"She's young and there's bright points to her. She wasn't saucy nor anything like that I hope?"
"Oh no—butter wouldn't melt in her mouth."
"What does Melinda think about her?"
"Melinda thinks better of her than what I do. She didn't before the match, but now, womanlike, she's all for it."
"That's to the good then. They talk of late autumn."
"Have you asked your girl where she thinks to live?"
"We haven't raised that yet."
"I did, and she put me off. There's things hidden. What are you going to give her?"
"Five hundred pound, Enoch."
"Don't, Ben. Keep it against their future. That's a hugeous lot of money and Lord knows what she'd do with it. I hope you haven't told her no such thing."
"My only daughter must have a good start. It's none too much; she knows about it."
Mr. Withycombe considered.
"Then I'll tell you what she's doing, Ben. She's marrying for money! Yes, she is. Not Jerry's, because he won't have a penny till I die, and then he can only have one-third of the lot, which ain't much. But Jane's marrying for your money, and I'll lay my life that she's going to spend it, thinking that there'll be plenty more where that comes from."
"You mustn't say such things. She knows the value of money better than most."
"Then have it out and learn what's in their minds. They've no right to secrets if you're going to pay the piper and start 'em in that generous way. Keep her money and let her have the interest on it and no more, till you see how they get on."
"Secrets there didn't ought to be I grant," said Benjamin. "But, mind you, I'm not allowing there are any. You may be mistook."
"Then find out where they be going to live and how Jane thinks to handle that dollop of cash," warned Mr. Withycombe. "You've a right to know: it's your duty to know, and your wife will tell you the same. And don't let Jane throw dust in your eyes. She's a tricky piece, like most of them beauties. I wish she'd took after the pattern of Orphan Dinah."
"So do I," admitted the other. "And now, to leave this, I'd like to speak a word about Dinah, because there's some things you may know bearing upon her that I do not. I'm struck with doubt, and I've been keeping her on along with me for two reasons. Firstly, because the right sort of place in my opinion don't offer."
"It never will," said Enoch. "Truth's truth, and the truth is you can't part from her."
"No, you mustn't say that. She's a very great deal to me, but I ban't selfish about her. I'm thinking of her future, and I don't want her placed where her future will be made dark and difficult. There's a lot to consider. And while I've been considering and withstanding Faith, here and there, and Dinah also for that matter, there's drifted into my mind the second point about Dinah. And that's in my mind still. But I begin to feel doubtful, Enoch, whether it's very much use for us old people to worry our heads as we do about the young ones. This generation will go its own way."
"Pretty much as ours did before them no doubt," answered the sick man. "We ancient folk love to bide in the middle of the picture so long as we can, and when I was a lot younger than now, yet not too young to mark it, I often thought it was rather a sad sight to see the old hanging on, and giving their opinions, and thinking anybody still cared a damn for what they said, or thought."
"Yes, only the little children really believe in us," confessed Mr. Bamsey; "and that's why I say we squander a good bit of wisdom upon the rising race, for they'll go on rising, for good or evil, without much troubling their heads as to whether we approve, or don't. They put education before experience, so, of course, what we've got to offer don't appeal to 'em. But Dinah—she does heed me, and now there's come a shadow of a suspicion in my mind about another man for her. That's why I'm so content to mark time a little and get hard words for doing it. She don't know herself, I believe, and very like the man don't know yet. Or he may know, and be biding his time. But more than once or twice—more, in fact, than she guesses—Dinah, when she's been talking to me, have named a certain person. I very near warned her against it, for women's ears are quicker than ours, and if Jane and my wife had marked it, evil might have risen out of it at once. But Dinah says a lot more in my hearing than in theirs and they don't know so far. And, as I tell you, Dinah herself don't know. But the name echoes along. In a word, what do you think of Maynard at Falcon Farm? You know him better than I do, though the little I've seen of the man leads me to like him. He's a sensible soul and none too cheerful—rather a twilight sort of man you might say; but that's a way life have with some of the thinking sort. It turns 'em into their shells a bit."
"He's a kindly, well-meaning chap and old for his years," said Withycombe. "I should say he's not for a wife."
"How d'you know?"
"I don't know. We never talk about himself, nor yet myself. He gives me his company sometimes and we tell about pretty high matters, not people. He's got a mind, Ben."
Melinda Honeysett joined them at this moment and entered their conversation.
"He's got a mind, no doubt," said Mr. Bamsey. "But he's also got a body, and it would be unnatural in a young, hearty man of his years, prosperous too I suppose, because, with his sense, he's sure to have put by a bit—it would be unnatural, I say, if he'd never turned his thoughts to a home of his own."
Enoch spoke to his daughter.
"Here's Ben trying to hatch up a match for Dinah," he said.
"No, no—too wise, I'm sure," answered Melinda.
"Far too wise," declared the visitor. "But if such a thing was possible in fulness of time, it would cut a good many knots, Melindy."
"Dinah likes freedom now she's got it, I believe, and I wouldn't say she was too fond of children neither," answered Enoch's daughter.
"They never like children, till they meet the man they can see as father of their own children," answered Ben; "and if Dinah ever said she didn't want 'em, that's only another proof that she never loved poor John."
"The love of childer be knit up with other things no doubt," admitted Enoch.
"There's lots love childer as never had none, like myself," answered Melinda.
"True, my dear. There's lots love game as never shot it. But the snipe you brought down yourself be always the one that tastes best. A mother may love her own children, or she may not; but it depends often enough on the husband."
It was Mrs. Honeysett's father who spoke.
"There's some child-lovers who only wed because that's the way to get 'em," he continued. "Such women don't think no more of the husband than the doctor—I've known such. But perfect love of childer did ought to begin with the perfect love of the man that got 'em. Take me. I had but three, but they were the apple of my wife's eye, because they was mine as well as hers."
"My brother, Robert, be coming home presently," said Melinda. "My sailor brother, Mr. Bamsey. How would you like him for Dinah? I'm sure she'd make a proper wife for him. He's like Jerry, only quicker in the uptake. But not so clever as father."
"Wouldn't like Dinah to marry a sailor man," confessed Ben. "I know Robert is a fine chap; but they've got a wife in every port. A sailor sees a lot more than the wonders of the deep."
Mr. Withycombe laughed.
"He ain't that sort, I promise you," he said.
"The point is, in strictest confidence, Melindy," explained Ben, "that I believe, though she scarce knows it herself, Dinah's interested in the Falcon Farm cowman. She's seen him off and on and, in my ear alone, speaks of the man. And your father here has nought but good to say of him."
"He's not for a wife, so Joe tells me. He was naming him a bit agone," answered Melinda, "and he said that the most comforting thing about him, and Mr. Palk also, was that they were cut out for the bachelor state for evermore. Perhaps you'd best to name that to Dinah. Though, for my part, I should hope it would be years after her last adventure afore she ever dared to think upon a man again."
"So it would be—so it would be in the course of nature," granted Ben. "No doubt you're right; and yet—there it is. He seems to attract her—against her own reason I dare say."
