Joe Voysey walked over one evening to talk with his lifelong friend Thomas Gollop. The gardener felt choked to the throat with injustice, and regarded his dismissal from the vicarage as an outrage upon society; while Mr. Gollop laboured under similar emotions.
Both declared that the ingratitude of Dennis Masterman was what principally stung them. To retire into private life caused them no pain; but to have been invited to do so was a bitter grievance.
Miss Eliza Gollop chanced to be out, and Thomas sat by the fire alone. His Bible stood on the table, but he was not reading it. Only when Voysey's knock sounded at the cottage door did Thomas wheel round from the fire, open the book and appear to be buried in its pages.
He had rather expected a visit from Mr. Masterman, hence these preparations; but when Voysey entered, Thomas modified his devout attitude and shut the Bible again.
"I half thought as that wretched man from the vicarage might call this evening," he said.
"He won't, then," replied Joe, "for he've got together all they fools who have fallen in with his wish about yowling carols at Christmas. Him and her be down at the schoolroom; and there's row enough rising up to fright the moon."
"Carol-singing! I wish the time was come for him to sing to his God for mercy," said Thomas.
Then he went to a cupboard and brought out a bottle of spirits.
"Have he said anything to you about a pension?" asked Voysey.
"No, not yet. I thought he might be coming in about that to-night. My father afore me got a pension—a shilling a day for life—and I ought to have twice as much, in my opinion, though I don't expect it. And when I've got all I can, I'm going to shake the dust off my boots against the man and his church too. Never again, till I'm carried in to my grave, will I go across the threshold—not so long as he be there. I'm going to take up with the Dissenters, and I advise you to do the same."
"That woman have told me about my pension," answered Joe—"Alice Masterman, I mean. I won't call her 'Miss' no more, for 'tis too respectful. She've worked on her brother—so she says—to give me three half-crowns a week. But I doubt she had anything to do with it—such a beastly stinge as her. However, that's the money; and who d'you think they've took on? That anointed fool the policeman's brother! He've been learning a lot of silliness down to a nurseryman at Plymouth, and he'm coming here, so bold as brass, and so noisy as a drum, to show what can be done with that garden. And if I don't look over the wall sometimes and have a laugh at him, 'tis pity!"
Gollop nodded moodily, but he did not answer. Then Joe proceeded with malevolent glee.
"I clear out on the last day of the year," he said; "and if I haven't picked the eyes out of his garden and got 'em settled in my patch afore that day——! She met me taking over a lot of mint plants a bit ago. 'Where be you taking they mint plants?' she said. 'To a neighbour,' I said. 'He wants 'em, and we can spare 'em.' 'You'll ask me, please, before you give things away, Voysey,' she said. And now I ax, humble as a maggot, if I may take this or that to a neighbour afore I move a leaf. And she always says, 'Yes, if we can spare it.' Had her there—eh?"
"As for me," said Gollop, "I shall be the last regular right down parish clerk we ever have—unless the good old times come back later. A sexton he must use, since people have got to be buried, but who 'twill be I neither know nor care."
"Mind you take the tools," said Joe. "They be fairly your property, and you can sell 'em again if you don't want 'em yourself. I've made a good few shillings that way during the last forty years. But as for leaving the church, I shouldn't do that, because of the Christmas boxes. 'Tis well knowed in Shaugh that your Christmas boxes run into a tidy figure, and some people go so far as to say that what you take at the door, when the bettermost come out after Christmas morning prayer, is pretty near so good as what be dropped in the bags for the offerings."
"Lies," declared Thomas. "All envious lies. I never got near what the people thought. Still, I hadn't remembered. That's yet another thing where he'll have robbed me."
When Miss Eliza Gollop appeared half an hour later, she was cold and dispirited.
"What be you doing in here?" she said to Mr. Voysey.
"Having a tell with Thomas. We be both wishing to God we could strike them hateful people to the vicarage. Harm be bound to come to 'em, for their unchristian ways; but me and your brother would like to be in it."
"You'll be in it alone, then," she answered; "for this place have gone daft where they're concerned. They can't do no wrong seemingly—except to us. The people babble about him, and even her, as if they was angels that had lost their wings."
