And though you might
say no man could be worse off than to lose his wits, yet for poor old
Ben there's one good thing: he'll never know you've gone, or how
you've gone."
"I've thought of that; but how can you be sure, if he'd had the mind
left to understand, he wouldn't have been glad for me? He liked you."
"You know different, Dinah. He liked me; but he'd never have been
glad, given the facts."
She was silent and Lawrence spoke again.
"He's only a shadow of a man now and will grow more and more faint,
till he fades away. But you'll have the grateful memory of him."
"Yes; and if ever we get a son, Lawrence, he must be called
Benjamin--I will have it so."
He fell silent. Dinah often spoke with delight of children; and it
was at those times the man felt the drag on his heart hardest. They
had argued much, but her frank puzzlement and even amusement at his
problems and doubts began to wear them down. She knew it, but,
behind her assumption of certainty, still suspected him a little. He
varied and seemed more inclined to listen than to talk. But things
were rushing to a conclusion and there could only be one.
It was agreed that they must now hide their friendship and their
purpose for the sake of other people. Dinah grew full of plans, and
Lawrence listened while she ran on; but she knew that the real plans
would be made by him. A sort of vagueness came into their relation
and its cause was in his head, not his heart. That, too, she knew.
But certain things to-day he told her and certain things, unknown to
him, she now determined to do. Impatience must have been created for
Dinah this evening, but that she understood his doubts were solely on
her account. She believed that nothing but questions of law remained
to deter Maynard, and of their utter insignificance she had often
assured him.
"I've got the facts," he said, "and I'd like for you to hear them.
And, after to-night, we mustn't see each other so often. To make it
easier for us when we go, we'd better keep as far apart as need be
till then. There's a lot must pass between us and we can't post
letters very well--not in the pillar-boxes; but we may want a
pillar-box of our own presently."
"What I hate about life," she cried, "is that you've got to pretend
such a lot. If this had happened to Jane, she'd love the hiding up
and the plotting and turning and twisting, like a hare running away
from the hounds. But I hate it. I hate to think the world's full of
people, who look at life in such a way that what we're going to do
must be wrong."
"They've been brought up with fixed ideas about marriage and think
it's got more to do with God than with men and women. The interests
of the Church are put high above right and justice for the people.
They always were; and them that claim marriage is God's plan, also
claim that He would chain wretched, mistaken creatures together for
life, quite regardless of their honour and decency and self-respect.
It's funny that educated men should write the stuff I read; but the
moment you see the word 'God' in a newspaper, you can say good-bye to
reason and pity. We're punished--we who make a mistake--for what?
Oft for nothing but misreading character, or because truth's withheld
from us on purpose. Palk was telling of a man he knew who went
courting and was never told his intended's mother was in a mad-house.
And he married, and his wife went out of her mind with her first
child. Now she's got to be put away and may live for fifty years,
and sane, well-meaning people tell the man he must bide a widower for
ever-more--at the will of God! God wills he should go alone to his
dying day, because his wife's people hid the truth from him."
"But the law--surely the law----?"
"The law's with the Church so far. They hunt in couples. But the
law's like to be altered 'tis thought; though no doubt the Church
will call down fire from Heaven if any human mercy and common sense
and decency is brought to bear on marriage."
"Can't the religious people see that lots quite as good as them, and
quite as willing and wishful to do right are being put in the wrong?
And can't they see tortured men and women won't be patient for ever?"
"No; they put us in the wrong and they keep us in the wrong, for
God's sake--so He shan't be vexed. They don't understand it isn't
only adultery that breaks up marriage, but a thousand other things
beside. It's human progress and education and understanding; and
these pious people only leave one door to escape through. And they
don't seem to see that to decent thinking and self-respecting men and
women that's a door they won't enter. They say, 'If you want to
right your mistake, you must sin.' But if Almighty God made
marriage, He never made such filth to be thrust down the throats of
them that fail in marriage. Thus, any way, it stands with Minnie
Courtier at present--and with me. This is the law and clear enough.
A man disappears and blots himself out of life, you may say, and,
what's more important, blots himself out of the lives of everybody
who knew him, including his wife. And the question is, what can the
wife do about it? I've looked into this very close, and I find the
issue is like a lot of other things in the law. It often depends on
the judge, and how he reads the facts of the case, and whether he's
all for the letter of the law, or one of the larger-minded sort, who
give the spirit a chance. A man not heard about for seven years may
be counted dead in the eyes of the law; but there's no presumption he
died at any particular time in the seven years, and it isn't enough
to say, 'Seven years are past and I'm in the right to presume
somebody dead.' You must have legal permission, and judges differ.
You've got to prove that diligent inquiries were made to find the
vanished person before you apply to the Court, and a human sort of
judge is satisfied as a rule and doesn't torment the public and sets
a man or woman free. But if circumstances show that the vanished
party wouldn't be heard of, even if he was alive, then many
frost-bound judges won't allow he's dead, or grant freedom to a
deserted partner even after seven years. So, now, though the seven
years are up, even if application was made to assume my death, it
rests on the character of the judge whether Mrs. Courtier would be
allowed to do so."
"She may not care a button about it one way or the other," said
Dinah--"any more than I do."
"Very likely. It's only of late that I've spared a thought to her.
There's very little doubt in my mind that she's settled down to being
a widow--had enough of men I reckon."
"You don't know, however?"
"I don't know--and it's time I did, I suppose. But how?"
Dinah considered.
"She's a clever woman and she may find herself very well content to
keep herself to herself as you say. Or she may not. One thing's
sure; she'll never forgive you, and she wouldn't do nothing to help
you if she could."
"She can't help, any more than she can hinder."
"'Tis a great thought--that woman. I'd give a lot to know a bit
about her," said Dinah. "Suppose, for example----"
Then she broke off, for her mind had suddenly opened a path which
must be followed alone, if followed at all. A possibility had
occurred to Dinah--a possibility of vague and shadowy outline, but
still not quite devoid of substance. She wondered intensely about a
certain thing, and since, when she wondered, her spirit never rested
until some answer to her wonderment was forthcoming, she felt now
that this problem must be approached. Indeed it was no sooner
created than it possessed her, to the destruction of every lesser
idea. She was on the verge of uttering it to Lawrence, but
controlled herself. He might disagree, and she could brook no
disagreement, even from him, before this sudden impulse. There was
hope in it for them both. She acknowledged to herself that the hope
must be small; but it existed.
She changed the subject with suspicious abruptness, but Maynard,
following his own thoughts, which led in a different direction, did
not observe that after her hiatus and a silence following on it,
Dinah resumed about something else. He had also left the facts and
drifted to the future. The suggestion that he himself had raised: to
attempt some inquiry concerning his wife, though obvious enough to
any third person, did not impress itself upon him as important. He
mentioned it and dismissed it. He felt sufficiently certain of her
and her present state. The details of his own future presented more
attractive and pressing problems. For he was now affirmed to
go--either with Dinah, or before her, on an understanding that she
would follow. For the present they must certainly part and be
associated no more--either by rumour or in reality.
Upon these thoughts she struck, so naturally that it seemed they were
unconsciously communicating in their minds.
"We must set up a post office, Lawrence, where the letters won't need
stamps; and for the minute I'd be glad if you could give me a few
shillings for pocket-money. I've got a hatred now of Bamsey money
and the five shillings a week Mrs. Bamsey gives me, because
foster-father's past doing it himself. And I've told them that I'm
not going to take any of his money in the future. I've told them
very clear about that and I mean it."
"I'm glad you have. But they won't agree."
"So they say; but I shall be far ways off, beyond their reach or
knowledge, long before then. And Jane knows clearly I won't touch
it."
Maynard brought out a little leathern purse and gave Dinah the
contents--some thirty shillings.
She thanked him and assured him that would be enough. They parted
soon afterwards and arranged to meet once more, on a date a fortnight
hence, in late evening, at a certain gate not above a mile from Green
Hayes.
"I may have something to tell you by then," she said, "and I'll find
a post office. It'll be a year till I see you again."
He took a lingering leave of her and was moved by a last word she
spoke at parting.
"We never get no time to love each other," she said, "'tis all hard,
hateful talk and plotting. But we'll make up to each other some day."
Then he went his way, leaving her to develop her secret determination.
Conscience smote Dinah that she should enter upon any such adventure
without telling him; but the fear that he might forbid her was too
great, for she felt very positive the step she designed must be to
the good. Certain precious and definite knowledge at least would
follow; and the worst that could happen would only leave them where
they were.
She meant to go to Barnstaple. When she had broken off her speech,
she was about to put it to Maynard whether the woman there might not
be in his own position--desirous to marry and perhaps even already
seeking the aid of the law to free herself from a vanished spouse.
It seemed intensely possible to Dinah; but evidently in the mind of
Lawrence no such likelihood existed. That he should not have
followed the thought showed how little importance he attached to
it--so little that she felt sure he would not have supported her
sudden desire to learn more. Therefore she kept the inspiration from
him and determined he should know nothing until her quest was
accomplished.
And, he, having left her, now endeavoured, as he had endeavoured for
many days, to shake his mind clear of cobwebs and traditions and
prevenient fears. Even his thoughts for her seemed petty when he was
with her. Deeply he longed for Dinah, and the peace that she must
bring to his mind, and the contentment inevitable out of a life
shared with hers.
Perhaps for the first time he now resolutely banished every doubt,
thrust them behind him, and devoted all future thought to their
departure from England. He inclined to Australia now from all that
he had read and heard about it. There he would take Dinah, and
there, as "Lawrence Maynard," he would marry her.
He began to look back upon his doubts as unmanly and mawkish; he
began to marvel that, for so many painful months, he had entertained
them. He assured himself that the air was clean and cloudless at
last, and designed to advance the situation by definite preliminary
steps before he met Dinah again.
CHAPTER XXIX
JOE TAKES IT ILL
Melinda Honeysett came to see Mr. Stockman, and it happened that she
paid her visit but half an hour after heavy tidings had fallen on his
ears.
From the moment of her arrival, she was aware of something unusual in
his manner, and presently she learned from him all particulars.
He was in his garden, sitting alone under a little arbour constructed
at the side of the house with its eye in the sun; and there he sat
with his hands in his pockets, idle, staring before him. Even the
customary pipe was absent from his mouth. He was restored to health,
as Melinda knew; but she felt at a loss to see him dawdling thus at
noon. He looked old and dejected too, nor did he rise to greet her
when she entered the garden.
She approached him therefore, and he gazed indifferently and
dull-eyed upon her.
"Morning, Joe. They cabbages you gave me be all bolting* I'm sorry
to say, and Mr. Ford, my next door neighbour, tells me I can't do
nothing."
* "Bolting"--running to seed.
"Ban't the only things that's bolting. Funny as you should be the
one to face me after what I've just heard."
"You'm down seemingly?"
"Down and out you might say without straining the truth. It's a
blasted world, though the sun do be happening to shine. I've had the
hardest blow of my life this morning. I'm still wondering if I ban't
in an evil dream."
"Terrible sorry I'm sure. Good and bad luck don't wait for the
weather. I be in trouble, too--more or less. Jerry and Jane Bamsey
have fallen out and I'm in two minds--sorry for Jerry, and yet not
all sorry, for father always said she wasn't any good. Yet I don't
know what Jerry will do if it don't come right."
Mr. Stockman seemed totally uninterested at this news. He still
looked before him and brooded. Melinda took a cane chair, which
stood near his, and mopped her face, for she was hot.
"Only a lovers' quarrel I dare say; but if it was broke off
altogether I reckon my brother might live to be thankful. And Orphan
Dinah's gone to find work somewhere. I hope she will this time.
Jane thinks she's run away to get married."
"Marriage--marriage!" he said. "Perdition take all this bleating
about marriage! I'm sick to death of it, as well I may be."
She was astonished.
"I never heard you talk against it for them so inclined. Marriage is
a good bit in the air this summer I believe. My sailor brother,
Robert, be coming home for a spell pretty soon. And he writes me as
he'll wed afore he goes back to sea, if he can find one. And I
thought of Dinah. And Mr. Ford, the gardener, next to me--I reckon
he means to marry again. He's got a great opinion of the state.
Harry Ford's my own age to a day, strange to say. Our birthdays fall
together. He had no luck with his wife, but he's going to try again
I can see."
"I don't want to hear no more about him, or anybody else," said Mr.
Stockman. "'Tis doubtful manners mentioning him to me. If you knew
what I know, you'd be dumb with horror."
"Well, I can't be horrified if you won't tell me why I should.
Where's Soosie-Toosie?"
She received a shattering answer.
"To hell with Soosie-Toosie!" cried Joe.
"Man alive, what's got into you? Be you ill again, or is it Palk
leaving? If that's the trouble, lift your finger and he'll stay.
You do that. I lay he meant nothing but good, standing up for Susan.
He's a clumsy, ignorant creature; but you're always quick to forgive
faults a man can't help. Pardon the chap and let him bide. I've
always told you it was going too far to sack him on that. Don't be
craking about it no more. It's your fault, after all, that he's
going."
He glowered at her.
"You're like cats--the pack of you--never do what a reasonable
creature wants, or expects. Put a bowl for 'em and they'll only
drink out of a jug. Call 'em to the fire, they'll go to the window.
Ope the window for 'em and they'll turn round and make you ope the
door. And only a born fool wastes time or thought to please a cat;
and be damned if ever I will again."
"Be you talking about Susan, or me?" asked Mrs. Honeysett, with
rising colour. She did not know what was disturbing Joe's mind and
began to feel angry. He pursued his own dark thoughts a moment
longer and then, as she rose to leave him, he broke his news.
"Not an hour ago, when all was peace and I had been able to tell the
household I found myself well again, and was turning over an
advertisement for a new horseman, they crept before me, hand in
hand--like a brace of children."
"Who did?"
"Why, Susan and that blasted sarpent, Palk."
"Palk a sarpent!"
"Do, for God's sake, shut up and listen, and don't keep interrupting.
They came afore me. And Palk said that, owing to a wonderful bit of
news, he hoped we was going to part friends and not enemies, though
he was afraid as he might have to give me another jar. Then I told
him to drop my darter's hand that instant moment and not come
mountybanking about when he ought to be at work; and then he said
that Susan had taken him, and they hoped afore long to be married!"
"Mercy on us, Joe!"
"That's what I heard this morning. And the woman put in her oar when
I asked Palk if he was drunk. She said she loved him well and
dearly, and hoped that I wouldn't fling no cold water over her great
joy, or be any the less a kind father to her. Got it all by heart of
course."
"What a world! That's the last thing ever I should have thought to
fall out."
"Or any other sane human. It's a wicked outrage in my opinion and
done, of course, for revenge, because I cast the man away--cunning
devil!"
"Don't you say that. You must take a higher line, Joe.
Soosie-Toosie's a good woman, and you always said Thomas was a good
man."
"He's not a good man. He's a beast of a man--underhand and sly and
scheming. He's got one of them hateful, cast-iron memories, and when
I began to talk to them and soon had my daughter dumb, it was Palk,
if you please, opened his mouth and withstood me and flung my own
words in my face."
"What words?"
"And it shows kind speech to that fashion of man be no better than
cheese-cakes to a pig. I told him to think twice before he made
himself a laughing-stock to the parish, and then he minded me of the
past and a thing spoke when I sacked him, a fortnight ago. I've gone
so weak as a mouse over this job I can tell you."
"Take your time. What had you said to him?"
"I'd told him, when he dared to come afore me about my way with my
only child, that if there was anything in the world I could do for
Susan to make her home a happier place, he might rest assured she
would tell me so herself. And the sarpent remembered that and then
invited the woman to speak; which she did do, and told me that her
life, without this grey-headed son of a gun, wouldn't be worth living
no more; and she hoped that I wouldn't pay back all her love and
life-long service--'service,' mind you--by making a rumpus about it,
or doing or saying anything unkind. And I've got to go down the wind
like a dead leaf afore them, because I soon saw that under her mild
words, Susan weren't going to be shook."
"She wouldn't be. There's no strength like the strength of a woman
who gets her only chance. She knows, poor dear, 'tis Palk or
nothing."
"I told 'em to get out of my sight for a pair of cold-blooded, foxy
devils--yes, in my anger I said that--and so they have; and soon, no
doubt, they'll be gone for good and all. And that's the middle and
both ends of it; and the worst and wickedest day's work ever I heard
tell about."
"You've dropped below your usual high standards, if I may say so,"
answered Melinda. "Little blame to you that you should feel vexed,
I'm sure; but 'tis more the shock than the reality I believe. I feel
the shock likewise, though outside the parties and only a friend to
all. 'Tis so unlike anything as you might have expected, that it
throws you off your balance. Yet, when you come to turn it over,
Joe, you can't help seeing there's rhyme and reason in it."
"You say that! For a woman to fly from the safety and security of
her father's home--and such a father--to a man who don't even know
what work he's going to do when he leaves me. And a wretch that's
proved as deep as the sea. Can't you read his game? He knows that
Susan be my only one, and bound to have all some day--or he thinks he
knows it. That's at the bottom of this. He looks on and says to
himself, 'All will be hers; then all will be mine.'"
"Don't you say that. Keep a fair balance. Remember you held a very
high opinion of Palk not two months agone, when he showed by his acts
to his dead sister's child that he was a high-minded man."
"I'll thank you to keep my side of this, please," he answered. "I
don't much like the line you're taking, Melinda. Just ax yourself
this: would any man, young or old, look at Susan as a possible
help-mate and think to marry her, if he warn't counting on the jam
that would go with the powder? She's my child, and I'm not one to
bemoan my fortune as to that, but a woman's a woman, and was the male
ever born who could look at Susan as a woman? You know very well
there never was."
"You couldn't; but men ain't all so nice as you about looks. And you
can't deny that apart from being a bit homely, Susan----"
"Stop!" he said. "I believe you knew about this all the time and be
here as a messenger of peace! And if I thought that----"
"Don't think nothing of the sort, there's a good man. I'd so soon
have expected the sun to go backward as hear any such thing. But
'tis done on your own showing, and you must be so wise as usual about
it and not let the natural astonishment upset your character. It's
got to be, seemingly. So start from there and see how life looks."
Melinda indeed was also thinking how life looked. Her mind ran on
and she had already reached a point to which Mr. Stockman's bruised
spirit was yet to bring him. She prepared to go away.