"When that happens, it means love," declared Enoch.
Melinda spoke like a woman. She was fond of Dinah, but had been exceedingly sorry for Johnny.
"Queer—sure enough," she said. "If Dinah, now, was to feel drawn to a man as hadn't any use for her, it would be fair justice in a manner of speaking, wouldn't it, Mr. Bamsey?"
"In a manner of speaking I dare say it might, Melindy," he admitted. "But I'll not hear Dinah tongue-handled over that no more."
"I'll sound Lawrence on his next visit," promised Enoch. "But he's very shy where his own affairs are concerned."
"And another thing be certain," added Melinda, "Joe Stockman would be terrible put about if he thought any such doings as that was in the wind."
Then Mr. Bamsey went his way, as doubtful as when he came.
Jerry and his sweetheart wandered together along the lane from Buckland on an afternoon when Jane had been visiting the Withycombes. The sun beat down through the trees and even in the shade it was too hot to tempt the lovers far.
"We'll climb up the Beacon a little ways and quott down in the fern," said Jerry, "and I'll smoke in your face and keep the flies off."
Jane, however, objected.
"I'm going to Hazel Tor I reckon, and then to Cousin Joe's for tea. We'll meet John at Hazel Tor. Shall we tell him our secret plans, Jerry?"
"I don't care who knows it. If you feel there's no more need to hide up what we've ordained to do, then tell everybody."
"There's every need to hide up for that matter. Only Johnny's different from others. Me and Johnny are pretty close pals and always were. He won't mind us having a shop in a town. I've often told him I was set on the thought of a shop."
"The doubt will lie with me," said Jerry. "I know very well my father and Melindy and everybody will say I ban't the sort of man to shine at a shop."
"There's shops and shops," answered Jane, "and it's a very difficult question indeed to decide what to sell. If we sold some things you'd be a lot more useful than if we sold others. But there's a lot of things I wouldn't care about selling."
They had already debated this matter many times, and never failed to find it attractive.
"There's certain goods ruled out, I know," he said. "You don't hold with butching, nor yet a fish shop."
"Nothing like that. I won't handle dead things," declared Jane. "It lies in my mind between three shops now. I've brought 'em down to three. There's a shop for children's toys, which I'd very much like, because new toys be clean and bright and interesting to me; but you wouldn't be much use in that."
"I should not," admitted Jerry.
"Then," continued Jane, "there's a green-grocer's; and there's a great deal to be said for that, because we should have father behind us in a manner of speaking, and he'd let us have tons of fruit and vegetables at a very small price, or no price at all I dare say."
"Only if he comes round, Jenny. You grant yourself he'll little like to hear you be going to spend your capital on a shop."
"He'll come round when he sees I'm in earnest. And it might help him to come round if we took a green-grocer's. But I'm not saying I'd specially like a green-grocer's myself, because I shouldn't. 'Tis always a smelly place, and I hate smells."
"All shops have their smells," answered Jerry. "Even a linen draper to my nose have a smell, though I couldn't describe it in words."
"They have," admitted she. "And the smell I'd like best to live in be tobacco. If I'd only got myself to think for, it would be a tobacco shop, because there you get all your stuff advanced on the cheap, I believe, and if you once have a good rally to the shop, they bring their friends. And it's quite as much a man's job as a woman's."
"My head spins when I think of it, however," confessed Jerry. "The only shop I see myself in is the green-grocer's, and only there for the cabbages and potatoes and such like. The higher goods, such as grapes and fine fruits, would be your care."
Jane shook her head.
"Half the battle is to feel a call to a thing," she said, "same as I felt a call to you. And as I'll be shopwoman most of the time, it's more important as I shall be suited than you."
"Certainly."
"There's more money moving among men than women: you must remember that too," continued Jane. "Men have bigger views and don't haggle over halfpennies like women. A green-grocer's be a terrible shop for haggling; but with tobacco and pipes and cigars, the price is marked once for all, and only men buy 'em, and the clever shop women often just turn the scales and sell the goods. I've watched these things when I've been in Ashburton along with father, or Johnny; and I've seen how a pleasant, nice-spoken woman behind the counter, especially if she's good-looking, have a great power. Then, again, the bettermost sort of men go into a tobacconist; but never into a green-grocer. Buying vegetables be woman's work."
"I can see you incline your heart to tobacco," said Jerry. "And so, no doubt, it will be tobacco; but I must work, and if there's no work for me in our shop, then I'll have to find it outside our shop. Lots of women keep a shop and their men do something else."
"Why not?"
"Us may say the lot's pretty well cast for tobacco then. Shall us tell Johnny to-day and get his opinion?"
"I'll see what sort of frame he's in," replied Jane. "He's been dark lately, because he's getting slowly and surely to know that Dinah Waycott ain't going back on her word. It makes me dance with rage sometimes to think that John can want her still, and would forgive the woman to-morrow if she offered to take up with him again."
"Love's like that, I dare say," guessed Jerry. "It'll sink to pretty well anything."
"Well, I hate to see it—a fine man like my brother. He comes and goes, and they've made it up and are going to be friends; at least, father thinks so—as if anything could ever make up a job like that. If I was a man, and a woman jilted me, I know when I'd make it up. I'd hate her to my dying day, and through eternity too."
"You oughtn't to say things like that, Jane."
"It ain't over yet," she continued. "I shouldn't wonder much if there was an upstore before long. Dinah can't keep secrets and she's shameless. There's another in her eye as I have told you—talk of the devil!"
They were abreast of Falcon Farm and a man descended from it by a path to the main road as Jane spoke. Maynard was on his way to Buckland. He met them and gave them "good day" pleasantly enough. Jerry responded and praised the weather, but his sweetheart did not speak.
"Your brother be coming up to tea at the farm," said Lawrence.
"I know that," was all Jane answered, and he went his way without more words.
"There!" she exclaimed, when he was out of earshot.
"Why did you say 'talk of the devil'?" asked Jerry. "Surely nobody have a quarrel with that chap? My father says he's a very proper sort and a lot cleverer than you might think."
"I dare say he is a lot cleverer than some people," answered Jane; "but he ain't a lot cleverer than me. He's a tricky beast, that's what he is, and us'll know it presently."
Jerry was much astonished.
"I never! You're the first person as I've heard tell against him. Joe Stockman thinks the world of him. What have he done to you? If you have got any fair thing against the man, I'll damn soon be upsides with him."
"I'll tell you this," she replied. "I believe Dinah's hanging on at home and letting father have his way, not because she cares two straws for father really. She's a heartless thing under all her pretence. But she's on that man's track, and she's too big a fool to hide it from me. And him that would look at her, after what she done to Johnny, must be a beast. And I hope you see that if you're not blind."
Jerry scratched his head and stared at her.
"I'm sure I trust you be wrong, Jenny. That would be a very ill-convenient thing to happen, because Farmer Stockman would be thrown very bad."