"'Tis all lax and lawless and going to the dogs," said Thomas. "There's no truth and honesty and manliness left in Shaugh. The man found a human thigh-bone kicking about up under the top hedge of the churchyard yesterday. Lord knows where it had come from. I never seed it nowhere; but he turned on me and said 'twas sacrilege, and I know not what else. 'Where there's churchyards, there'll also be bones,' I said to the fool; 'and if one here and there works to the top, along of the natural heaving of the earth, how can a sexton or any other man help it?' A feeble creature, and making the young men feeble too. Carol-singing! Who wants carols? However, I've done with him. I've stood between him and his folly time and again; but never no more. Let him go."
"'Tis a knock-kneed generation," declared Mr. Voysey. "All for comfort and luxury. Tea, with sugar in it, have took the place of the good, honest, sour cider like what every man had in harvest days of old. But now, these here young youths, they say sharp cider turns their innards! It never used to turn ours. 'Tis all of a piece, and the nation's on the downward road, along of too much cosseting."
"For my part, I think 'tis more the weakness of mind than the weakness of body that be ruining us," observed Miss Gollop. "As a nurse I see more than you men can, and, as a female, I hear more than you do. And I will say that the way the people have taken these here doings of that scarlet woman to Undershaugh is a sin and a scandal. At first they wouldn't believe it, though I blew the trumpet of truth in their ears from the moment that Dissenter died; but, afterwards, when 'twas known as a fact and the parties couldn't deny it, and Mr. Waite throwed over Cora Lintern, as any respecting man would when he heard the shameful truth—then who came to me and said, 'Ah, you was right, Eliza, and I was wrong'? Not one of 'em! And what's worse is the spirit they've taken it in. Nobody cares, though everybody ought to care!"
"Every person says 'tis none of their business," explained Voysey.
"More shame to 'em!" declared Thomas. "As if it wasn't the business of all decent men and women. Time was when such an incontinent terror of a woman would have been stoned out of the village in the name of law and righteousness. Yet now, mention the thing where I will, 'tis taken with a heathen calmness that makes my blood boil. And Masterman worst of all, mind! If it wasn't a case for a scorching sermon, when was there one? Yet not a word. And not a word from the Dissenters neither—not in the meeting-house—though 'tis a subject they'm very great against most times. However, I've inquired and I find it has been passed over."
"No godly anger anywhere," admitted Eliza, "and not one word of sorrow to me for the hard things what were spoken when I stood up single-handed and told the truth."
"Religion be dying out of the nation," summed up Thomas. "My father always said that me and Eliza would live to see antichrist ascend his throne; and it begins to look as if the times were very near ripe for the man. And 'twill be harder than ever now—now I'm driven out from being parish clerk. For I shall have to look on and yet be powerless to strike a blow."
They drank in gloomy silence; but Mr. Voysey was not similarly oppressed by the moral breakdown of the times. He strove to bring conversation back to the vicarage, and failing to do so, soon took his leave.
After he had gone the brother and sister debated long, and Thomas gave it as his opinion that it would be well for them to leave Shaugh and end their days in a more Christian and congenial atmosphere.
"There's nought to keep us now," he said; "all have gone down afore that Masterman, and 'tis something of a question whether such as we ought to bide here, simply as common folk with no more voice in the parish. If we go, the blame lies on his shoulders; but once I make up my mind, I won't stop—not though the people come before me and beg on their bended knees for me to do so."
"'Twould be like Adam and Eve being driven out of the Garden if we'm forced to go," declared Eliza.
"With this difference, however, that the blame ban't with us, though the punishment may be. There's nobody can say we've ever done wrong here, or gone outside our duty to God or man by a hair. If we go, 'tis them that drive us out will have to pay for their wickedness."
"They'll certainly smart, if 'tis only in the long run," confessed Eliza. "'Twill be brought home against them at the appointed time."
Thomas nodded drearily.