"I won't stop no more now. You'll have a lot to think over in your
mind about the future. Thank goodness you be well again--and never
looked better I'm sure. What's their plans?"
"Damn their plans--how about my plans?"
"You'll come to your plans gradual. And don't think 'tis the end of
the world. You never know. When things turn inside out like this,
we be often surprised to find there's a lot to be said for changes
after all."
"'Tis mortal easy to be wise about other folk's troubles," he said.
Then Mrs. Honeysett departed and felt Joe's moody eyes upon her back
as she went slowly and thoughtfully away. Soosie-Toosie's eyes were
also upon her; but that she did not know.
CHAPTER XXX
THE NEST
Joe Stockman, like a stricken animal, hid himself from his fellow men
at this season; yet it was not curious that he should conceal his
tribulation from fellow men, because he knew that sympathy must be
denied. To run about among the people, grumbling because his
daughter had found a husband, was a course that Joe's humour told him
would win no commiseration. He was much more likely to be
congratulated on an unexpected piece of good luck. Even Melinda,
with every kindly feeling for him, proved not able to show regret;
and if she could not, none might be looked for elsewhere. But he
made it evident to those chiefly involved that he little liked the
match; he declined to see any redeeming features and went so far as
to say that the countryside would be shocked with Susan for leaving
her father under such circumstances. To his surprise he could not
shake her as at first he had hoped to do. She was meek, and
solicitous for his every wish as usual; she failed not to anticipate
each desire of his mind; she knew, by long practice, how to read his
eyes without a word; but upon this one supreme matter she showed
amazing determination.
She did not speak of it; neither did Thomas, and when his master, who
had failed for the moment to get a new horseman worthy of Falcon
Farm, invited Palk to stop another month, he agreed to do so. But
Thomas grumbled to Maynard when they were alone, and at the same time
heard something from Lawrence that interested him.
They were hoeing the turnips together and the elder spoke.
"There's no common decency about the man in my opinion," he said.
"Goodjer take him! He's like a sulky boy and pretends that facts
ban't facts, while every day of the week shows they are. And
patience is very well, but it don't make you any younger. Here I've
pleased him by promising to stop another month, and when I did that,
I had a right to think it would break down his temper and stop the
silly rummage he talks about a thankless child and so on. You know
how he goes on--chittering at me and Susan, but never to us--just
letting out as if he was talking to the fire, or the warming-pan on
the wall--of course for us to hear."
"He's took it very hard no doubt. Of course it's a shatterer. He
didn't know his luck; and when you suddenly see your luck, for the
first time just afore it's going to be taken away from you, it makes
you a bit wild," explained Lawrence.
"Let him be wild with himself then, and cuss himself--not us. Look
at it--I meet his convenience and go on so mild as Moses, working
harder than ever, and all I get be sighs and head-shakings; and you
always see his lips saying 'sarpent' to himself every time you catch
his eye. It's properly ondacent, because there's duties staring the
man in the face and he's trying his damnedest to wriggle out of 'em!"
"What duties?"
"Why, his daughter's wedding, I should think! Surely it's up to him,
whatever he feels against it, to give the woman a fatherly send off.
Not that I care a cuss, and should be the better pleased if he wasn't
there glumping and glowering and letting all men see he hated the
job; but Susan be made of womanly feeling, and she reckons he did
ought to come to the church and give her away, all nice and suent,
same as other parents do. And after that there ought to be a rally
of neighbours and some pretty eating and drinking, and good wishes
and an old shoe for luck when us goes off to the station man and
wife. And why the hell not?"
"I dare say it will work out like that. You must allow for the
shock, Tom. He'd got to rely on you and your future wife like his
right and left hand; and to have the pair of you snatched away
together---- He's a man with a power of looking forward and, of
course, he can see, in a way you can't, what he'll feel like when you
both vanish off the scene."
"You be always his side."
"No, no--not in this matter, anyway. I know very well what you feel
like, and nobody wishes you joy better than me. You've got a grand
wife, and I've always thought a lot of you myself as you know. But
'tis just the great good fortune that's fallen to you makes it so
much the worse for him. He knows what he's losing, and you can't
expect him to be pleased. He'll calm down in a week or two."
"Let the man do the same then and take another. There's a very fine
woman waiting for him."
"There is; and he'll take her no doubt; but there again, he knows
that you can't have anything for nothing."
"He had his daughter for nothing."
"Yes, and got used to it; but he won't have Melinda Honeysett for
nothing. A daughter like Susan gives all and expects no return; a
wife like Mrs. Honeysett will want a run for her money. And Joe
knows mighty well it will have to be give and take in future."
"Quite right too."
"There's another thing hanging over master. It won't seem much
compared with you going. But I'm off before very long myself."
"By gor! You going too!"
"In the fall I reckon."
"When he hears that, he'll throw the house out of windows!"
"Not him. I'm nobody."
"If it's all the same to you, I'd be glad if you didn't break this to
Stockman till our job's a thought forwarder," said Thomas. "He can
only stand a certain amount. You was more to him than me really.
This will very like turn him against human nature in general, and if
he gets desperate, he may disgrace himself."
"I shan't speak just yet."
"We was much hoping--Soosie and me--that he'd go bald-headed for
Melinda before this--if only to hit back. Because, if he done that,
he might cut my future wife out of his will you see. And, in his
present spirit of mind, I believe it would comfort him a lot to do
so--and tell me he had."
"No, no--he wouldn't lower himself like that. And as for Mrs.
Honeysett, I reckon he's to work in that quarter. He can't strike
all of a sudden, of course, because the people would say he'd only
done it for his own convenience; but he'll be about her before long I
expect. He's been saying in a good few places that he must marry
now."
"He named her name at Green Hayes to my certain knowledge," said
Thomas, "and Mrs. Bamsey heard him do so; and she told Arthur Chaffe,
the carpenter; and he told his head man; and he told me. And he said
more. He said that Arthur Chaffe had marked that Joe had lost a lot
of his old bounce and weren't by no means so charming as he used to
be."
"There's no doubt this job has upset him a lot."
"Then where's his religion? He did ought to remember he can't go
sailing on and have everything his own way all his life, no more than
anybody else."
They hoed together shoulder to shoulder, then reached the end of
their rows and turned again.
"There's a religious side no doubt," admitted Maynard. "And we never
feel more religious, if we're religious-minded at all, than after a
stroke of good fortune; and never less so than after a stroke of bad.
And I'm telling you what I know there, because I've been called to go
into such things pretty close. There's nothing harder than to break
away from what you was taught as a child. 'Tis amazing how a thing
gets rooted into a young mind, and how difficult it may be for the
man's sense to sweep it away come he grows up."
Mr. Palk, however, was not concerned with such questions.
"I don't want to break away from nothing," he said. "I only want for
Stockman to treat me and his daughter in a right spirit. And what I
say is, if his religion and church-going, not to name his common
sense, can't lead him right, it's a very poor advertisement for his
boasted wisdom."
"So it would be; but he'll come round and do right, only give him
time," answered Lawrence.
"And what's in your mind?" asked Thomas presently, as he stood up to
rest his back. "Have you got another billet in sight?"
"No. I much want to get abroad. It's always been a wish with me to
see a foreign country."
"A very fine idea. I'd so soon do the same as not; but I heard a
chap say that you find the land pretty near all under machinery if
you go foreign. And I shouldn't care to quit hosses at my time of
life."
"There's your wife to think on. She'd never like to put the sea
between her and her father."
"As to that," answered Palk, "it's going to be largely up to him. If
he carries on like what he's doing now, he'll have to pay for it;
because the woman's only a human woman and she haven't deserved this
conduct. Why, God's light! if she'd stole his money-box and set the
house on fire he couldn't take it no worse!"
These things were heard by another pair of ears in the evening of
that day, for then Maynard saw Dinah again. But much passed between
the lovers before they reached the subject of Susan and Thomas.
Maynard had been deeply interested to hear of Dinah's sudden
departure, of which she had told him nothing, and he had puzzled ever
since learning the fact mentioned by Melinda Honeysett. For he did
not guess her purpose, or her destination, and the fact that she had
gone away only served to explain her need for money. She let him
know, however, before they met, and that without any word; for during
her absence, there came a picture postcard to Lawrence--a coloured
picture of Barnstaple parish church; and that told him everything.
He trusted her, but knew her forthright ways and felt very anxious to
see her again. The date and place for their next meeting had been
fixed between them at their last conversation, and as he had heard
that Dinah was returned, he knew that she would keep the appointment.
He brooded for hours upon her action and inclined to a shadow of
regret that she should have taken it, yet the fact did not astonish
him, looking back at their last meeting; for had Dinah asked
permission to go, he would not have suffered it in his mood at the
time. That she knew; and yet she had gone. He recognised the
immense significance of her action and the time seemed interminable
until the dusk of that day, when he was free. The night came mild
and grey with a soft mist. Their meeting place was a gate in a lane
one mile from Green Hayes among the woods ascending to Buckland.
There it had been planned they should join each other for the last
time before one, or both, disappeared from the Vale.
Maynard felt a curious sense of smallness as he went to the tryst.
He seemed to be going to meet somebody stronger, more resolute, more
steadfast of spirit than himself. Surely Dinah had done the things
that would have better become him to do. And yet he could not blame
himself there, for it would have been impossible for him to set foot
in the town where, no doubt, his wife still lived. He had wearied
himself with futile questions, impossible to answer until Dinah
should meet him, and there was nothing left but intense love and
worship for her in Maynard's mind when they did meet. If she had any
sort of good news, so much the better; but if she had none, he yet
had good news for her. He had banished the last doubt during her
absence and now told himself that not moral sensibility, but moral
cowardice had ever caused him to doubt. He had probed the equivocal
thing in him and believed that its causes were deep down in some
worthless instinct, independent of reason. She should at least find
him as clear and determined as herself at last. He had decided for
Australia, and the question of their separate or simultaneous
disappearance was also decided. She had to hear to-night that they
could not leave England together for her credit's sake. The details
of their actions were also defined. He had planned a course that
would, he hoped, suit Dinah well enough, though as yet he knew not
whether any word of hers might modify it.
She was waiting for him and came into his arms with joy. She guessed
that her postcard had revealed her adventure and began by begging for
forgiveness. This he granted, but bade her talk first.
"It's made me long to go out in the world," she said. "Just this
taste. I've never seemed to understand there was anything beyond
Ashburton and Lower Town; but now I've gone afield and seen miles and
miles of England, and I've met people that never heard of the Vale.
Say you ban't cross again, my dear heart. You know very well why I
went. It rose up on me like a flame of fire--to make sure. I told
'em at Green Hayes I had some business up the country and they think
I went to be married--Jane's idea that was. She's positive sure I'm
married, though I've told her in plain words I'm not. Of course they
be curious, but I couldn't tell a lie about it. So I said
'business.'"
"Never mind them. I won't swear I'd have said 'no' if you'd asked
me, Dinah--not if I'd thought twice. It was a natural, needful
point, and you grasped it quicker than I did, and no doubt made up
your mind while I was maundering on about the law. I saw all that
after I got your card. But I couldn't have gone myself."
"It was my work and I've done it; and I wish more had come of it.
But nothing has. I took a room in a little inn near the station and
tramped about and found her shop in the best part of the town. A big
place with fine windows--a dairy and creamery and refreshment room.
Just 'Courtier' over the windows, in big, gold letters, and a few
maidens inside and--tea. I marked her, of course, the minute I saw
her. She's in the shop herself--rather grand, but not above lending
a hand when they're busy. She's up in the world. They knew about
her at the inn where I stopped, and told me the story. They said her
husband went mad on the honeymoon and disappeared off the earth. I
went to the shop three times and had my tea there, and the second
time there was a man at the counter talking to her. But he didn't
look much of it. So there it is. She's going on with her life just
as you thought, and making money; and what the people see, I saw, and
what they don't see, or know, is no matter. But she was quite
pleased with herself--a cheerful woman to the eye. You can tell that
much.
"She's worn well I should think. She's a pretty woman; but she's
hard and her voice is hard. She wouldn't have no mercy on people
under her. She drove her maidens in the shop and was down on 'em if
they talked much to customers. At my inn she was spoke very well of
and thought a bit of a wonder. You was forgot. They said it was
thought you killed yourself. And now that the seven years are up,
some fancied she might marry again, but others didn't think she ever
would, being too independent. A man or two they mentioned; but the
opinion I heard most was that she never wanted to change. I couldn't
ax too much about her, of course."
So Dinah told her tale.
"I wish it had been different," she went on. "I hoped all sorts of
things--that I'd find her married again, or gone, or, perhaps dead.
But there she is, so large as life, and I shouldn't think she'd ever
marry for love, but she might for money, or for getting a bit more
power. I didn't feel to hate her in the least, or anything like
that. I felt sorry for her in a way, knowing what she'd missed, and
I thought, if it had been different, what a big man you might be by
now. But you'll be bigger some day along with me. And so we know
where we are, Lawrence."
He asked various questions, which she answered, and he observed how
absolutely indifferent Dinah found herself before the facts. She
evidently recognised no relationship whatever between the husband and
wife. From the adventures at Barnstaple she returned to the present,
and he let her talk on, waiting to speak himself till she had
finished.
She had been away nine days and returned to find Jane fallen out with
Jerry Withycombe. Mr. Bamsey had recognised her on her return and
called her by name and made her sit beside him for a long time. But
the next morning he had forgotten her again. Faith Bamsey had also
thought Dinah must have disappeared to be married, but believed her
when she vowed it was not so. John Bamsey was away for the time,
doing bailiff's work up the river above Dartmeet.
Then he told her of his determination and greatly rejoiced her, save
in one particular.
"We don't go together," he said, "and the details will very soon
clear themselves; but there must be no shadow on your memory, here or
anywhere, when you're gone. I give Joe notice presently and go to
Australia, to get the home ready. You find work and, for a bit, keep
that work. Then you leave it for London, or a big town, where ships
sail from, and your passage is took and you come along. That leaves
them guessing here, and none can ever say a word against you. But so
sure as we go together, then Stockman tells everybody that I'm a
married man, and the harm's done."
"You do puzzle me!" she answered. "You can't get this bee out of
your bonnet, Lawrence--such a clever chap as you, too. What in
fortune's name does it matter what Cousin Joe says about you, or what
the people believe about me? I know you're not married, and when I
wed you I shall be your one and lawful wife. Who else is there--now
foster-father be gone? That was the only creature on earth I could
hurt, and he's past hurting, poor old dear. I like your plan all
through but there. I'm going when you go, and half the joy of my
life would be lost if I didn't sail along with you in the ship. That
I do bargain for. Oh, I wish it was to-morrow we were running away!"
"I hate to run."
"I love it--yes, I do, now. I wish to God I wasn't going to lose
sight of you again. But it won't be for long."
They spoke of the details and he pointed out that her plan must
increase the difficulties somewhat, yet she would take no denial.
"What's all this fuss for? False pride," she said. "You've got to
think for me the way I want you to think, not the way you want to
think. If we know we're right, why should we fret if all the rest of
the world thought different? I'm hungry and thirsty to go and be in
a new world with you. I want you and I want a new world. And you
will be my new world for that matter."
"I know that."
"Together then. 'Twould spoil all any other way. 'Twould be small
any other way. 'Twould be cringing to the Vale."
He laughed.
"I can't keep you here in the rain all night. The next thing is our
post office--from now on."
"Promise about my going with you."
"That means thinking over all the plans again."
"Think them over again then; and I'll help. And I've found the post
office. List!"
They kept silence for half a minute, but Dinah had only heard a
night-bird.
"'Tis here!" she said, "twenty yards down the lane. I found it in
the spring--a wrennys' nest hid under the ivy on the bank. No better
place. 'Tis empty now and snug as need be."
He accompanied her to the spot, lit matches and examined the proposed
post office. It was safe enough, for the snug, domed nest lay
completely hidden under a shower of ivy, and Dinah had only
discovered it by seeing the little birds pop in when they were
building.
Lawrence doubted; it seemed a frail receptacle for vital news; but it
was dry and as safe as possible.
"I'd thought to put a tobacco tin under a stone somewhere," he said,
"but perhaps this couldn't be beat."
He took careful note of it and marked the exact spot as well as he
could in the dark. A sapling grew in the hedge opposite and he took
his knife and blazed the bark behind, where only he, or Dinah, would
find the cut.
"There'll be a letter for you in a few days," she said, "for I know
I've forgot a thousand things; and when your new plans be finished,
you'll write 'em for me."
"We must go slow and steady," he answered. "I've got to give Joe
warning presently, and I don't mean to be out of work longer than I
can help. When we know what we're going to do to the day, then I'll
speak; and he won't like it none too well. He's terrible under the
weather about Susan."
He told her the Falcon Farm news, with details which she had not
heard.
"I'm sorry for Cousin Joe, but mighty glad for Susan, and I'm coming
up one day to supper to congratulate her--why not?"
"It will be something just to look at you across the table," he said,
"but we'd best speak little to each other."
Dinah grew listless as the moment for leave-taking came. Her mood
was shadowed.
"I know it's right and wise to keep apart now," she told him. "And I
know we can never have none of the old faces round us when we're
married, and none of the little pleasures that go with old friends.
But I am sorry. It's small, but I am sorry."
"So am I, for your sake," he answered. "And it's not small. It's
natural. This is the only home you know, and the only folks you know
are in it. And most are kindly and good. It only looks small
against the bigger thing of being together for evermore. The time
won't be long. 'Twill slip away quicker than you'll like I guess.
And there's plenty of new friends waiting for us down under."
"It's cruel of life," she cried. "It's hard and cruel of life to
make love like ours so difficult. Open air, daylight creatures, like
us, to be called to plot and scheme and hide against the frozen
silliness of the world. Just the things I hate most. And now we
must trust the house a little bird have made with things that we'd
both be proud to shout from the church steeple!"
"I know every bit what you're feeling. I feel it too--I hate it more
than you do--knowing what you are. It will soon be over."
"I'll come up and look at you anyhow," said Dinah. "That won't shock
the people; and I dare say, now that Susan knows what it is to love a
man--but don't you fear. I won't kiss you even with my eyes,
Lawrence."
