CHAPTER IXIN WHICH ONE LOVER WALKS OUT AND ANOTHERWALKS IN
PURE is the air on Mawm moor, charged with the virtues of the sea and the strength of the hills! and pure are the streams that fill the runnels and tinkle their accompaniment to the music of the breeze as it sweeps the strings of bent grass and reed!
Good and desirable as these things are, however, Mawm can claim in their possession nothing extraordinary. There are other moors where the air is as heavily charged with life’s elixir and the waters course as sweet and fresh.
But in the Cove, Mawm has something altogether unique; it has, as I have said, one of the most imposing natural wonders of the land. To picture it imagine yourself first on a wide stretch of moorland, hemmed in by mountains—a grassy moor, whose surface is scarred by great terraces of fissured limestone in whose crevices the winds and the birds have dropped seeds of ferns and flowers that peep above the tops and splash the scene with colour.
Imagine an impossible giant furnished with an impossible spade, standing on the edge of the moor where it begins to fall steeply down into the valley. He is a giant of the unrecorded past when impossible things happened; when frozen waters sundered continents and shattered mountains and scooped out valleys; when great rocks were hurled as if they had been shuttlecocks from peaks that seemed firm asthe world’s foundations, and embedded themselves on far distant slopes where they were alien to the soil.
It is a hollow, crescent-shaped spade on which our giant sets his foot, and he thrusts it vertically through the solid limestone, piling up the débris (soon to be covered with the short grass of the moors) on either side as he proceeds until instead of the green declivity you see a perpendicular cliff, little short of three hundred feet in height and nearly a quarter of a mile wide, dazzlingly white when the southern sun rests there; spectral in the colder moonlight.
From underneath its base the river emerges; the baby river, conceived nobody quite knows where on the wild heights above, and carried in that dark womb of nature until its birth at the foot of the Crag—a giant’s child, itself destined to be a slave, whose lot it will be to bear to the sea the filth and off-scouring of factory and dye-house. That, however, is later history; our concern is with Meander; let the towns lower down account for Styx!
The face of the gigantic cliff has its seams and wrinkles, and at a point midway rapidly-narrowing ledges run out from either side and paint streaks of green across the grey; but each tapers off and disappears long before the centre of the crescent is reached. On the western ledge a few dwarfed ash-plants have rooted themselves on the steeply-shelving soil, and their presence gives the illusion of breadth and inspires in the adventurer an entirely false sense of security. One tree stands within a foot or two of the ledge’s vanishing-point; but few are the youths of Mawm who have ventured within many yards of it without self-reproach and prayer.
Save for the call of the jackdaw and other birds that nest in the crannies, and the faint puling of the stream, the Cove is quiet in winter-time as a cathedralcloister, and has something of the cathedral’s air of mystery and awe. And when the sun is setting in a haze that betokens snow and frost, and a section of the white cliff borrows a warmer hue from the blood-red globe whose rays penetrate the western windows, the sense of reverence is heightened; and though a man may not bare his head as he stands there it is much if he does not lower his voice.
It was just after two o’clock when Nancy left the road at the point where it begins to fall, and having stood for a moment to watch the sun tripped down the slippery hillside to the foot of the Cove. It was an adventure to slide over the short grass, to cling to the slender boles of the stunted trees in order to check the pace or save herself from falling, but it was an adventure to which she was accustomed, and which involved no greater risk than that of a twisted ankle or a bruised knee; and with one as agile as Nancy there was little fear of either.
Her cheeks burned as she reached the bottom, and more hotly when Jagger walked forward and greeted her.
“I thought you’d be at Betty’s,” he said, “and guessed you’d come this way.”
He was the answer to her thoughts—one might say to her prayers; the embodiment of the image she had been carrying with her all the afternoon; the substance of her hopes and fears.
Very strong and masculine and altogether desirable he looked as he stood there, though his clothes were well worn and the collar he had put on for the occasion of Saturday was badly frayed. An uneasy smile was on his face, and his hands played awkwardly with the stick they held; but Nancy knew by intuition that he had come to make his peace, and her heart bounded; yet the perverse adviser who is the instrument of our worse selves, bade her harden her voice and hold back the answering smile which had almost escaped control. She had been rehearsingthe smooth things she would say if they should meet; but now that the movement had come from the other side she stiffened, yielding to the traitor within the gates; and by that act wrecked her hopes.
“If I’d known you were here I’d as like as not have kept to the road. I’ve things that want thinking out.”
It was a lie; but how was he to know it? How was he to know that all he had to do was to seize her in his arms and master her? His own voice hardened, and the light died down in his eyes, yet he made a brave attempt at self-control, remembering his father’s advice, and it was not perhaps entirely his fault that his tone was querulous and unconvincing.
“I’m wanting to make it up, Nancy. I’ve been miserable this last three weeks; and it’s a shame it should have come to this just when we’d got to an understanding. If it hadn’t been for you I shouldn’t have been so particular about a rise, and Baldwin and me wouldn’t have quarrelled. Not but what it ’ud have had to come sooner or later, for there’s nobody knows better than you that he taxes your patience past all bearing, and there comes a time when a fellow’s bound to make a stand.”