"What does he matter? Can't you see the insult to John? And can't you see that, if they be after each other on the quiet, it must have been Maynard that kindiddled Dinah away from John in the first place? What I believe is that he came between Dinah and John, and got round her, and made her give John up."
"For God's sake don't say such things," begged Jerry. "Don't you rush in like that, or you'll very likely wish you hadn't. 'Tis too fearful, and you can't tell what far-reaching trouble you might make if you was to tell John such a thing. Him being what he is, you might land him—Lord knows where!"
She considered this.
"You're right so far I suppose; all the same I've had it on the tip of my tongue to whisper this to John and bid him watch them."
"Don't then—for the Lord's love, don't," implored Withycombe. "It would be playing with fire. If she's given over John once for all, then let him think no more about the woman. 'Tis no good spying, nor nothing like that. It ain't your business; and for that matter, it might be the best thing to happen for somebody to get hold of Dinah, and marry her, and take her far ways off. John have got to come to it, and when he found she loved somebody else, surely that would show him 'twas wasting his time to grizzle any more about her."
"I'll thank you to look at it different, Jerry," said Jane sharply. "If I hate a man, for very good reasons, then you ought to do the same. I can see into things a lot deeper than what you can, as you've always granted, and I can see into Maynard. He's the silent, shifty sort, deep as a well—and I won't have you sticking up for him against me, so now then."
Jerry whistled.
"I've nothing for, or against him," he answered slowly. "I scarcely know the man, but there's my father and others speak well of him; and I'm always wishful to think well of everybody, unless there's a reason against."
"I'm the reason against then," she declared, "and you've got to put me and my opinions first, I should hope. I'm a kindly creature enough, God knows, and ban't quick to think evil."
"Certainly not," admitted Jerry.
"But I look to you to pay me the respect due," she continued, "and if I tell you a man's doubtful, then 'tis for you to believe me and act according."
"I will," he promised. "We'm all doubtful for that matter. Us will speak and think of the man as we find him. We needn't go out of the way to make trouble."
"I ban't one to make trouble," she retorted; "but, next to you, John's more to me than anybody, and I won't stand by and see him wronged by that hateful woman, nor yet by that man, if I can stop it."
Jerry felt this attitude unreasonable, but decided the subject had better be dropped.
"If wrong's done, I'll help to right it, that I'll swear," he promised.
"I'd right it myself," she said. "If I could prove the man had stole her from my brother, I'd lie behind a hedge for him!"
"Do shut up and stop telling such dreadful things," he answered roughly. "'Tis hateful to hear such words from your mouth—Sunday and all. I won't have it, Jane. What the hell's the matter with you?"
They were silent for a time; then having reached Hazel Tor, Jerry helped his sweetheart to climb the great rocks. Soon they were perched high on the granite, and Jane opened a white and blue parasol, while he stretched his vast limbs at her feet and smoked his pipe. His elephantine playfulness and ideas on the tobacco shop won Jane's smiles presently, and at heart Jerry regretted the moment when his future brother-in-law ascended through the pine-trees from the river and joined them.
The fret and sting of his hopeless quest had marked John Bamsey, and now he was come to the knowledge that no hope remained. His dream dissolved. Until now he had defied reason and lived on shadows spun of desire. He had sunk beneath his old pride and returned to Dinah's hand. He had not grovelled; but he assumed an attitude, after the passing of the first storm, that astonished his family. And Dinah it astonished also, filling her with fresh pain. He had hung on; he had asked her to forgive his words upon the bridge; he had returned into the atmosphere of her and gone and come from home as before. Dominated by his own passion, he had endured even the wonder in his mother's eyes, the doubt in Jane's. Dinah could not be explicit to him, since he had been careful not to give her any opportunity for the present. But, under his humility, he had bullied her. The very humility was a sort of bullying, and she felt first distracted and then indignant that he should persist. To him she could not speak, but to Faith Bamsey and Jane she could speak; and to the former she did.
Mrs. Bamsey therefore knew that Dinah was not going to marry John, and in her heart she was thankful for it; while none the less indignant that John's perfections should have failed of fruition for Dinah. She resented Dinah's blindness and obstinacy, and felt thankful, for John's sake, that the girl would never be his wife. As for Jane she had never shared her brother's whispered hope that Dinah would return to him. She hated Dinah, and while hot with sympathy for her brother, rejoiced that, sooner or later, her father's foster-daughter must disappear and never be linked to a Bamsey.
Johnny's present attitude, however, she did not know; and it was left for this hour amid the tree girt rocks of Hazel Tor to teach her. She longed to learn what he would say if any other man were hinted of in connection with Dinah. She much wanted Johnny to share her opinion of Dinah, and now, ripened for mischief by the recent sight of Maynard, she prepared to sound Johnny. Jerry suspected what was in her mind and hoped that she would change it. They spoke first of their own secret, and informed John, after exacting from him promises of silence.
He was moody and his expression had changed. Care had come into his face and its confidence had abated. He had always liked to talk, and possessed with his own wrongs, of late, began to weary other ears. To his few intimate friends he had already spoken unwisely and salved the wounds of pride by assuring them that the rupture was not permanent. He had even hinted that he was responsible for it—to give the woman he designed to wed a lesson. He had affected confidence in the future; and now this was not the least of his annoyances, that when the truth came in sight, certain people would laugh behind his back. Upon such a temper it was easy to see how any mention of another man in connection with Dinah must fall; and had Jane really known all that was tormenting her brother's mind, at the moment when it began to feel the truth, even she might have hesitated; but she did not.
John considered their dreams of a shop without much sympathy and doubted their wisdom.
"You're a woodman and only a woodman—bred to it," he declared. "What the mischief should you make messing about among shops and houses in a town? You know you'd hate it, just so much as I should myself, and you know well he would, if he don't, Jane."
"You forget his feeling for me, Johnny," explained his sister. "It wouldn't be natural to him I grant; but there's me; and what's my good be Jerry's good when we'm married."
"You ought to think of his good, too, however. I shouldn't hide this up. You'd do well to talk to mother before you do anything."
"You don't think father will change about the five hundred pound?" asked Jane. "'Twas fear of that kept us quiet."
"No; he won't change. I was to have had the same."
"And so you will have," she said. "'Tis only a question of time."
"You'll get one as feels for you, same as Jane feels for me, presently," ventured Jerry.
"And Dinah Waycott will get hell," added Jane; "and I dare say it may happen to her afore so mighty long, for that matter."
Jerry shrank, for Jane's brother fastened on this.
"What d'you mean?" he asked, and she was glad he did.
"Nothing, Johnny; only I've got eyes. I ban't one to think evil; but I can't help being pretty quick where you are concerned. You're next to Jerry, and I shan't be a happy woman till you're a happy man, and you know it."
"What then, Jane?"
"We met Lawrence Maynard walking down the road a bit ago."
"And if you did?"
She dared greatly.
"I suppose you haven't ever heard his name along with hers?"
"'Hers'? D'you mean Dinah's? No, by God—nor any other man's! If I did——Out with it. What are you saying, Jane?"