"Susan wouldn't see nothing for that matter," he said. "Love be a
dour pastime for her and Palk as things are. They be like us in a
way--frightened to look at each other under that roof."
"But firm," she said. "Cousin Joe ain't going to choke Susan off it?"
"Not him. She'll take Thomas, so sure as you take me."
Dinah was cheerful again before he left her.
"When we'm married, I'll always be wanting to kiss you afore the
people," she said, "just for the joy of doing it openly."
Then they parted, to meet no more in secret until they should never
part again.
He half regretted her determination to sail with him, as he tramped
home; yet he felt in no mind to argue the point. In his present
spirit, sharing her indignation that his fellow men would thrust him
away from Dinah for ever if they could, he cared little more than she
for what their world might say and think when they had vanished from
it for a larger.
CHAPTER XXXI
JOE'S SUNDAY
Melinda stood at her door and spoke to her neighbour, Mr. Harry Ford,
the gardener. He was a red-whiskered man of fifty, and he and Mrs.
Honeysett viewed life somewhat similarly.
"You bad creature," she said, "working in your garden o' Sunday!"
This was the sort of remark on which Harry never wasted speech. He
went on with his digging.
"I wish the second early potatoes were coming up so well at the Court
as they are here in my little patch," he remarked. "But they haven't
got the nice bit o' sand in the soil as we have."
He rested a moment.
"How's Jerry going on?" he asked. "Have it come right?"
"No, I'm sorry to say; and yet not sorry neither. She's keeping all
this up because he vexed her Easter Monday. They was at Ashburton
revel together and she says he took a drop too much and very near ran
the trap over Holne Bridge and broke her neck coming home. And he
says no such thing. But the real trouble is about the blessed shop
Jane wants to start at Ashburton after marriage. She's for a tobacco
shop, and Jerry wants for it to be green-grocer's, where he can do
his part. My own belief is that Jane Bamsey's getting tired of
Jerry. If the wedding had gone through when it was ordained, all
might have been well; but owing to Ben Bamsey's illness and sad
downfall after, 'twas put off. I never much liked her I may tell
you, no more didn't my father."
"He must have been a bit of a wonder--a very clever man they say."
"He was a clever man."
"Did he believe in the ghost in my house, Mrs. Honeysett?"
"He did not--no more than you do."
He paused and looked at her. Melinda appeared more than usually
attractive. She was in her Sunday gown--a black one, for she still
mourned her parent; but she had brightened it with some mauve satin
bows, and she wore her best shoes with steel buckles.
"There is a ghost in the house, however," declared the gardener.
"Never!"
"Yes--the ghost of a thought in my mind," he explained.
"Ideas do grow."
"If they stick, then they grow. Now I'll ax you a question, and
you've no call to answer it if you don't want. You might say 'twas a
hole in my manners to ax, perhaps."
"I'm sure you wouldn't make a hole in your manners, Mr. Ford."
"I hope not. 'Tis this, then. What might the late Mr. Withycombe
have thought of Farmer Stockman up the hill?"
Melinda parried the question.
"Well, you never can say exactly what one man thinks of another,
because time and chance changes the opinion. A man will vex you
to-day and please you next week. Sometimes what he does and says is
contrary to your opinions, and then again, he may do or say something
that brings him back to you."
"He liked him and didn't like him--off and on? But he'd made up his
mind in a general way about his character?"
"I suppose he had."
"I know he had."
"How should you know?"
"Because I was at the trouble to find out."
"Fancy!"
"Yes. I sounded a man here and there. I went to Chaffe, the
carpenter."
"Arthur Chaffe knew father very well and respected him, though he
didn't hold with his opinions about religion."
"Religion I never touch--too kicklish a subject. But I spoke to
Chaffe, and being friendly disposed to me--and why not?--he said a
thing I might be allowed to name to you in confidence."
"Certainly," said Melinda, "if it's nothing against my father."
"Far from it. And I hope you'll take it as 'tis meant."
"I always take everything like that."
"That's right then. Well, Chaffe, knowing me for a pretty quiet man
and a hater of gossip, told me the late fox-hunter saw very clear
you'd go to Joe Stockman after he was took----"
"How could he?"
"Well, I don't know how he could. But he did. And though too tender
to whisper it in your ear, he told Chaffe that he was sorry!"
"Good Lord, you surprise me!"
"No business of mine, you'll say. And yet I felt somehow that if
your father--such a man as him--felt sorry, there was a reason why
for he should. And I won't deny but I told Chaffe he ought to
mention it to you. He wouldn't, because he said the thing was too
far gone."
"What's gone too far?"
"You know best. But people have ears and Stockman's got a tongue."
Mrs. Honeysett showed annoyance, while Harry returned to his potatoes.
"You're telling me what I know, however," she said.
He purposely misunderstood.
"You knew your good father didn't care for Mr. Stockman at bottom?"
"I know he's talking."
"The only thing that matters to know is your own mind, not what's in
other people's, or in his."
At this moment a black-coated figure appeared on the high road and,
much to Mr. Ford's regret, turned up the lane to the cottages.
"Talk of----!" he said.
It was Mr. Stockman.
"He's coming here and--and--I hoped something weren't going to happen
for the minute," confessed Melinda; "but now I reckon it may be."
"Well, if you're in doubt, nobody else is," said Mr. Ford striking
boldly. "Farmer's sounding his victory far and near--not a very
witty thing to do when an old man's after a young woman."
Melinda ignored the compliment and viewed the approaching figure with
impassive features.
"He's cut the ground from under his own feet as to his age," she
answered, "for if you cry out you're old before your time, of course
people must believe you."
Mr. Ford could not answer for Stockman was within earshot.
He showed a holiday humour, but reproved Harry.
"Working o' Sunday!" he said.
"There's all sorts o' work, master," replied the gardener. "I dare
say now that the better the day the better the deed holds of your job
so well as mine."
"You're a sharp one! And how's Melinda?"
"Very well," she said. "You wasn't to church this morning."
"I was not. I meant coming down the hill again this afternoon, to
drink a dish of tea with you, if you please; and though twice up and
down the hill be naught to me, yet I shirked it."
They went in together.
"Where's Jerry?" he asked.
"Mooning down to Green Hayes on the chance of getting things right."
"Good. He'll fetch her round; though I doubt she's worth it."
"So do I."
"However, I'm not here, as you'll guess, about your brother. The
time has come, Melinda."
"You've let 'em name the day then--Susan and Thomas?"
"No such thing; but they'll be naming it themselves pretty soon.
They'll be away in a month or two I expect. And I want for the house
to be swept and garnished then. I want a lot done. I've suffered a
great deal of undeserved trouble in that quarter, and there's wicked
words being said about my treatment of my child. The people have
short memories."
"There's wicked words being said about a lot of things. It's been
said, for instance, up and down the Vale, that you've told a score
you be going to marry me, Joe. That's a proper wicked thing, I
should think."
He was much concerned.
"Good God! What a nest of echoes we live in! But there it is. When
a thing's in the air--whether 'tis fern seed, or a bit of scandal, or
a solemn truth, it will settle and stick and grow till the result
appears. No doubt the general sense of the folk, knowing how I've
felt to you for years, made up this story and reckoned it was one of
they things that Providence let out before the event. Marriages be
made in Heaven they say, Melinda."
"But they ain't blazed abroad on earth, I believe, afore both parties
choose to mention it."
"Most certainly not; but if you move in the public eye, people will
be talking."
"Yes, they will, if they be started talking. I met Ann Slocombe to
Lower Town three days agone and she congratulated me on my engagement
to you."
"Who the devil's Ann Slocombe?"
"She's a woman very much like other women. And I told her it was
stuff and nonsense, and far ways from anything that had happened, or
was going to happen."
"No need to have said that, I hope. 'Tis the curious case of----"
"'Tis the curious case of talking before you know," said Melinda
tartly. "What would you have thought if I'd told people you'd gone
down to Brixham, to offer yourself to a woman there?"
"God's my judge I----"
Mr. Stockman broke off.
"This is very ill-convenient, Melinda, and quite out of tune with me
and the day, and what's in my mind. If I've spoke of you with great
affection to one or two tried friends--friends now no more--then I
can only ax you to overlook their freedom of speech. I've been in a
very awkward position for a long time, and made of justice as you
are, you must see it. For look how things fell out. First, just as
I was coming to the great deed and going to ax you to be mistress of
Falcon Farm, there happened your dear father's grievous illness and
his death. Well, I couldn't jump at you with my heart in my hand,
while you was crying your eyes out and feeling your fearful loss.
And then, just as the clouds were lifting and the way clear, what
happened? My misguided girl takes this false step. And that cut two
ways. First there was the disaster itself, and then, in a flash, I
saw that if I came to you on top of it, enemies--not you, yourself, I
well knew that--enemies would be bitter quick to say I was doing it
from no honour and respect to you, but to suit my own convenience,
because Susan was off. So I held away, because I saw that you'd be
put in a false position, with your inclination--so I hope--on one
side, and your proper woman's pride on the other. And now I see what
a quandary it was, and how I've let you in for these painful
adventures--all from too much nice feeling, seemingly."
"You can make a case, of course, but----"
"Let me finish. I ban't here to argue, Melinda. We've known each
other a good long time now and it have been the bright ray in a
troublous life, your friendship for me. We looked at things from the
same point of view, and took high opinions, and laughed when we ought
to laugh, and was serious in due season. And good men are scarce and
good women far scarcer. And there never was and never will be a
better woman than you. And it would be a second spring to me to have
such a one at my right hand. I want you, not for this or that
accident of life as have fallen upon me; but I want you just the same
as I have wanted you any time these ten years. I couldn't speak till
your father was gone, and I couldn't speak after, and in solemn
truth, being a man of pretty nice feelings, I couldn't speak an hour
before this instant moment. So you must sweep such trifles out of
your mind and come to the question with no bias, but just your honest
feelings to me and your memory of the past. So there it lies, my
dear."
Mrs. Honeysett hesitated a few moments before replying--not because
she was in any doubt as to her answer, but from a native sense that
all must be done decently and in order.
Joe made the best of the situation and probably, had Melinda's
attitude to him remained unchanged, a look back into memory, as he
suggested, might have won the day for Mr. Stockman. She was
conscious that a year ago she would have pardoned his errors of
egotism. She even suspected that, as things were, they did not
really lie at the root of the matter. But the root of the matter
extended into new ground. Here, however, she could not pursue it.
She only told herself that she would never marry Mr. Stockman now;
and while sharing his opinion, that her little grievances were really
unimportant and not worthy of being offered as a reason for refusal,
she only considered how, without them, she might gracefully decline.
She let her tongue go and trusted to chance. Then she suddenly saw a
way and took it.
"Us have had a very fine friendship indeed, Joe," she admitted, "and,
in my humble opinion, it would be a terrible mistake to spoil it this
way. For say what you may, friendship ain't love and love ain't
friendship; and I do feel, betwixt me and you, it might be a sad pity
to lose the substance for the shadow."
"You talk as if love would end friendship, instead of double it,
Melinda," he answered; but he was quick-minded and he knew the woman
meant to decline him. The thought immeasurably troubled Mr.
Stockman, for he had assumed success to be certain. He had, indeed,
already proceeded far beyond this point and planned his future with
Melinda. He argued now and made a very strenuous effort to prove
that there is no friendship like that of married people. He argued,
also, that such an understanding as had obtained between him and
Melinda since his wife's death was sufficient foundation for a very
perfect and distinguished union.
She admitted that it might be so, but declined the experiment. She
held that love too often endangered and weakened friendship, even if
it did not actually destroy it; and she told him frankly, but with
all consideration, that her friendship and admiration for him did not
tend in that direction.
"I'm very much addicted to you, Joe, and you've been a big figure in
my life for years, and will so continue I hope; but marriage with you
don't draw me. You've been like an elder brother to me, and I hope
you'll see your way to remain like that. But 'twould spoil all if we
went into marriage. And, in a word, I couldn't do it, because my
feelings don't respond."
"This is a very painful shock to me," he answered. "Somehow, such
was you to me and, as I thought, me to you, that I felt the step
could only be a matter of time; and what's more, Melinda, you never
did nothing to make me feel otherwise--quite the contrary in fact. I
don't say you--however, we'll not go into that side. You know what I
mean."
"I do; and we will go into it, Joe, and have done with it. If you
think I encouraged you----"
"What do you think?"
"Never--God's my judge! I was very proud of being your friend, and I
got plenty of wisdom and good advice from you; and you often took a
hint from me also. But nothing tender ever passed between us--never."
"That depends on what you call tenderness. To the seeing eye and
feeling heart there may be a world of tenderness in a glance,
Melinda, or in a silence, or in a handshake. I did most honestly
believe you felt more than friendship for me, just as I have long
felt more than friendship for you. And I showed as much, by a lot of
touches that a quick woman like you couldn't have mistook. No, no,
Melinda, that won't do. You knew."
"I'll take the blame, then, if you think I ought."
"Don't talk of blame. Consider if you ain't making a mistake.
You're simply wasted single, and here's a tidy sort of man offering;
and all his is yours, from the hour you say 'yes.' Weigh it. I know
only too well what I'll lose if you don't come to me. In fairness,
then, you did ought to consider if you don't lose pretty heavy too."
"Of course, of course. To lose your friendship would be a very great
disaster for me, Joe. It's been a steadfast and lasting thing, and I
should feel a cruel lot was gone if that was gone. But if it is to
be a choice---- No; leave it as 'tis between us, my dear man. Let's
be friends and forget this. I'll get 'e a cup of tea."
"As to friends, you don't quite see what you're doing yet, I'm
afraid. You'm acting in an astonishing way that throws down the
past, Melinda, and makes you like the rough and tumble of women--them
with no fixed views and opinions, as don't know their own mind--if
they've got minds to know. I'll be off instanter, Melindy, and leave
you in hope that you'll think this thing out and find you're on the
edge of a terrible mistake. I never thought I'd misunderstood you
like this. Indeed, if I had fancied there was a doubt, I should have
probably been too proud to offer at all."
He rose and prepared to depart.
Mrs. Honeysett, glad that he remained calm, was also thankful that he
should go.
"I'll never lose sight of you in my mind, or in my prayers," she said.
"I came in full sail," he answered; "now I go off like a ship without
a mast, or a rudder. It'll puzzle me to my dying day how you could
be so harsh."
He left her in deep dejection, which warmed to anger before he had
reached home. He convinced himself that Melinda had played him
false. For years there had been an implicit understanding in his
mind that he had but to put forth his hand to take. And he had been
tender and abounded in the little "touches" he mentioned. These
Melinda had perfectly comprehended and even appreciated. Nay, she
had repaid them in kind. The effect of her refusal was bad. Mr.
Stockman saw his stable world reeling about him. He had barely
recovered from the shock of Susan's engagement and now, after
carefully rebuilding his future environment and allowing himself to
dwell philosophically on the bright side of it, he found all in ruins
and further necessity for fresh plans.
And that same evening, after supper, when Thomas Palk and Susan had
crept out for a walk, Lawrence Maynard came to the master of Falcon
Farm and gave notice.
"There's no hurry," he said. "I'm at your service, master, so long
as you want me; but I've made up my mind to leave England in the
autumn and see a bit of the world before it's too late. I think to
go by Michaelmas, or a bit after--to Australia very like--and take up
land."
To Maynard's amazement Joe turned upon him with something almost of
fury. His cowman knew not of Joe's earlier reverse and all that he
had that day been called to endure.
"What--what are you telling me? You going too? You ungrateful
devil! You thankless, selfish toad! What have I done--what on God's
earth have I done--to be turned down and flouted and tormented at
every step of my life in this way? A man whose every act and thought
be kindness for other people; and now every man's hand be against me!
Persecution I call it; and you--you, who have had to thank me for far
more than goes between master and man; you, as I have offered
friendship to, and trusted and treated more like a son than a
servant! You ought to be shamed to the marrow in your bones to think
to leave me--an old, careworn, ill-used wretch with one foot in the
grave and all the world turning its back on him."
"Don't--don't!" said Lawrence. "Don't take on like that. There's no
hurry for a few months. I've been very proud and grateful for all
you've done for me, Mr. Stockman."
"Get out of my sight," answered the other. "There's no honesty, nor
honour, nor plain dealing left in man or woman, so far as I can see.
It's a hell of a world, and I wish a good few people as I could name,
yourself included, had never come into it. My lines have fallen in
shameful places, and if I wasn't too old, I'd shake the dust off my
shoes against Buckland and everybody in it."
Then Maynard retreated and left Joe panting heavily and staring into
the kitchen fire.
He had gone to bed when Susan returned, and she and Tom and Maynard
mumbled in low voices for an hour while the latter described his
experience. To Stockman's daughter this outburst signified far more
than it did to either of the men, for she guessed upon what business
her father had been employed that afternoon, and now knew that a
terrible disappointment must have overtaken him. She wept half the
night on his account and mourned not a little on her own; for Joe's
failure must inevitably increase her personal difficulties and double
the future problems of Thomas and herself.
CHAPTER XXXII
JANE AND JERRY
Under the first grey of dawn, Maynard posted a letter in the empty
wrens' nest and then proceeded down the hill to Lower Town. He was
on an errand from Falcon Farm to Mr. Chaffe, and then he would
proceed to a farm on the moor, about the purchase of two heifers.
For Stockman had long since found that Lawrence knew as much
concerning cattle as himself. The present arrangements had been made
before the cowman gave notice, and his latest letter to Dinah
chronicled the fact that he had done so. He answered also her last
note. The letter-box worked well and many communications had been
exchanged. Dinah's were full of love and ardour. Her plans amused
him. They shared one determination; to take nothing with them. They
would sail from Plymouth for Australia presently and they would be
married at Sydney as soon as possible after landing. Maynard's money
was more than enough and their passages would be state-aided.
Preliminaries were complete and there remained only to fix their
place of meeting and date of sailing. Then they would simultaneously
disappear.
Mr. Chaffe was already in his workshop when Maynard appeared.
"Early birds both!" said he. "I know what you've come about,
however. Joe wants me to look into his stables, where the dry rot
have got, and see how much must come out and be made good."
"That's right, Mr. Chaffe."
"I've been waiting and expecting it since Palk made the sad
discovery. But no doubt your master has his mind pretty full of
greater things."
