Below, in the kitchen, all Bear Down assembled about breakfast. Then Mark Endicott told the company this news, and unutterable glances passed between Ash, Cramphorn, and Collins."You'd best to keep dumb 'bout your share, Jonah," muttered Churdles under his breath, with round eyes that indicated aversion. "I wouldn't say the law mightn't overget 'e, if it knawed.""As to that, I fear nothin', an' the tears I shed won't drown a midge," answered the other in a defiant whisper. "I've forgived his wrong; forget it I never shall."Collins was busy telling Sally and Margery of the spectral rabbit."An' 'tis plain the ill-convenient beast didn't run for nought. Who shall laugh at such deeds now? Not the vainest man amongst us," he concluded."Him of all to go!" sighed Mrs. Loveys; "an' when us thinks of what might have been an' how one short word will make or mar a life——"Then a question from Margery as to where Tom Bates might be was answered by the sudden appearance of that youth, and Mrs. Loveys, with a mind somewhat overwrought, found outlet for emotion in an attack upon him."Doan't 'e knaw the hour for eatin', you ugly li'l twoad?" she demanded sharply. "An' to come to the table in such a jakes of a mess tu! You ought to be shamed."But the boy paid no heed. He returned breathless with a comforting discovery, and now cried it aloud to his companions of the morning."'Tis all right," he said; "no call for no upstore nor trouble at all. That theer white bastey I mean. I followed un half a mile to the furze meadows down-long to make sartain, then I lost un, an' presently if I didn't see un again—wi' a young rabbit he'd catched! Nought but that baggerin' auld ram cat as they've got to Creber Farm!""Quiet! you young fule!" said Mr. Cramphorn roughly; "shut your mouth, will 'e? or I'll scat 'e awver the ear-hole! You to pit your green brains against our ripe wans! A man be dead, an' so 'tis sartain us seed what us seed.""Sartain as doom us seed what us seed," echoed Gaffer Ash, "for a man be dead."CHAPTER XVI.A SHELF OF SLATEA blackbird, with sleepy notes and sad, warbled in a green larch at dawn; and the pathos proper to his immemorial song was well suited to the scene. For the larch raised her lovely foliage, begemmed with rubies, above many graves in the burying-place of Little Silver; and a streamlet also murmured there, uttering a sort of purring harmony that mingled with the contralto of the bird. From an ivy-tod, at hand in the grave-yard hedge, bright eyes peeped and the mother, with head and tail alone visible and sooty-brown body pressed close upon four eggs, listened to her lord. Elsewhere a man also heard the music, but heeded it not. He stood at his house door, yawned and sniffed the morning; while his whitewashed walls that faced the east were warmed into a glowing melon colour, and sunshine wove golden threads along the ancient straw of the thatch above.Noah Brimblecombe, the sexton, was a man of middle age, with grey whiskers, clean-shaved lips and chin, a strong mouth, and a reflective forehead. His back had grown rounded by digging of graves from early manhood, and the nature of his life's labours appeared in a tinge of gloom that marked his views. He passed through the world with an almost morbid severity in his disparagement of all mundane concerns, triumphs or possessions. The man now stood and fixed his small grey eyes upon the church, but little more than a hundred yards distant. Then, bearing great keys in one hand, an inch or two of candle in the other, he proceeded to the burying-ground upon an errand connected with his calling.Little Silver is a hamlet of almost beggarly simplicity. In the midst stands a trinity of three great buildings beneath the bosom of a hill; certain ruined barns, with a few thatched cots and a pound, embrace the remainder of the village; while a duck-pond outside the churchyard gate, orchard lands sloping to the valleys beneath, a little winding road and a stone wall, beside which grow yellow bullace plums, complete the picture. Variety in form and wide divergence in point of age characterise the central features of this spot. Paramount, by virtue of years and pristine significance, stand the ruins of Little Silver Castle; the church comes next—an erection of the customary moorland pattern, with a ring of small, sweet-toned bells, and a crocketted tower, something too tall for its breadth; while, between these two, there stands an old-time manor-house—empty as the ruined castle at the date of this narrative; but more recently repaired for habitation. Here spread the familiar theatre of Mr. Brimblecombe's life. Every stone of the old fourteenth-century castle was familiar to him, and he delighted to take chance visitors of antiquarian taste upward by a winding stair into the time-fretted, ivy-mantled abode of the lords of Little Silver. Now the sky was its covering; the lancet windows, through which once frowned war-like faces behind crossbow, matchlock, or petronel, were the dwelling of a thousand soft green things and framed the innocent eyes of wild flowers; in the upper chamber rowans stood rooted upon old hearthstones; briar and many grasses, pellitory of the wall and blue speedwells superseded bygone mural tapestries; and where antlers of the red deer hung and brazen sconces for the torch aforetime sprang, there now rose the fronds of hart's-tongue and shield ferns, with tangle of woodbine and ivy and networks of rootlets that hid the mossy homes of wrens. Beneath the ruin there still existed a dungeon-vault, gloomy and granite-groined; yet, save for broken wall and stairway, perfect as when poor wretches mouldered there at the mercy of their feudal masters. Now not so much as one spectre of a vanished sufferer haunted the place; only the bats passed their sleeping hours among the arches of the roof, and hung from five-clawed hands, with sinister, wrapped wings—like little dusky cherubim that worship with veiled faces at some mystery-seat of evil.Mr. Brimblecombe was not concerned with castle or with church at the present time. His eye roamed forward to a ponderous mausoleum that lay amid lush grasses and rank, sappy, umbelliferous plants in a corner of the churchyard. A conical yew tree flanked each angle, and the larch, whereon a blackbird sang, extended high overhead. Here stood the vault of the Yeolands, and the last six generations of them slept within, for no further accommodation existed under the church flags, where earlier members of the race lay jowl to jowl with their historic enemies, the Prouzes. The family tomb was of granite, with white marble tablets upon three sides and a heavy metal door in the fourth or eastern face. Above grinned decoration of a sort, and the architect, following sepulture fashions at that date, had achieved a chaplet of marble skulls, which Time was toying with from year to year. Now their foreheads, their crowns, and occiputs were green and grimy; their eyes and jaws were stuffed with moss; trailing toad-flax crept out of their noses; and stray seeds, bird-planted, hung bright blossoms above them in summer-time.Hither came Brimblecombe, and his feet stamped over the graves of many more dead than the mounds of the churchyard indicated. A young man, the sexton's assistant, sat and smoked among the marble skulls, waiting for his master there; and now he rose, put out his pipe, and gave Noah "Good morning." A moment later the blackbird had fled with a string of sharp ejaculations, for a harsh note grated upon the air as the sexton turned his key in the Yeoland vault door. A flood of light from the risen sun streamed in where, "sealed from the moth and the owl and the flitter-mouse," lay the dead. A few giant woodlice rushed to concealment before this shattering incursion of sunshine, and other curling, crawling things made like haste to disappear. Then Brimblecombe's blinking eyes accommodated themselves to the inner gloom. Two ledges of slate lay on each side of the mortuary, and coffins, whose nails had long turned green, poked head and feet from rotting palls upon three of these. The place struck very cold, with a fungus smell. A few puny fragments of asplenium found life amid the interspaces of the stone-work and lived dismally in the dark where damp oozed and granite sweated. The fourth ledge bore a coffin that held Christopher Yeoland's father, and its pall had as yet resisted the decaying influences of this gloomy spot, for only a few round circles of mould dimmed the lustre of the velvet.It was the custom of the family that the last four of their dead should lie here upon these shelves; but now another needed his place and the most ancient of the four—a matron who had flourished in the first George's days—was to be deposed and lowered into the charnel below. Brimblecombe moved an iron grating in the floor; then, with his assistant's help, carried a slight and much tarnished shell to its place in the ultimate desolation beneath."'Tis awful how the watter gains down here," declared Noah. "Small wonder them ducks of Mother Libby's do graw to be so heavy. They gets the very cream an' fatness of the churchyard into 'em, an' 'tis a'most a cannibal act to eat 'em.""'Tis lucky this here gen'leman's last of his race seemin'ly," said the younger man, raising a candle above his head and spitting among the coffins; "for theer ban't no more room to bury a beetle. Full up above an' below by the look of it.""Last of his line—'tis so—an' comed of gude havage[#] as ever a man need to boast on. A poor end to such a high family. Just a worm stinged un an' he'm falled into lifeless dust, no better than the founder of the race. To think this heap o' rags an' bones be all that's left of a mighty folk as was."[#] Havage = ancestry."An' not a Yeoland left to carry on the name, they tell me.""Not wan, Sam Reed; not a single bud left to bloom. Auld tree be dead of sheer age, I reckon, for 'tis with families as with nations, as parson said 'pon the Sunday after auld Jarvis died. They rise up gradual an' slow to theer high-watter mark; then, gradual or fast, they tumble back into the dust wheer they started. All dust—nations an' men like you an' me—all draws our life an' power from dust—airth, or gold, or grass, or what not. An' awnly lookin' 'pon the whole story of a man or a family when 'tis told to the end, can you say wheer 'twas it reached the high-watter mark an' measure the sum weight of the gude or bad to be set against its name. Do you take me?"Young Reed nodded."In paart I do," he said."Very well, then. Now I be gwaine to my meal."Having made all ready for a new-comer, as yet upon the sea, Mr. Brimblecombe locked up the Yeoland vault again. He then walked to a rubbish heap at the back of the church behind the tower, there deposited the rags of a pall taken from the coffin that he had just deposed, and so returned home.At his door stood Stapledon, smoking a pipe before breakfast; indeed of late Myles had fallen much upon tobacco and the company of his horse and dogs. But neither narcotic nor the trustful eyes of the dumb animals he loved possessed power to lighten loads that now weighed upon his heart. They lay beyond the alleviation of drug or the affectionate regard of beasts. This sudden death had shocked him immeasurably, and in process of time he began to accuse himself of it and saddle his conscience with the self-same deed that Honor had instantly committed to her own account on hearing the ill tidings. Stapledon felt that he was sole cause of the disastrous catastrophe; that by blundering blindly into the united lives of this woman and man he had destroyed the one and blackened all the future days of the other. Before this spectacle, very real, very bitter contrition and self-accusation overwhelmed him. And that the lash fell vainly rendered its sting the greater. But he could not punish himself adequately, and at length even remorse fainted before the sure knowledge that Yeoland was beyond all reach of prayer or petition. Stapledon's was not a nature that could grieve for long over an evil beyond possibility of cure. In any sort of future he disbelieved; yet, if such existed, then there might be time in it for Christopher Yeoland to settle with him. Meanwhile, a living, suffering woman remained. He thought without ceasing of Honor, he asked himself by how much this event altered his duty with regard to her, and finally determined, through turmoil of sleepless nights and much torture of the mind, to do as he had already determined before this sad news came, and leave Bear Down when certain buildings were completed and the new stock purchased.For some weeks he had seen nothing of Honor, and purposely abstained from seeking her. Concerning her, however, he had learnt from Sally Cramphorn, who described how the mistress kept her room for two days from Easter Sunday, how she had then reappeared, dressed in mourning, and how that ever since she had spent most of her time with Mr. Endicott, and preserved an unusual silence. For nearly three weeks Honor did not pass beyond her garden; and this fact confirmed Stapledon in a suspicion that she had so acted and avoided the land to escape from sight of him. He felt such a desire natural in her, and only wondered that she had not known him well enough to rest assured he would not seek her or cross her path.Then he learned that the girl was going from home for a while to visit an aunt at Exeter; and, once assured of her departure, he hastened to Bear Down and won a lengthy conversation with Mark Endicott. Women were at work in the kitchen; so, setting down his needles and worsted, Mark walked out of doors, took the arm Myles offered, and moved with him slowly along the hillside. They spoke first of Christopher Yeoland."I can't believe it yet somehow. A man so full of life and possibilities, with all the world before him to do some good in. A sad death; a cruel death.""As to that, I don't know," answered the elder. "He's out of earshot of our opinions now, poor fellow; but I'm not ashamed to say behind his back what I told him to his face more than once. Never a man played a poorer game with his time. 'Tis the life of him looks sad and cruel to me—not the death.""So young as he was.""What's that? Only a woman would be soft enough to mourn there. 