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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"