"He has, I'm afraid. And it's making him fall short of his usual
sense here and there."
"A man full of sense, however."
"So I've always found him, and full of human kindness also. I've a
lot to thank him for--a very good friend to me. But a few days agone
I gave notice, because I'm going farther afield before I'm too old,
and he took it very bad indeed."
"My! You going too? Where?"
"To Australia. I want to see a bit of life and start fresh."
"And Joe didn't like it?"
"No; but he'll easily find a new cowman. There's nothing to get so
savage about that I can see."
"He'd come to look at you as part of his show. No doubt, falling on
his other troubles---- But he knows where to look for comfort I
should hope. After all, it's but a passing thing. I always say that
we who live in a Vale ought to know what a vale means. Life's gone a
thought too flowing and easy with Joe. This is all meant to make him
think of Beyond."
"Thought of the next world don't make trouble anything less than
trouble."
"It ought then."
"Look after this world and the next will look after itself, Mr.
Chaffe."
"A very dangerous opinion, Maynard, and I'm sorry you think so. It
shows a weakness in you. That ain't the Christian standpoint and you
know it."
"Your views are behind the times perhaps."
"Far from it: they're ahead of the times. It's the still, small
voice ain't heard in these days. The world knows its noisiest men,
not its greatest; and so it don't know its Saviour--not even yet."
"Life's life, Mr. Chaffe, and what you hold runs counter to life.
It's no sense preaching earthly misery to humans, because they're
built to hate misery and seek happiness."
"I don't preach misery. I only preach that happiness must be looked
for in the next world, not this one. It don't belong here and never
will."
Maynard shook his head.
"I've thought of these things and I see your Church standing between
man and a lot of lawful happiness. Let the Church help to clear up
the cruel mess in this world."
"Then join the brotherhood of God and do your share."
"Only the brotherhood of man can do it. Justice ain't the possession
of you Church people alone. And while you demand such a lot of
injustice, you'll only lose your friends. Take marriage. You won't
let marriage be a human thing, nor yet divorce. You let marriage be
a trap for people--easy to get in, impossible to get out--then you've
got the face to say it's God's will--the God of love and mercy!"
"I'm sorry to hear you talk in this wicked way, and I know where you
learnt such bad learning," answered Arthur. "But Enoch Withycombe
wouldn't say those things now, Maynard. He's in the Light now, and
it would make him a very sad man to hear you."
"I didn't get my opinions from him. I only keep my eyes open and see
how life goes; and I know there's hundreds and hundreds of poor
people living in misery to-day, because you say God brought 'em
together, instead of the Devil."
"We'll talk about this another time. I must try to open your eyes if
I can. You stand on very dangerous ground and your little bit o'
learning's like a Jack o' Lantern--it'll land you in a bog if you
don't watch it. John Bamsey's much the same, only his doubts take
him in another direction. The mischief with you young men is that
you think your own twopenny-halfpenny opinions matter; and in his
case, he lets a small thing like his own experience poison his life
and spoil his Christian outlook."
"Your own experience isn't a small thing," argued Lawrence, but the
carpenter declared personal experience a very trumpery matter.
"Only the weak mind will let the things that happen to it influence
conscience and the knowledge of right and wrong," he said. "Our
faith is founded on a Rock, remember, and our bad luck and earthly
frets and cares did only ought to make us cling the stouter to that
Rock."
They talked but did not convince each other. Then Lawrence went his
way, leaving in the mind of Mr. Chaffe considerable uneasiness. In
the carpenter's knowledge there were not a few who professed similar
opinions, and it greatly saddened him to see the younger generation
slipping away from the faith of its fathers. He held that no sound
democracy was possible without religion, and to hear young men say
that religion had no more to do with democracy than football, was a
serious grief to him.
Meantime there had happened behind Lawrence Maynard's back a thing of
much import. Though the hour was still early, two people entered the
lane through the woods some fifty minutes after he had descended it,
and their arrival synchronised at the region of the ivy bank and the
wrens' nest. A few seconds more would have seen Jerry Withycombe
past the spot, on his way to work in the valley; but chance so willed
it that, as he rounded a bend on his way, he saw beneath him, but
still far distant, a woman's sun-bonnet, and he recognised its faded
blue. She with whom his melancholy thoughts were concerned was
evidently approaching, and the fact that she should be out so early,
and on the way she knew he must be travelling to his work, created
sudden, deep emotion in the woodman. His quarrel with Jane bulked
larger in his eyes than in hers. She continued to be obdurate about
a trifle, from no opinion that the trifle really mattered, but
because it gave her a sense of freedom and a loophole if she so
desired. She continued to be really fond of Jerry, and it wanted no
great change of mind to bring them together. Indeed she proposed ere
long to make it up. And now it seemed as though she were about to do
so, and had put herself to trouble and risen early to meet him on his
way.
A few moments, however, brought large disappointment for the man. At
sight of the sun-bonnet, he had backed and waited to watch. Now he
quickly perceived the approaching figure was not Jane's slim shape,
but Dinah's ampler proportions. He was cast down from a great hope
and scowled at the innocent Dinah. Then a ray of light shot his
darkness, for it occurred to him that Dinah might be a messenger of
good tidings. At any rate the sun-bonnet was Jane's--picked up
haphazard no doubt, when Dinah set forth.
He waited and watched a few moments before proceeding, then marked
Dinah stop and do a strange thing. She had not come to seek him it
seemed after all; but something she sought and something she found.
In truth the lover of Lawrence was there to leave a letter. She did
not expect one and was the more delighted to find the note left an
hour before. Jerry saw her peep about, to be sure she was alone,
then go to the green bank, insert her hand and bring out a small
white object from the ivy. She stood and evidently read a letter.
Still he held back, in great wonder at this scene. Dinah next
produced something from her own pocket, opened it and appeared to
write. She was adding a few words to the note that she had brought.
She then put it in the nest and was quickly gone again down the hill.
Jerry waited till Dinah had disappeared; then, having marked the spot
where she stood, he shouldered his frail and proceeded. Already he
had a suspicion of the truth and presently made cautious search under
the ivy-curtain. Nothing rewarded him until he found the old nest
and a piece of paper therein. It was folded closely but conveyed no
information on the outside. He held it in his hand a few moments and
his mind worked in a selfish direction. Here was an item of
tremendous interest to one person. He did not doubt that the letter
was intended for a man, and felt very sure the fact proved his own
sweetheart's assurance: that Dinah was secretly engaged, if not
married. His thoughts were with Jane, and it seemed to him that
chance had now thrown him an admirable opportunity to win her back.
For such a secret as this would be meat and drink to her. Nor need
it hurt Dinah. Jerry had not the slightest desire to hurt anybody;
but he felt that his information might be well worth Jane's
forgiveness; and if Dinah were indeed courting a local man, no harm
could befall either her, or him, by the fact of their secret
escaping. There might be a good joke in it: that anything to
distress and confound the secret lovers could spring from his
discovery he did not guess.
To him, then, this post office of Dinah and an unknown appeared a
great and delightful find, capable of doing him a very good turn. It
meant a triumph for Jane--a sort of triumph she would appreciate; but
it also meant a bargain that should recover Jane's friendship before
completion.
To find the unknown man would be easy now; indeed Jerry guessed that
he had only to open the letter to learn it; but that was not an
action possible to him. He restored the folded paper to its place,
marked the spot very carefully and was content to leave the rest to
Jane. She would have to see him, and that for the moment she
declined to do; but he proposed to himself a visit after his day's
work and doubted not that, if he pressed it forcibly enough, she
might consent. Failing that, he would have to proceed single-handed
with his inquiry. He felt sure enough that Jane had all along been
right in her conviction that Maynard was the man, and he already
anticipated her triumph if this should prove to be so.
That night he called at Green Hayes and it was Dinah who answered his
knock. Jerry felt uncomfortable, but salved his conscience and
invited her friendship.
She, knowing very well why he was come, left him and returned to the
kitchen.
"Jerry wants to see you half a minute, Jane," she said. "He won't
keep you, but he's got something to say as you must hear. It's a
wonderful thing, he says, and will interest you a lot."
Jane, however, showed no immediate inclination to respond.
"Like his cheek," she said. "Didn't I tell the know-naught fool that
when I wanted him I'd let him know?"
"Well, he wants you. And he's bursting with news seemingly. He
begged me very earnest to ask you to see him."
"Perhaps his patience is out," said Mrs. Bamsey. "Perhaps he's come
to give you up, Jane."
"No," she said. "I ban't feared of that. I only want him to see
sense over a little matter here and there. If we are to be married
in the autumn, he's got to understand about a few things."
Jane's secrets were secrets no longer. Her dream of a shop at
Ashburton was now common knowledge.
"Go to him then. You've kept it up long enough if you really want
him," said her mother.
"What should he have to tell me, except he's come round to my views?"
asked Jane.
"Perhaps he has," replied Dinah.
Jane rose, dropped a story book and went out. There was a mumble of
voices. Then Dinah and Faith heard her go down the garden path with
Jerry.
"Thank goodness that's over," said Dinah. "Now you'll have peace,
Mrs. Bamsey."
"I don't know," answered the elder. "They're not really well suited.
Jane did ought to have taken a town man."
"She'll break him in to bricks and mortar after a bit," prophesied
Dinah. "They love each other properly enough."
"If that was so, there'd be no talk of breaking in," said Jane's
mother.
Meantime Jerry had spoken.
"It's very kind of you to see me," he said, "and you won't regret it.
I've got a great piece of news for you, and it's a triumph for you,
Jane, and if you agree to come round and make it up and be same as
you was, I'll tell you."
"What's the great news you'd be likely to hear?"
"I didn't hear it: I found it out. And it'll be a lot more to you
than me for that matter."
They talked like children.
"Very well then I'll hear it."
"And be friends?"
"I'll be friends, if it's such great news as you say."
"No; that means you'll go back on it after. You must be friends.
And we'll regard it still open about the shop. And you needn't fear
my news ain't great. 'Tis a triumph for you, and everybody will say
so."
Jane's triumphs were few. She considered. She had not the faintest
idea of the matter in his mind, yet was glad to be close to him again
and hear his voice.
"All right then," she said. "The shop can wait."
"Will you come out for an hour? Then you shall see something, as
well as hear tell about it."
She turned, picked up the sun-bonnet that Dinah had donned in the
morning, and followed him.
He made her kiss him and then they went up the hill as he told his
story in every particular.
"And why for I've fetched you out," he said, "is because you shall
see it with your own eyes."
She was deeply interested.
"And 'tis greatly to your credit," declared Jerry, "for you've seen
through it from the first, like the clever one you are. 'Tis a
feather in your cap, Jane."
"It fits in very suent," she answered, "because Maynard's given
warning and be off presently; and if 'tis him, then no doubt they'll
be off together. And God knows that won't trouble me."
"Why all this secret business?" asked Jerry. "There's no law against
'em marrying if they want to. What be they shamed of?"
"Can't you see that? The man who's after Dinah must know all about
the past and how she served John. He's feared of John. My brother's
took this like any proud man would. He's not going to have his name
dragged in the dirt and take his wicked wrongs lying down."
Jerry was concerned.
"You don't mean to tell me this is any business of John's? Surely to
God he's got sense enough to----?"
"You can leave John," she said, to calm his anxiety. "I'm not one to
make trouble I'm sure. I'm only telling you. The chap after Dinah
is afeared of John, and that's why they're keeping it close hid.
What other reason can they have?"
"Then I do beg you'll respect their secret plans so far," urged
Jerry. "I'm not telling you this for any mischief against anybody.
I only wanted for you to have the pleasure of finding yourself in the
right; and I thought 'twould be a bit of fun to let everybody know of
it, and surprise Dinah and him and have a laugh at 'em--all friendly
and well meaning. But if you tell me Johnny still means to be evil
disposed to anybody as looks at Dinah, then the case is altered, for
that means trouble."
But Jane was not prepared to lose the salt of the adventure for
Jerry, or anybody. She kept her intentions secret, however.
"John's not a fool. I didn't mean that he'd do anything. What could
he do? I only meant that the man, whoever he is, feels frightened of
him. Of course there's no reason why he should be. Only a coward
would be. So he's fair game anyway."
"If 'tis to be a laughing matter, I'll go on--not else," vowed Jerry;
but she assured him that nothing but laughter would end the incident
in any case.
They climbed the hill and he picked up his marks; then bade Jane
light matches while he hunted for the nest. It was quickly found;
she put her hand in and drew out Dinah's letter deposited that
morning.
"He haven't come for it yet," said Jerry. "So us had better be
moving, for he might be on his way this minute."
But Jane delayed and held the letter in her hand.
"If he only comes by night, we shall never find out who it is," she
answered. "And you've been a very clever chap indeed, Jerry; and the
rest you can leave with me. And don't you fear no trouble--of course
not."
There was an obvious desire in her mind; but she guessed what Jerry
would think of it and so kept it hidden and returned the letter to
the nest.
"Well, you're a great wonder to find this out," she said, "and I'll
keep my word and be friends. Don't you whisper a word to a soul yet.
Leave it to me."
"No, no--this is your bit of fun," he declared. "They'll puzzle like
fury to know how it slipped out, and us'll all roar with laughter at
'em I expect."
Indeed, he laughed in anticipation.
"Hush!" she said. "The man may be on his way now. I'll see you
Sunday afternoon. And I'll find out for sure who the chap is by
then, if I've got to hide and watch for him."
Jerry was overjoyed and embraced her.
"Sunday, then, and thank God we'm all right again, and us must never
fall out no more, Jane; and I shall always feel kindly to these
people, whether or no, because they've done this good deed for us."
Then they parted, each promising the other to keep a sharp look out
on any passer-by. Jerry went his way in the best possible spirits
and Jane started to run down the hill. But she did not run far and
after her lover was out of the way, she stole back. She had kept his
box of matches and now did a thing Jerry had probably forbidden. Not
perhaps that his objection might have stopped her, but Jane's mind
moved swiftly. Before all else it was desirable to find out the man,
and she felt that nobody but a fool would waste time in detective
operations while so simple an expedient as opening a letter offered.
She had observed that Dinah's missive was merely folded, not sealed,
and now she returned to the nest, found it and satisfied herself.
Jane's honesty reached a point that amply soothed conscience. She
had no intention to read the letter: that she would have held an
improper action; but if the first words indicated the recipient, as
she doubted not they would, then a great deal of time and trouble
might be saved.
Jane opened the letter, having first listened that no approaching
footfall broke the silence. Then she struck another match, read the
words, "My darling Man," and hesitated. The match went out and she
stood with the letter in her hand. Experience told her, from her own
occasional communications to Jerry, that one might begin with an
endearing but vague term and yet, at some later point in one's
communication, mention the loved object by name. Dinah's large, free
handwriting was easily seen and Jane considered that it would be
possible to skim the letter, without really reading it, on the chance
of finding the information she desired. This astute reasoning was
rewarded, for, on the second sheet, as her eyes flickered along the
lines, the name "Lawrence" very clearly appeared. Then she stopped,
dropped her match, folded the letter carefully, restored it to its
place and was gone.
"There's only one 'Lawrence' in these parts," thought Jane. Her
reflections were now entirely with her brother. She did not echo
Jerry's wish, that the matter should end in laughter, and clever
though Jane was in some directions, there was a streak of malevolent
idiocy about her in others. She now cherished a vague opinion that
the man ought to suffer for his secret love-making. She despised him
for a coward and rejoiced to think that John might do something
drastic in the matter. That Maynard should be called upon to suffer
seemed entirely reasonable to Jane; while as far as Dinah was
concerned, she panted with delight that her little schemes were now
to be made as public as the bird's-nest she had trusted with them.
She hated Dinah and had always done so. Anything therefore that
could make Dinah miserable must commend itself to Jane.
"And she shall know who she's got to thank, too," reflected the
maiden; "there wouldn't be much in it for me if she didn't hear who'd
found her out."
Full of these unamiable intentions Jerry's sweetheart returned home
and announced that she and her lover were reconciled.
"Thank the Lord for that, then," cried Dinah. "And don't you give
him a chance to quarrel again. 'Tis good time lost, Jane."
"You mind your own love affairs," answered the other tartly. "Us all
know you've got 'em; but be too shamed of 'em, seemingly, to make 'em
public."
With this crushing response Jane retired while Dinah stared after her.
"Don't mind the girl," said Faith Bamsey. "You be such a woman of
mystery since you went off about your affairs, that you mustn't
quarrel with people if they fling their words at you."
"I don't want to quarrel with anybody, Mrs. Bamsey," answered Dinah.
CHAPTER XXXIII
JOE HEARS THE SECRET
Susan and Thomas were returning from church, where they had sat
solemnly together and heard their banns called for the first time of
asking. Mr. Stockman, informed that this would happen, declined to
go; indeed of late he had worshipped but seldom, permitting personal
trials to check his devotions. The betrothed pair discussed Susan's
father on the way home and Palk held it an impropriety that Mr.
Stockman should not have been present.
"Out of respect to you, he did ought to have been there," he said;
"and it's a very oneasy thing; because the next we shall hear may be
that he won't come to the wedding neither."
"He's a regular Job for the minute--first one thing took and then
another, till I dare say he feels the Lord have turned from him,"
murmured Susan.
"Not at all. Naught have overtook him that ain't well inside the
common lot. Look at the items--firstly, his daughter gets engaged to
be married to his hossman--a thing that ought to rejoice him instead
of cast him down; secondly, his cowman gives notice--a thing that may
happen to any farmer; and thirdly, yonder woman won't take him."
Thomas pointed where, fifty yards ahead of them, Melinda and her
brother were walking home from church.
Soosie-Toosie nodded mournfully.
"There's no doubt. And that's a very harsh blow for father anyway.
He'd always counted he could fall back on Melinda, like you put by a
nest egg for the rainy day. And I'm a good bit disappointed in that
quarter--quite as much as father in fact. But you mustn't whisper
it, Tom; because of course the world ain't supposed to know father
offered and got turned down."
"Other people won't pretend if we do," answered Mr. Palk. "He blew
the trumpet about it himself, and everybody well understands that
Mrs. Honeysett refused him."
"I'd give a fortune to know why," answered Joe's daughter. "Some day
I'll ax her, I shouldn't wonder. Meantime I'd very much like to talk
to her on another subject; and that's us."