'Tisn't the years of a man's life that matter, but the manner of living 'em. The length of the thread's no part of our labour—only the spinning of it. He went—poor soul—but left no ball of yarn behind him—nought but a tangle of broken ends and aimless beginnings. 'Tis the moral sticking out of this I speak for—not to blame the man. God knows I don't judge him unkindly. My youth was no better spent—maybe not so well."Stapledon's mind continued to be occupied by the former figure."The spinning—yes, the spinning," he said. "That's a true saying; for, if you look at it, all life's much like a ropewalk, where we toil—walking backwards—with our faces turned away from fate.""Some are blind for choice—such as you," answered Mr. Endicott; "some judge they've got the light; some hope they have; some know they have. That last sort denies it to all but themselves, an' won't even let another soul carry a different pattern candlestick to their own. But a man may envy such high faith, for it's alive; it rounds the rough edges of life; sets folk at peace with the prospect of their own eternity; smooths the crumples in their deathbeds at the finish.""I don't know. I've never heard that your thorough-paced believers make a better end than other folks," Myles answered. "My small experience is that they regard death with far more concern and dread than the rudderless ones who believe the grave is the end.""That's only to say a fear of death's nature-planted and goes down deeper than dogma. Most makes of mind will always shrink from it, so long as life's good to live. Faith is a priceless treasure, say what you may, if a body has really got it. I'll maintain that so long as I can talk and think. The man who pretends he has it, and has not, carries his own punishment for that daily lie with him. For the Lord of the Blessings never could abide pretence. Take Him or leave Him; but don't play at being sheep of His fold for private ends. That's a game deserves worse damnation than most human baseness.""Yes, yes. Take Him as He is; and take what He brought, and be thankful. Lord of the Blessings! Isn't that a title high enough? But here's my thought and sure belief, uncle. The discovery called Christianity depended on no man, no single advent of a prophet, or poet, or saviour. It was a part of human nature always, a gold bred in the very heart's core of humanity. And Christ's part was to find the gold and bring it into the light. Burn your book; let the beautiful story go. It is ruined, worm-eaten, riddled by the centuries and follies and lies heaped upon it. Sweep your institutions all clean away and Christianity remains, a sublime discovery, the glorious, highest known possibility of man's mind towards goodness. Lord of the Blessings! What dogma intrudes amongst them to blind and blight and make our hearts ache? They are alive and eternal—as all that is true must be eternal. They were waiting—hidden in human hearts—left for a man to discover, not for a God to invent. Who cares for the old dead theories that explained rainbows and precious stones, and the colour of a summer-clad heath and the strength of the solid earth? We have the things themselves. And so with the message of Christ.""Wild man's talk," said Mark. "And quite out of your usual solid way of thought. There's more hid in the Rock of Ages than a vein of gold opened by a chance good man; but you and me won't argue on that, because we're not built to convince each other. With years may come light; Potter Time may mould a bit of faith into the fabric of even you presently; who can tell? But spin slow and sure, as you mostly do—look to the thread and see you leave no knot or kink behind as won't stand the strain that life may call it to bear any moment.""There's another thought rises from what you said; and I'll tell you why I'm on that morbid tack in a moment. You declare the length of the thread is out of our keeping, and that a mind will shrink naturally from death so long as life is good. But how many a poor fool does determine the length and cut the thread when life ceases to be good?""Determine the length they don't. They are the puppets, and when the string is pulled they make their bow and go off the scene—by their own hand, if it is to be.""Humanity holds suicide a crime now. Once, I learn, it was not so. Great heathen men destroyed themselves, yet do not lack marble statues for it. Only yesterday, as one might say, a man was cut off and buried at crossroads with a stake through his belly if he dared to die by his own hand. The Church recognises no shades of meaning in this matter, and so to-day, as often as not, a coroner's jury bleats out a solemn and deliberate lie—so that a man shall be buried with the blessing of the Church and rest in God's acre against the trump. But there's no greater piece of solemn humbug than that eternal verdict.""I thought much of these things when my eyes were put out. I have been on the brink myself, but 'twas ordained my thread should run. A man must be mad to destroy himself—mad or else a coward.""Most times cowardly perhaps," answered Myles. "But to be a coward is not to be a lunatic. Suicide is one of those matters we shut our eyes about—one of the things we won't face and thresh out, because the Church is so determined on the point. Not but a man may picture circumstances when a self-death would be a great deed. You may lay down your life for your friend in more ways than one. Such a thing can rise to greatness or sink to contempt according to the mainspring of the action. Some at least might think so, and that's why I'm on this subject. I feel a shadowy fear sometimes that Christopher Yeoland might have had some such fancy—would even have done such a crack-brained deed for love of Honor. I bid his friend be very plain with him and explain the gap that his going left in her life. I made it as clear as I had power to. Honor distinctly told me that she still loved him too well to marry any other man. That was all he had need to know, and I asked Clack to make Yeoland return to her on the strength of her confession.""And now he does.""How might he have argued when you consider his great love for her? Is it not possible that he thought so? Is it not possible that he said, 'I am the obstacle. Let me go beyond reach, and Honor—who still feels that nothing can wipe out our old understanding—will be in reality free?' Might he not reason in that way?"The old man shook his head."Not to the extent of blotting himself out by death. Had the cases been reversed, I could almost picture you destroying yourself, since your views are what they are. You might do it, worse luck—Yeoland never. Besides, what necessity? Such a course would be merely like a stage play under these circumstances.""But there was an inclination towards just that in him; towards a theatrical sort of way—unreal.""You read him like that. But he wasn't so superficial as he seemed to a man of your build of mind. You don't find Honor superficial? No—he wouldn't kill himself, because the necessity wouldn't appear from his point of view. As I say, you'd blunder into the act much sooner than Yeoland.""Not so at all. You misunderstand me.""Well, at least you can't see what would be easier and pleasanter, and answer the purpose just as well under our present civilisation. Consider. How stands the problem if Yeoland married somebody else? You'll find that meets the case at every point. I'm not belittling Yeoland. Who knows what chances of greatness there may have been hidden and lost in him? Life only calls into play a thousandth part of any man's powers during his brief tale of days, and most of us die full of possibilities unguessed even by ourselves, because the hazard never rose; but Yeoland's greatness, if greatness he had, would not have led him off the stage by that road. He didn't die willingly, I promise you. Come back he might have upon your message, if he had lived; or married he might have, even out of consideration for Honor's future. We'll allow him all the credit belonging to possibilities. Meantime, the only thing that we know beyond his death is a last wish expressed to Clack—a wish quite in keeping with his character.""To be brought home again.""Yes, the desire to rest his bones in Little Silver. Struck for death, the thought in his mind was not death, nor Honor, nor you. His love for the grass and the trees and the earth of his mother-land woke in him; dying, his heart turned to Godleigh and his own old roof-tree. The picture of the place was the last on his brain when all things were fading away."The other bowed his head; then he asked concerning Honor."It's hit her hard," answered Mark Endicott. "This sudden end of him has been a burnish on the glass of memory—polished it very bright. She has lived through the summer weather with him and talked fitfully of woodland walks by him, and chatter of birds, and shining of Teign, and cutting of letters on tree trunks. The glow and glory of love slowly growing in them—sad enough to look back on for those that love her.""Sad enough. And my share of the pain's all too light.""Who knows how much or how little you deserve? You were sent to play your part in her life. Just a bit of the machine. Change—change—change—that's the eternal law that twists the wheel and opens the womb; digs the grave and frets the name off the tombstone; gnaws away the stars; cools the sun in heaven and the first love of a young maid's heart. You brought something new into her life—for better or for worse. Something new and something true, as I think; but maybe truth's not always the right medicine at all hours. Anyhow change will work its own way with time and space and the things that belong to them. She was torn in half between you, and brave enough to make naked confession of it. That proclaimed her either a greater character than we thought once, or a poorer thing every way—according to the mind that views the case.""I didn't know such a tangle could happen.""Every sort of tangle can happen where men and women are concerned. Not that she's not a puzzle to me, too, every hour. She has gone now for a while to Exeter. I advised that she should bide there until after the funeral, but she scorned the thought. 'I'm chief mourner in truth, if not in name,' she said; and so she will be. Time must do the rest.""The last resource of the wretched.""And the best to be relied on.""I can only hope to God she's not to be unhappy for ever.""She gets her happiness, like a bee gets honey—here, there, everywhere, by fits and snatches. Too quick to see the inner comedy of human affairs to be unhappy for ever, or happy for long. And what are you going to do, Myles?""I thought to go for good—yes, for good this time.""Couldn't do better. She will read you into these chapters of her life. Can't help it. But Time's on your side too, though you slight him. And this, at least, you'll remember: if she wants you to come back, she won't hesitate to let you know it."CHAPTER XVII.SPRING ON SCOR HILLOften it happens that small matters demand lengthy spaces in time for their development, while affairs of import and interests involving high changes are carried through at comet speed upon the crest of some few splendid or terrible moments. Thus did concerns of note to those playing a part of their history under our eyes tumble unexpectedly to the top, and an event take place wholly unforeseen by Myles Stapledon, though predicted and prophesied for a more or less remote future by Uncle Endicott. For this surprise one woman was responsible.Honor returned from Exeter in time to be present at Christopher Yeoland's funeral; and with her she bore a fair wreath of Eucharis lilies, which Mr. Brimblecombe consigned to a rubbish heap behind the church tower as soon as her back was turned, because he held flowers out of place on the coffin of quality. Those now occupying Godleigh for a term of years gladly allowed the recent possessor to pass his last night among men beneath that roof, and not a few folk representative of the district attended the obsequies in person or by proxy. So Christopher Yeoland was laid upon his shelf of slate, and Doctor Courteney Clack, for the benefit of such as cared to listen, told how a whip snake, falling from a tree, had fastened upon the dead man's neck, and how, with few words and one wish to be buried at home, he had quickly passed away under the poison.So that chapter closed at the mausoleum, whose guardian cherubs were moss-grown skulls; and day followed day, month succeeded upon month, into the time of early summer; of misty silver nights and shining noons; of warm rain and steaming fields; of the music of life from birds' throats; of the scent of life in the chalices of bluebells; of the very heart-beat and pulse of life under the glades of green woods and beside the banks of Teign.Then, in a June day's shape, Time, of many disguises, began his work with Honor Endicott. A revulsion followed the gloom that had passed and pressed upon her; she mourned still, but for choice in the sunshine; and, growing suddenly athirst for the river and the manifold life that dwelt upon the brink of it, she took her rod as an excuse, passed upward alone, descended Scor Hill, and pursued her way eastward to a lonely glen where Teign winds into the woods of Godleigh. Many fair things broke bud about her, and in secret places the splendour of summer made ready. Soon the heather would illuminate these wastes and the foxgloves carry like colour aloft on countless steeples of purple bells; soon woodbine and briar would wreathe the granite, and little pearly clusters of blossom spring aloft from the red sundews in the marsh; while the king fern already spread his wide fronds above the home of the trout, and the brake fern slowly wove his particular green into the coombs and hills.Despite a sure conviction that melancholy must henceforth encompass her every waking hour, Honor Endicott was not armed against the magic of this blue and golden day. She could fish with a fly, and that skilfully; and now, before the fact that a brisk rise dimpled and dappled the river, passing temptations to kill a trout wakened and were not repulsed. She set up her rod, and by chance mused as she did so upon Myles