"Cold comfort," he said, "but the only satisfaction there is to be got out of it by us. Yes, I shall go; I shall shake off the dust for a witness. I wish I thought as 'twould choke a party here and there; but, thank God, I know my place. I never offered to do His almighty work, and I never will. I never wanted to call down thunder from heaven on the evil-doer. But 'tis always a tower of faith to a righteous man when he sees the Lord strike. And to them as be weak in faith, 'tis often a puzzle and a temptation to see how long the Lord holds off, when justice cries aloud to Him to rise up and do His worst."
At the approach of another Christmas, Humphrey Baskerville stood in the churchyard of St. Edward's and watched two masons lodge the stone that he had raised to his brother Nathan. It conformed to the usual pattern of the Baskerville memorials, and was of slate. The lettering had been cut deep and plain without addition of any ornament. The accidental severity and simplicity of the stone contrasted to advantage with Vivian's ornate and tasteless marble beside it.
Dennis Masterman walked across the churchyard presently and, seeing Humphrey, turned and approached.
"Good morning," he said. "Glad you've put a slate here. I like them better than these garish things. They are more suited to this grey Moor world of ours."
"'Tis a foolish waste to spend money on the dead," answered Mr. Baskerville. "When all the living be clothed and fed, then we can fling away our money over graves. 'Tis only done to please ourselves, not to please them."
"You've a right to speak," said the clergyman. "To praise you would be an impertinence; but as the priest of Him we both worship, I rejoice to think of what you have done to clear the clouded memory of this man."
Humphrey took no verbal notice of these remarks. He shrugged his shoulders and spoke of the gravestone.
"I'll thank you to read what I've put over him, and say whether 'tis not right and just."
The other obeyed. After particulars of Nathan's age and the date of his death, there followed only the first verse of the forty-first Psalm—
"Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lordwill deliver him in time of trouble."
"You see," explained Mr. Baskerville, "my brother did consider the poor—and none else. That he made a botch of it, along of bad judgment and too much hope and too much trust in himself, is neither here nor there; for I hold his point of view was well-meaning though mistaken. If we see a man's point of view, it often leads—I won't say to mercy, for that's no business of ours in my opinion—but to the higher justice. To judge by results is worldly sense, but I'm doubtful if 'tis heavenly sense. Anyway, that's how I feel about my brother now, though 'twas only brought home to me after a year of thinking; and as for the end of the text, certainly that happened, because none can doubt the Lord delivered him in the time of trouble. His death was a deliverance, as every death must be, but none more than Nathan's afore the tempest broke."
Masterman—knowing as little as the other what Nathan's death had brought to Nathan of mental agony before the end—conceded these points freely. They walked together in the churchyard and spoke of moral topics and religious instruction. At a point in the enclosure, the younger stopped and indicated a space remote from the lodges of the silent people.
"You design to lie here—is it not so? Gollop, I remember, told me, a long time ago now."
The old man regarded the spot indifferently and shook his head.
"I meant it once—not now. We change our most fixed purposes under the battering of the world; and small enough our old thoughts often look, when seen again, after things have happened and years have passed. I'll creep to join my own, if you please. They won't mind, I reckon, if I sink into the pit beside 'em. I'll go by my wife and my son and my brothers. We'll all rise and brave the Trump together, as well as erring man may."
The stone was set in its place presently and Mr. Baskerville, well pleased with the result, set off homeward. His tethered pony stood at the gate, and he mounted and went slowly up the hill.
"Some say they believe the old saying and some say they don't," declared Mr. Abraham Elford to a thin bar at six o'clock on Christmas Eve; "but for my part I know what I've proved to be true with my own eyes, and I will stick to it that apples picked at wane of moon do shrivel and scrump up cruel. In fact, for hoarding they be no use at all."
"And you swear that you've proved that?" asked Mr. Head in his most judicial manner. "You stand there, a man up home sixty years of age, and steadfastly declare that apples gathered when the moon be on the wane do dry up quicker than others that be plucked when it begins to grow?"
"Yes, I do," declared the innkeeper. "Don't I tell you that I've proved it? Pick your apples when the moon be first horning, that's my advice."
They wrangled upon the question, and missed its real interest as an example of the value of evidence and the influence of superstition and individual idiosyncrasy on all human testimony.