He paused, realising that this was not what he had meant to say, and Nancy stood with her eyes averted and her hands clasped in front of her.
“I don’t know that all this gets us much forrader,” she answered coldly, hating herself all the while for her coldness, but yielding to the miserable pressure from within. “I’d been thinking that maybe you’d come and say you were sorry, and fall in with what’s best for both of us. To go straight away, same as you did, and plan to start for yourself when you knew the business was my living as well as Baldwin’s, didn’t seem as if you thought overmuch o’ me——”
Where were all the tender thoughts, all the pleasing projects, she had entertained for hours past and been seeking an opportunity to reveal? Where were allthe cajoling artifices she had designed to melt his stubborn mood and convict him of folly? All flung to the winds forsooth, for no better reason than that he had made the first overtures for peace.
“I’m sorry,” he answered; but only too doggedly; “not for what I did but for t’ way I did it. I wouldn’t have hurt you for t’ world, neither i’ your pocket or any other way, and I wasn’t meaning ought o’ t’ sort——”
“There’s a way of showing that,” Nancy interrupted, with a degree more warmth in her tone. “If you mean what you say you’ll be willing to drop it——” She avoided the word “shop” or “business,” but Jagger understood her. “You’ll see for yourself you were too hasty, and if you’d only taken me into your confidence we could have planned something together that would have put a flea in Baldwin’s ear.”
“What could we have planned?” asked Jagger, on whose horizon a ray of light was breaking, though he was still suspicious, still half-hostile because of the confidence of the girl’s rebuke.
“We could have told him we were going to be married,” she said, “and you could have left the rest to me.” Perhaps the cold note that crept into her voice again was intended to screen the wave of colour that swept over her face, which Jagger never saw because he was gazing at a possibility. “I should have told him that he’d have to make you a partner, seeing that you were going to be my husband, and that it was my property and partly my money.”
She ended haltingly, because her coldness was disappearing and she was drawing near to the starting point that she had planned before they met; also because she began to wonder if there had been anything bold and unmaidenly in her explanation.
Half timidly she stole a glance at Jagger’s face, and the look she saw there stopped all further utterance.
“And do you think I’d truckle to a man like BaldwinBriggs for all t’ partnerships i’ t’ world?” he broke in hotly. “Would I sell my soul to the devil for money? It’s bad enough to work for a man like him for wages; but to share t’ responsibility for all his thieving underhanded ways is a thing I wouldn’t have for all t’ brass i’ t’ Bank of England. Me a partner with Baldwin Briggs! I’ll beg i’ t’ streets first!”
He drove the stick into the ground in his temper, and Nancy froze for a moment, and then a wave of hot anger and humiliation swept over her.
“So that’s your love, is it?” she cried. “It’s to humble me and turn me away with your foot that you’ve come here! Thank God I’ve found you out before it was too late! Aye, and God forgive me ’at I should have lowered myself to talk o’ marrying you, only to be scorned and spat at. To tell me to my face that I’d have you sell your soul to the devil! I hate you, Jagger Drake! Get you gone before I sell my soul to the devil and do you a mischief! Get you gone, I say!”
If only the tears had come then, all might have been well; but the springs were parched,—dried up by the heat of her indignation, and it was fire and not moisture that shone in her eyes. Jagger faced the storm, and like Lot’s wife when the ashes of Sodom fell on her, was turned to stone. Too late he remembered his father’s caution, the torrent of his temper had passed the sluice-gates and could not be recalled though its force was spent. For a few moments he remained immovable whilst the fierce anger of the girl he loved expended itself in words that battered and dulled his senses without reaching his understanding; then with a groan he turned away like a fool, and stumbled up the hillside to the road.
Yet though his spirits were heavy as lead, it was upon the girl and not him that the catastrophe fell with crushing weight. Bitterly as he cursed the fatethat had parted them again in anger, he was too sure of his love for her, too convinced of her love for him, to doubt that the hour of their reconciliation was only delayed; and the thought that was uppermost in his mind as he neared his home was of his father’s kindly scorn—a scorn that cut across the soul sometimes like the lash of a whip.
Nancy read the situation more truly, though perhaps she did not read it at all, but just listened to the malevolent inward voice that told her the breach was widened beyond repair at last.
She was heartsick, and nursed an anger that would not be pacified: the anger of self-reproach and humiliation; and as she stood there with set teeth and clenched hands, breathing like one who endures severe physical pain and is restraining the impulse to cry aloud, she knew that she would not marry Jagger Drake, and that the fault was hers, no less than his. Instinctively she realised that the moment of reconciliation had passed and would not return; and for a while she was stunned; conscious of nothing but shame and bitter resentment. She hated Jagger, but not as bitterly as she hated herself.