Stapledon. Him she had not seen for many days, but her regard had not diminished before his abstention. Indeed she appreciated it up to a point, though now it began to irk her. She did not know that he was about to depart definitely; for Mark Endicott had deemed it unnecessary to mention the fact.At her third cast Honor got a good rise, and hooked a fish which began its battle for life with two rushes that had done honour to a heavier trout. Then it leapt out of the water, showed itself to be a half-pounder or thereabout, and headed up stream with a dozen frantic devices to foul the line in snag or weed. But Honor was mistress of the situation, turned the fish with the current, and, keeping on the deadly strain, soon wearied it. Then she wound in the line steadily, steered her victim to a little shelving backwater, and so, having no net, lifted the trout very gently out of its element on to the grass. Flushed with excitement, and feeling, almost against her will, that she was young, Honor gazed down upon gasping fario, admired the clean bulk of him, his fierce eye, dark olive back spotted with ebony and ruby, the lemon light along his plump sides, his silver belly, perfect proportions, and sweet smell. He heaved, opened his gills, sucked deep at the empty air, and protested at this slow drowning with a leap and quiver of suffering; whereupon, suddenly moved at thought of what this trout had done for her, Honor picked him up and put him back into the water, laughing to herself and at herself the while. After a gulp or two, strength returned to the fish, and like an arrow, leaving a long ripple over the shallow, he vanished back to the deep sweet water and his own sweet life.Other trout were not so fortunate, however, and by noon, at which time all rise ceased, the angler had slain above half a dozen and was weary of slaughter. She fished up stream, and had now reached the tolmen—a great perforated stone that lies in the bed of Teign near Wallabrook's confluence with it. And resting here awhile, she saw the figure of Myles Stapledon as he approached the river from a farm on the other side. The homestead of Batworthy, where it nestles upon the confines of the central waste, and peeps, with fair silver thatches, above its proper grove, shall be seen surrounded by heather and granite. The river babbles at its feet, and on every side extends Dartmoor to the high tors—north, south, and west. From hence came Myles Stapledon, after gathering certain information from a kindly colleague; and now he strode across the stream and on to within ten yards of Honor, yet failed to see her, where she sat motionless half hidden by ferns and grasses. He moved along, deep plunged in his own thoughts, and she determined to let him pass, until something in the weary, haggard look of him tempted her to change her mind. He was lonely—lonelier than she; he had nobody to care about him, and all his life to be lived. Perhaps, despite these sentimental thoughts, she had suffered him to go, but one circumstance decided her: on the arm of his workaday coat appeared a band of black. And, guessing something of his recent tribulations, she lifted her voice and called him."Myles! Why do you avoid me?"He started and slipped a foot, but recovered instantly, turned, and approached her. His face betokened surprise and other emotion."How good of you to call me—how kind. I did not know that you were out on the Moor, or within a mile of this place. Else I would have gone back another way.""That's not very friendly, I think. I don't bite.""I thought—but like all thoughts of mine, though I've wasted hours on it, nothing was bred from it. At least I may accompany you back. It was most kind to call me. And most strange and culpable of me not to see you."She noticed his gratitude, and it touched her a little."I've killed eight trout," she said; "one nearly three-quarters of a pound.""A grand fish. I will carry them for you. Fine weather to-day and the summer really at the door.""It was thoughtful of you to keep away, Myles. I appreciated that.""I should have gone clean and haunted the land no further; but there was much to do. Now all is done, and I'm glad of this chance to tell you so. I can really depart now. You'll think it a cry of 'Wolf!' and doubt my strength to turn my back on Bear Down again; but go I must at last."She was reflecting with lightning rapidity. That he meant what he said she did not doubt. The news, indeed, was hardly unexpected; yet it came too suddenly for her peace of mind. There existed a side to this action in which she had an interest. Indeed with her might lie the entire future of him, if she willed it so. Decisions now cried to be made, and while even that morning they had looked afar off, vague, nebulous as need be, now they rushed up from the horizon of the future to the very zenith of the present. Yet she could not decide thus instantly, so temporised and asked idle questions to gain time."Of what were you thinking when I saw you cross the river with your head so low?" she asked, and hoped that his answer might help her. But nothing was further from his mind than the matter in hers. He answered baldly—"My head was bent that I might see my way on the stepping-stones. As to my thoughts, I only had a muddled idea about the season and the green things—friends and foes—all growing together at the beginning of the race—all full of youth and sap and trust—so to speak; and none seeing any danger in the embrace of his companion. Look at that pest, the beautiful bindweed. It breaks out of the earth with slender fingers, weak as a baby's, yet it grows into a cruel, soft, choking thing of a thousand hands—more dangerous to its neighbour than tiger to man—a garotter, a Thug, a traitor that hangs out lovely bells and twines its death into fair festoons that it may hide the corpse of its own strangling.""And then?""That was all my thought. Yet I seemed to feel akin to the plant myself.""Something has changed you since we dropped out of one another's lives. Fancy a practical farmer mooning over such nonsense! Bindweed can be pulled up and burnt—even if it's growing in your heart.""How like you to say that! It is good to me to hear your voice again, Honor.""Take down my rod then, and tell me why you are going. Half of Endicott's is your own.""I thought—I believed that you would be happier if I did so. And I still suspect that is the case. I owe you deeper reparation than ever a man owed a woman.""You are too good, but your goodness becomes morbid.""I'm only a clumsy fool, and never knew how clumsy or how much a fool until I met you.""No, I say you are really good. Goodness is a matter of temperament, not morals. Some of the most God-fearing, church-going people I know can't be good; some of the worst people I ever heard about—even frank heathens like yourself—can't be bad. There's a paradox for you to preach about!"But he shook his head."Your mind's too quick for me. Yet I think I know what you mean. By 'goodness' and 'badness' you signify a nature sympathetic or otherwise. It's all a question of selfishness at bottom.""But the day looks too beautiful for such talk," answered Honor."So it is; I don't desire to talk of anything. You can't guess what it is to me to hear your voice again—just the music of it. It intoxicates me, like drink.""You're dreaming; and, besides, you're going away."The light died out of his face, and they walked together in silence a few paces. Then the girl's mind established itself, and her love was a large factor in that decision, though not the only one. She determined upon a course of action beyond measure unconventional, but that aspect of the deed weighed most lightly with her.They were passing over the face of Scor Hill when she turned to the left, where stood that ancient monument of the past named Scor Hill Circle."I'm going down to the old ring," she said; "I've a fancy to visit it."He followed without speech, his mind occupied by a frosty picture of their last visit to the same spot. Now it basked under sunlight, and spring had touched both the splinters of granite and the lonely theatre in which they stood. Upon the weathered planes of the stones were chased quaint patterns and beads of moss, together with those mystic creatures of ochre and ebony, grey and gold, that suck life from air and adamant and clothe the dry bones of Earth with old Time's livery.Upon a fallen stone in the midst, where young heather sprouted in tufts and cushions, Honor sat down awhile; and seeing that she remained silent, Myles uttered some platitudes concerning the spot and the ceremonies of heathen ritual, state, or sacrifice that had aforetime marked it. The upright stones surrounded them where they sat beside a sort of central altar of fading furze. The giant block of the circle stood on the north of its circumference, and upon more than one of the unshaped masses were spots rubbed clean by beasts and holding amid their incrustations red hairs of cattle, or flecks of wool from the fleeces of the flocks. Even now a heifer grazed upon the grass within the circle; its herd roamed below; round about the valley rose old familiar tors; while sleepy summer haze stole hither and thither upon the crowns of Watern and Steeperton, and dimmed the huge bulk of Cosdon Beacon where it swelled towards the north."When did we last come here?" began Honor suddenly."On the day of the snowstorm.""Ah, yes. We were riding, and stopped a moment here. Why?"Stapledon looked at her, then turned his head away."If you have forgotten, it is good," he said."What did I say to that great question, Myles?""Spare me that, Honor. I have been punished enough.""Don't generalise. What did I say?""That you could marry neither of us—neither Yeoland nor me—out of consideration for the other.""And you gasped when you heard it; and I kept my word. Now the pity is that you must keep yours.""Mine?""Never to ask again what I would not give then.""Honor!""Hush. Don't break your word for such a trifle as a wife. I'm accustomed to doing unmaidenly, horrible things, so this doesn't hurt me as much as it would a proper-thinking, proper-feeling woman. I love you; I always have loved you since I knew you. And I suppose you love me still—more or less. He who has gone—has gone. There will never be another Christo for me, Myles. You cannot take his place; and if you were dead and he was alive, he could never have taken yours. That's my peculiarly deranged attitude. But here I sit, and I should like to be your wife, because life is short and a woman's a fool to throw away good love and starve herself when plenty is offered."Stapledon's dog looked up from his seat on the heather, barked and wagged his tail, knowing that his master was happy; and the heifer, startled by these canine expressions of delight and sudden ejaculations uttered aloud in a man's deep voice, flung up her hind legs wildly and cutting cumbrous capers, to indicate that she too appreciated the romance of the moment, shambled away from the grey circle to join her companions in the valley below.CHAPTER XVIII.ROSES AND ROSETTES"Us'll go down-long awver the plough-path; then us'll be in full time to see the butivul bride arrive," said Tommy Bates. He stood in Sunday attire among his betters, and the sobriety of much black broadcloth was brightened by unusual adornment, for Cramphorn, Ash, Collins, Pinsent, and the rest were decorated with large rosettes of satin ribbon. Many also wore roses in their buttonholes, for one of Stapledon's few friends was a big rose-grower at Torquay, who, from the abundance of his scented acres, had despatched countless blooms—crimson and cream, snow-white, ivory and orange-yellow, pink and regal purple—to brighten a glorious day.But in the judgment of Ash and the elders no flower of cultivation could compare in significance or beauty with the sham sprigs of orange-blossom at the centre of the rosettes. Churdles himself also carried a bulky parcel in the tail of his coat, which added another protuberance to his gnarled form. It was not a prayer-book, as he gave Collins to understand with many nods and winks.The party stood upon the grass plot before Bear Down—a space separated from the main great grass lands of the farm. These latter subtended the level ground and swelled and billowed under waves of colourless light that raced free as the wind over another year's hay harvest. Far beneath, just visible above a green hedge between elms, four small peaks arose and a White Ensign fluttered from a flagstaff in the midst, where stood the village church.Mr. Cramphorn and his friends set forth and improved the occasion with reflections upon what would follow the wedding, rather than in much consideration of the ceremony itself."They be gwaine straight off from the church door," said Mr. Ash, "an' so they'll miss the fun of the fair up-long, though 'tis theer money as'll furnish the junketings. A braave rally of neighbours comin' to eat an' drink an' be merry by all accounts; an' not a stroke more'n milkin' cows an' feedin' things to be done to-day by man or woman.""They ought to bide to the eating whether or no," said Mr. Cramphorn. "An' I be gwaine to tell a speech, though they'll be half ways to Exeter before I does. I hold it my duty. She'm the best mistress an' kindest woman in the world to my knawledge, an' my gift o' words shan't be denied at her solemn weddin' feast, whether she be theer or whether she han't."Mr. Collins applauded these sentiments, for his private ambitions were strong at heart under the rosy atmosphere of the hour."I lay you'll tell some gude talk come bimebye," he said. "'Tis a gert power—same as the gift of tongues in the Bible seemin'ly.""Theer'll be some plum drinkin' by all accounts," said Mr. Ash, pouting up his little wrinkled mouth in cheerful anticipation. "Brown sherry wine for us, an' fizzy yellow champagne an' auld black port for the quality. An' it's a secret hope of mine, if I ban't tu bowldacious in thinkin' such a thing, as I may get a thimbleful of the auld wine—port—so dark as porter but butivul clear wi' it, an' a sure finder of a man's heart-strings. I be awful set upon a sup of that. I've longed for fifty years to taste it, if so be I might wi'out offence. It have been my gert hope for