"We must go on our appointed way. We don't want no outside opinions."
They overtook Melinda, and while Thomas talked with Jerry, the women
fell back and Susan spoke of private affairs. She explained her
gathering difficulties and Melinda listened with a good deal of
sympathy.
"'Tis very undignified of your father, Susan--more like a naughty,
disappointed child, than a man with fame for sense. I allow for him,
because a good few things have happened to shake him; yet, so far as
you and Mr. Palk are concerned, it did ought to be all joy and
gladness."
"So it ought; but far from it," answered the other. "Father's got to
such a pass now that when I tell him I'm wishful to name the day, he
dares me to do so."
"Very wilful and unkind, and something ought to be done about it,"
declared Mrs. Honeysett. "I've been thinking a good deal on Joe
lately, as I dare say you can guess; and no doubt you know very well
why he came to see me a fortnight agone, Soosie. But I don't forget
the past and I don't want to lose his friendship, nor yet yours. And
I've thought a lot about you and him."
They lagged and mumbled together for some time; but it was clear that
Melinda's views commended themselves much to Susan, and when they
joined Jerry and Thomas at the turn to Mrs. Honeysett's house, Joe
Stockman's daughter thanked her friend gratefully for some inspiring
suggestions.
She talked without ceasing to Tom all the way home, and he listened
and nodded and declared there might be a good deal in it.
"'Tis a great thought," he said, "and if you feel kind to it, then I
might. Us'll see--'tis a rod to hold over the man, because it be
full time for your father to find out where he stands."
"'Tis a sort of bargain of course," admitted Susan; "but you wouldn't
call it a one-sided bargain."
"Not at all. It lets him out so as he can save his face before the
folk. And it shows him what good-tempered creatures you and me are."
Thomas thought it might be possible to speak at the end of that day.
"I'll ax him to have a spot out of my bottle to-night," he said, "and
if he condescends so far as to do so, then I'll open on him--not
otherwise."
Mr. Palk was disappointed, however, for during the evening there came
in John Bamsey to supper.
He appeared to be in a good temper and hid the object of his visit
until after the meal was ended. He spoke chiefly of his own work on
the river, and then of his father. Mr. Bamsey had sunk to be the
mere husk of a man and his son frankly hoped that he might soon pass
away.
"To know he was dead wouldn't be half so wisht as to see him alive
like this," he said.
John was tactful with regard to Susan and Thomas. Indeed, he
congratulated them out of earshot of Cousin Joe, and hoped it would
be all right. To Maynard he was civil and no more.
Then, when opportunity came to do so, unheard by anybody else, he
asked Mr. Stockman to walk out and smoke a pipe as he had something
private to tell him. Joe was bored, for no affairs but his own
interested him at this moment; but he obliged the younger, and
through a warm, thundery night they strolled upon the Beacon. For a
time the elder uttered general grievances and when he mentioned
Lawrence Maynard, John struck in.
"That's why I wanted to get you away from them. There's a bit of
news about Maynard; but perhaps you know it. And when it's out, he's
got to reckon with me."
"Maynard's a very disappointing chap," declared the farmer. "Never
did I like a man better, and never did I treat a man better, and I'm
quite reasonable in that quarter when I say this is no ordinary case
of a hand giving notice. He's outside his right to do any such thing
with me; for I've been as good as a father to him for very near two
years, and he well knew I never counted upon his going, and he's got
no justice or honesty in him to do so."
"No, there's not much honesty or justice in him. And I dare say you
wondered why he was going."
"I wondered certainly."
"I'll tell you. He's going to be married, and he couldn't dare to be
married here, because he knew that he'd got me to reckon with. So
he's planned it on the quiet, and he'll disappear presently no doubt;
and then somebody else will disappear too. And that's Dinah Waycott."
Mr. Stockman was much agitated.
"Good powers! D'you know what you're saying, John?" he asked.
"Very well indeed. And I'll tell you how it was; but I don't want
Maynard to know his dirty job be found out, and I'll beg you to keep
dumb about it till things are a bit forwarder. I can get forty
shillings or a month out of him, and give him a damned good hiding
and disgrace him for his underhand, blackguard conduct--stealing
another man's girl--but I want to do a bit more than that if it's in
my power. And so long as you're not on his side no more, you'll be
the best one to help me. I'd do a lot to break this off and punish
Dinah, same as she punished me; and why not? She deserves it quite
so well as him."
"Begin at the beginning," said Joe. "Tell me what you know. I'm
your side without a doubt in this matter. There's a lot hid here you
don't understand, and, for the credit of human nature, I hope you're
wrong. This may be something that you've given ear to, out of ill
feeling against Orphan Dinah. You must be terrible sure of your
ground, for there's very good reasons why you ought to be mistaken.
But if you're right, then you be the tool of Providence and it's well
you came to me."
Johnny, who had learned everything from Jane, told the story with
only one addition contrary to facts. Jane lied in a minor particular
and concealed the incident of looking into Dinah's letter. Instead
she declared that she had hidden herself, and watched, and seen
Maynard come for the letter and leave another on the following
evening in late dusk. The conclusion amounted to the same thing.
Joe was deeply impressed.
"I always held him a bit sly," he said, "and I've lived to find him
ungrateful and hard-hearted where I'd every right to expect something
very different. He struck me at the very moment when a decent man
would have scorned to do so, with all my own troubles thick upon me.
But this is something a lot deeper than his conduct to me, and even a
lot worse."
"I'm glad you think so," answered John. "I'm very glad you see he's
a secret, cowardly sort of one. He kindiddled Dinah away from me no
doubt; and very like it is Providence, as you say; and if you don't
think he ought to marry her, then I hope you'll help me to prevent
it."
Johnny felt exalted. He had not expected much from his visit to his
kinsman; he had even feared that Joe might already know the facts and
attach no importance to them; but it seemed that Mr. Stockman was
quite of John's opinion. Indeed he declared so.
"I certainly think they ought not to marry," he answered. "And I
think a great deal more than that. Keep your mouth shut close for
the present. There's plenty of time--unless."
"When's the man going?"
"No date be fixed."
"My mother was put out when Dinah went off a bit ago. She got the
idea from Jane that Dinah had gone to be married then. But when they
taxed her, she swore she had not."
"She couldn't tell a lie if she was paid to," declared Mr. Stockman,
"and Maynard certainly weren't in that, because he was here and I saw
him every day about his business. We must rest the blame on the
right pair of shoulders. And it'll break 'em without a doubt. But
we'd best to go careful. Don't you take a step alone. How many
know?"
"Only Jane and Jerry and me."
"Maynard don't suspect?"
"Neither of 'em--they couldn't."
"Then tell your sister and Withycombe to keep dumb as mice for the
minute; and so will I. This is a very serious thing indeed--and a
great shock to me. To think he was that sort!"
John was pleased but mystified. He failed to see why this event
should make so tremendous an impression on Mr. Stockman.
"I'm very glad you think it is so bad," he said. "I was in a bit of
doubt if you'd take my side."
"As to sides," answered Joe, "I'm going to take the side of right,
which is no more than to say I'll do my duty. And that looks pretty
clear. I dare say you are a bit astonished, but understand me. I'm
not making your quarrel mine, and I don't hold at all with your talk
about forty shillings or a month out of Lawrence Maynard. This goes
a very great deal deeper than forty shillings or a month, I may tell
you. I'll say no more for the minute; but I shan't do naught till
I've seen you again. Only keep this in mind: Maynard ain't planning
this hookem snivey job and doing it all in secret, because he's
afraid of you, but because he's afraid of me."
Johnny became more and more puzzled. It was clear, however, that he
had won a powerful friend and might now hope to strike a harder
stroke than any with his fist.
"So long as you be going to queer the man's pitch, and punish him,
and get Dinah away from him, I don't care a damn," he said. "If
Dinah finds out; but perhaps he's made her think----"
"Yes; he's made her think a lot, and he's told her a great many dark
and devilish falsehoods--that's very clear indeed," answered Joe.
"And if her eyes be opened, she may come back to sense yet!" cried
the sanguine youth. "Shame will show her the truth perhaps."
Mr. Stockman did not answer. He was occupied with his own
reflections.
"This shakes me to the vitals," he declared presently. "I thought I
knew pretty well all there was to that man; and I knew less than
naught. If anybody had said he was a wicked scoundrel, I'd have
denied and defied it; but----"
They had descended from the Beacon and were walking on the Buckland
road. Then Joe stopped.
"You go your way now," he said, "and leave me to put this together.
You do naught and I'll do naught for the minute. But there may not
be any too much time. He was going at Michaelmas. 'Tis certain now
that's a blind. He'll take French leave presently and we've got to
be before him. Come to supper o' Wednesday, John. Then us'll see
how it looks. That poor woman--as honest a creature as ever stepped."
"If he's up to any tricks----"
"He is, by God! Now I'll leave you. And be so silent as the grave
till you see me again."
Deeply wondering and greatly rejoicing at his success, John Bamsey
went down the hill, while Mr. Stockman turned and slowly ascended.
His excitement gave way to listlessness presently, for this discovery
and the subsequent sensation could not advance Joe's own problems.
He considered for a moment whether any course existed by which
advantage could accrue to himself out of Maynard's position; but he
saw none.
A trap from Ashburton descended, flashing its lights through the
leafy darkness of the road; and when the ray illuminated Mr.
Stockman, he heard a woman's voice bid the driver pull up. It was
Mrs. Honeysett who spoke, and she seized an opportunity to relieve
the existing painful conditions. For she had not seen Joe since she
declined him; but here was an excuse and she took it.
"You'll be wondering what I'm doing at this time of night," she said,
"but I can't pass you."
Then she alighted and a man alighted with her.
"Just been to Ashburton to meet my brother, Robert," she explained.
"You remember him. He's home for a bit at last."
A huge figure towered in the gloom over Joe and a heavy hand grasped
his own.
"I remember you," said the farmer, "but I forgot you were such a
whacker. Sailed all the Seven Seas, I suppose, since you was last to
Buckland?"
"He's two inches taller than what dear father was," declared Melinda,
relieved to find Mr. Stockman in a humour apparently amiable.
"Robert's going to take a nice rest along with me. In fact he doubts
sometimes if he'll go back to sea at all."
"No, no--I don't doubt that," answered the sailor. "But I be going
to give work a rest."
"And find a wife, if he can," continued Melinda. "Us must help him,
Joe."
"I always swore as I'd marry a maiden from the Vale," said Robert
Withycombe.
"The puzzle will be to find one, I tell him," laughed Melinda "I know
a likely girl all the same, and so does Mr. Stockman, Bob."
Joe guessed to whom she referred, and it showed him that Melinda knew
nothing of the threatened tragedy.
"I reckon you mean Orphan Dinah," he said. "Well and why not? A
very sensible young woman. The man that gets her will be lucky."
"They'd be a proper pair and I hope Bob will think well of her. But
he must be warned that she's already changed her mind in one quarter."
"That's not against her," replied Joe. "That shows strength of
character and she had every right to do so. I only hope I know
another woman who'll be wise enough to change her mind."
Before this veiled attack, Melinda was silent and Robert spoke.
"My girl, when she comes along, won't have no time to change her
mind. She've got to marry me and be quick about it. Then us must
find a little house to Southampton, or else Plymouth."
Stockman, with certain ideas moving in his head, issued an invitation.
"Perhaps you'll be in luck--who knows? I'd pleasure you for your
sister's sake, because she and me are very good friends, and I hope
always will be. You come to supper o' Wednesday, Robert, and bring
Jerry along with you. I don't ax you, Melinda--not this time. I
want to have a tell with your brothers; mind you make 'em come."
"Come and welcome," promised Robert, while his sister wondered what
might be behind this invitation. They parted; the trap with the
sailor and his kit-bag rolled down the hill and Joe proceeded home.
He was gloomy and his thoughts concerned themselves with Melinda, but
not hopefully. All had changed with her refusal. Even if she did,
indeed, find herself in a mood to accept him on another invitation,
it would never be the same to Mr. Stockman. He did not care for her
enough to let any future 'yes' make him forget the grave rebuff
already suffered. Indeed he did not very much want her now. Like a
skeleton between them must ever persist the recollection of her
refusal. He only realised the attractive features of the old
arrangement at the moment when it was about to end, and he still
smouldered with intense heat when he reflected on his daughter's
marriage. In the light of this evening's revelation he was disposed
to add another sin to those upon the head of Lawrence Maynard. It
occurred to him that the cowman might have had a hand in Susan's
romance and urged Thomas forward upon his hateful course. He began
to be convinced that Lawrence had inspired Thomas, possibly for
private ends hidden from Joe. He suspected that these men had made a
cat'spaw of him, and since Thomas was certainly not equal to any such
task single-handed, to the subtler Maynard might chief blame be
assigned.
He found himself hating Maynard and taking grim satisfaction in the
thought Lawrence had over-reached himself. Here, at any rate, was an
outlet for Mr. Stockman's pent-up indignation. One man should have
justice at his hands, and if the downfall of Maynard indirectly smote
Palk, or even changed his determination, so much the better. Joe
indeed always hoped that something might happen even at the last
moment to upset the marriage of Susan, and he would have stuck at no
reasonable means of doing so. He had assured himself long ago that,
for her own sake, such a step must be taken if the least opportunity
occurred.
CHAPTER XXXIV
AN OFFER
Now force was ranged against force, and while Dinah and Lawrence
Maynard matured the final details of their exodus, half a dozen men
had become aware of their secret enterprise and were concerned to
upset it in the name of right. Only the manner of doing so offered
material for argument. The situation was reached on the Wednesday
night of Joe's supper party, for when John Bamsey duly arrived to
learn the secret, he was surprised to find Jerry Withycombe and his
brother, Robert, also of the company. Mr. Stockman had so far
accepted the inevitable that his friends might discuss Susan's
approaching wedding in his presence, and to-night Robert Withycombe
chaffed Mr. Palk and Susan while he ate. Presently, indeed, he drank
to their united bliss and challenged the rest of the company to do
so. Thomas was gratified and Susan felt much moved to see her father
humbly drink the toast with the rest. Then the diplomatic Joe asked
Robert if he had called at Green Hayes, and what he thought of
Jerry's future wife.
Robert praised Jane very heartily.
"She's a bowerly piece," he said, "and clever as they make 'em. What
the devil she finds in this chap I can't guess; but love's blind no
doubt. I shall see 'em hitched up afore I go."
"And yourself, too, by all accounts," said Mr. Palk.
"'Tis odds he won't find nobody good enough," declared Jerry. "He
fancies himself something cruel, because he's sailed pretty near
round the world."
"There's one good enough for any living man at Green Hayes," asserted
Mr. Stockman. "Have you seen Orphan Dinah, Robert?"
"I have, and I ain't wishful to talk on that subject in public--not
yet," answered the sailor guardedly.
"He's hit--he's hit!" cried Joe. Then he remembered that Johnny was
present and turned with a great show of innocence to Maynard, who
took his supper with the rest.
"Here's a man that knows Dinah Waycott, and have took a walk or two
with her for that matter. And a very clever man too, and I'm
terrible sorry he's going to leave me. What would you say of Orphan
Dinah, Lawrence?"
Maynard was unruffled.
"Lucky the man who gets her," he answered; "she's one in a thousand."
The talk ranged and John grew more and more impatient to know when
vital matters would be reached; but he perceived that Mr. Stockman
could not speak before the company. After supper Maynard disappeared
and then, when his daughter had cleared away, Joe beckoned John and
took him outside.
"I don't trust my family circle in this matter," he said, "and so
we'll light our pipes and go out. 'Tis a moony night and to walk a
mile after supper is a very good rule, thought I don't practise it.
Call them two men. They've got to know so well as you."
In ten minutes Thomas and Susan had Falcon Farm to themselves, while
Joe, with John and the Withycombe brothers, strolled through a still
and moonlit night.
Then he told them that Lawrence was married, and had run away from
his wife.
"That's how we stand, neighbours. Maynard's a secret sort of man in
most of his dealings, but when he came here, he found me not lacking
in friendship, and he told me that much about himself. And I thought
the better of him for it; because it's often the wisest and properest
thing that parties can do, to put a few leagues between self and
partner, if marriage be poisoning 'em both. He weren't to blame for
that, so far as I can tell; indeed, I upheld the man in his action;
but now the case is altered, and we may be pretty sure the fault was
his and some innocent creature have already suffered at his hands.
And there's no reason why another should.
"It's all clear enough now. He remembered, no doubt, that he'd told
me his secret, and so he's running this job on the quiet and have
doubtless forged good reasons for Dinah's ear why they should bolt
presently, instead of proclaiming the thing like decent people would.
It's because Maynard be married that he's doing this; and now good
chance puts the secret into the hands of honest men and we must act
according. I always leave a rogue to Providence myself, and never
yet found I could do anything better than what Providence done; but
in this case there's a victim, and the victim can be saved, thank
God."
They talked and poured their indignation into the moonlight. Johnny
abounded in drastic suggestions. He desired, above all, to face
Maynard with Dinah, then let her hear the truth and beat the cowman
before her. But one, who as yet knew the least of Dinah, raised a
question.
"How if he's told her and she's willing to chance it and don't care?"
asked Robert.
Mr. Stockman protested.
"You little understand the sort she is. She'd die rather than sink
to such a deed. No; he's caught her with a parcel of lies, and he
merits a pretty good punishment no doubt. You might say the loss of
her will be punishment enough; but there's more to it than that I
dare say."
"By God, yes!" vowed Johnny.
"If he's catched and headed off in time, the law can't touch him,"
said Robert.
"Then 'tis for us to take the law in our own hands," added Johnny,
"and we will."
Joe warned him.
"All in good time," he answered. "It's life or death for Dinah, and
therefore we be called to act; but what we shall do and how we shall
both save her and be evens with this rogue will take some planning.
Rough justice must be done I grant. He must have rope enough to hang
himself with, and he must get the surprise of his life presently; but
we must be clever, else we'll spoil all. I've got ideas, but he's a
downy chap and nobody must do anything to make him smell a rat."
They abounded in suggestions and Johnny pointed a danger.