To hear him swear made Jerry wonder, for John had never sworn in the past. The woodman, regarding him very anxiously, now perceived how his face and the tone of his voice had altered. That such phenomena were visible to Jerry's intelligence argued their magnitude.
"She went for a long walk with him a few weeks back," said Jane. "She made no secret about it. He took her to see a stone out Hey Tor way."
"Did he? And why didn't you tell me?"
"I was going to; but I waited to see if there was more to tell. There is no more than that—not yet."
Johnny fell silent. His mind moved quickly. Love had already begun to suffer a change, half chemical, half psychological, that would presently poison it. Such passion as he had endured for Dinah would not fade and suffer extinction in Johnny's order of mind. He came to the ordeal untried and untested. He had till now been a thief of virtue, in the sense that he was good and orderly, peace-loving and obedient by native bent and instinct. He fitted into the order of things as they were and approved them. Nothing had ever happened to make him unrestful, to incite class prejudice, or to foment discontent with his station. He had looked without sympathy on the struggle for better industrial conditions; he had despised doubt in the matter of religion. He was born good: his mother had said the Old Adam must surely be left out of him. But now came the shock, and pride prevented John from admitting his failure to anybody else; pride, indeed, had assured him that such a man as he must have his own way in the end.
He debated the past, and his self-respect tottered before his thoughts, as a stout boulder shakes upon its foundations at the impact of a flood. He stared at Jane and Jerry unseeing, and they marked the blood leap up into his face and his eyes grow bright. This idea was new to him. What Jane said acted perilously, for it excused to himself his gathering temper under defeat and justified his wrath in his own sight.
"Be careful," he said. "D'you know all it means you'm saying, Jane?"
"For God's sake, unsay it, Jenny," urged her sweetheart. "You can't know—nobody can know."
"If any other man thinks he'll have that woman——"
John said no more; but his own thoughts surged up and seemed to be bursting his head. A mountain of wrongs was toppling down upon him. He forgot his companions; then became suddenly conscious of their eyes staring into his. He looked at them as though they had been strangers, started up, went down the rocks at a pace to threaten his neck and then was gone through the trees, plunging straight ahead like a frightened animal.
Jerry Withycombe declared great alarm; Jane only felt the deepest interest.
"Now you've done it," said the man.
"So much the better," she answered. "It was bound to come. I'm glad."
Meantime Maynard, musing on Jane Bamsey's curt attitude, had reached Buckland to spend an hour or two by invitation with Enoch Withycombe.
"Time drags for you sometimes I expect," said Lawrence.
"No, I wouldn't say time drags," declared the sick man. "Time don't run more than sixty minutes to the hour with me, though I can't say it runs less, like it does for the young and hale and hearty people. Give me a new book and life don't drag. And there's always memory. I've got a very good memory—better than many who come to see me I reckon. My mind keeps clear, and I still have the power to go over my great runs with hounds. And I don't mix 'em. I can keep 'em separate and all the little things that happened. You'd think they'd get muddled up; but they do not."
"That's wonderful," said Lawrence.
"Yes, I can shut my eyes and get in a comfortable position and bring it all afore me and feel my horse pulling and my feet in the stirrups. And once or twice of late I've dreamed dreams; and that's even better, because for the moment, you're in the saddle again—living—living! When I wake up from a dream like that, I make a point of thanking God for it, Maynard. I'd sooner have a dream like that than anything man can give me now."
"They're terrible queer things—dreams," declared the younger. "I've had a few of late. They take hold of you when your mind's more than common full, I reckon."
"Or your stomach—so doctor says. But that's not right. I've stuffed once or twice—greedy like—just for the hope that when I went to sleep I'd be hunting, but it never did anything but keep me awake. No, dreams hang on something we can't understand I reckon; and why the mind won't lie down and sleep with the body, sometimes, but must be off on its own, we can't tell. But there's things said about dreams that ban't true, Lawrence. I read somewhere that you never see the faces of the dead in dreams. That's false. You do see 'em. I saw my brother none so long ago—not as he was when he died, but as a little boy. And dreams be very reasonable in their unreason, you must know, for I was a little boy too. I saw his young face and flaxen hair, and heard him laugh, and we was busy as bees climbing up a fir-tree to a squirrel's dray in a wood. A thing, no doubt, we'd done in life together often enough, sixty years agone; and 'twas put into my dream, and I woke all the better for it."
"Don't you get no sad dreams?" asked Lawrence.
"They come too. They leave you a bit down-daunted, I grant. And some be lost, because you can't call 'em home when you wake up. You'll dream a proper masterpiece sometimes and wake full of it; and yet, for some mysterious working of the brain, 'tis gone, and you try to stretch after it, but never can catch it again. I woke in tears—fancy! Yes, in tears I woke once, long ago now; and for the life of me I didn't know what fetched 'em out of my eyes."
"Perhaps you'd had a cruel bout of pain while you was asleep?"
"No, no; pain don't get tear or groan out of me. I'll never know what it was."
He broke off suddenly, for a previous speech of his visitor gave him the opening he desired.
"You said just now you'd been dreaming, along of your mind, that was more than common full. Was it anything interesting in particular on your mind, or just life in general?"
"Just life as it comes along I reckon."
Enoch regarded him.
"You be looking ahead, as you've the right to do. You're a man a thought out of the common in your understanding. You don't want to work for another all your life, do you?"
"I never look much ahead. Sometimes the past blocks the future, and a man's often less ambitious at thirty than he was ten years before. I don't particular want a home of my own. A home means a lot of things I've got no use for."
"Pretty much what some of the maidens think," said Enoch with craft. "For them a home means a man; and for us it means a woman, of course, because we can't very well establish anything to be called home without one. Orphan Dinah wants badly to be off, so Ben Bamsey, her foster-father, tells me. And yet he's in a quandary; because he feels that if a happy home were in sight for her, he'd far sooner she waited for it, a year or more, than left him to go somewhere else."
"A very reasonable thought. But these things don't fall out as we want 'em to."
They fenced a little, but Lawrence was very guarded and committed himself to no opinion of Dinah until Enoch, failing in strategy, tried a direct question.
"What do you think of Orphan Dinah as a woman?" he asked.
"I like her," answered the other frankly. "Since you ask, there's no harm in saying I think she's a very fine character. She haven't shone much of late, because there was a lot of feeling about what she done; and it's been made the most of I can see by women, and some men. But she's made it clear to me and to you, I hope, that she did right. She's built on a pretty big pattern and she's had a lot to put up with, and she's been very patient about it."
"A bit out of the common you'd say?"
"I think she is."
"I may tell you, for your ear alone, Maynard, that she thinks very well of you."
Lawrence tightened his lips.
"No, no—don't you say that. She don't know me. I dare say, if she was to, she'd feel different."
"Dinah can't hide herself from her foster-father's eyes," explained Enoch. "She don't try to for that matter, and Ben sees that there's something about you that interests her; and you've told me there be something to her that interests you. And what follows? I'm only an old man speaking, and you mustn't take offence whether or no."