generations; an' if it awnly comes 'pon my death-bed I'll thank the giver, though 'twould be a pleasanter thing to drink it in health.""I seed larder essterday," said Tommy Bates. "My stars! The auld worm-eaten shelves of un be fairly bent.""Purty eating, no doubt," assented Cramphorn, though as one superior to such things."Ess fay! Fantastic pastry, more like to cloam ornaments for the mantelshelf than belly-timber. God knaws how they'll scat 'em apart.""Each has its proper way of bein' broke up," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Theer's manners an' customs in all this. Some you takes a knife to, some a fork, some a spoon. The bettermost takes a knife even to a apple or pear.""Things a lookin' out o' jellies, an' smothered in sugar an' transparent stuff! I'd so easy tell the stars as give a name to half of 'em. But theer was a pineapple—I knawed un by seein' his picksher in the auld Bible, where Joseph was givin' his brothers a spread. But they didn't have no such pies an' red lobsters as be waitin' up-long. Such a huge gert cake 'tis! All snow-white, an' crawled awver wi' silver paper, an' a li'l naked doll 'pon top wi' blue eyes an' gawld wings to un. A pixy doll you might say.""Her ought to bide an' cut that cake herself, not dash away from church as though she'd done murder 'stead of praiseworthy matrimony," grumbled Mr. Cramphorn. "'Tis defying the laws of marryin' and givin' in marriage. Theer may be trouble to it presently.""If they'm both of a mind, they'll do what they please," said Collins."Ay, an' 'twon't hurt none of us, nor make the vittles an' drinks less sweet," declared Samuel Pinsent."That's truth," assented Gaffer Ash; "an' when you come to be my ripe years, Jonah, you'll go limpin' to meet the li'l pleasures that be left to 'e half-way, 'stead of fearin' evil. As for the pains—fegs! they meets you half-way!""'Twill be a happy marriage, I should reckon," ventured Pinsent."We'll pray it will be, though he'm a thought tu deep in love for my money," declared Cramphorn."Can a man love his maiden more'n enough?" asked Henry Collins in amazement; and the other answered that it might be so."Love be well knawn for a mole-blind state, Henery—a trick of Nature to gain her awn ends; an' the sooner new-fledged man an' wife see straight again better for their awn peace of mind. Maister Myles be a shade silly here and theer, though Lard knaws if ever a man's to be forgiven for gettin' his head turned 'tis him. A marvellous faace an' shape to her. But ban't the wise way to dote. She'm a human woman, without disrespect; and her sawl's to save like poorer folk. In plain English, he'll spoil her.""Couldn't—no man could," said Mr. Ash stoutly. "To think of a sovereign to each of us, an' two to me by reason of my ancient sarvice!""You've toiled 'pon the land for a fearsome number of years, I s'pose, Maister Ash?" asked Tommy respectfully."Me? I was doin' man's work in the reign of the Fourth Gearge. I've ate many an' many a loaf o' barley bread, I have; an' seed folks ride pillion; an' had a woman behind me, on the auld-fashion saddles, myself, for that matter. An', as for marriage, though I never used it, I've seed scores o' dozens o' marriages—sweet an' sour. Marriages be like bwoys playin' leapfrog, wheer each lad have got to rucksey down in turn; an' so man an' wife have got to rucksey down wan to t'other at proper times an' seasons. Each must knaw theer awn plaace in the house; an' Mrs. Loveys was right, when us gived 'em the cannel-sticks for a gift. You call home how she said, 'I wish 'e patience wan wi' t'other, my dearies, 'cause theer ban't nothin' more useful or more like to be wanted 'bout the house o' newly married folk than that!'"The party now mingled with those already assembled in Little Silver. A crowd drawn from Throwley, Chagford, and elsewhere stood and admired flags that waved between green-garlanded poles at the churchyard gate. Many passed from the hot sunshine into the shadow of the holy building; many had already entered it."Us'll bide here till our brows be cool an' she've a-come. Then us'll go in an' sit usual plaace, left side o' the alley," said Mr. Cramphorn.Presently Myles Stapledon appeared, and a hum of friendship rose for him. He looked somewhat anxious, was clad in a grey suit, white waistcoat, and a white tie with his solitary jewel in it—an old carbuncle set in gold that had belonged to his father and adorned that gentleman's throat or finger on the occasion of his marriage. In the bridegroom's buttonhole was a red rosebud, and now and again his hand went nervously across to an inner pocket, where reposed the money for the honeymoon. He walked to the vestry, made certain entries in the book spread open for him, and presented Mr. Scobell with two guineas. He then entered a choir stall and sat down there, facing the eyes of the increasing company without visible emotion.Outside came stroke of horse-hoofs and grinding of wheels. Then entered an ancient aunt of the bridegroom's with her two elderly daughters. A second carriage held Honor's relatives from Exeter, and a third contained Mrs. Loveys and Sally and Margaret Cramphorn; for it was Honor's wish that her serving-maids should be her bridesmaids also, and she knew none of her sex who loved her better. Each had a bouquet of roses; each wore a new dress and now waited at the entrance for their mistress, with many a turn and twist, perk of head, and soft rustle from the new gowns. The eyes of Mr. Collins watered as he beheld Sally, and his huge breast rose, heaved up by mountainous sighs. Meantime, she had secretly handed a rosette to Mr. Greg Libby, who, in company of his old mother, adorned the gathering; and Margery too, at the first opportunity, presented the young man with a rosette. Thus it came about that Gregory gloried in dual favours and attached both to his marriage garment; whereupon two maiden hearts under dove-coloured raiment were filled with emotions most unsisterly, and all men, save one, laughed at the luck of the gilded hedge-tacker.The glory of Little Silver church centres in an ancient screen of many colours. Upon it shall be found elaborate interlacing of blue and gold, pale blue and dark crimson; while through the arches of it may be seen the Lord's Table under a granite reredos. Pulpit and lectern are also of the good grey stone, and to-day a riot of roses that made the little place of worship very sweet climbed the old pillars and clustered in the deep embrasures of the windows. The walls, painted with red distemper, ascended to a waggon roof; and upon pews, where the humble living stood or knelt above dust of noble dead, frank daylight entered through plain glass windows.Along the base of the ornate screen stood figures of the saints mechanically rendered, and about one, standing upon the right hand of the choir entrance, there twined a text that indicated this figure stood for John the Baptist. "The voice of one crying in the wilderness" were those graven words; and now by chance they caught a pair of downcast eyes, as Honor Endicott bent her young head and passed onward from independence into the keeping of a man.She came with her uncle, and those in church rose amid mighty rustlings and clink of iron-shod boots, and those outside crowded into their places. A little harmonium groaned gallantly, and Mr. Scobell billowed up the aisle from the vestry. Honor walked to meet Myles with her hand holding Mark Endicott's. At the steps, under the screen, she stopped for him to feel the step, and as she did so caught sight of the text. Then a big, florid face, with the plainest admiration exhibited upon it, met her gaze, and she also became dimly conscious of a tall, grey man at her right elbow. The florid face belonged to Mr. Scobell, who, recollecting himself and chastening his features, frowned at the back of the church, and began the ceremony. But the grey man was waiting for her, longing for her, "to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish," until death should part them.Yet the text—that voice in the wilderness—haunted her mind all the while, as it is the way with irrelevant ideas to intrude upon high moments. Presently Honor put her hand into her husband's, felt the gold slip over her finger, and marvelled to feel how much heavier this ring was than the little toy of diamond and pearl she had been wearing of late. Then all was accomplished, and Mr. Ash and his friends quite drowned the squeak and gasp of a Wedding March, with which the vicar's daughter wrestled upon the harmonium; for they all clattered out of church and drew up in a double line outside along the pathway. Churdles then produced his mysterious packet and exhibited a bag of rice. This was opened, and old, tremulous hands, knotted and veined like ivy-vines upon an oak, flung the grain as lustily as young plump ones, while man and wife came forth to face the benignant shower.At the gate two stout greys and an old postillion—relic of days flown—were waiting to take Myles and his lady to Okehampton for the London train. Mark Endicott, led by Tommy Bates, stood at the carriage door; and now he felt warm lips on his blind face and a tear there."Be a good uncle," whispered Honor; "and don't weary your dear hands too much for those Brixham fishermen. Home we shall come again in a month; and how I'm going to do without you for so long, or you without me, I can't guess."He squeezed her hands, and for once the old Spartan was dumb."God bless 'e!""Long life an' happiness to 'e!""Good luck to the both of 'e!"Then a jumble and buzz of many speaking together; lifting of voices into a cheer; a gap in the road, where the carriage had stood; a puff of dust at the corner by the old pound; and courageous fowls, clucking and fluttering and risking their lives for scattered rice, among crushed roses and the legs of the people.The bells rang out; the dust died down; personages drove slowly up the hill to the banquet; certain persons walked up. Mr. Cramphorn, fearful of a love contagion in the air, convoyed his daughters home himself, and Libby, growing faint-hearted before the expression on Jonah's face, abandoned his design of walking by Sally's side for half the distance and with Margery for the rest. Henry Collins was also deprived of the society he craved, and by ill-fortune it chanced that Ash, Pinsent, and the two rivals found themselves in company on the journey home. Collins thereupon relieved his wounded soul by being extremely rude, and he began with a personal remark at the expense of Gregory's best coat and emerald tie."All black an' green, I see—mourning for the devil that is," he said, in a tone not friendly."Aw! Be he dead then?" inquired Mr. Libby with great show of interest."Not while the likes of you's stirrin'. An' what for do 'e want to make a doomshaw of yourself—wearin' two rosettes, like a Merry Andrew, when other men have but wan?""Grapes are sour with you, I reckon, Henery. You see I puts this here left bow just awver my 'eart, 'cause Sally Cramphorn gived it to me."Collins blazed into a fiery red, and a fist of huge proportions clenched until the knuckles grew white."Have a care," he said, "or I'll hit 'e awver the jaw! Such a poor penn'orth as you to set two such gals as them by the ears!""Who be you to threaten your betters? You forget as I'm a man wi' money in the bank, an' you ban't.""Ah, so I did then," confessed Collins frankly. "I did forget; but they didn't. Keep your rosettes. 'Tis your gert store o' money winned 'em—same as bullock, not farmer, gets the ribbons at Christmas fair. So, every way, it's dam little as you've got to be proud of!"Mr. Libby became inarticulate before this insult. He rolled and rumbled horrible threats in his cleft palate, but they were not intelligible, and Collins, striding forward, left him in the rear and joined Gaffer Ash and Pinsent, who dwelt peaceably on the joys to come."A talk of moosicians there was," said Samuel."Right. The Yeomany band to play 'pon the lawn. An' gude pleasure, tu, for them as likes brass moosic.""How Maister Stapledon girned like a cat when the rice went down onderneath his clean collar!""Ess, he did; 'twas a happy thought of mine.""What's the value or sense in it I doan't see all the same," objected Collins, whose day had now suffered eclipse. "'Pears to me 'tis a silly act whether or no.""That shaws how ill you'm learned in affairs," answered Mr. Ash calmly. "The meanin' of rice at a weddin's very well knawn by onderstandin' men. 'Tis thrawed to ensure fruitfulness an' a long family. A dark branch of larnin', I grant 'e; but for all that I've awnly knawed it fail wance; an' then 'twern't no fault of the magic."But Henry had been taught to regard a full quiver as no blessing."If that's what you done it for, 'twas a cruel unfriendly act," he declared, "an' I stands up an' sez so, auld as you be. Devil's awn wicked self caan't wish no worse harm to a innocent young pair than endless childer. I knaw—who better?—being wan o' thirteen myself; an' if I heard that was the use of it, not a grain would I have thrawed at 'em for money."Churdles blinked, but was quite unmoved."You speak as a bachelor, my son, not to say as a fule. Black dog's got 'pon your shoulder this marnin'. A pity tu, for 'tis a perspiring day wi'out temper. No rough language to-day. All peace an' plencheousness; an' a glass o' black port, please God. Us'll feast wi' thankful hearts; an' then go forth an' sit 'pon the spine-grass in the garden an' smoke our pipes an' listen to the moosickers in the butivul sunshine.""'Pears to me," said Gregory Libby, who had now rejoined them, "that you chaps o' Endicott's did ought to give some return for all this guzzling an' holiday making.""Theer you'm wrong, as you mostly be, Greg," answered old Ash with a serene smile, "for 'tis awnly a small mind caan't take a favour wi'out worrittin' how to return it."
Below, in the kitchen, all Bear Down assembled about breakfast. Then Mark Endicott told the company this news, and unutterable glances passed between Ash, Cramphorn, and Collins.
"You'd best to keep dumb 'bout your share, Jonah," muttered Churdles under his breath, with round eyes that indicated aversion. "I wouldn't say the law mightn't overget 'e, if it knawed."
