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.
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.
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.
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."