Jack scoffed, Abraham Elford grew warm; for who is there that can endure to hear his depositions brushed aside as worthless?
Upon this great topic of the shrinking of apples at wane of moon, some sided with Mr. Head; while others, who held lunar influence as a force reaching into dark mysteries of matter and mind, supported the publican.
The contention was brisk, and not until it began to interfere with the nightly sale of his liquor, did Elford awake to its danger and stop it. He conceded nothing, but declared the argument must cease.
"'Tis Christman Eve," said he, "and no occasion for any short words or sharp sayings. Me and Head both know that we'm right, and mountains wouldn't move either of us from our opinions, so let it be."
He lifted a great earthen pot from the fire in the bar parlour. It contained cider with pieces of toast floating in it.
"Pretty drinking, as I'm certain sure that one and all of you will say," foretold the host.
Apples, however, rose again to be first topic of conversation before this fine wassail, and Jack spoke once more.
"Time was, down to the in country, that on this night—or else Old Christman Eve, I forget which—we gawks should all have marched out solemn to the orchards and sung lucky songs, and poured out cider, and fired our guns into the branches, and made all-round heathen fools of ourselves. And why? Because 'twas thought that to do so improved the next year's crop a thousandfold! And when we remember that 'twas no further back than our fathers that they did such witless things, it did ought to make us feel humble, I'm sure."
"Don't talk no more about cider, drink it," said Heathman Lintern, who was of the company. "Drink it while 'tis hot, and 'twill warm your bones and soften your opinions. You'm so peart to-night and so sharp at the corners, that I reckon you've got your money back at last."
This direct attack reduced Mr. Head to a less energetic and dogmatic frame of mind.
"No," he answered. "I have not, and I happen to know that I never shall. Me and the old chap fell out, and I dressed him down too sharp. I was wrong, and I've since admitted it, for I'm the rare, fearless sort that grant I'm wrong the first minute it can be proved against me. Though when a man's built on that large pattern, you may be sure he ban't wrong very often. 'Tis only the peddling, small creatures that won't admit they're mistaken—out of a natural fear that if they once allow it, they'll never be thought right again. But though he's forgiven me, I've strained the friendship. So we live and learn."
"Coode's had his money again," said the host of 'The White Thorn.'
"He has—the drunken dog? There's only me left," returned Jack.
"It wasn't till after he lost his money that he took to swilling, however," declared the innkeeper. "I know him well. The misfortune ruined his character."
"His daughter's been paid back, all the same," said Lintern. "She keeps his house, and the old boy gave the money to her, to be used or saved according as she thinks best."
"That leaves only me," said Jack.
"Me and Rupert was running over the figures a bit ago," continued Heathman. "We made out that the sporting old blade had dropped upwards of six thousand over this job, and we was wondering how much that is out of all he's got."
"A fleabite, I reckon," answered Head; but the other doubted it.
"Rupert says he thinks 'tis pretty near half of his fortune, if not more. He goes shabbier than ever, and he eats little better than orts for his food."
"That's no new thing," said another man as he held a mug for some more of the hot cider; "'twas always so, as Susan Hacker will tell you. My wife have heard her grumbling off and on these ten years about it. His food's poor and coarse, like his baccy and his cider. His clothes be kept on his back till there ban't enough of the web left to hold 'em together any longer. Susan offered an old coat to a tramp once, thinking to get it away afore Baskerville missed it; and the tramp looked it over—through and through, you might say—and he thanked Susan as saucy as you please, and told her that when he was going to set up for a mommet[1] he'd let her know, but 'twouldn't be yet."
[1]Mommet—scarecrow.
"A strange old night-hawk, and always have been," said Head. "Not a man—not even me, though I know him best—can measure him altogether. Never was such a mixture. Now he's so good-natured as the best stone, and you'll go gaily driving into him and then, suddenly, you'll strike flint, and get a spark in your eye, and wish to God you'd left the man alone. He's beyond any well-balanced mind to understand, as I've told him more than once."
"Meek as Moses one minute, then all claws and prickles the next—so they tell me," declared Abraham Elford. "But whether 'tis true or not, I can't say from experience," he added, "for the man don't come in here."