"While we're talking and planning," he said, "they may give us the
slip any night and be out of reach and vanished off the earth so far
as we're concerned. And I say this: 'tis time we knowed what was in
their letters. They be keeping apart very clever indeed, so as
nobody should link up their names, though my sister always swore they
was up to something; but they write, and Jane has watched Dinah go up
for a letter more'n half a dozen times; and now it's time we know
what's doing, else we'll get left."
"To look into a knave's letters to frustrate his tricks be no crime,
I reckon," admitted Robert Withycombe. "What d'you say, Mr.
Stockman?"
They all agreed that to read the secret correspondence was
permissible, for Dinah's sake. Indeed Joe held that this had become
a duty.
Robert expressed sorrow for her; but he knew the situation with
respect to John Bamsey and did not, therefore, say much. His own
emotions to Dinah, if any had been yet awakened, cooled rapidly. He
had no mind to seek a maiden so much involved.
They parted presently; but John was going to tell Jane the truth that
night, and impose upon her the task of reading letters when she
could, to gather what definite information of Maynard's plans they
might contain.
"I hate for Jane to do anything so mean," declared Jerry, "but I see
it did ought to be done."
"It ain't mean, my son; it's for the sake of justice, and to come
between Dinah and living death," explained Joe.
Then the younger men went their way to Buckland, and John, leaving
the brothers there, started for home. He passed Maynard on the way
and guessed that he had left, or brought, a letter. Much he longed
to challenge him, and fully he intended to play an active part in the
future proceedings; but he hid his secret knowledge, and said 'Good
night' and passed down the hill, while the unsuspecting cowman, who
had just posted a letter to Dinah, responded with friendly voice.
But Maynard did not overtake his master, and hearing Tom's slow voice
droning in the kitchen with thin interjections from Soosie-Toosie, he
retired on returning home.
Indeed matters of some moment for Joe awaited him, for the time
brought his thoughts sharply back to himself. Susan hastened to pour
out his evening drink when he came back, and Thomas, who always rose
to his feet when his master entered the kitchen, now asked if he
might be permitted to say a few words.
He spoke and Susan fluttered about in the background, while Joe
listened and sipped from a glass of spirits and water.
"You see things be risen to a crisis," began Tom, "and I feel very
much that the time's ripe for an understanding. It's mournful to
keep on like this, and to-day, by the post, there came a very fine
offer of work for me to a gentleman's farm nigh Exeter. Everything
done regardless, and good money and a cottage. So now's the
appointed time to speak, and Susan and me feel very wishful to
pleasure you, and we've come by an idea."
"Go on then. It don't much matter putting your ideas before me, as
I'm not axed to influence them. You'll do as you want to do."
"No," said Thomas; "in reason we want to do your will if it can be
done. You've been very harsh of late, master, and, of course, I can
well understand your feelings about losing Susan. But I never shall
see why you was so cruel rude about it. You may treat people like
dirt, if you do it kindly, and they won't mind; but if you call 'em
dirt, then they get a bit restive; and restive I've got, and so have
she. But here it is--an offer in a very friendly spirit; and we
haven't come to it without a lot of thinking and balancing the bright
side against the dark. And, on the whole, for Susan and me it's a
bright thought, and we hope you may think so too."
"But there's one little thing, father," began Susan, and Mr. Palk
stopped her.
"Leave all to me," he said, "I'll set it out. There's several little
things for that matter, and if the master don't see his way, so be
it. First, there's what we be offering, and next there's the
conditions to set against it. And we offer to stop after we'm
married and to go on just as usual. As a son-in-law I know you've
got no use for me; but as a hossman, you've been suited. And as a
hossman I'll willingly bide and do all I know regular and steadfast
for the same money as I'm getting now. And I pray God, if that
happened, you'd come to find me a good son-in-law likewise. And that
means your darter bides at your right hand so long as you want her
there. And I'll go farther than that. I'll say if at any time in
the next five years you take a wife and want us away, we'll go."
"I wish it too, with all my heart, father," declared Susan. "I'd be
lost away from you, and worriting all the time to know whose hands
you were got in. And marrying Thomas won't make no difference,
except there'll be two to think about you instead of one."
Mr. Stockman puffed his pipe and showed by no expression that he
appreciated the proposal.
"I'll give you this credit," he said, "I dare say you mean well."
"No two people ever meant better, father."
"And now for the powder. I expect that, even if I was to see my way,
you've got a barrelful of ugly things you'll demand. And I tell you
at once that it just hangs on a razor-edge whether the idea be good
enough as it stands, without any conditions to it at all. I should
have conditions also, and one of them would be that you undertook to
stop and not change your minds after a year, or bolt off and leave me
at your own will."
"Never," answered Susan. "It's understood we don't go unless you
wish it."
"And now your conditions, Palk, if you please."
"There ain't no powder about 'em, but only right and reason," said
Thomas, "and be it as 'twill, there's only three of 'em. Firstly,
that we have a proper, human wedding, all joyous and cheerful, with
you smiling and a few neighbours to the spread after, and a nice send
off; secondly, that we be allowed ten clear days for a honeymoon
round about somewhere; and thirdly, and lastly, that Susan, when she
comes home, be allowed a virgin girl under her, to help the labour of
the house. Just a maid-of-all-work, as any other married woman would
have for her dignity. That's all we ask, master, and I do hope you
may be brought to see there's nothing to it but will make for your
comfort and satisfaction. Susan you know, and you've often said she
was the light of the house, and she wants so to continue; and I do
believe, when you get to know me better and see how I go on and how I
treat Susan, that you'll come to feel a kinder feeling for me also."
"Don't say 'no' without thinking over it and giving us the benefit of
your wisdom, dear father," pleaded Soosie-Toosie, her large eyes
fixed upon him.
"I never say 'no' to anything, without thinking it over, Susan. 'Tis
all the other way, and I'm prone to give people the benefit of the
doubt too often. I'll turn this over. You've put the case very
clear. We shall see. I'm one for the long view, as you know. I'll
look all round it."
CHAPTER XXXV
FOR RIGHT AND JUSTICE
Joe Stockman decided that he must submit to the propositions of
Thomas and his daughter. He declared that the decision was marked
solely by affection for Susan, and a determination that his
son-in-law should have every opportunity to show his worth under the
new conditions. He also let it be known how this arrangement was his
own idea and, indeed, mentioned it in several quarters as a fact,
before he informed the lovers that he was agreeable. This matter
settled, Joe, who was really much gratified and relieved, modified
his gloom, and to the surprise of those most concerned, proceeded
with his part of the contract in a spirit not unamiable. He planned
a substantial entertainment for the wedding-day, permitted Susan to
secure a maid, and decreed that the honeymoon might last a fortnight.
All progressed smoothly; the farmer became affable to everybody,
including Mr. Palk, and made no opposition to the minor details of
housekeeping and general control that the marriage would involve.
"I've drawed the sting of the trouble," he confessed to himself.
And then, two days before the wedding, he received certain secret
information concerning the matter of Lawrence Maynard. He expected
it, for during the same week Maynard had specified a date for leaving.
Then came the vital news from Jane, who dipped into the secret
letter-box from time to time and skimmed the lover's letters to glean
facts. These she had now learned, and they embraced the time of
departure and details concerning it.
Thus Jane and John, with the Withycombe brothers and Mr. Stockman,
heard what was planned, and the younger conspirators now waited for
Joe to determine what actions should be taken. For him zest had
already dwindled out of the adventure. He had secured a new cowman
and the maid-of-all-work was skilled in the dairy; therefore Joe felt
satisfied, so far as his own comfort and welfare were concerned. But
there remained Dinah to be saved, and various courses of action
offered themselves, the simplest being to make all publicly known at
once.
Joe, however, decided to take another party into the secret before
any final action, and he was inspired to do so by the visit of Arthur
Chaffe, who arrived at this time, to look into the matter of the dry
rot in the stables.
They met and conversed on various subjects, beginning, English
fashion, with the weather; but the weather was not a topic that
Arthur ever permitted to waste his time.
"An early autumn," said Joe. "The leaves be falling in the topmost
trees a'ready."
"I wish one old leaf would fall," answered the carpenter. "It's
among the saddest things I've known that Ben Bamsey lives on--a poor
spectrum and shadow of his former self. A very harrowing thing for
all concerned, and I've prayed on my knees daily, for a month now,
that it may please God to take him. What a man prays for will show
you the measure of his wits, Joe, and the nature of his character;
and for my part I've always made it a habit to pray for others more
than for myself, and found it a very good rule."
"No doubt, no doubt, Arthur. But most people have looked upon Ben as
dead ever since last spring. There's only the outer case of the man
left: the works be gone. And a good thing here and there. He's took
from some shocks and surprises. Run your eye over this job and see
what's to be done, then I'll have a tell with you about something
else that calls for a lot of brain power. Right must be done in a
certain quarter; but the question is how best to do it."
Chaffe proceeded, and when he had settled the matter of the dry rot,
he spoke of the approaching wedding and declared his immense
satisfaction that Soosie-Toosie would stop with her father.
"It's like your good sense, and there's no doubt at all you've done a
wise thing. And Thomas Palk's mind be opening out very well I find.
He's a very good man and, in your hands, though old for a learner,
can't fail to enlarge. In fact I'm very glad about it, and so's
everybody. You'd have missed her, of course, and she'd have felt a
lost creature away from you."
"So I believe, and so I acted," answered Joe; "and now list to me,
Arthur, and face a very critical affair. 'Tis understood you don't
mention it again to a living soul for the minute; but I'll ask you to
give it your full attention. I'll tell you now, and after a bit of
dinner, which you'll take with me, please, you can say what you think
about it."
Mr. Chaffe protested at stopping for dinner. He was desperately busy
and begged to be allowed to return home; but Joe would not suffer it.
"No," he said, "a soul be in the balance, Arthur, and I never yet
heard you put your work before the welfare of a soul."
"If a soul's the matter, you must speak and I must hear," answered
the old man; and then he listened to the story, from the moment of
Maynard's arrival at Falcon Farm up to the present and the secret
flight, planned to take place within ten days.
"Maynard goes from me," concluded Joe, "and the next morning he meets
Orphan Dinah at Shepherd's Cross, on Holne Moor. From there they get
down to the in-country, take train for Plymouth, at Brent I expect,
and sail that night, or the next day, to Australia. A very simple
and easy plan if it wasn't interfered with; but of course it ain't
going to happen, and the question is how best to stop it in a
righteous and seemly fashion."
Mr. Chaffe was much concerned.
"Who can say he's ever fathomed man or woman?" he asked. "This
throws a light into darkness, Joe, and shows me many things that have
troubled me. Not about Dinah, for she's above board and a good
Christian by nature and upbringing; but about Maynard. He's foxed
her into this dark and dangerous deed, and I'll be bold to say the
blame's on his shoulders only, though nothing ought to have made her
agree to run away unbeknownst from her friends. That shows a
lightness; but no doubt the man have made her love him, and love
blinds the best. There's a lot to thank God for, however. You can
see Providence looking far ahead as usual. For if Maynard hadn't
confided the truth to you years ago, we should never have known, and
he'd have brazened it out and committed bigamy in our midst no doubt."
"He would--the rascal; and I feel his crime did ought to be punished,
whether it succeeds or not. He's tried to do a blackguard act, and
it is for us just men to make him feel his proper reward and chasten
the wretch--if only for his future salvation. But seeing that I've
fallen out with him already in a manner of speaking, when he gave
notice, I'm in the position where it wouldn't become me to smite him,
because people would say it was revenge. And so I put it to you, who
stand for nothing but the cause of religion and justice."
Mr. Chaffe nodded.
"A very proper line to take. And I might, of course, go in my turn
to higher ones. You see it's a matter for State and Church both,
Joe. This man be out to break the law and ruin an innocent and
trusting woman; and he's also flouting righteousness and planning a
great sin. We must rise to the proper answer; and my feeling would
be to take a line on our own, if I can think of the right one. And
if I can't, then we must hand it over to the lawful authorities."
"No," said Mr. Stockman. "In my view that would be paltry. We've
got to keep the man and woman apart and read him a sharp and bitter
lesson. That's well in our power without going to the police. They
couldn't lock him up if he hadn't done the crime, so it's for us to
make justice on the spot and fall on the man like the trump of doom,
just when he thinks he's triumphed. That's how I see it. And we
don't give him no long drawn out punishment, but just crush him, like
you'd crush a long-cripple,* and leave him to his bad conscience.
And as for Dinah, when she finds out the size of her danger and sees
the brink she was standing on, she'll soon forget her troubles, in
thankfulness to God for her great escape."
* "Long-cripple"--viper.
"It calls for a fine touch," declared Arthur. "There's no doubt our
duty stands before us, Joe, and, at a first glance, I'm minded to see
with you, that this feat is within our power and we needn't call for
no outside aid. The thing is to know just how to strike. Your idea
of falling on the man like the crack of doom be good on the whole.
But we mustn't overdo it, or forget we're sinful creatures ourselves.
He's got a fearful punishment afore him in any case, apart from what
we may do, because he loses Dinah just at the very moment when he
thinks he's got her safe for evermore. And that's enough to go on
with for him. But the right thought will certainly come to my mind,
since we be acting in the name of religion."
"I'm all for mercy as a rule," answered Stockman; "but not in this
case. Mercy's barred out, because of Maynard's wickedness."
"There don't seem no very loud call for mercy certainly, when you
think of the far-reaching thing he's led the poor girl into. No; we
may stop at justice I reckon. I'll brood upon it, Joe. I see the
line, I believe; but I'll take it afore my Maker. We want a bit of
physical force--we may even have to handle him, as I see it."
"D'you think so?"
"Yes. For the sake of argument, would John Bamsey and the Withycombe
brothers be strong enough to withstand him?"
Joe believed they might be.
"If they surprised the man, they would. Robert Withycombe's a huge,
strong chap. What be in your mind?"
"Wait till it takes a clearer shape. Put by the thought till after
the wedding. That must be all happiness and joy; and when that's
well over and the happy pair are away, we'll turn to Maynard. We
must come to it with clean hands, Joe, as humble, willing tools of
Providence. Us mustn't allow ourselves no evil hate, or anything
like that, but just feel but for the grace of God us might have been
tempted and fallen into the pit ourselves. There's a bright side,
even for him, and I hope in time he'll live to see what we saved him
from."
"We must have a masterpiece of cleverness, and I'll think too," added
Mr. Stockman. "Don't squeak, Arthur; don't tell a living soul about
it. We must just teel a trap for the beggar and catch him alive.
And we must spare Dinah all we can."
"As to Dinah," answered Mr. Chaffe, "if what I see rising up in my
mind be the right course, we may have to give Dinah a pinch also. I
quite agree she must be spared all shame if possible; but I always go
the way I'm led by the still small voice, Joe; and if the ideas
creeping in me blaze out and command to be followed, then very like
Dinah may have to be in it--for her own good. You must remember that
Dinah's only a part of human nature, and we can read her feelings
very clear when this bursts upon her."
"How can we?" asked Joe. "I never can read any woman's feelings very
clear at any time. They never feel about anything same as we do, and
their very eyes ban't built to look at the shape and colour of things
as ours be. They're a different creation in fact, and 'tis folly to
pretend they ain't."
"A different creation, no," answered Arthur. "They feel and suffer
same as us, and Dinah Waycott, afore this great downfall, will take
the ordinary course of human nature. Her Christianity will help her
to keep a tight hand on herself; but, being a woman, she'll want to
give Lawrence Maynard a bit of her mind, and he'll deserve it and
didn't ought to be spared it."
Mr. Stockman was rather impressed.
"By God, that's true," he said. "And I'm rather glad you thought of
it and not me, Arthur. For if I'd hit on that, people would without
doubt have said 'twas the poison of revenge working in me. But
coming from you, of course it can be no more than justice. It's just
a thing a bachelor might have hit upon. The average married man
would have felt a twinge of mercy, and only your high sense of
justice would screw you up to such a pitch."
"Nothing be done yet," answered Mr. Chaffe. "And if my thoughts look
too harsh in your eyes presently, I'll willingly tone 'em down where
possible. But often the surgeon as ban't feared to cut deep be the
best to trust. We've got to save the man's soul alive, and seeing
the size of the wound upon it and the danger in which he stands, we
should be weak to botch our work for the sake of sparing him, or
ourselves pain. For that's what mercy to the wicked often comes to,
Joe. We forgive and forget for our own comfort far too often, and
let a sinner off his medicine, only because we don't like to see the
ugly face he makes over it."
"In fact, mercy would be weakness and false kindness," admitted Joe.
"And if we want a couple more strong men presently, I know the proper
ones. We must all be ministers of right in this matter, and I'm glad
of your clear head and high opinions. For now I know we shall come
through with credit to ourselves and the respect of the people."
"There again, we must take care our feet don't slip," answered Mr.
Chaffe. "It may hap that this ain't a case for the people. As a
lesson and warning it may have to be told about, for the sake of the
young; but, against that, we may find, for Dinah's sake, that it
might not be convenient to make it a public affair. And now we'll
put this away for the Lord to work on, Joe. Be sure it won't slumber
nor sleep, but take the shape He wills in our hands. We'll talk of
the wedding now for ten minutes afore I be off. How would you like a
triumphant arch over the lichgate to church? It can very easy be
done."
"No," said Mr. Stockman. "I'm going through with it as a father
should, Arthur, and we're to have a very fine meal, with a
pastry-cook from Ashburton to prepare it and serve it. I'm doing my
part, and I'm giving Susan away in church, and I've asked all the
neighbours, including five outlying friends of Palk's. But, between
you and me and without unkindness, I feel no temptation to lose my
head about what's going to happen. I don't hunger for large
diversions, nor yet triumphant arches over the lichgate, nor anywhere
else. I want for it to be over and them back home, so as I may see
how it's going on and what measure of peace and comfort I can count
upon in the future. The time for triumphant arches be when a pair
have stood each other ten years, and can still go on with it."
"Keep your nerve and give 'em every fair chance and trust God," said
Mr. Chaffe.
"Be sure of that," answered Joe. "I only wish I felt so sure that,
hunting in a couple, they'll do their duty to me so well as I shall
do mine to them."