Slowly the sun sank and the haze thickened; but she still stood there with her eyes on the Cove. On the moor above a shepherd was gathering his sheep. She could not see him, but occasionally the sound of his voice reached her ear, and more regularly the sharp admonitory bark of dogs. Incuriously she turned her eyes in the direction and saw through the mist the shadowy forms of the flock 300 feet above her head. There were two dogs, she noticed, and by that sign knew that the voice she had heard was Swithin’s. One of the dogs was young and frolicsome, and had much to learn of life’s responsibilities. It was fussing about the outside of the flock now, harassing the sheep instead of guiding them, out of mere playfulness and mischief. One of them, tormented beyondendurance, broke away from the rest and ran down the slope towards the side of the Cove, pursued by the dog which made no attempt to head it off until a stern cry from the shepherd sought to bring it to a sense of its duty, when it stood still and gazed upwards. By this time the older dog was tearing down the precipitous slope, but the sheep was already on the grassy track that ran out on to the narrow ledge on the cliff face, where the shepherd could not see it.
“There’s the devil of a mess there,” said a voice in Nancy’s ear that she recognised as Inman’s.
She experienced no sensation of surprise, just as she had felt none of excitement or suspense at what was happening before her eyes. For the moment she was dead to all external experiences and thrills, and the real was shadowy as a dream.
“Ben will fetch her back,” she said. “It was Robin’s fault: he drove her there and now hangs back.”
It was true. Swithin was clambering down the steep slope with an old man’s slow speed and the young dog was standing a body’s length behind Ben who was on the ledge, silent and calculating. Then there came an angry call, and Robin turned and slunk back up the hill at a careful distance from his master.
Meantime the sheep was also standing with its head turned inquiringly in the direction of old Ben, who was creeping quietly forward.
“If it goes another step its number’s up,” said Inman coolly. “I’ve been on there as far as it was safe to go, and I know what I’m talking about. It’s barely room to turn now.”
“Lots of animals have lost their lives there,” Nancy replied in a dull voice. “Once a fox got on and couldn’t get back. It dropped to the bottom.”
She was roused now and fascinated with the tragedy that was taking place before her eyes; but Inman took a cigarette from the case in his waistcoat pocket and lit it deliberately.
“The old dog’s got it weighed up,” he said, as he tossed the match away. “What’s he going to do?”
Almost as he spoke, the question was answered. The sheep had half turned, but seemed to hesitate, and suddenly Ben sprang forward, quite over the sheep’s back; struggled for a second or two to keep his feet,—and fell down the face of the cliff.
Nancy clutched Inman’s arm and closed her eyes. When she opened them again the sheep was making its way up the hill to join the flock, and Swithin was clambering over the rocks to where Ben’s body lay in the water. To the sickness of Nancy’s soul there was added a physical nausea that caused her to lean heavily against Inman’s supporting arm.
“He gave his life for her, and died like a hero. What is there better than dying game?” Inman’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact. “He’d have come to a gun-shot, or a pennorth o’ poison sooner or later, so what’s the odds? The other dog—Robin, did you call him? a better name ’ud be Jagger—’ll take his place, I suppose.”
Still she was silent; but the arm that was about her waist did not tighten, and she could not complain that he took advantage of her faintness.
“It was horrible,” she said at length, as she made an attempt he did not resist to stand erect. “Life is full of horrible things.”
“Not a bit of it,” he said, and he threw the half-smoked cigarette into the stream as he spoke. “Life is full of very pleasant things if you know where to look. Ben’s dead and done for, and Swithin ’ud do better to get back to his work instead of standing blubbering and cursing over a carcass. Every dog has his day, and Ben ended his nobly, though I daresay the sheep ’ud have come off all right if he’d left her alone. It was Jagger’s fault—I beg pardon, I mean Robin’s. He had his fun out of her, and what does it matter to him if he drove her crazy so long as hesaved his own skin? Did you see how he crept away? All the same I suppose he’ll get Ben’s job. It’s the way of the world!”
“Jagger’s no coward,” she answered listlessly. It was no concern of hers to defend the man who had gone out of her life, and the protest was the last spark from the ashes of a love that was nearly cold. Nothing that Inman could say would cause her to fire again.
“Coward!” he repeated, without emotion of any kind. “We don’t call babies cowards, whether they’re dog-babies or men-babies. Jagger’s a baby, playing at being a man. He’s in trouble o’ some sort now—I met him down the road with a face as long as a fiddle, running to his daddy to have his sore finger kissed.”
She had no reply ready and indeed was not disposed to reply. Her heart was like an arid desert where every fountain of emotion was dry. Life was like a desert, too, with no prospect save that of limitless dreariness. She had been dreaming of marriage; of a home of her own where she would be free from Baldwin’s petty tyrannies and Keturah’s complaints. She had fashioned a husband out of her own fancy, and he had fallen to pieces—crumbled like dust at the first test. What better was Jagger, in spite of all his protestations, than Inman or even Baldwin? He was all for himself, just as they were, though self-righteousness might deceive him. And he had humiliated her bitterly, which Inman had never done. Inman was masterful and showed his worst side——.
The sun had passed behind the mountains and Nancy shivered. Inman drew her arm within his own and moved forward up the hill, and she made no protest, realising in a dull half-conscious way that her future had been determined for her.
The next morning she left the village and went to stay with her uncle.