"And why?" said Heathman. "That's another queer side of him. I axed him that same question, and he said because to his eyes the place was haunted by my father. 'I should see Nathan's long beard wagging behind the bar,' he said to me, 'and I couldn't abide it.'"
"He's above common men, no doubt," declared another speaker. "We can only leave him at that. He's a riddle none here will ever guess, and that's the last word about him."
Rupert Baskerville came in at this moment and saw Heathman. Both were in Dennis Masterman's carol choir, and it was time that they gathered with the rest at the vicarage, for a long round of singing awaited them.
"A mild night and the roads pretty passable," he announced. "We're away in half an hour wi' books and lanterns; but no musickers be coming with us, like in the good old days. Only voices to carry it off."
He stopped to drink, and the sight of Jack Head reminded him of a commission.
"I want you, Jack," he said. "Come out in the ope-way for half a moment."
They departed together, and in a few moments returned. Rupert was laughing, Mr. Head exhibited the liveliest excitement. In one hand he waved three ten-pound notes; with the other he chinked some gold and silver.
"Money! Money! Money, souls!" he shouted. "If that baggering old hero haven't paid me after all! Give it a name, boys, drinks round!"
They congratulated him and liquor flowed. Head was full of rejoicing. He even exhibited gratitude.
"You might say 'twas no more than justice," he began; "but I tell you he's more than just—he's a very generous old man, and nobody can deny it, and I for one would like to do something to pay him back."
"There's nought you can do," declared Elford, "but be large-minded about it, and overlook the little smart that always touches a big mind when it's asked to accept favours."
"Not a big mind," corrected Rupert. "'Tis only a small mind can't take favours. And the thought of giving that smart would pain my uncle, for he's terrible tender and he's smarted all his life, and knows what 'tis to feel so."
"Smart be damned!" said Mr. Head. "There's no smart about getting back your own. I'm only glad that he felt the call to pay; and, though I was kept to the last, I shan't quarrel about that. If Rupert here, as be his nephew and his right hand by all accounts, could hit on a thing for us to do that would please the man, then I say us might do it without loss of credit. There's nobody has anything serious against him, I believe, nowadays, unless it be Abraham here, because he never comes inside his bar."
The publican shrugged his shoulders.
"I can't quarrel for that," he said, "since he goeth nowhere else either."
They considered the possible ways of bringing any satisfaction to Humphrey Baskerville, but could hit on no happy project. Head, indeed, was fertile of ideas, but Rupert found objections to all of them.
"If us could only do something that meant a lot of different chaps all of one mind," said Heathman. "The old bird always thinks that the people hate him or laugh at him, and if we could somehow work a trick that showed a score of folk all meaning well to him and thinking well of him for once—— But Lord knows what."
Then came an interruption in the shape of Dennis Masterman. He was warm and somewhat annoyed. He turned upon the guilty Rupert and Heathman.
"This is too bad, you fellows!" he said. "Here we're all waiting and waiting, and, despite my express wishes, you turn in to drink. I blame you both."
They expressed the liveliest regret, and Dennis was speedily mollified when he heard the great argument that had made these men forget the business of the night.
"There's no time now," he answered, "but you're in the right to think of such a thing, and, after Christmas, I shall be only too glad to lend a hand. A very admirable idea, and I'm glad you've hit on it."
"Just a thimbleful of my wassail, your honour, for luck," said the host, and Masterman, protesting, took the glass handed to him.
A sudden and violent explosion from Mr. Head made the clergyman nearly choke in the middle of his drinking.
"I've got it!" cried Jack so loudly that the company started. He slapped his leg at the same moment and then danced with exaggerated rejoicing.
"Got what? D.T.'s?" asked Heathman.
"Go up along to Hawk House! I beg and pray your reverence to go there first of all," urged Jack. "Surely 'tis the very thing. 'Tis just what we was trying to light upon—summat that meant the showing of general friendship—summat that meant a bit of trouble and thought taken for him—all your blessed Christmas vartues put together—goodwill and all the rest of it. If you was to steal up through the garden by the greenside and then burst forth like one man—why, there 'tis! Who can deny 'tis a noble idea? And you can go and holler to the quality afterwards."