"There's no offence," answered Lawrence. "You'd not offend anybody. But I'd rather not have any speech about it, Mr. Withycombe."
Enoch had said all he desired to say and learned all he wanted to learn.
"And quite right and proper," he answered. "These things are very safe where they belong, and I wouldn't rush into a man's private affairs for money."
"You've been a very good friend to me and made my mind bigger," declared Lawrence. "A man that can preach patience from your bed of pain, like you do, did ought to be heard. It ain't easy I should reckon."
They talked of Enoch's books and his master, who had lately been to see him.
"There's one who fears not to look the truth in the face," said the huntsman. "He told me things that only I say to myself, because the rest are too tender to say them. Doctor looks them, but even he won't say them out. But master could tell me I'd soon be gone. He believes in the next world, and don't see no reason in the nature of things why there shouldn't be fox-hunting there."
Another visitor dropped in upon Mr. Withycombe. It was Arthur Chaffe in his Sunday black.
"If one's enough at a time, I'll be off," he said, "and fetch up again next Sunday."
But Enoch welcomed him.
"I'm in good fettle, Arthur, and be very willing to make hay while the sun shines."
Arthur, however, doubted.
"You'm looking so grim as a ghost, my old dear," he answered, "and so white as a dog's tooth."
Mr. Withycombe laughed.
"You be a cheerful one for a death-bed, sure enough," he answered.
"There's no death, Enoch, and you know it so well as what I do."
"And you an undertaker! Mind you deal fair and square with me, Chaffe; for death, or no death, 'tis as certain as life that I shall want some of your best seasoned elm afore very long."
But Mr. Chaffe steadied the conversation.
"You be quiet, Enoch," he said. "This is the Lord's Day and us didn't ought to be joking, like as if 'twas Monday."
The hunter took up the challenge and they went at it again, in the best of humour, till Melinda returned and gave the three men tea.
They spoke of Dinah and gave examples of her quality and difference from other young women. Mrs. Honeysett tended rather to disparage her of late, having been influenced thereto in certain quarters; but Arthur Chaffe supported Dinah, and Lawrence listened.
He presently, however, quoted.
"Long ago, before she had to break with poor Bamsey, I remember a word she said to me," he remarked. "It showed she knew a bit about human nature and was finding out that everybody couldn't be relied upon. She asked me if I was faithful. It seemed a curious question at the time."
"And you said you was, no doubt?" asked Melinda.
"We must all be faithful," declared Arthur Chaffe. "Where there's no faith, there's no progress, and the order of things would run down like a clock."
"The world goes round on trust," admitted Mr. Withycombe, "and the more man can trust man, the easier we advance and the quicker. 'Faithful' be the word used between us in business and it wasn't the one we fixed upon for nothing. 'Yours faithfully' we say."
"Yes, oftener than we mean it, God forgive us," sighed Mr. Chaffe. "'Tis often only a word and too few respect it. Us have all written so to people we hate, and would like to think was going to be found dead in their beds to-morrow. Such is the weakness of human nature."
"We must be civil even to enemies," said the sick man.
"I wonder," mused Melinda. "It's a bit mean to hide our feelings so much."
"Warner Chave was a fine example," answered Mr. Chaffe. "Foes he had a plenty, as such a straight and pushing chap must; but he never quarrelled with man or mouse. He never gave any living soul a straw to catch hold of. His simple rule was that it takes two to a quarrel, and he'd never be one; and he never was. Why! He got on with his relations even!"
"How?" asked Maynard.
"Never criticised 'em. Such was his amazing skill that he let them live their lives their own way, and treated 'em with just the same respect he showed to everybody else."
They enjoyed tea in a cheerful temper, and Arthur Chaffe had continually to remind them it was Sunday.
Then he prepared to depart and Maynard left with him. In the high road they, too, separated, for their ways were opposite.
"I laugh, but with sorrow in my heart," said Arthur, "for that dear man be going down the hill terrible fast to the experienced eye. We shall miss him—there's a lot of Christian charity to him, and I only wish to God he'd got the true Light. That's all he wants. The heart be there and the ideas; but his soul just misses the one thing needful."
"I hope not," said Maynard. "He's earned the best we can wish for."
"It may come yet," prophesied Arthur. "It may flash in upon him at the last. Where there's life, there's hope of salvation. Us must never forget that the prayers of a righteous man availeth much, Maynard."
"And the life of a righteous man availeth more, Mr. Chaffe," answered Lawrence.
"That we ain't told," replied the elder. "We can only leave the doubter to the mercy of his Maker; and there's many and many got to be left like that, for doubt's growing, worse luck. Us say 'sure and certain hope' over a lot of mortal dust, when too well our intellects tell us the hope ban't so certain nor yet sure as us would like to feel."
He perked away on his long, thin legs, like a friendly stork, and Maynard set his face upward for his home.
Though circumstances had of late baffled Dinah Waycott and tended sometimes to beget a reserve and caution foreign to her; though she found herself hiding her thoughts in a manner very unfamiliar and keeping silent, where of old she would have spoken, or even allowing by default an opinion to pass unquestioned as hers which of old she would have contradicted; there was still no confusion in her mind when she communed with herself. Therefore, when she found that she stood face to face with a new thing, she pretended no doubt as to the name of it. Bewilderment, none the less, filled her mind, and elements of joy, that might be supposed proper to such an experience, could not at present live with the other more distracting sensations her discovery awakened. Something like dismay she did feel, that any such paramount event should have overtaken her at this stage in her life; for Dinah was not insensitive, though so plain-spoken, and now painfully she felt this was no time to have developed the burning preoccupation that already swept into nothingness every adventure and emotion of the past.
There had happened a precious wonder beyond all wonders, but Dinah felt angry with herself that, under present conditions of stress and anxiety, any loophole existed for such a selfish passion. It had come, however, and it could not stand still; and selfish she had to be, since the good and glory of the thing must be shared with none at present.
Silent, however, she could not be for long. There was one to whom she never feared to talk and from whom she had no secrets. To him, her foster-father, Dinah had taken every joy and sorrow, hope and fear since she could talk. Only once, and that in the matter of his own son, John, had she hidden her heart from Ben Bamsey, yet found it possible to show it to another.
She remembered that now; and it was that same 'other,' who, from the first, had possessed a nameless quality to challenge and arrest Dinah. Gradually he had occupied a larger and larger domain in her mind, until he overwhelmed it and her gradual revelation was complete. For gradual it had been. Together they walked once more at her wish, after their first long tramp, while, agreeably to the invitation of Mr. Bamsey, Lawrence Maynard again visited Green Hayes upon a Sunday afternoon. Then, indeed, under the eyes of Jane and her mother, Dinah had hidden her heart very effectually, and even made occasion to leave the house and go elsewhere before Maynard's visit was ended; but she knew by signs in her body and soul that she was in love. The amazing novelty of her thoughts, the transfiguration they created in her outlook upon all things, the new colours they imparted to any vision of the future, convinced her that there could be no doubt. Against this reality, the past looked unreal; before this immensity, the past appeared, dwarfed and futile. That cloudy thing, her whole previous existence, was now reduced to a mere huddled background—its only excuse the rainbow that had suddenly glowed out upon it.