"As to that, I fear nothin', an' the tears I shed won't drown a midge," answered the other in a defiant whisper. "I've forgived his wrong; forget it I never shall."
Collins was busy telling Sally and Margery of the spectral rabbit.
"An' 'tis plain the ill-convenient beast didn't run for nought. Who shall laugh at such deeds now? Not the vainest man amongst us," he concluded.
"Him of all to go!" sighed Mrs. Loveys; "an' when us thinks of what might have been an' how one short word will make or mar a life——"
Then a question from Margery as to where Tom Bates might be was answered by the sudden appearance of that youth, and Mrs. Loveys, with a mind somewhat overwrought, found outlet for emotion in an attack upon him.
"Doan't 'e knaw the hour for eatin', you ugly li'l twoad?" she demanded sharply. "An' to come to the table in such a jakes of a mess tu! You ought to be shamed."
But the boy paid no heed. He returned breathless with a comforting discovery, and now cried it aloud to his companions of the morning.
"'Tis all right," he said; "no call for no upstore nor trouble at all. That theer white bastey I mean. I followed un half a mile to the furze meadows down-long to make sartain, then I lost un, an' presently if I didn't see un again—wi' a young rabbit he'd catched! Nought but that baggerin' auld ram cat as they've got to Creber Farm!"
"Quiet! you young fule!" said Mr. Cramphorn roughly; "shut your mouth, will 'e? or I'll scat 'e awver the ear-hole! You to pit your green brains against our ripe wans! A man be dead, an' so 'tis sartain us seed what us seed."
"Sartain as doom us seed what us seed," echoed Gaffer Ash, "for a man be dead."
CHAPTER XVI.
A SHELF OF SLATE
A blackbird, with sleepy notes and sad, warbled in a green larch at dawn; and the pathos proper to his immemorial song was well suited to the scene. For the larch raised her lovely foliage, begemmed with rubies, above many graves in the burying-place of Little Silver; and a streamlet also murmured there, uttering a sort of purring harmony that mingled with the contralto of the bird. From an ivy-tod, at hand in the grave-yard hedge, bright eyes peeped and the mother, with head and tail alone visible and sooty-brown body pressed close upon four eggs, listened to her lord. Elsewhere a man also heard the music, but heeded it not. He stood at his house door, yawned and sniffed the morning; while his whitewashed walls that faced the east were warmed into a glowing melon colour, and sunshine wove golden threads along the ancient straw of the thatch above.
Noah Brimblecombe, the sexton, was a man of middle age, with grey whiskers, clean-shaved lips and chin, a strong mouth, and a reflective forehead. His back had grown rounded by digging of graves from early manhood, and the nature of his life's labours appeared in a tinge of gloom that marked his views. He passed through the world with an almost morbid severity in his disparagement of all mundane concerns, triumphs or possessions. The man now stood and fixed his small grey eyes upon the church, but little more than a hundred yards distant. Then, bearing great keys in one hand, an inch or two of candle in the other, he proceeded to the burying-ground upon an errand connected with his calling.
Little Silver is a hamlet of almost beggarly simplicity. In the midst stands a trinity of three great buildings beneath the bosom of a hill; certain ruined barns, with a few thatched cots and a pound, embrace the remainder of the village; while a duck-pond outside the churchyard gate, orchard lands sloping to the valleys beneath, a little winding road and a stone wall, beside which grow yellow bullace plums, complete the picture. Variety in form and wide divergence in point of age characterise the central features of this spot. Paramount, by virtue of years and pristine significance, stand the ruins of Little Silver Castle; the church comes next—an erection of the customary moorland pattern, with a ring of small, sweet-toned bells, and a crocketted tower, something too tall for its breadth; while, between these two, there stands an old-time manor-house—empty as the ruined castle at the date of this narrative; but more recently repaired for habitation. Here spread the familiar theatre of Mr. Brimblecombe's life. Every stone of the old fourteenth-century castle was familiar to him, and he delighted to take chance visitors of antiquarian taste upward by a winding stair into the time-fretted, ivy-mantled abode of the lords of Little Silver. Now the sky was its covering; the lancet windows, through which once frowned war-like faces behind crossbow, matchlock, or petronel, were the dwelling of a thousand soft green things and framed the innocent eyes of wild flowers; in the upper chamber rowans stood rooted upon old hearthstones; briar and many grasses, pellitory of the wall and blue speedwells superseded bygone mural tapestries; and where antlers of the red deer hung and brazen sconces for the torch aforetime sprang, there now rose the fronds of hart's-tongue and shield ferns, with tangle of woodbine and ivy and networks of rootlets that hid the mossy homes of wrens. Beneath the ruin there still existed a dungeon-vault, gloomy and granite-groined; yet, save for broken wall and stairway, perfect as when poor wretches mouldered there at the mercy of their feudal masters. Now not so much as one spectre of a vanished sufferer haunted the place; only the bats passed their sleeping hours among the arches of the roof, and hung from five-clawed hands, with sinister, wrapped wings—like little dusky cherubim that worship with veiled faces at some mystery-seat of evil.
Mr. Brimblecombe was not concerned with castle or with church at the present time. His eye roamed forward to a ponderous mausoleum that lay amid lush grasses and rank, sappy, umbelliferous plants in a corner of the churchyard. A conical yew tree flanked each angle, and the larch, whereon a blackbird sang, extended high overhead. Here stood the vault of the Yeolands, and the last six generations of them slept within, for no further accommodation existed under the church flags, where earlier members of the race lay jowl to jowl with their historic enemies, the Prouzes. The family tomb was of granite, with white marble tablets upon three sides and a heavy metal door in the fourth or eastern face. Above grinned decoration of a sort, and the architect, following sepulture fashions at that date, had achieved a chaplet of marble skulls, which Time was toying with from year to year. Now their foreheads, their crowns, and occiputs were green and grimy; their eyes and jaws were stuffed with moss; trailing toad-flax crept out of their noses; and stray seeds, bird-planted, hung bright blossoms above them in summer-time.
Hither came Brimblecombe, and his feet stamped over the graves of many more dead than the mounds of the churchyard indicated. A young man, the sexton's assistant, sat and smoked among the marble skulls, waiting for his master there; and now he rose, put out his pipe, and gave Noah "Good morning." A moment later the blackbird had fled with a string of sharp ejaculations, for a harsh note grated upon the air as the sexton turned his key in the Yeoland vault door. A flood of light from the risen sun streamed in where, "sealed from the moth and the owl and the flitter-mouse," lay the dead. A few giant woodlice rushed to concealment before this shattering incursion of sunshine, and other curling, crawling things made like haste to disappear. Then Brimblecombe's blinking eyes accommodated themselves to the inner gloom. Two ledges of slate lay on each side of the mortuary, and coffins, whose nails had long turned green, poked head and feet from rotting palls upon three of these. The place struck very cold, with a fungus smell. A few puny fragments of asplenium found life amid the interspaces of the stone-work and lived dismally in the dark where damp oozed and granite sweated. The fourth ledge bore a coffin that held Christopher Yeoland's father, and its pall had as yet resisted the decaying influences of this gloomy spot, for only a few round circles of mould dimmed the lustre of the velvet.
It was the custom of the family that the last four of their dead should lie here upon these shelves; but now another needed his place and the most ancient of the four—a matron who had flourished in the first George's days—was to be deposed and lowered into the charnel below. Brimblecombe moved an iron grating in the floor; then, with his assistant's help, carried a slight and much tarnished shell to its place in the ultimate desolation beneath.
"'Tis awful how the watter gains down here," declared Noah. "Small wonder them ducks of Mother Libby's do graw to be so heavy. They gets the very cream an' fatness of the churchyard into 'em, an' 'tis a'most a cannibal act to eat 'em."
"'Tis lucky this here gen'leman's last of his race seemin'ly," said the younger man, raising a candle above his head and spitting among the coffins; "for theer ban't no more room to bury a beetle. Full up above an' below by the look of it."
"Last of his line—'tis so—an' comed of gude havage[#] as ever a man need to boast on. A poor end to such a high family. Just a worm stinged un an' he'm falled into lifeless dust, no better than the founder of the race. To think this heap o' rags an' bones be all that's left of a mighty folk as was."
[#] Havage = ancestry.
"An' not a Yeoland left to carry on the name, they tell me."
"Not wan, Sam Reed; not a single bud left to bloom. Auld tree be dead of sheer age, I reckon, for 'tis with families as with nations, as parson said 'pon the Sunday after auld Jarvis died. They rise up gradual an' slow to theer high-watter mark; then, gradual or fast, they tumble back into the dust wheer they started. All dust—nations an' men like you an' me—all draws our life an' power from dust—airth, or gold, or grass, or what not. An' awnly lookin' 'pon the whole story of a man or a family when 'tis told to the end, can you say wheer 'twas it reached the high-watter mark an' measure the sum weight of the gude or bad to be set against its name. Do you take me?"
Young Reed nodded.
"In paart I do," he said.
"Very well, then. Now I be gwaine to my meal."
Having made all ready for a new-comer, as yet upon the sea, Mr. Brimblecombe locked up the Yeoland vault again. He then walked to a rubbish heap at the back of the church behind the tower, there deposited the rags of a pall taken from the coffin that he had just deposed, and so returned home.
At his door stood Stapledon, smoking a pipe before breakfast; indeed of late Myles had fallen much upon tobacco and the company of his horse and dogs. But neither narcotic nor the trustful eyes of the dumb animals he loved possessed power to lighten loads that now weighed upon his heart. They lay beyond the alleviation of drug or the affectionate regard of beasts. This sudden death had shocked him immeasurably, and in process of time he began to accuse himself of it and saddle his conscience with the self-same deed that Honor had instantly committed to her own account on hearing the ill tidings. Stapledon felt that he was sole cause of the disastrous catastrophe; that by blundering blindly into the united lives of this woman and man he had destroyed the one and blackened all the future days of the other. Before this spectacle, very real, very bitter contrition and self-accusation overwhelmed him. And that the lash fell vainly rendered its sting the greater. But he could not punish himself adequately, and at length even remorse fainted before the sure knowledge that Yeoland was beyond all reach of prayer or petition. Stapledon's was not a nature that could grieve for long over an evil beyond possibility of cure. In any sort of future he disbelieved; yet, if such existed, then there might be time in it for Christopher Yeoland to settle with him. Meanwhile, a living, suffering woman remained. He thought without ceasing of Honor, he asked himself by how much this event altered his duty with regard to her, and finally determined, through turmoil of sleepless nights and much torture of the mind, to do as he had already determined before this sad news came, and leave Bear Down when certain buildings were completed and the new stock purchased.
For some weeks he had seen nothing of Honor, and purposely abstained from seeking her. Concerning her, however, he had learnt from Sally Cramphorn, who described how the mistress kept her room for two days from Easter Sunday, how she had then reappeared, dressed in mourning, and how that ever since she had spent most of her time with Mr. Endicott, and preserved an unusual silence. For nearly three weeks Honor did not pass beyond her garden; and this fact confirmed Stapledon in a suspicion that she had so acted and avoided the land to escape from sight of him. He felt such a desire natural in her, and only wondered that she had not known him well enough to rest assured he would not seek her or cross her path.
Then he learned that the girl was going from home for a while to visit an aunt at Exeter; and, once assured of her departure, he hastened to Bear Down and won a lengthy conversation with Mark Endicott. Women were at work in the kitchen; so, setting down his needles and worsted, Mark walked out of doors, took the arm Myles offered, and moved with him slowly along the hillside. They spoke first of Christopher Yeoland.
"I can't believe it yet somehow. A man so full of life and possibilities, with all the world before him to do some good in. A sad death; a cruel death."
"As to that, I don't know," answered the elder. "He's out of earshot of our opinions now, poor fellow; but I'm not ashamed to say behind his back what I told him to his face more than once. Never a man played a poorer game with his time. 'Tis the life of him looks sad and cruel to me—not the death."
"So young as he was."