"Good for you, Jack!" answered Rupert. "And I say ditto with all my heart if Mr. Masterman——"
"Come, then," interrupted Dennis. "The night will be gone before we start. We'll go to Hawk House right away. I can't gainsay such a wish, though it's a mile out of the beat we had planned. Come!"
The clergyman, with Rupert Baskerville and Heathman Lintern, hurried off, and a few of the younger men, accompanied by Jack Head, followed after them.
"I must just pop in my house and lock up this dollop of money," said Jack; "then us'll go up over with the singers to see how the old Hawk takes it. He'll be scared first; and then he'll try to look as if he was going to fling brickbats out of the windows, or set the dogs at us; and all the time we shall very well know that he's bubbling over with surprise to find what a number of respectable people have got to thinking well of him."
The crowd of men and boys moved on ahead of Jack and his friends. The shrill cries and laughter of the youngsters and a bass rumble of adult voices wakened night, and a dozen lanterns flashed among the company as they ascended into the silent darkness of Dartmoor.
Humphrey Baskerville had hoped that his nephew might visit him on Christmas Eve; but he learned that it was impossible, because Rupert had joined the carol-singers, and would be occupied with them on a wide circle of song.
After dark he sat alone until near seven o'clock; then Mrs. Hacker returned home and they took their supper together.
The meal ended, she cleared it away and settled to her knitting. Talk passed between them not unmarked by sentiment, for it concerned the past and related to those changes the year had brought. On the following day Humphrey was to eat his Christmas dinner at Cadworthy, and Susan hoped to spend the festival with friends in Shaugh.
"I've got Heathman and his mother to be of the company," said Mr. Baskerville. "The daughters are both about their own business, and one goes to her sweetheart, and Cora's down to Plymouth, so we shall escape from them and no harm done. But Heathman and his mother will be there. They are rather a puzzle to me, Susan."
"No doubt," she replied. "You'll go on puzzling yourself over this party or that till you've puzzled yourself into the workhouse. Haven't you paid all the creditors to the last penny?"
"Not so," he answered. "That's where it lies. A man's children and their mother are his first creditors, I should reckon. They've got first call in justice, if not in law. I judge that there's a fine bit of duty there, and the way they look at life—so much my own way 'tis—makes me feel—— I wrote to that bad Cora yesterday. She's working hard, I'm told."
Susan sniffed.
"So does the Devil," she said. "'Tis all very well for you, I suppose; because when you wake up some morning and discover as you've got nought left in the world but your night-shirt, you'll go about to them you've befriended to seek for your own again—and lucky you'll be if you find it, or half of it; but what of me?"
"You'll never want," he declared. "You're the sort always to fall on your feet."
"So's young Lintern for that matter. No need to worry about him. He's a lesson, if you like. The man to be contented whatever haps."
"I know it. I've marked it. I've learnt no little from him. A big heart and a mighty power of taking life as it comes without fuss. There's a bad side to it, however, as well as a good. I've worked that out. It's good for a man to be contented, but no good for the place he lives in. Contented people never stir up things, or throw light into dark corners, or let air into stuffy places. Content means stagnation so oft as not."
"They mind their own business, however."
"They mostly do; and that's selfish wisdom so oft as not. Now Jack Head's never content, and never will be."
"Don't name that man on Christmas Eve!" said Mrs. Hacker testily. "I hate to think of him any day of the week, for that matter."
"Yet him and the east wind both be useful, little as you like 'em. For my part, I've been a neighbour to the east wind all my life and shared its quality in the eyes of most folk—till now. But the wind of God be turning out of the east for me, Susan."
"So long as you be pleased with yourself—— And as for content, 'tisn't a vartue, 'tis an accident, like red hair or bow legs. You can't get it, nor yet get away from it, by taking thought."
He nodded.