She was honestly ashamed that love could have happened to her at this moment and thrust so abruptly in upon her sad experience with Johnny. It seemed, in some moods, callous and ungenerous to allow such wayward delights and dreams to enter her heart while well she knew that his was heavy. But, at other times, she would not blame herself, for her conscience was clear. Maynard had meant nothing to her when she gave up her first lover, and it was no thought of him, or any man, that had determined her to do so.
Her love at least was pure as love well could be, for she did not know that he returned it; sometimes, at first, she almost hoped he would not. But that was only in the dim and glimmering dawn of it. Love cannot feed on dreams alone. She put it from her at first, only to find it fly back. So she nursed it secretly and waited and wondered, and, meantime, strove to find a way to leave Green Hayes. But still Ben opposed her suggestions, and then there came a time when, from the first immature fancy that to love him secretly, herself unloved, would be enough, Dinah woke into a passionate desire that he should love her back again. Now she was mature, accomplished, awake and alert, lightning quick to read his mood, the inflexion of every word he uttered when he was beside her, the faintest brightening of his eyes, his dress, his walk, the inspiration of every moment.
She could not help it. Often she returned dull and daunted, not with him but herself; and as she began to know, from no sign of his but by her own quickened sex endowment that he cared for her, she grew faint and ashamed again. He had taught her a great deal. He seemed to be very wise and patient, but not particularly happy—rather unfinished even on some sides of his experience. There were a great many things he did not know, and he seemed not nearly as interested in life as she was, or as desirous to have it more abundantly. Johnny had evinced a much keener appetite for living and far greater future ambitions than Maynard. Lawrence was, in fact, as somebody had said, "a twilight sort of man." But it was a cool, clear, self-contained twilight that he moved in, and he appeared to see distinctly enough through it. Dinah thought it was twilight of morning rather than night. She imagined him presently emerging into a wonderful dawn, and dreamed of helping him to do so. She checked such fancies, yet they were natural to her direct temperament, and they recurred with increasing force. Her native freedom of mind broke down all barriers to private thinking, and sometimes she longed for him; then she chastened herself and planned a future without him and found it not worth remaining alive for. She began to sleep ill, but hid the signs. She plotted to see Maynard and was also skilful to conceal the fact that she did so. He always welcomed her, sometimes with a merry word, sometimes with a sad one. The milch cows grazed upon the moor now, and once or twice, sighting them a mile off upon her way home, Dinah would creep near and wait for Lawrence and the sheep dog to round them up and turn them to the valley for milking. She would hide in a thicket, or behind a boulder, and if he came would get a few precious words; but if Neddy Tutt appeared, as sometimes happened, then she would lie hid and go her way when he was gone.
She knew now that Maynard cared for her; but she discounted his every word and granted herself the very minimum. She was fearful of hoping too much, yet could not, for love's sake, hope too little. She longed to set her mind at rest upon the vital question; and at last did so. Making all allowance, and striving to chill and belittle his every word, she still could not longer doubt. He was often difficult to understand, yet some things she did now clearly comprehend. She had already seen a man in love, and though the love-making of Johnny differed very widely from that of Lawrence, though indeed Lawrence never had made a shadow of love to her, yet she knew at last, by mental and physical signs that curiously repeated Johnny's, he did love her.
She hugged this to her heart and felt that nothing else mattered, or would ever matter. For a time she even returned to her first dream and assured herself that love was enough. He might tell her some day; he might never tell her; but she knew it, and whether they came together, or lived their lives apart, the great fact would remain. Yet there was no food in any such conclusion, no life, no fertility, no peace.
She came to Ben Bamsey at this stage of her romance, for she hungered and thirsted to tell it; and to her it seemed that her foster-father ought to know. She came to him fresh from a meeting with Lawrence, for she had been, at Mr. Bamsey's wish, with a message to Falcon Farm, and she had met Maynard afterwards as she returned over the foothills of the Beacon.
The year was swinging round, and again the time had come for scything the fern, that it might ripen presently for the cattle byres.
He stopped a moment and shook hands with her.
"Just been up to see Soosie-Toosie," said Dinah. "Terrible sorry Mr. Palk's cut his hand so bad."
"Yes; it'll have to go in a sling for a bit. He thought it would mend and didn't take no great count of it, and now it's festered and will be a fortnight before it's all right."
"I wish I could help," she said. "If you was to do his work and Mr. Stockman would let me come and milk the cows for a week——"
"No, no—no need for any help. Tom can do a lot. It's only his left hand and master's turning to. He says if he can't do the work of Tom's left hand, it's a shame to him."
"Did Mr. Palk get his rise he was after?"
"He did not, Dinah. But Mr. Stockman put it in a very nice way. He's going to raise us both next year. And you? Nothing turned up?"
She shook her head.
"A funny thing among 'em all they can't find just the right work. I wish you was away from Green Hayes."
She had told him all about her difficulties and he appreciated them. He thought a great deal about Dinah now, but still more about himself. He had been considering her when she appeared; and for the moment he did not want to see her. His mind ebbed and flowed, where Dinah was concerned, and he was stubborn with himself and would not admit anything. He persisted in this attitude, but now he began to perceive it was impossible much longer to do so. If Dinah had read him, he also had read her, for she was not difficult to read and lacked some of the ordinary armour of a woman in love with a man. He knew time could not stand still for either of them, yet strove to suspend it. Sometimes he was gentle and sometimes he was abrupt and ungenial when they met. To-day he dismissed her.
"Don't you bide here now," he said. "I'm busy, Dinah, and I've got a good bit on my mind too."
"I'm sorry then. You ask Soosie if I shall come and milk. That would give you more time. Good morning, Lawrence."
He had seen how her face fell.
"I wish I could think of a way out for you. Perhaps I shall. I do have it on my mind," he said. "But there's difficulties in a small place like this. Pity you ain't farther off, where you could breathe easier."
For some reason this remark cheered her. She left him without speaking again and considered his saying all the way home. The interpretation she put upon it was not wholly mistaken, yet it might have surprised the man, for we often utter a thought impelled thereto by subconscious motives we hardly feel ourselves. He did not for the moment associate himself, or his interests, with the desire that Dinah should go away, yet such a desire really existed in him, though, had he analysed it, he had been divided between two reasons for such a desire. He might have asked himself whether he wished her out of her present difficult environment in order that his own approach to her should become easier and freer of doubtful interpretation in the mouths of other people; or he might have considered whether, for his own peace, he honestly wished to see Dinah so far away that reasonable excuses should exist for dropping her acquaintance. Between these alternatives he could hardly have decided at present. He lagged behind her, for love seldom wakens simultaneously, or moves with equal pace on both sides. He might continue to lag and fall farther behind, or he might catch her and pass her. He was at a stage in their approach when he could still dispassionately consider all that increase of friendship must imply. He hardly knew where the friendship exactly stood at the moment. Actual irritation sometimes intervened. He suffered fits of impatience both with himself and her. Yet he knew, when cool again, that neither was to be blamed. If blame existed, it was not Dinah's.