"What's that? Only a woman would be soft enough to mourn there. 'Tisn't the years of a man's life that matter, but the manner of living 'em. The length of the thread's no part of our labour—only the spinning of it. He went—poor soul—but left no ball of yarn behind him—nought but a tangle of broken ends and aimless beginnings. 'Tis the moral sticking out of this I speak for—not to blame the man. God knows I don't judge him unkindly. My youth was no better spent—maybe not so well."
Stapledon's mind continued to be occupied by the former figure.
"The spinning—yes, the spinning," he said. "That's a true saying; for, if you look at it, all life's much like a ropewalk, where we toil—walking backwards—with our faces turned away from fate."
"Some are blind for choice—such as you," answered Mr. Endicott; "some judge they've got the light; some hope they have; some know they have. That last sort denies it to all but themselves, an' won't even let another soul carry a different pattern candlestick to their own. But a man may envy such high faith, for it's alive; it rounds the rough edges of life; sets folk at peace with the prospect of their own eternity; smooths the crumples in their deathbeds at the finish."
"I don't know. I've never heard that your thorough-paced believers make a better end than other folks," Myles answered. "My small experience is that they regard death with far more concern and dread than the rudderless ones who believe the grave is the end."
"That's only to say a fear of death's nature-planted and goes down deeper than dogma. Most makes of mind will always shrink from it, so long as life's good to live. Faith is a priceless treasure, say what you may, if a body has really got it. I'll maintain that so long as I can talk and think. The man who pretends he has it, and has not, carries his own punishment for that daily lie with him. For the Lord of the Blessings never could abide pretence. Take Him or leave Him; but don't play at being sheep of His fold for private ends. That's a game deserves worse damnation than most human baseness."
"Yes, yes. Take Him as He is; and take what He brought, and be thankful. Lord of the Blessings! Isn't that a title high enough? But here's my thought and sure belief, uncle. The discovery called Christianity depended on no man, no single advent of a prophet, or poet, or saviour. It was a part of human nature always, a gold bred in the very heart's core of humanity. And Christ's part was to find the gold and bring it into the light. Burn your book; let the beautiful story go. It is ruined, worm-eaten, riddled by the centuries and follies and lies heaped upon it. Sweep your institutions all clean away and Christianity remains, a sublime discovery, the glorious, highest known possibility of man's mind towards goodness. Lord of the Blessings! What dogma intrudes amongst them to blind and blight and make our hearts ache? They are alive and eternal—as all that is true must be eternal. They were waiting—hidden in human hearts—left for a man to discover, not for a God to invent. Who cares for the old dead theories that explained rainbows and precious stones, and the colour of a summer-clad heath and the strength of the solid earth? We have the things themselves. And so with the message of Christ."
"Wild man's talk," said Mark. "And quite out of your usual solid way of thought. There's more hid in the Rock of Ages than a vein of gold opened by a chance good man; but you and me won't argue on that, because we're not built to convince each other. With years may come light; Potter Time may mould a bit of faith into the fabric of even you presently; who can tell? But spin slow and sure, as you mostly do—look to the thread and see you leave no knot or kink behind as won't stand the strain that life may call it to bear any moment."
"There's another thought rises from what you said; and I'll tell you why I'm on that morbid tack in a moment. You declare the length of the thread is out of our keeping, and that a mind will shrink naturally from death so long as life is good. But how many a poor fool does determine the length and cut the thread when life ceases to be good?"
"Determine the length they don't. They are the puppets, and when the string is pulled they make their bow and go off the scene—by their own hand, if it is to be."
"Humanity holds suicide a crime now. Once, I learn, it was not so. Great heathen men destroyed themselves, yet do not lack marble statues for it. Only yesterday, as one might say, a man was cut off and buried at crossroads with a stake through his belly if he dared to die by his own hand. The Church recognises no shades of meaning in this matter, and so to-day, as often as not, a coroner's jury bleats out a solemn and deliberate lie—so that a man shall be buried with the blessing of the Church and rest in God's acre against the trump. But there's no greater piece of solemn humbug than that eternal verdict."
"I thought much of these things when my eyes were put out. I have been on the brink myself, but 'twas ordained my thread should run. A man must be mad to destroy himself—mad or else a coward."
"Most times cowardly perhaps," answered Myles. "But to be a coward is not to be a lunatic. Suicide is one of those matters we shut our eyes about—one of the things we won't face and thresh out, because the Church is so determined on the point. Not but a man may picture circumstances when a self-death would be a great deed. You may lay down your life for your friend in more ways than one. Such a thing can rise to greatness or sink to contempt according to the mainspring of the action. Some at least might think so, and that's why I'm on this subject. I feel a shadowy fear sometimes that Christopher Yeoland might have had some such fancy—would even have done such a crack-brained deed for love of Honor. I bid his friend be very plain with him and explain the gap that his going left in her life. I made it as clear as I had power to. Honor distinctly told me that she still loved him too well to marry any other man. That was all he had need to know, and I asked Clack to make Yeoland return to her on the strength of her confession."
"And now he does."
"How might he have argued when you consider his great love for her? Is it not possible that he thought so? Is it not possible that he said, 'I am the obstacle. Let me go beyond reach, and Honor—who still feels that nothing can wipe out our old understanding—will be in reality free?' Might he not reason in that way?"
The old man shook his head.
"Not to the extent of blotting himself out by death. Had the cases been reversed, I could almost picture you destroying yourself, since your views are what they are. You might do it, worse luck—Yeoland never. Besides, what necessity? Such a course would be merely like a stage play under these circumstances."
"But there was an inclination towards just that in him; towards a theatrical sort of way—unreal."
"You read him like that. But he wasn't so superficial as he seemed to a man of your build of mind. You don't find Honor superficial? No—he wouldn't kill himself, because the necessity wouldn't appear from his point of view. As I say, you'd blunder into the act much sooner than Yeoland."
"Not so at all. You misunderstand me."
"Well, at least you can't see what would be easier and pleasanter, and answer the purpose just as well under our present civilisation. Consider. How stands the problem if Yeoland married somebody else? You'll find that meets the case at every point. I'm not belittling Yeoland. Who knows what chances of greatness there may have been hidden and lost in him? Life only calls into play a thousandth part of any man's powers during his brief tale of days, and most of us die full of possibilities unguessed even by ourselves, because the hazard never rose; but Yeoland's greatness, if greatness he had, would not have led him off the stage by that road. He didn't die willingly, I promise you. Come back he might have upon your message, if he had lived; or married he might have, even out of consideration for Honor's future. We'll allow him all the credit belonging to possibilities. Meantime, the only thing that we know beyond his death is a last wish expressed to Clack—a wish quite in keeping with his character."
"To be brought home again."
"Yes, the desire to rest his bones in Little Silver. Struck for death, the thought in his mind was not death, nor Honor, nor you. His love for the grass and the trees and the earth of his mother-land woke in him; dying, his heart turned to Godleigh and his own old roof-tree. The picture of the place was the last on his brain when all things were fading away."
The other bowed his head; then he asked concerning Honor.
"It's hit her hard," answered Mark Endicott. "This sudden end of him has been a burnish on the glass of memory—polished it very bright. She has lived through the summer weather with him and talked fitfully of woodland walks by him, and chatter of birds, and shining of Teign, and cutting of letters on tree trunks. The glow and glory of love slowly growing in them—sad enough to look back on for those that love her."
"Sad enough. And my share of the pain's all too light."
"Who knows how much or how little you deserve? You were sent to play your part in her life. Just a bit of the machine. Change—change—change—that's the eternal law that twists the wheel and opens the womb; digs the grave and frets the name off the tombstone; gnaws away the stars; cools the sun in heaven and the first love of a young maid's heart. You brought something new into her life—for better or for worse. Something new and something true, as I think; but maybe truth's not always the right medicine at all hours. Anyhow change will work its own way with time and space and the things that belong to them. She was torn in half between you, and brave enough to make naked confession of it. That proclaimed her either a greater character than we thought once, or a poorer thing every way—according to the mind that views the case."
"I didn't know such a tangle could happen."
"Every sort of tangle can happen where men and women are concerned. Not that she's not a puzzle to me, too, every hour. She has gone now for a while to Exeter. I advised that she should bide there until after the funeral, but she scorned the thought. 'I'm chief mourner in truth, if not in name,' she said; and so she will be. Time must do the rest."
"The last resource of the wretched."
"And the best to be relied on."
"I can only hope to God she's not to be unhappy for ever."
"She gets her happiness, like a bee gets honey—here, there, everywhere, by fits and snatches. Too quick to see the inner comedy of human affairs to be unhappy for ever, or happy for long. And what are you going to do, Myles?"
"I thought to go for good—yes, for good this time."
"Couldn't do better. She will read you into these chapters of her life. Can't help it. But Time's on your side too, though you slight him. And this, at least, you'll remember: if she wants you to come back, she won't hesitate to let you know it."
CHAPTER XVII.
SPRING ON SCOR HILL
Often it happens that small matters demand lengthy spaces in time for their development, while affairs of import and interests involving high changes are carried through at comet speed upon the crest of some few splendid or terrible moments. Thus did concerns of note to those playing a part of their history under our eyes tumble unexpectedly to the top, and an event take place wholly unforeseen by Myles Stapledon, though predicted and prophesied for a more or less remote future by Uncle Endicott. For this surprise one woman was responsible.
Honor returned from Exeter in time to be present at Christopher Yeoland's funeral; and with her she bore a fair wreath of Eucharis lilies, which Mr. Brimblecombe consigned to a rubbish heap behind the church tower as soon as her back was turned, because he held flowers out of place on the coffin of quality. Those now occupying Godleigh for a term of years gladly allowed the recent possessor to pass his last night among men beneath that roof, and not a few folk representative of the district attended the obsequies in person or by proxy. So Christopher Yeoland was laid upon his shelf of slate, and Doctor Courteney Clack, for the benefit of such as cared to listen, told how a whip snake, falling from a tree, had fastened upon the dead man's neck, and how, with few words and one wish to be buried at home, he had quickly passed away under the poison.
So that chapter closed at the mausoleum, whose guardian cherubs were moss-grown skulls; and day followed day, month succeeded upon month, into the time of early summer; of misty silver nights and shining noons; of warm rain and steaming fields; of the music of life from birds' throats; of the scent of life in the chalices of bluebells; of the very heart-beat and pulse of life under the glades of green woods and beside the banks of Teign.
Then, in a June day's shape, Time, of many disguises, began his work with Honor Endicott. A revulsion followed the gloom that had passed and pressed upon her; she mourned still, but for choice in the sunshine; and, growing suddenly athirst for the river and the manifold life that dwelt upon the brink of it, she took her rod as an excuse, passed upward alone, descended Scor Hill, and pursued her way eastward to a lonely glen where Teign winds into the woods of Godleigh. Many fair things broke bud about her, and in secret places the splendour of summer made ready. Soon the heather would illuminate these wastes and the foxgloves carry like colour aloft on countless steeples of purple bells; soon woodbine and briar would wreathe the granite, and little pearly clusters of blossom spring aloft from the red sundews in the marsh; while the king fern already spread his wide fronds above the home of the trout, and the brake fern slowly wove his particular green into the coombs and hills.
Despite a sure conviction that melancholy must henceforth encompass her every waking hour, Honor Endicott was not armed against the magic of this blue and golden day. She could fish with a fly, and that skilfully; and now, before the fact that a brisk rise dimpled and dappled the river, passing temptations to kill a trout wakened and were not repulsed. She set up her rod, and by chance mused as she did so upon Myles Stapledon. Him she had not seen for many days, but her regard had not diminished before his abstention. Indeed she appreciated it up to a point, though now it began to irk her. She did not know that he was about to depart definitely; for Mark Endicott had deemed it unnecessary to mention the fact.