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE WEDDING DAY
A kindly spirit might have been moved somewhat to observe
Soosie-Toosie's wonder and delight when wedding presents began to
appear before her marriage. She could hardly remember being the
recipient of any gift in her life, and she felt amazed, almost
prostrate, under the sense of obligation awakened by a tea-set from
Green Hayes, a metal teapot and milk jug from Melinda, a "History of
Palestine," with coloured pictures from Mr. Chaffe, and other
presents only less handsome. Thomas, too, was remembered by former
friends, and the kinsmen of the Stockmans, who dwelt at Barnstaple,
sent Susan an eider-down quilt of fiery scarlet and green, which she
secretly determined should comfort the couch of her father when
winter returned. This gift inspired Mr. Palk.
They had not yet decided where the fortnight's holiday should be
spent, and he suggested that Barnstaple would serve the purpose.
"Then I could be introduced to your relations," he said.
"And so could I," added Susan, "because I've never seen 'em in my
life, and father haven't seen 'em for twenty years--have you, father?"
Joe admitted that he had not, but the eider-down quilt impressed him
and he held it desirable that the families might be better
acquainted. He was not in the least proud of Mr. Palk; yet, upon the
whole, he thought it well that his daughter should come within reach
of her relatives. The honeymoon was therefore fixed for Barnstaple.
Lawrence Maynard's gift took a practical form. He did not design to
carry anything from England but his money and a few clothes. The
remainder of his property, including a small chest of good tools, a
tin trunk, and a pair of leggings, some old clothes and some boots,
he gave to Thomas, who accepted them gladly.
"Us wish you very well, though Joe do not," said Mr. Palk, "and I
hope some day, when you've got time, you'll write to me and tell
about Australia--especially how hosses be out there."
The wedding was well attended and Melinda, who came over in the
morning to help Soosie-Toosie with her new dress, declared that the
bride, in a steel-blue gown and a large white hat with a white
feather in it, had never looked so well. Mr. Palk was also clad in
blue, of another shade. His wedding garment was of ultramarine shot
with a yellow thread, and he wore a yellow tie with a green shamrock
sprigged upon it. The best man came from Newton Abbot. He was older
by many years than the bridegroom, but he had merry eyes and a merry
face and declared a score of times that he had known Mr. Palk from
childhood, and that an honester man didn't walk.
From Buckland Court came Susan's bridal bouquet of orchids and white
roses, which Mr. Ford carried up the evening before and himself
immersed in a jug of water for the night. A pair of distinguished
candlesticks and a clock came from the Court also, greatly to the
gratification of Mr. Stockman; while his landlord sent Susan a cheque
for ten pounds.
At the wedding were the family of Withycombes (the sailor had given
Susan two amazing shells from the other end of the world); while from
Green Hayes came John and Jane Bamsey and their mother. Dinah was
with them at church, but did not attend the wedding breakfast, asking
rather to return to her foster-father at home. Those who understood
were not surprised to learn her wish to do so. Mr. Chaffe was
present and also enjoyed the banquet. No less than fifteen sat down,
and they openly declared in each other's ears that Joe had "spread
himself" in a very handsome manner.
One speech only was made, and Arthur proposed the health of bride and
bridegroom in an oration which made Soosie-Toosie shed a few tears
despite herself. Then Thomas was held back, as he rose with the rest
to drink his own everlasting happiness; and his wife cut the cake,
declaring it was a terrible pity to spoil such a pretty thing.
They drove off in their blue attire presently, and the last seen of
them was Mr. Palk waving his new grey wide-awake from one window of
the wedding chariot and Susan fluttering a handkerchief from the
other.
Many curious eyes rested on Maynard during the course of the meal,
but he was innocent of the fact and preserved a cheerful demeanour.
Those who watched him mused, according to the measure of their
intelligence, as to what was proceeding in his mind; but none
guessed; all the conspirators rather found in his brown face and dark
eyes evidences of a devious and lawless spirit hiding itself for its
own purposes. He was in reality considering how far different would
his own doubtful nuptials be in a strange land amid strange faces.
When the entertainment was at an end and most of the wedding guests
had gone, with expressions of their gratitude, certain men, by
arrangement, drifted away together. Maynard, in the farmyard milking
the cows, saw Mr. Stockman with Mr. Chaffe and a few others saunter
over the autumnal moor and sit presently together upon a flat ledge
of rocks under the Beacon.
And there it was that Arthur learned the last news concerning
Maynard, the date of his departure and the hour at which, upon the
day following, he would meet Dinah at their last tryst. He himself
had come primed with an inspiration as to what should be done.
"Jane's thankful to God she haven't got to do no more hateful
spying," said Jerry Withycombe. "But there it is. He meets her at
Shepherd's Cross somewhere after six o'clock on the morning after he
goes off from here."
"And at the cross the man must face his outraged fellow creatures,"
declared Mr. Chaffe. "And when Dinah comes, she shall see and hear
the bitter truth. All be clear in my mind's eye now and I see a very
high and solemn deed, which must be done in the spirit of justice
only--else it will fail. We be the instruments, and if any man have
any hate or ill will towards the evil doer rather than the evil deed,
then he'd better stand down and let another take his place. For
Maynard have got to be handled, and when he fights against us, as he
will, with the whole force of his baffled wickedness, we must act
without passion and feel no more rage in our hearts than the Saviour
did when he cast the devil out of a poor, suffering creature. We
must be patient under Maynard's wrath."
"'Tis a young man's job," said Joe, after Arthur had described his
dramatic purpose, "and we can very well leave it to them. Us older
blades needn't be called to be there at all, I reckon."
"I wouldn't say there was any cause for you to be," answered Arthur,
"but I shall certainly be there. It's my duty; I be the voice that
will reach his heart and his conscience, I hope, when the rough
work's done and the blow has fallen. And there's the woman to be
thought upon also. One has to consider this matter from every point
of view. I shall take Orphan Dinah back to her home, when all is
over, and she understands how the Lord has looked after her."
"'Tis a matter of the man's fighting powers," said Robert Withycombe.
"No doubt I could manage him with Jerry's help; but I reckon we don't
want a scrap and a lot of blood about, or broken heads. Be we three
men--Jerry and John and me--strong enough to make him yield without a
dust up?"
"And why not a dust up?" asked Johnny; but Arthur admonished him.
"If you feel like that, you'd best not to come, Bamsey," he said. "I
tell you again that all's spoiled if we don't carry this thing out in
a proper manner. Robert be perfectly right. The man had far better
feel he is up against a force beyond his strength to oppose. We
don't want no painful scene to spoil the dignity. And if you three
ban't equal to it, we must get in somebody else. But not police; I'm
very wishful to keep professional people out of this."
"All depends on him," said Mr. Stockman. "If he was to put up a
fight, then there'd be temper and hard knocks and fur flying, no
doubt. You want to drop on the man like a flap of lightning; but if
it's going to be a rough and tumble first, and him perhaps escaping
after all, then I say get another pair of hands, so as he will see
it's no good opposing you, even if he wants to. He must be faced
with such force as will make him throw up the sponge at once and take
what you mean to give him. He must feel 'tis just as vain to make a
fuss about it as a man feels when he makes up and knows he's going to
be hanged inside the hour."
"I wish we was going to hang him," whispered John to Jerry.
They decided that it would be wise to add a powerful member to their
number, in order that Maynard would be prevented from making any
unseemly effort to evade his punishment.
"Abel Callicott will do very nice," said John. "He's a prize-fighter
and he's to Ashburton now. If I tell him we're out to punish a
rogue, and Robert here tells him too, he'll understand there's no
cowardice meant, or nothing like that, and he'll help. The man
wouldn't waste his time trying to fight or trying to run away then."
"They prize-fighters are generally good-tempered creatures and often
religious," admitted Mr. Chaffe. "If he'll come in the right frame
of mind, well and good. But don't let there be no mistake. We must
all be on the spot and out of sight before they arrive. In fact, to
be safe, us will do wisely to get up over the night before. I pray
it may be fine weather, else it will be as painful to our bodies as
our minds. We'll foregather at Shepherd's Cross and we must leave a
good margin of time for fear of accidents."
They talked thoughtfully and seriously. Arthur Chaffe lifted the
minds of them to the high issue involved and the gravity of what they
purposed. They worked objectively with the facts and had no
subjective glimmering of the reasons that lay behind the facts in the
lives of those about to commit this deed. Here was a married man
deceiving a single woman--a frank situation, that left no place in
the argument for any extenuations. Dinah they knew, and they
believed their knowledge precluded the possibility of such a
character consenting to live in sin under any possible circumstances.
The man they did not know; but it was enough that he had planned this
wickedness. One who could plot thus had put himself beyond the pale.
Their attitude was entirely to be commended, and each felt worthy of
the occasion. Joe Stockman and John Bamsey alone might have been
accused of mixed motives, and certainly the master of Falcon Farm
would not have admitted them. As for John, in the atmosphere of the
conference, even he abated something of his fire--at least openly.
In secret he trusted that Maynard would fight, and that it might be
his privilege to administer a quietus. But, indeed, no great
possibility in this direction offered, since there must be four men
to one in any case. Johnny abandoned much thought of the man,
therefore, and centred on the future of the woman.
For the rest, Robert and Jerry merely proposed to do what now
appeared a duty; while as for Mr. Chaffe, no more placable spirit
ever planned how to chasten a sinner for his own good. He was much
pleased with what he had arranged, yet desired no credit afterwards.
"We must be silent, neighbours, when all is done," he said. "Each
man will take his part, and when it is over, we will keep our mouths
shut and put it behind us. 'Unto God be the praise'; we don't want
none."
CHAPTER XXXVII
SHEPHERD'S CROSS
The new cowman came on the day before Maynard left Falcon Farm and
Mr. Stockman was satisfied with his ability and intelligence. And
then came the moment when Joe shook hands and bade Lawrence farewell.
All animosity had died, for the elder was not vindictive. He
pictured the experiences that awaited his old servant and found it in
his heart to be sorry for him. Only thought of the enormity of the
deed he had so deliberately planned steeled Mr. Stockman.
"I shall hear tell of you, no doubt," were the last words that he
said at parting.
To Holne went Maynard, put up with an acquaintance for that night,
and, at five o'clock on the following morning, set out to meet Dinah
at Shepherd's Cross, a mediæval monument that marked a forgotten
monkish way of old. There Dinah, whose departure was designed to be
secret, would meet him, and together they would descend to Brent,
where neither was known, and so reach Plymouth, whence their steamer
sailed that night.
The morning dawned fine and touched with frost. The wind blew gently
from the east. There was no sting in it, but it created an
inevitable haze, and distance quickly faded under its blue-grey
mantle, while at hand all shone clear and bright in the sunrise
fires. The heavy dew of a cloudless night was not yet dried off the
herbage, and the grass, nibbled to a close and springy velvet by
sheep and rabbits, spread emerald green between the masses of heather
and furze, where the lover climbed Dene Moor. Still the autumn heath
shone with passages of colour; but into the rich pink of a month
earlier had crept a russet warmth, where innumerable heather bells
passed to death with a redness that drowned the purple. As yet this
new colour was genial in tone, shone in the sunlight and glowed along
the reaches of the fading fern; but a time approached when from ruddy
to sere the countless blossoms must sink. Then the light would fade
and the flowers wither, till winter winds tinkled in their grey
inflorescence and sang the song of another dying year. Now only the
splendour of their passing and the pale gold, where brake died in
patches amid the standing fern, prophesied changes to come. A few
raddled sheep browsed their morning meal and made harmony with the
bright colours of the dawn, while Maynard, stooping, picked up the
wing feather of a carrion crow and reflected that this was the last
black plume he would ever find to clean his pipe on Dartmoor. He was
sorry to leave it, but had found no time for regret until this
moment. Life had passed so swiftly and demanded so much thought and
contrivance of late, that only now he spared a few minutes to
consider all that he was leaving, and how much had been good and
precious to him. He had formed a hazy and nebulous picture of his
future environment, but knew that it could in no way resemble this.
He guessed that he must often look back, and doubted whether his
future scene of life would entirely take the place of the one he was
about to leave. But he remembered Dinah's attitude and her expressed
joy that the Vale should be left behind them and all things become
new.
Now he centred upon her and again thin shadows crept through his
mind. For good or evil they had listened to their own hearts alone;
but he still found questions asking themselves and doubts limning
deep in his soul when he thought of her; he still felt a smoulder of
indignation in himself that this cup should be forced upon them.
There was an ingredient of bitterness, a dumb question why fate
should have called him and Dinah to do a thing against which he
rebelled, and the doing of which was an outrage upon her love of
truth and directness. She might make light of the burden, but he
resented the fact that she was called to bear it. Such is the force
of inherited conviction and tradition that he could not, as she had
done, discredit and dismiss his past as an empty dream. She honestly
so regarded Maynard's story; otherwise he knew she would never have
come to him; but it was only for his sake that she made the
sacrifice, and he felt it a cruel fact that any sacrifice should be
called for from her. His past was real enough, and the shadow must
fall on her and the children to be born of her. That the world would
never see the shadow, or know of its existence, did not matter. For
him and his wife it could never vanish. Even yet he did not perceive
that no shadow whatever existed for Dinah. The thing that still
haunted him like a fog, like the robe of the east wind hanging on the
skirts of the moor, must, he felt, be appreciated by her also, and
might, indeed, grow more solid and real for her in the future.
Regret for the inevitable thus found a place in his mind despite his
reason, because it sprang from foundations other than his reason.
Swinging forward with an ash sapling in his right hand and a leathern
portmanteau in his left, Lawrence presently saw his goal ahead.
Sunshine played over the blue hazes and touched the grey summit of
Shepherd's Cross, where the ancient stone stood erect and solitary on
the heath. It reared not far distant from rough, broken ground,
where Tudor miners had streamed the hillside for tin in Elizabethan
days. The relic glimmered with lichens, black and gold and ash
colour. Upon its shaft stuck red hairs, where roaming cattle had
rubbed themselves. It stood the height of a tall man above the water
worn trough at its foot, and the cross was still perfect, with its
short, squat arms unbroken, though weathered in all its chamfering by
centuries of storm.
Here he sat down, knit his brows to scan the northern slope of the
hill, whereon Dinah must presently appear, and wondered how far she
might have already tramped upon her way. He had found his own climb
from Holne shorter than he imagined and was at their place of meeting
before the time.
Then, suddenly, behind him he heard feet shuffling and turned to see
five men spring up from their hiding-places at hand. They were
familiar faces that he saw, and for a moment no suspicion that they
were here upon his account entered the mind of Maynard. It occurred
to him that Shepherd's Cross might be a meeting-place for hounds at
this early hour. Yet he did not know that cub-hunting was yet begun.
And then he marked behind the four now beside him, the tall, thin
figure of Arthur Chaffe--one who would certainly attend no meet of
hounds.
He was not left long in doubt. The men brought ropes. They closed
round him, as he rose to confront them, caught his arms, dragged him
to the cross and, with the celerity of executioners, quickly had him
fast bound by ankles and wrists against the granite--crucified
thereto with his arms extended upon the arms of the cross and a dozen
coils of rope about his shoulders, trunk and legs. John Bamsey
handled one wrist and saw that his cords bit.
Here was Mr. Chaffe's inspiration; that the erring man should be
lifted on the Christian emblem of salvation, for his heart to be
taken by storm, and for Dinah to behold the great event. He
apprehended a wondrous purification in Maynard as the result of this
punishment and he hoped thai he himself might have time to say the
necessary words and utter a trumpet note in the sinner's ear before
his victim reached Shepherd's Cross.
The men had come by night and hidden as near the tryst as possible.
Now they completed their work and stood off, some grinning, some
scowling, at the prisoner. His hat had fallen and his ash sapling
and his leather bag lay together where he had sat. The light of day
shone upon his bare head and he stared at the faces round him, still
dazed and silent before the terrific surprise of their attack. But
though he said nothing, others spoke freely enough and some chaffed
and some derided.
"You didn't think you was going to get chained up this morning, you
dirty, runaway dog!" said John Bamsey, while Robert Withycombe
laughed.
"You ban't the first thief as have found yourself on a cross--eh, my
bold hero? Not but what a cross be almost too holy a sign to rope
such a scamp upon."
"You--you that thought you could fox an honest woman and turn her
away from an honest man! You wicked lying trash, as ought to have
the skin tanned off your bones!" roared John.
But the thunder did not make Maynard shrink. He turned his head to
the veteran and spoke.
"What does this mean, Mr. Chaffe?" he asked.
Jerry Withycombe began to answer him, but John took the words out of
his mouth. Jerry was too mild for this occasion.
"It means that I happened to find the wrens' nest, and I told about
it, and John's sister found 'twas you plotting against Orphan Dinah
and----"
"It means that all the world knows you're a married man, you blasted
wretch," stormed Johnny. "It means you kindiddled the woman away
from me with lies and cunning and thought to get her out of England
and ruin her, and then, no doubt, fling her off, like you flung off
your lawful wife. It means you're found out for what you are--the
scum of the earth. And she's going to know it, and see you where you
stand, and hear where your filthy plots and wickedness was going to
land her. And if she don't sclow down your face for you when she
knows and tear your damned eyes out, she ought to!"
Maynard looked at the furious man, but did not answer. Then Mr.
Chaffe intervened.
"That'll do, John Bamsey," he said. "Us have carried out our work in
a high spirit so far and we don't want no crooked language."
"Crooked language be the right sort for crooked deeds I reckon,"
declared Mr. Callicott, the prize-fighter--a sturdy and snake-headed
youth who had assisted the others. "If it's true this bloke's
married and was going to run away and do bigamy with an innocent
girl, then you can't talk too coarse to him, I reckon."
"You're right to be angered, but righteous wrath must keep its
temper, Callicott," explained Arthur. "Now hear me talk to the man
and show him how it is with him. He be dazed, as you see, and stares
through us and looks beyond, as if we was ghosts."
"He knows very well we ban't ghosts," said Jerry.
"You see him," continued Mr. Chaffe, as though he were lecturing on a
specimen--"you see him in the first flush of his surprise--gazing out
at the risen sun and too much knocked over even to make a case."
"What sort of case should he make--a man that meant to seduce another
chap's sweetheart?" asked John Bamsey.
"If he haven't already," suggested Mr. Callicott.
"Hear me, and let him hear me," answered Arthur; and then he turned
to Maynard.