She went home now, and after dinner on that day, found opportunity to speak with her foster-father. They were cutting oats and she descended to the valley field beside Ben and made a clean breast of her secrets, only to find they were not hidden from him. He treated her as one much younger than she really was, and seeing that she was indeed younger than her age in many particulars of mind, this process always satisfied Dinah and made her feel happier with Ben Bamsey than his family, who made no such concession, but, on the contrary, attributed qualities to Dinah she lacked.
"Foster-father," she said, "I'm wishful to have a tell and here's a good chance. I be getting in a proper mizmaze I do assure 'e."
"You must be patient, my little dear," he answered.
"I've been patient for six months, though it's more like six years since I changed about poor Johnny. And other people, so well as I, do feel I'd be better away."
"Have I ever said you wouldn't be better away, Dinah? I know only too well how it is. But a father can look deeper into life than his child. I'm wide awake—watching. I understand your troubles and try to lessen 'em where I can."
"If you wasn't here, I'd have runned away long ago. For a little bit, after that cruel come-along-of-it, I wouldn't have minded to die. Now that's passed; but you, who never did such a thing, can't tell what it is to know that you're fretting and galling two other women. And Mrs. Bamsey and Jane have a right to be fretted and galled by me. I can well understand, without their looks, how I must be to them; and 'tis a sharp thorn in your flesh to be hated, and it's making me miserable."
He had not guessed she much felt this side of the position.
"You'm growing up, I see, like everybody else," he said. "I forget that I can't have it both ways, and can't have you a loving, watchful daughter and a child too. And if you can think for me, as you do so wonderful, then you'm old enough to feel for yourself, of course. Still you'm so parlous young in some ways, that it ain't strange I still think of you a child in everyway. I suppose you must go and I mustn't find nothing against no more. And yet——"
He broke off, his mind upon Maynard.
While he was hesitating and wondering whether he should name the man, Dinah saved him the trouble.
"Only this morning coming home from Falcon Farm I met Lawrence—Lawrence Maynard and he—even he, an outsider so to say, said he thought I'd be better far ways off. And I well know it. I didn't ought to be breathing the same air as Johnny. It ain't fair to him, especially when you know he's not taking it just like I meant it. And I wouldn't say it's right, foster-father."
He, however, was more concerned for the moment with the other man than his own son.
"Johnny's beginning to understand. His good sense will come to help him," he answered; "but when you say 'Lawrence Maynard,' Dinah—what do you say? Why for has he troubled his head about your affairs?"
"You like him?" she answered.
"Granted. And so do you seemingly. And how much do you like him? Do you like him as much as I think you do, Dinah?"
She was astonished but pleased.
"I'm glad you ask me that; but I hope Mrs. Bamsey and Jane——?"
"So do I. No, they haven't marked nothing; or if they have, they've hid it from me very close. But Faith wouldn't hide nothing. Tell me."
She hesitated.
"What do you think?" she asked.
"I think you care about the man."
"I love him then."
"Ah!"
"It sounds a fearful thing spoke out naked. But truth's truth, and I'm very thankful to tell you. Don't you call it wicked nor nothing like that. It only happened a very little while—not till long, long after I dropped Johnny. But it has happened; and now I know I never loved dear Johnny a morsel."
He reflected.
"The man himself told you to go—Maynard, I mean? What was in his mind when he said that?"
"I've been wondering. It ought to have made me sad; but it hasn't. Ought it to have made me sad?"
"Has Lawrence Maynard——? What about his side?"
"I don't know—yet I do. There's some things you feel. I don't think I could have loved him if I hadn't known he loved me first. Could I?"
"He's never said it, however?"
"A man's eyes and ways say things."
"Don't you talk like this to anybody but me, Dinah," urged Mr. Bamsey.
"Not likely. Is it wrong?"
"I'm moving in the matter; I'm moving," he answered. "You can't hide much from me, and already I've had Maynard in my thoughts."
"You haven't?"
"Yes. I've seen a very good, common friend. And I'll tell you this. I sounded Mr. Withycombe—the bed-lier. The young man often goes of a Sunday to see him, and Enoch thinks well of him. But more than that. He's spoke cautious with Maynard, and Maynard likes you. He granted you was out of the common, in fact a remarkable pattern of woman."
She had his arm and her own tightened upon it.
"Foster-father!"
"So enough said. And now you'll understand why I'm marking time. The rest be in the hands of God. You keep out of his way for a bit—Maynard, I mean; and we'll watch how it goes."
"Nothing else matters now," she said.
"A lot matters now; but what matters be up to him."
"I didn't think it was possible to be so happy as I be this minute, foster-father."
"Put it out of your mind, however, so far as nature will let you. We be groping in the dark."
"No, no—it's all light—all light now."
"So far as he's concerned, we be in the dark," he repeated. "No doubt the time's near when he'll offer for you, Dinah. And then he's got to come to me. I remember the first evening he was to Green Hayes, and seemed a thought under the weather and a little doubtful about his Maker. I said he'd got a grievance against life, and I must hear all about that grievance, if such there is."
"You'll never hear anything but the truth from him. He wouldn't do anything that you wouldn't like. I'm feared of him in a way. He's very strict and very stern sometimes. He's not what you call easy on wrongful doing. He's better'n me."
"That no man ever was, or will be," said Ben. "I'm very glad you came to me with this; for if you'd hung off much longer, I'd have had to see the man. Now I shan't, and I'm not sorry. We know where we stand, because you'm so open-minded, thank God, along with me. But we don't know—at least we can't be sure we know—where he stands. It's up to Mr. Maynard to unfold his feelings. And for sure he very soon will."
"And why should you reckon he advised me to be off from here so soon as I could?" asked Dinah again. "Queerly enough I liked him for saying it, and yet—yet you might think there might be a frosty reason."
"There might be. Time will show. You can't be off till we've found the proper place for you to be off to. Now you run home about your chores. Mother wants you in the garden. There's the last lot of rasps to be picked. I didn't count on no more, but I was surprised to see enough to market yet."
She ran up the hill and he descended to a field of heavy oats. The weather after a spell of sunny days began to break up and Mr. Bamsey hoped to get his crop off the ground before it did so. But his mind was not on his oats. He believed that Dinah must indeed leave him now, and guessed that Maynard would think it wise to abandon his present work and take her far away. Mr. Bamsey knew what this must mean for him. He did not disguise from himself that he loved Dinah better than anything on earth, while blaming himself unfeignedly for doing so.
Mr. Stockman, having decided that sea air and a fortnight of rest were desirable to fortify him against another winter, had been absent from his home and was only recently returned. He had visited a friend, who farmed land in the neighbourhood of Berry Head, above Brixham, and he declared himself very much better for the change of scene and companionship. He related his adventures, told how he had trusted himself to the sea on more than one occasion in a Brixham trawler, and also expatiated in Soosie-Toosie's ear upon a woman whom he had met—the daughter of his friend.