At her third cast Honor got a good rise, and hooked a fish which began its battle for life with two rushes that had done honour to a heavier trout. Then it leapt out of the water, showed itself to be a half-pounder or thereabout, and headed up stream with a dozen frantic devices to foul the line in snag or weed. But Honor was mistress of the situation, turned the fish with the current, and, keeping on the deadly strain, soon wearied it. Then she wound in the line steadily, steered her victim to a little shelving backwater, and so, having no net, lifted the trout very gently out of its element on to the grass. Flushed with excitement, and feeling, almost against her will, that she was young, Honor gazed down upon gasping fario, admired the clean bulk of him, his fierce eye, dark olive back spotted with ebony and ruby, the lemon light along his plump sides, his silver belly, perfect proportions, and sweet smell. He heaved, opened his gills, sucked deep at the empty air, and protested at this slow drowning with a leap and quiver of suffering; whereupon, suddenly moved at thought of what this trout had done for her, Honor picked him up and put him back into the water, laughing to herself and at herself the while. After a gulp or two, strength returned to the fish, and like an arrow, leaving a long ripple over the shallow, he vanished back to the deep sweet water and his own sweet life.
Other trout were not so fortunate, however, and by noon, at which time all rise ceased, the angler had slain above half a dozen and was weary of slaughter. She fished up stream, and had now reached the tolmen—a great perforated stone that lies in the bed of Teign near Wallabrook's confluence with it. And resting here awhile, she saw the figure of Myles Stapledon as he approached the river from a farm on the other side. The homestead of Batworthy, where it nestles upon the confines of the central waste, and peeps, with fair silver thatches, above its proper grove, shall be seen surrounded by heather and granite. The river babbles at its feet, and on every side extends Dartmoor to the high tors—north, south, and west. From hence came Myles Stapledon, after gathering certain information from a kindly colleague; and now he strode across the stream and on to within ten yards of Honor, yet failed to see her, where she sat motionless half hidden by ferns and grasses. He moved along, deep plunged in his own thoughts, and she determined to let him pass, until something in the weary, haggard look of him tempted her to change her mind. He was lonely—lonelier than she; he had nobody to care about him, and all his life to be lived. Perhaps, despite these sentimental thoughts, she had suffered him to go, but one circumstance decided her: on the arm of his workaday coat appeared a band of black. And, guessing something of his recent tribulations, she lifted her voice and called him.
"Myles! Why do you avoid me?"
He started and slipped a foot, but recovered instantly, turned, and approached her. His face betokened surprise and other emotion.
"How good of you to call me—how kind. I did not know that you were out on the Moor, or within a mile of this place. Else I would have gone back another way."
"That's not very friendly, I think. I don't bite."
"I thought—but like all thoughts of mine, though I've wasted hours on it, nothing was bred from it. At least I may accompany you back. It was most kind to call me. And most strange and culpable of me not to see you."
She noticed his gratitude, and it touched her a little.
"I've killed eight trout," she said; "one nearly three-quarters of a pound."
"A grand fish. I will carry them for you. Fine weather to-day and the summer really at the door."
"It was thoughtful of you to keep away, Myles. I appreciated that."
"I should have gone clean and haunted the land no further; but there was much to do. Now all is done, and I'm glad of this chance to tell you so. I can really depart now. You'll think it a cry of 'Wolf!' and doubt my strength to turn my back on Bear Down again; but go I must at last."
She was reflecting with lightning rapidity. That he meant what he said she did not doubt. The news, indeed, was hardly unexpected; yet it came too suddenly for her peace of mind. There existed a side to this action in which she had an interest. Indeed with her might lie the entire future of him, if she willed it so. Decisions now cried to be made, and while even that morning they had looked afar off, vague, nebulous as need be, now they rushed up from the horizon of the future to the very zenith of the present. Yet she could not decide thus instantly, so temporised and asked idle questions to gain time.
"Of what were you thinking when I saw you cross the river with your head so low?" she asked, and hoped that his answer might help her. But nothing was further from his mind than the matter in hers. He answered baldly—
"My head was bent that I might see my way on the stepping-stones. As to my thoughts, I only had a muddled idea about the season and the green things—friends and foes—all growing together at the beginning of the race—all full of youth and sap and trust—so to speak; and none seeing any danger in the embrace of his companion. Look at that pest, the beautiful bindweed. It breaks out of the earth with slender fingers, weak as a baby's, yet it grows into a cruel, soft, choking thing of a thousand hands—more dangerous to its neighbour than tiger to man—a garotter, a Thug, a traitor that hangs out lovely bells and twines its death into fair festoons that it may hide the corpse of its own strangling."
"And then?"
"That was all my thought. Yet I seemed to feel akin to the plant myself."
"Something has changed you since we dropped out of one another's lives. Fancy a practical farmer mooning over such nonsense! Bindweed can be pulled up and burnt—even if it's growing in your heart."
"How like you to say that! It is good to me to hear your voice again, Honor."
"Take down my rod then, and tell me why you are going. Half of Endicott's is your own."
"I thought—I believed that you would be happier if I did so. And I still suspect that is the case. I owe you deeper reparation than ever a man owed a woman."
"You are too good, but your goodness becomes morbid."
"I'm only a clumsy fool, and never knew how clumsy or how much a fool until I met you."
"No, I say you are really good. Goodness is a matter of temperament, not morals. Some of the most God-fearing, church-going people I know can't be good; some of the worst people I ever heard about—even frank heathens like yourself—can't be bad. There's a paradox for you to preach about!"
But he shook his head.
"Your mind's too quick for me. Yet I think I know what you mean. By 'goodness' and 'badness' you signify a nature sympathetic or otherwise. It's all a question of selfishness at bottom."
"But the day looks too beautiful for such talk," answered Honor.
"So it is; I don't desire to talk of anything. You can't guess what it is to me to hear your voice again—just the music of it. It intoxicates me, like drink."
"You're dreaming; and, besides, you're going away."
The light died out of his face, and they walked together in silence a few paces. Then the girl's mind established itself, and her love was a large factor in that decision, though not the only one. She determined upon a course of action beyond measure unconventional, but that aspect of the deed weighed most lightly with her.
They were passing over the face of Scor Hill when she turned to the left, where stood that ancient monument of the past named Scor Hill Circle.
"I'm going down to the old ring," she said; "I've a fancy to visit it."
He followed without speech, his mind occupied by a frosty picture of their last visit to the same spot. Now it basked under sunlight, and spring had touched both the splinters of granite and the lonely theatre in which they stood. Upon the weathered planes of the stones were chased quaint patterns and beads of moss, together with those mystic creatures of ochre and ebony, grey and gold, that suck life from air and adamant and clothe the dry bones of Earth with old Time's livery.
Upon a fallen stone in the midst, where young heather sprouted in tufts and cushions, Honor sat down awhile; and seeing that she remained silent, Myles uttered some platitudes concerning the spot and the ceremonies of heathen ritual, state, or sacrifice that had aforetime marked it. The upright stones surrounded them where they sat beside a sort of central altar of fading furze. The giant block of the circle stood on the north of its circumference, and upon more than one of the unshaped masses were spots rubbed clean by beasts and holding amid their incrustations red hairs of cattle, or flecks of wool from the fleeces of the flocks. Even now a heifer grazed upon the grass within the circle; its herd roamed below; round about the valley rose old familiar tors; while sleepy summer haze stole hither and thither upon the crowns of Watern and Steeperton, and dimmed the huge bulk of Cosdon Beacon where it swelled towards the north.
"When did we last come here?" began Honor suddenly.
"On the day of the snowstorm."
"Ah, yes. We were riding, and stopped a moment here. Why?"
Stapledon looked at her, then turned his head away.
"If you have forgotten, it is good," he said.
"What did I say to that great question, Myles?"
"Spare me that, Honor. I have been punished enough."
"Don't generalise. What did I say?"
"That you could marry neither of us—neither Yeoland nor me—out of consideration for the other."
"And you gasped when you heard it; and I kept my word. Now the pity is that you must keep yours."
"Mine?"
"Never to ask again what I would not give then."
"Honor!"
"Hush. Don't break your word for such a trifle as a wife. I'm accustomed to doing unmaidenly, horrible things, so this doesn't hurt me as much as it would a proper-thinking, proper-feeling woman. I love you; I always have loved you since I knew you. And I suppose you love me still—more or less. He who has gone—has gone. There will never be another Christo for me, Myles. You cannot take his place; and if you were dead and he was alive, he could never have taken yours. That's my peculiarly deranged attitude. But here I sit, and I should like to be your wife, because life is short and a woman's a fool to throw away good love and starve herself when plenty is offered."
Stapledon's dog looked up from his seat on the heather, barked and wagged his tail, knowing that his master was happy; and the heifer, startled by these canine expressions of delight and sudden ejaculations uttered aloud in a man's deep voice, flung up her hind legs wildly and cutting cumbrous capers, to indicate that she too appreciated the romance of the moment, shambled away from the grey circle to join her companions in the valley below.
CHAPTER XVIII.
ROSES AND ROSETTES
"Us'll go down-long awver the plough-path; then us'll be in full time to see the butivul bride arrive," said Tommy Bates. He stood in Sunday attire among his betters, and the sobriety of much black broadcloth was brightened by unusual adornment, for Cramphorn, Ash, Collins, Pinsent, and the rest were decorated with large rosettes of satin ribbon. Many also wore roses in their buttonholes, for one of Stapledon's few friends was a big rose-grower at Torquay, who, from the abundance of his scented acres, had despatched countless blooms—crimson and cream, snow-white, ivory and orange-yellow, pink and regal purple—to brighten a glorious day.
But in the judgment of Ash and the elders no flower of cultivation could compare in significance or beauty with the sham sprigs of orange-blossom at the centre of the rosettes. Churdles himself also carried a bulky parcel in the tail of his coat, which added another protuberance to his gnarled form. It was not a prayer-book, as he gave Collins to understand with many nods and winks.
The party stood upon the grass plot before Bear Down—a space separated from the main great grass lands of the farm. These latter subtended the level ground and swelled and billowed under waves of colourless light that raced free as the wind over another year's hay harvest. Far beneath, just visible above a green hedge between elms, four small peaks arose and a White Ensign fluttered from a flagstaff in the midst, where stood the village church.
Mr. Cramphorn and his friends set forth and improved the occasion with reflections upon what would follow the wedding, rather than in much consideration of the ceremony itself.
"They be gwaine straight off from the church door," said Mr. Ash, "an' so they'll miss the fun of the fair up-long, though 'tis theer money as'll furnish the junketings. A braave rally of neighbours comin' to eat an' drink an' be merry by all accounts; an' not a stroke more'n milkin' cows an' feedin' things to be done to-day by man or woman."
"They ought to bide to the eating whether or no," said Mr. Cramphorn. "An' I be gwaine to tell a speech, though they'll be half ways to Exeter before I does. I hold it my duty. She'm the best mistress an' kindest woman in the world to my knawledge, an' my gift o' words shan't be denied at her solemn weddin' feast, whether she be theer or whether she han't."
Mr. Collins applauded these sentiments, for his private ambitions were strong at heart under the rosy atmosphere of the hour.
"I lay you'll tell some gude talk come bimebye," he said. "'Tis a gert power—same as the gift of tongues in the Bible seemin'ly."
"Theer'll be some plum drinkin' by all accounts," said Mr. Ash, pouting up his little wrinkled mouth in cheerful anticipation. "Brown sherry wine for us, an' fizzy yellow champagne an' auld black port for the quality. An' it's a secret hope of mine, if I ban't tu bowldacious in thinkin' such a thing, as I may get a thimbleful of the auld wine—port—so dark as porter but butivul clear wi' it, an' a sure finder of a man's heart-strings. I be awful set upon a sup of that. I've longed for fifty years to taste it, if so be I might wi'out offence. It have been my gert hope for generations; an' if it awnly comes 'pon my death-bed I'll thank the giver, though 'twould be a pleasanter thing to drink it in health."
"I seed larder essterday," said Tommy Bates. "My stars! The auld worm-eaten shelves of un be fairly bent."
"Purty eating, no doubt," assented Cramphorn, though as one superior to such things.
"Ess fay! Fantastic pastry, more like to cloam ornaments for the mantelshelf than belly-timber. God knaws how they'll scat 'em apart."
"Each has its proper way of bein' broke up," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Theer's manners an' customs in all this. Some you takes a knife to, some a fork, some a spoon. The bettermost takes a knife even to a apple or pear."