"You ask why we have laid in wait for you and done this," he said.
"But you know why we have done it only too well, you bad man, and the
true wonder in your mind is to guess how we found out. For well you
knew that when honest God-fearers were led by Providence to discover
what you was up to, they'd stop it in the name of the Lord. Don't
stare into the sky, nor yet over the hill for that poor woman, as you
meant to destroy body and soul. Just you turn your wits to me,
Lawrence Maynard, and listen; and then tell me before God, if you've
got any just quarrel with any man among us. And this is what you
done--you knowing you was married and had a wife you'd thrown over.
You come here and make a woman care for you; but since your watchful
Maker has already opened your mouth, so that your master heard you
was married, you know you couldn't pretend to wed her honest before
men, but must hatch lies for her and make a plot. And her love was
quick, no doubt, to think nothing you could do or say was wrong, so
she consented to follow you to foreign parts, where her shame might
be hid and where she'd be in your power--to cherish or to desert
according as your fancy took you. For well you understood that she
could never be no more than your leman and at your mercy. That's
what you planned, poor man; but God in His might chose different, and
willed to give you up to your fellow creatures and led this young
Jerry Withycombe to find your secret, so we learned what you was
going to do. And it is my work and ordinance that you stand here now
tied to the Cross of your Redeemer, Lawrence Maynard. And may the
cross enter into your heart and save your soul alive yet. And then
you'll see we five Christians be the willing instruments of Heaven,
and have put ourselves to this hard task for love of humanity and in
the spirit of our Master. We be here, not only to save Dinah, but to
save you; and you can say 'Amen' to that, and I hope your Father in
Heaven will touch your hard heart to bend and see what we've saved
you from."
"In fact you're getting out of it a damned sight softer than you
deserve, and a damned sight softer than you would if I had my way,"
growled Bamsey; but the sailor stopped him.
"Shut up, John, and let Mr. Chaffe talk," he said. "What he tells be
very fine, and us must follow his lead and take a high hand with the
man."
"We're all sinners," continued Arthur, "and nobody more so than you,
John Bamsey, so I'll beg you hold in and let me do my part."
Then he droned on to the roped cowman.
"Evils must come, but woe be to them that bring them, and you've
shown me in the past that you're a thinking creature with all your
intellects, and now you see where your doubtful thoughts and lawless
opinions have brought you. And I hope it will be a case of 'Go and
sin no more,' in the words of the Saviour of us all, Maynard. All
things go round and round, you must know. The worm gnaws the nettle
that the butterfly may rise up into the sunshine; and the butterfly
rises up into the sunshine that the worm may gnaw the nettle; but we,
as have immortal souls, be called to deny and defy nature, and lead
captivity captive, and trample on the adder and the basilisk. All
which things you knew very well, yet set your face to add to the evil
of the world to please your own base passions. And you didn't care
that a young and harmless woman, who was God's business quite as much
as you yourself--you didn't care where you dragged her down, so long
as you got what you wanted, and defied principalities and powers, and
lied to your own better nature just the same as you lied to her."
"The woman be coming," said Robert Withycombe. His sailor's eyes had
seen Dinah still far distant. She was clad in a brick-red gown--her
best--and carried a basket of yellow, woven cane that made a bright
spot on the heath.
"Yes," said Arthur Chaffe. "Like a lamb to the slaughter the virgin
cometh, Lawrence Maynard; and I hope 'tis your voice she will hear,
telling how God hath watched over her, and how right and religion
have won another victory on this glad morning."
But the prisoner preserved an obstinate silence. He seemed to be
rapt away out of sight or sound of Mr. Chaffe and the rest. His eyes
rested on Dinah; his ears appeared to be sealed for any attention he
paid to his captors. Arthur drew his wind and the others spoke.
"He's waiting for her to come," said Mr. Callicott. "He be going to
say his say afore the woman and don't care a damn for you, master."
"He'm in a dream," murmured Jerry. "I don't believe he's hearing
what Mr. Chaffe be pouring at him."
Then Dinah, who had long seen the group, made haste and dropped her
basket and hastened to Maynard, ignoring the rest.
Her face was scarlet and she could hardly speak for the throbbing of
her heart.
"Lawrence--Lawrence--what's this?" she asked. "What have they done?"
She had left her home before dawn, unknowing that another was awaking
also at Green Hayes and had heard her go. Her last act was to slip
into Benjamin Bamsey's room, where he slept alone, and kiss the
unconscious old man upon his temple. Then she had gone; and Jane had
heard her do so and seen the vague shadow of her descend the garden
path and vanish into the farm yard. Mrs. Bamsey was kept in
ignorance of Dinah's plans, but when morning came and they sat at
breakfast, her daughter informed her of all that had happened and
told her that she might expect to see her father's foster-daughter
return with Mr. Chaffe in an hour or two. Faith Bamsey took the
revelation calmly enough and showed no great emotion; while Jane
roamed restlessly through the morning and desired to see Jerry and
hear of what had happened on the moor.
Now, in answer to Dinah, Maynard, who was suffering physical pain
from his position and his bonds, answered very quietly, while the men
round the pair listened to him.
"They have done what they thought was right, Dinah. They found out
that we were going to leave England together, and they heard from Mr.
Stockman that I was married. And they took a natural view and
thought I was deceiving you as to that. So they laid in wait and
tied me here, until you heard the truth."
"I know the truth," she said. "I know a deeper truth than any they
can know. I know that in God's sight----"
"Stop!" cried Arthur Chaffe. "Listen to me, Orphan Dinah, and thank
Heaven on your knees that your fellow creatures have saved you from
the evil to come."
She looked at all of them with a flaming indignation.
"Did you set 'em to this dirty task--old as you are? Did you think
so badly of this man that you supposed he would try to do me harm?
Did you think there was no other side? Did you plot behind his back,
when you'd found out our simple secrets? Did you plan this cruel
insult and disgrace for one that never harmed you or anybody?"
"He harmed us all, Dinah, and I beg you'll keep your temper,"
answered Arthur. "You're talking far ways short of sense and you
don't know what we saved you from."
"Be you shadows, or real people, you grinning men?" she asked,
turning upon the others. "Do you know what you've done in your
clumsy, brutal strength? Do you know you've wronged and tortured a
man whose boots you ain't worthy to black?"
"Hear the truth and don't be an idiot!" answered John Bamsey.
"'Truth'! What do you know of the truth? You--shallow, know-naught
creatures, that go by spoken words and make words stand for truth?
It's a lie to say he's wedded. Is every man wedded that's married?
Have none of you ever seen married people that never felt or knew the
meaning of marriage? 'Tis for pity to the likes of you, beyond the
power of understanding, that we took these pains; and now we shan't
run away behind your backs, but go before your faces--a parcel of
zanies, that think because a thing be said it must be true."
"Let the man speak," said Mr. Chaffe. "I command that you speak,
Lawrence Maynard. The woman's beside herself and dead to reason.
'Tis your bounden duty to speak for yourself."
"Loose him then and he'll speak fast enough," cried Dinah. "Who be
you--a cowardly, hulking pack of ignorant clods to lay fingers on
him! If you had sense and decency and any proper Christianity in
you, you'd have gone to work very different and spared me this wicked
outrage, and him too. You'd have come to us and bid us speak. What
do you make us? Loose him, I tell you--ban't one among you man
enough to understand that I know all there is to know about
this--that it's my work we're going, my work--me that loves him and
worships him, and knows the big-hearted, patient, honourable chap he
is. God! If you could see yourselves as I see you--meddling,
nasty-minded bullies, you'd sink in the earth. Loose him and then
listen to him. You're not worth the second thought of a man like
him."
Lawrence spoke quietly to Robert Withycombe.
"You see how it is. Don't keep me trussed here no longer. I'm in
pain and no good can come of it. If you care to listen, then I'll
speak. I'm very glad to let you know how things are, for you've got
a credit for sense; so has Mr. Chaffe."
"It's a free country," said Mr. Callicott, "You chaps seem as if
you'd made trouble where there isn't none. Pity you didn't look into
this first and play your games after."
He opened a knife to sever the ropes that held Maynard. None
attempted to stop him save John, and then the sailor came between.
"Cut him loose, Callicott."
Mr. Chaffe was deeply dismayed and made an effort to save the
position.
"Orphan Dinah," he said, "for the love of your Saviour, and your
foster-father, and right and religion, come home with me this minute.
I can't believe what you say, for you know not what you say. Does
the man deny he's married? That's all I want to know; and if he is,
then do you mean to tell me you're going to live with him? There it
is in brutal words and----"
"The brutal words are yours, because you're bound up in words and
know naught about the truth of what this means, Arthur Chaffe,"
answered Maynard, who now stood free. "Do you think two people who
have set out to share their lives for evermore, didn't count the cost
every way? Believe me, we did, so understand that what seems wicked
to you, ban't wicked to us. I don't count, but Dinah does. She
knows every single word of the truth, and may I die on this stone if
she doesn't."
"Come," said Dinah. "We're not called to lay our hearts bare for
these men. Let 'em know there's as good and honourable and Christian
people in the world as themselves; and if I, knowing far, far deeper
than they know, am content and proud to be your wife in God's sight
for ever and ever, who else matters, and who else shall judge? You
be no more than the buzzing of gnats to us, and there's no power in
one of you to sting this man, or me."
"Think, think what you're doing, Dinah," pleaded Mr. Chaffe.
"And haven't I thought, and don't I know a million times more than
you can, or ever will? Understand before we go. This man was never
false to any woman--never--never. He don't know the meaning of
falseness. He never looked at me, John Bamsey, till I'd left you,
and I never thought of him till long, long after I was free. And
when I loved him, he told me he could not marry me--and why--and I
saw that it was moonshine and only a pair of weak, worthless
creatures would be frightened and part for that--only cowards feared
of their neighbour and the laws--laws that selfish Christians bleat
about and want kept, because to torture other people won't hurt their
comfort, or cloud their homes. What do you know of marriage--one of
you? What do you know of the dark, deadly things that may come
between people and separate 'em far as heaven from hell, while
parsons and lawyers and old bachelors and old women want 'em chained
together to rot--for Christ's sake! Look deeper--look deeper!"
While the men stood silent, Maynard picked up his stick and bag and
Dinah's basket.
Mr. Chaffe had sunk upon a stone and was wiping his eyes with a red
pocket handkerchief.
"You!" he said. "You brought up in a Christian home by God-fearing
people, Dinah!"
"And fear God I always shall; but not man," she answered scornfully.
"Did these chaps do this because they feared God? Ask them!"
She took her package from Maynard and he spoke.
"Have no fear that any harm be done to righteousness," he said. "No
woman knows her duty to her Maker better than this woman, or her duty
to her neighbour. If ever I was in doubt, and I have been, my doubts
be cleared afore what you men have done to-day, and I thank you for
that. You've shown how paltry it was to doubt, I reckon, and I doubt
no more. I be the better and stronger for seeing your minds, you
well-meaning chaps! My life and thought and worship belong to Dinah;
and where no secrets are hid, there's no blame counted against us,
and never will be, I hope."
They turned their backs upon the listeners and went away side by
side; they moved among the stones and bushes until they sank out of
sight and vanished for ever from that company.
"To hell with them!" said John, "and curse all women for the sake of
that blasted woman!"
But the rest did not share his passion. Only Mr. Chaffe mourned; the
others were impressed at what they had heard and the prize-fighter
was amused.
"A pretty parcel we look," said Callicott, "bested by that calm man
and quick-tongued woman. And be damned if I ban't their side. We
don't know naught about it, and if we did very like we'd praise 'em
for a bit of pluck. Anyway she knows what she's doing all right."
"If the Lord can read their hearts, it evidently don't much matter to
them that we can't," declared Robert Withycombe; "and be it as it
will, if he was a Turk, or Indian, the man could have two wives and
no harm done. And if there's only one Almighty, Mr. Chaffe, why for
should He hold it a parlous crime for us to do what a chap across the
water can do every day of the week?"
But Arthur Chaffe was too stricken to argue. He stared in great
grief after the vanished man and woman.
"My God, why hast Thou forsaken them?" he moaned.
They parted presently and went their different ways, leaving
Shepherd's Cross with the sunlight on its face and the severed ropes
about its foot.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
RETURN FROM THE HONEYMOON
Though, before the event, Mr. Chaffe had enjoined secrecy in the
matter of Lawrence Maynard, yet, since the affair fell out so
contrary, none obeyed him. It made a good story, and though many who
heard it shared Arthur's concern, none sank into such a deep
dejection as he over this trial and failure of faith. Jane Bamsey
shared John's indignation that both parties had won their way; while
her mother mourned with Mr. Chaffe over Dinah's downfall. For the
rest Robert Withycombe and Callicott, the boxer, related their
experience in many ears, and more laughed than frowned who heard them.
The attitude of Joe Stockman was defined in a conversation held a
week later with Melinda.
She came to Falcon Farm in a condition somewhat nervous, for she had
great news for Joe and felt doubtful how he would take it. She had
accepted the hand of Harry Ford in marriage and acknowledged to
herself that propriety demanded Mr. Stockman should be the first to
know her decision.
She brought a bouquet for Susan, who was returning that evening with
her husband.
"Everybody's beginning a new life seemingly," said Mrs. Honeysett.
"And I was wishful to know your view touching Orphan Dinah, because
as you think in that matter, so shall I."
But this diplomacy was wasted.
"No, no--you don't think like what I do--let's have no pretences,
Melinda. And as to my late cowman, if the new one ain't so clever
with women, he's quite so clever with cows. Chaffe have been up here
wringing his hands, and your brother, the sailor, have told me the
tale also; and on the whole I dare say it will be all right for
Dinah. She come out very clear, so Robert says. They was both in
deadly earnest and now they are gone beyond reach of prayers or
cusses alike, and I don't wish 'em no harm. If the time had to come
again, I'd keep my mouth shut about it. Anyway they'll be married as
far as words can marry 'em, when they get to Australia; and if the
world thinks you're married, that's all that matters."
"So Mr. Ford says. He's took a pretty large-minded view. In fact
nobody don't wish 'em any harm, except Jane Bamsey and her brother."
"And you be going to marry the gardener, Melinda?"
She started.
"I thought you was to be the first, after my family, to hear it, Joe."
"So I was. Robert told me last night."
"I do hope you'll feel kindly to us."
"Red to red--eh? Fire to fire when a red woman marries a red man;
because it's well known when red loves red--however, I'm not one to
cry danger afore it's in sight. Live and let live is my motto, and
never more than now, when my own days be running out so fast."
"Don't say that, Joe."
Mr. Stockman's age had in fact leapt up by a decade since Melinda's
refusal to marry him. He now spoke of himself as a man of
seventy-five and intended to behave as such, save in the matter of
his own small pleasures. He was not really regretful of the
situation as it had developed, and knew exceedingly well that he
would be more comfortable with Soosie-Toosie than he could have been
with a wife. But he intended to get something--indeed, a good
deal--out of pending changes, and designed a programme for his
son-in-law that embraced more work and larger responsibility. That
Thomas would be equal to the coming demands he also felt assured.
Joe spoke of him now.
"We must be reasonable to age. Justice the married pair will be
prepared to do me; but damn it, when you be in sight of seventy-five
and feel older, along of trial and disappointments, you've a right to
a bit more than justice from the rising generation; and I mean to
have it."
"Of course you will."
"As to you, I'll be your friend as before, Melinda, and Ford must
understand I am so. There's something in me that holds out the hand
of friendship again and again until seventy-times seven; and in your
case, though it's turning the other cheek to the smiter, still I do
it."
"A proper living Christian, as we all know," declared Mrs. Honeysett,
much relieved. She talked for some time and presently left, filled
with admiration for Joe's sentiments.
Then came home Susan and her husband in the best of spirits, to be
gratified in their turn by the amiability of their welcome. They had
often debated what form it would take, and forgot that Mr. Stockman
had suffered the unexampled experience of being without his daughter
for a fortnight.
Both were deeply interested in the story of Lawrence and Dinah; but
while Soosie-Toosie ventured to hope that the right thing had
happened, Thomas took a contrary opinion.
"Two wrongs don't make a right," he said, "nor yet two hundred. I
speak as a man who now knows the dignity of the married state, and I
think they've done a very wicked deed and will be punished for it.
She's a lost creature in my opinion."
"Why for, Thomas?" asked Mr. Stockman.
"Because marriage be the work of the Lord upon two human hearts,"
said Mr. Palk; "and when they have clove together by the plan of
their Maker, they be one and can no more be set apart by any human
contrivance than the growing grain from the young corn. Be God
likely to make a mistake and bring two people together unless He knew
they was made for each other? 'Tis only our wicked craving for
novelty makes us think there's misfits."
"If us all waited till your age, no doubt there wouldn't be so many,"
admitted Joe, "and so long as the law don't make love a part of
marriage, so long there'll be failures. But we must be merciful to
circumstances so far as we can. Many marry each other as was never
intended to do so by their Creator, and when such wants to part, it
may often be that He'd like to see 'em allowed to do so afore the man
cuts the woman's throat, or she puts poison in his tea."
"But if marriage wears like ours will, then give God the credit,"
suggested Mrs. Palk.
"'Tis a magnificent state in my opinion," declared Thomas, "and
there'll be no shadow of turning with me and Susan. We be wonderful
addicted to each other a'ready."
"Take that woman to Barnstaple," added his wife. "There was a case,
father. Her husband left her more'n seven years ago and was thought
to have lost his reason and killed himself, which no doubt he did do.
She tried her bestest to find the man high and low, but couldn't, and
a bit after the seven years were over, Mrs. Courtier called upon the
law to say she was free. And the law done so. And she married a
publican while we was there, and Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Stockman went to
the wedding, for everybody was well content about it. 'Twas a great
affair."
"Charity covers a multitude of sins, no doubt," said Thomas, "and
charity may cover him and her; but it won't cover their children--not
if the Church and the Law can help it."
"The law can't act unless you set it in motion," explained Joe, "and
so far as we know, the man's real wife will never hear what he's
done."
"And if Mrs. Courtier, why not Maynard?" continued Soosie-Toosie.
"And if I'd known of these adventures, I'd have sent the paper to
Lawrence--to cheer him up; because he was a good man in his way and
wouldn't have done evil to Orphan Dinah, or anybody."
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