"Mr. King has but one stay-at-home child, like me," he said, "and I could wish you were able to see the way Ann King runs her father's house. Not a breath against you, Susan—you know how I thank my God every night on my knees for such a daughter; but there's a far-sightedness and a sureness about Ann as I don't remember to have marked in any other female."
"How old might she be?" asked Susan.
"Older than you by ten years I dare say; but it's not so much that as her way of dealing with life and her sure head. The Elms Farm is bigger than ours and mostly corn. They grow amazing fine wheat, to the very edge of the cliffs; and Ann King reigns over the place and the people in such a way that all goes on oiled wheels. She's always ahead of time, that woman—bends time to her purpose and never is run about, or flustered. A great lesson to a simple man like me, who never seems to have enough time for his work."
Mr. Palk heard these things. There was growing between him and Joe a shadow of antagonism. So faintly did this contest of wills begin that neither appreciated it yet.
"And how many females do Miss King have at her word of command, master?" asked Thomas, his subconscious self up in arms as usual when Susan was even indirectly assailed.
Joe stared blandly at him.
"Hullo! I didn't know you was there, Thomas. I was talking to my daughter, Thomas, not you, if you'll excuse me; and if you've got nothing on your hands for the moment, perhaps you won't mind having a look over the harness and reporting to me to-morrow. I was put about when I came home to see a bit of rope where there did ought to be leather, Thomas. You know what I mean."
"I was going to name it," answered Mr. Palk.
"Good; I'm sure you was; we'll go over the lot at your convenience—to-morrow perhaps. I admire you a lot for making shift and saving my pocket. It shows a spirit that I value in a man; but we must keep our heads up, even under the present price of harness if we can; and when we've had a tell over it, I'll go down to saddler at Ashburton and put it to him as an old customer."
Joe returned from his holiday full of energy. He had to-day been at a sale of sheep at Hey Tor village and was tramping with Maynard by road behind fifty fine ewes from a famous breeder. He discoursed of sheep and his man listened without much concentration.
They trudged together behind the raddled flock with a sheep-dog attending them.
"The rare virtue of our Dartmoors is not enough known," declared Mr. Stockman. "In my opinion, both for flesh and coat, there's no long-wooled sheep in the world to beat 'em and few to equal 'em. Yet you'll find, even to this day, that our Devon long-wools be hardly known outside the South Hams and Cornwall. Mr. King had a friend from Derbyshire stopping at Brixham—a very clever man and wonderful learned in sheep; but he knew naught about our famous breed. They did ought to be shown at all the big shows all over England, and then, no doubt, they'd come into their own, and some of us who rears 'em would earn our just reward."
"That class ought to be included in all important shows certainly," admitted Lawrence. "At their best they can't be beat."
"And they ought to be shown in their wool," added Mr. Stockman. "The difficulties ought to be got over, and it should be done for the credit of the county, not to say Dartmoor."
They debated this question till the younger man wearied of it and was glad when a farmer on horseback overtook them. He had been a seller, and he approved of Joe's opinions, now repeated for his benefit. Maynard walked a little apart and found leisure to think his own thoughts. They revolved about one subject only, and reverted to it with painful persistence.
He was in love with Dinah Waycott and knew that she was in love with him. The something that was left out of her made this all the more clear, for she relied on no shield of conventions; she had a way to slip a subject of the clothes it generally wore, in shape of speech.
She had exerted no wiles, but she could not be illusive, and the obvious qualities of Dinah which had appealed to Johnny's first love had also, for different reasons, overwhelmed Maynard. Many men by these very qualities in her would have been repulsed. Experienced men might have missed those elements in Dinah that, for them, make a woman most provocative and desirable; but in the case of this man, his own experience of life and his personal adventure combined to intensify the charm that her peculiar nature possessed. He had known nothing like her; she contrasted at almost every possible point with what he had known; she shone for him as an exemplar of all that was most desirable in feminine character. He could not believe that there were many such women, and he doubted not that he would never see such another. He had tried to adopt a fatherly attitude to Dinah and, for a considerable time, succeeded. The view he took of her at their first acquaintance, when she was betrothed to John Bamsey, persisted after the breaking of the engagement; but the very breaking of the engagement enlarged this view, and the freedom, that could no longer be denied to her after that event, had improved their knowledge of each other until both learned the same fact. Then Maynard could play a fatherly friendship no more, nor could the figment of an elder brother serve. He loved her and she loved him. A thing he had never considered as possible now complicated a life that for seven years he had striven with all his might to simplify; and the new situation extended far beyond Dinah, for it was calculated to alter his own agreement and undertaking with himself. These covenants had been entered into with himself alone. Circumstances had long ago combined, at a certain period of his early, adult life, to change the entire texture of existence, deflect its proposed purpose and throw down the goal he set out to attain. And with the changes wrought in temporal ambitions had come others. Life thus dammed ceased to flow. His future collapsed and in its place appeared a new purpose, if negation could be called a purpose. That had sufficed, though at a cost of mental corrosion he did not guess; but now it seemed that a closed book was thrown open again and he stood once more facing outlets to life that even implied happiness. His existence for seven years, it appeared, had not been a progression, but a hiatus. Yet he knew, even while he told himself this, that it must be a delusion and a juggle with reality; since no man can for seven years stand still.
There was need for a jolt forward now, and the problem appeared simple enough as to the thing he must do, but shattering when he saw it done. He was deeply agitated, yet through the inexorable shot a thread of unexpected hope and beauty. To cut this thread, which had crept so magically into the grey fabric of existence and touched the days of his crepuscular life with the glimmering of an unguessed sunrise, promised to be a task so tremendous that it was not strange he hesitated. For did any vital necessity exist to cut it? He could not immediately convince himself, and every natural instinct and impulse combined to cry out against such a necessity.
He had reached an attitude of mind, and that long before he met Dinah Waycott, which now suffered no shock from the personal problem. He had dealt in generalities and pondered and meditated on human conduct in many aspects. The actual, present position, too, he had debated, and even asked himself how he might expect to act under certain circumstances. But the possibility of those circumstances ever arising had not occurred to him, and now that they had done so, he saw that his view and his judgment were only one side of the question in any case. The visionary figure of a woman had turned into a real one, and as such, her welfare and her future, not his own, instantly became the paramount thing. What he might have deemed as sudden salvation for himself, namely, a good and loving woman in his life, took another colour when the woman actually appeared. The temptation now lay in this. He knew Dinah so well, that he believed, from her standpoint, she might look at the supreme problem as he did; and for this very reason he delayed. Reason argued that, did Dinah see eye to eye with him, no farther difficulty could exist, while if she did not, there was an end of it; but some radical impulse of heredity, or that personal factor of character, which was the man himself, fought with reason at the very heart of his being and made the issue a far deeper matter for Maynard now.