"Things a lookin' out o' jellies, an' smothered in sugar an' transparent stuff! I'd so easy tell the stars as give a name to half of 'em. But theer was a pineapple—I knawed un by seein' his picksher in the auld Bible, where Joseph was givin' his brothers a spread. But they didn't have no such pies an' red lobsters as be waitin' up-long. Such a huge gert cake 'tis! All snow-white, an' crawled awver wi' silver paper, an' a li'l naked doll 'pon top wi' blue eyes an' gawld wings to un. A pixy doll you might say."
"Her ought to bide an' cut that cake herself, not dash away from church as though she'd done murder 'stead of praiseworthy matrimony," grumbled Mr. Cramphorn. "'Tis defying the laws of marryin' and givin' in marriage. Theer may be trouble to it presently."
"If they'm both of a mind, they'll do what they please," said Collins.
"Ay, an' 'twon't hurt none of us, nor make the vittles an' drinks less sweet," declared Samuel Pinsent.
"That's truth," assented Gaffer Ash; "an' when you come to be my ripe years, Jonah, you'll go limpin' to meet the li'l pleasures that be left to 'e half-way, 'stead of fearin' evil. As for the pains—fegs! they meets you half-way!"
"'Twill be a happy marriage, I should reckon," ventured Pinsent.
"We'll pray it will be, though he'm a thought tu deep in love for my money," declared Cramphorn.
"Can a man love his maiden more'n enough?" asked Henry Collins in amazement; and the other answered that it might be so.
"Love be well knawn for a mole-blind state, Henery—a trick of Nature to gain her awn ends; an' the sooner new-fledged man an' wife see straight again better for their awn peace of mind. Maister Myles be a shade silly here and theer, though Lard knaws if ever a man's to be forgiven for gettin' his head turned 'tis him. A marvellous faace an' shape to her. But ban't the wise way to dote. She'm a human woman, without disrespect; and her sawl's to save like poorer folk. In plain English, he'll spoil her."
"Couldn't—no man could," said Mr. Ash stoutly. "To think of a sovereign to each of us, an' two to me by reason of my ancient sarvice!"
"You've toiled 'pon the land for a fearsome number of years, I s'pose, Maister Ash?" asked Tommy respectfully.
"Me? I was doin' man's work in the reign of the Fourth Gearge. I've ate many an' many a loaf o' barley bread, I have; an' seed folks ride pillion; an' had a woman behind me, on the auld-fashion saddles, myself, for that matter. An', as for marriage, though I never used it, I've seed scores o' dozens o' marriages—sweet an' sour. Marriages be like bwoys playin' leapfrog, wheer each lad have got to rucksey down in turn; an' so man an' wife have got to rucksey down wan to t'other at proper times an' seasons. Each must knaw theer awn plaace in the house; an' Mrs. Loveys was right, when us gived 'em the cannel-sticks for a gift. You call home how she said, 'I wish 'e patience wan wi' t'other, my dearies, 'cause theer ban't nothin' more useful or more like to be wanted 'bout the house o' newly married folk than that!'"
The party now mingled with those already assembled in Little Silver. A crowd drawn from Throwley, Chagford, and elsewhere stood and admired flags that waved between green-garlanded poles at the churchyard gate. Many passed from the hot sunshine into the shadow of the holy building; many had already entered it.
"Us'll bide here till our brows be cool an' she've a-come. Then us'll go in an' sit usual plaace, left side o' the alley," said Mr. Cramphorn.
Presently Myles Stapledon appeared, and a hum of friendship rose for him. He looked somewhat anxious, was clad in a grey suit, white waistcoat, and a white tie with his solitary jewel in it—an old carbuncle set in gold that had belonged to his father and adorned that gentleman's throat or finger on the occasion of his marriage. In the bridegroom's buttonhole was a red rosebud, and now and again his hand went nervously across to an inner pocket, where reposed the money for the honeymoon. He walked to the vestry, made certain entries in the book spread open for him, and presented Mr. Scobell with two guineas. He then entered a choir stall and sat down there, facing the eyes of the increasing company without visible emotion.
Outside came stroke of horse-hoofs and grinding of wheels. Then entered an ancient aunt of the bridegroom's with her two elderly daughters. A second carriage held Honor's relatives from Exeter, and a third contained Mrs. Loveys and Sally and Margaret Cramphorn; for it was Honor's wish that her serving-maids should be her bridesmaids also, and she knew none of her sex who loved her better. Each had a bouquet of roses; each wore a new dress and now waited at the entrance for their mistress, with many a turn and twist, perk of head, and soft rustle from the new gowns. The eyes of Mr. Collins watered as he beheld Sally, and his huge breast rose, heaved up by mountainous sighs. Meantime, she had secretly handed a rosette to Mr. Greg Libby, who, in company of his old mother, adorned the gathering; and Margery too, at the first opportunity, presented the young man with a rosette. Thus it came about that Gregory gloried in dual favours and attached both to his marriage garment; whereupon two maiden hearts under dove-coloured raiment were filled with emotions most unsisterly, and all men, save one, laughed at the luck of the gilded hedge-tacker.
The glory of Little Silver church centres in an ancient screen of many colours. Upon it shall be found elaborate interlacing of blue and gold, pale blue and dark crimson; while through the arches of it may be seen the Lord's Table under a granite reredos. Pulpit and lectern are also of the good grey stone, and to-day a riot of roses that made the little place of worship very sweet climbed the old pillars and clustered in the deep embrasures of the windows. The walls, painted with red distemper, ascended to a waggon roof; and upon pews, where the humble living stood or knelt above dust of noble dead, frank daylight entered through plain glass windows.
Along the base of the ornate screen stood figures of the saints mechanically rendered, and about one, standing upon the right hand of the choir entrance, there twined a text that indicated this figure stood for John the Baptist. "The voice of one crying in the wilderness" were those graven words; and now by chance they caught a pair of downcast eyes, as Honor Endicott bent her young head and passed onward from independence into the keeping of a man.
She came with her uncle, and those in church rose amid mighty rustlings and clink of iron-shod boots, and those outside crowded into their places. A little harmonium groaned gallantly, and Mr. Scobell billowed up the aisle from the vestry. Honor walked to meet Myles with her hand holding Mark Endicott's. At the steps, under the screen, she stopped for him to feel the step, and as she did so caught sight of the text. Then a big, florid face, with the plainest admiration exhibited upon it, met her gaze, and she also became dimly conscious of a tall, grey man at her right elbow. The florid face belonged to Mr. Scobell, who, recollecting himself and chastening his features, frowned at the back of the church, and began the ceremony. But the grey man was waiting for her, longing for her, "to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish," until death should part them.
Yet the text—that voice in the wilderness—haunted her mind all the while, as it is the way with irrelevant ideas to intrude upon high moments. Presently Honor put her hand into her husband's, felt the gold slip over her finger, and marvelled to feel how much heavier this ring was than the little toy of diamond and pearl she had been wearing of late. Then all was accomplished, and Mr. Ash and his friends quite drowned the squeak and gasp of a Wedding March, with which the vicar's daughter wrestled upon the harmonium; for they all clattered out of church and drew up in a double line outside along the pathway. Churdles then produced his mysterious packet and exhibited a bag of rice. This was opened, and old, tremulous hands, knotted and veined like ivy-vines upon an oak, flung the grain as lustily as young plump ones, while man and wife came forth to face the benignant shower.
At the gate two stout greys and an old postillion—relic of days flown—were waiting to take Myles and his lady to Okehampton for the London train. Mark Endicott, led by Tommy Bates, stood at the carriage door; and now he felt warm lips on his blind face and a tear there.
"Be a good uncle," whispered Honor; "and don't weary your dear hands too much for those Brixham fishermen. Home we shall come again in a month; and how I'm going to do without you for so long, or you without me, I can't guess."
He squeezed her hands, and for once the old Spartan was dumb.
"God bless 'e!"
"Long life an' happiness to 'e!"
"Good luck to the both of 'e!"
Then a jumble and buzz of many speaking together; lifting of voices into a cheer; a gap in the road, where the carriage had stood; a puff of dust at the corner by the old pound; and courageous fowls, clucking and fluttering and risking their lives for scattered rice, among crushed roses and the legs of the people.
The bells rang out; the dust died down; personages drove slowly up the hill to the banquet; certain persons walked up. Mr. Cramphorn, fearful of a love contagion in the air, convoyed his daughters home himself, and Libby, growing faint-hearted before the expression on Jonah's face, abandoned his design of walking by Sally's side for half the distance and with Margery for the rest. Henry Collins was also deprived of the society he craved, and by ill-fortune it chanced that Ash, Pinsent, and the two rivals found themselves in company on the journey home. Collins thereupon relieved his wounded soul by being extremely rude, and he began with a personal remark at the expense of Gregory's best coat and emerald tie.
"All black an' green, I see—mourning for the devil that is," he said, in a tone not friendly.
"Aw! Be he dead then?" inquired Mr. Libby with great show of interest.
"Not while the likes of you's stirrin'. An' what for do 'e want to make a doomshaw of yourself—wearin' two rosettes, like a Merry Andrew, when other men have but wan?"
"Grapes are sour with you, I reckon, Henery. You see I puts this here left bow just awver my 'eart, 'cause Sally Cramphorn gived it to me."
Collins blazed into a fiery red, and a fist of huge proportions clenched until the knuckles grew white.
"Have a care," he said, "or I'll hit 'e awver the jaw! Such a poor penn'orth as you to set two such gals as them by the ears!"
"Who be you to threaten your betters? You forget as I'm a man wi' money in the bank, an' you ban't."
"Ah, so I did then," confessed Collins frankly. "I did forget; but they didn't. Keep your rosettes. 'Tis your gert store o' money winned 'em—same as bullock, not farmer, gets the ribbons at Christmas fair. So, every way, it's dam little as you've got to be proud of!"
Mr. Libby became inarticulate before this insult. He rolled and rumbled horrible threats in his cleft palate, but they were not intelligible, and Collins, striding forward, left him in the rear and joined Gaffer Ash and Pinsent, who dwelt peaceably on the joys to come.
"A talk of moosicians there was," said Samuel.
"Right. The Yeomany band to play 'pon the lawn. An' gude pleasure, tu, for them as likes brass moosic."
"How Maister Stapledon girned like a cat when the rice went down onderneath his clean collar!"
"Ess, he did; 'twas a happy thought of mine."
"What's the value or sense in it I doan't see all the same," objected Collins, whose day had now suffered eclipse. "'Pears to me 'tis a silly act whether or no."
"That shaws how ill you'm learned in affairs," answered Mr. Ash calmly. "The meanin' of rice at a weddin's very well knawn by onderstandin' men. 'Tis thrawed to ensure fruitfulness an' a long family. A dark branch of larnin', I grant 'e; but for all that I've awnly knawed it fail wance; an' then 'twern't no fault of the magic."
But Henry had been taught to regard a full quiver as no blessing.
"If that's what you done it for, 'twas a cruel unfriendly act," he declared, "an' I stands up an' sez so, auld as you be. Devil's awn wicked self caan't wish no worse harm to a innocent young pair than endless childer. I knaw—who better?—being wan o' thirteen myself; an' if I heard that was the use of it, not a grain would I have thrawed at 'em for money."
Churdles blinked, but was quite unmoved.
"You speak as a bachelor, my son, not to say as a fule. Black dog's got 'pon your shoulder this marnin'. A pity tu, for 'tis a perspiring day wi'out temper. No rough language to-day. All peace an' plencheousness; an' a glass o' black port, please God. Us'll feast wi' thankful hearts; an' then go forth an' sit 'pon the spine-grass in the garden an' smoke our pipes an' listen to the moosickers in the butivul sunshine."
"'Pears to me," said Gregory Libby, who had now rejoined them, "that you chaps o' Endicott's did ought to give some return for all this guzzling an' holiday making."
"Theer you'm wrong, as you mostly be, Greg," answered old Ash with a serene smile, "for 'tis awnly a small mind caan't take a favour wi'out worrittin' how to return it."