"You're in the right there. One man will make more noise if he scratches his finger than another if he breaks his leg. 'Tis part of the build of the mind, and don't depend on chance. Same with misery—that's a matter of character, not condition, I know men that won't be wretched while they can draw their breath; and some won't be happy, though they've got thrice their share of good fortune. No doubt that's how Providence levels up, and gives the one what he can't enjoy, to balance him with the other, who's got nought, but who's also got the blessed power of making happiness out of nought."
"You've found the middle way, I suppose," she said; "and, like others who think they're on the sure road to happiness, you be pushing along too fast."
"Running myself out of breath—eh? But you're wrong. I'm too cautious for that. If I'm a miser, as the people still think here and there, then 'tis for peace I'm a miser. 'Twas always peace of mind that I hungered and hankered for, yet went in doubt if such a thing there was. And even now, though I seem three-parts along the road to it, I feel a cold fear often enough whether my way will stand all weathers. It may break down yet."
"Not while your money lasts," she answered with a short laugh.
He followed his own thoughts in silence, and then spoke aloud again.
"Restless as the fox, and hungrier than ever he was. Every man's hand against me, as I thought, and mine held out to every man; but they wouldn't see it. None to come to my hearth willingly, though 'twas always hot for 'em; none to look into my meaning, though that meaning was always meant for kindness. But who shall blame any living creature that they thought me an enemy and not a friend? How should they know? Didn't I hide the scant good that was in me, more careful than the bird her nest?"
"They be up to your tricks now, anyway; and I've helped to show 'em better, though you may not believe it," declared Susan. "What a long-tongued, well-meaning female could do I've done for you; and I always shall say so."
"I know that," he said. "There's no good thing on earth than can't be made better, but one thing. And that's the thing in all Christian minds this night—I mean the thing called love. You know it—you deal in it. Out of your kind soul you've always felt friendly to me, and you saw what I had the wish but not the power to show to others; and you've done your share of the work to make the people like me better. Maybe 'tis mostly your doing, if we could but read into the truth of it."
This work-a-day world must for ever fall far short of the humblest ethical ideal, and doubtless even those who fell prostrate at the shout of their Thunder Spirit, or worshipped the sun and the sea in the morning of days, guessed dimly how their kind lacked much of perfection. To them the brooding soul of humanity revealed the road, though little knew those early men the length of it; little they understood that the goal of any faultless standard must remain a shifting ideal within reach of mind alone.
At certain points Baskerville darkly suspected weak places in this new armour of light. While his days had, indeed, achieved a consummation and orbicular completeness beyond all hope; while, looking backward, he could not fail to contrast noontide gloom with sunset light, the fierce equinox of autumn with this unfolding period of a gracious Indian summer now following upon it; yet, even here, there fell a narrow shadow of cloud; there wakened a wind not unedged. In deep and secret thought he had drifted upon that negation of justice involved by the Golden Rule. He saw, what every intellect worthy a name must see: that to do as you would be done by, to withhold the scourge from the guilty shoulder, to suffer the weed to flourish in the garden, to shield our fellow-men from the consequence of their evil or folly, is to put the individual higher than society, and to follow a precept that ethics in evolution has long rejected.
But he shirked his dilemma: he believed it not necessary to pursue the paradox to its bitter end. The Golden Rule he hypostatised into a living and an omnipresent creed; henceforth it was destined to be his criterion of every action; and to his doubting spirit he replied, that if not practicable in youth, if not convenient for middle age, this principle might most justly direct the performance and stimulate the thought of the old. Thus he was, and knew himself, untrue to the clearer, colder conviction of his reasoning past; but in practice this defection brought a peace so exalted, a content so steady, a recognition so precious, that he rested his spirit upon it in faith and sought no further.
Now he retraced his time, and made a brief and pregnant summary thereof for Susan's ear.
"'Tis to be spoken in a score of words," he said. "My life has been a storm in a teacup; but none the less a terrible storm for me until I won the grace to still it. Port to the sailor-man be a blessed thing according to the voyage that's gone afore. The worse that, the better the peace of the haven when he comes to it."
She was going to speak, but a sound on the stillness of night stopped her.
"Hark!" was all she said.
Together they rose and went to his outer door.
The gibbous moon sailed through a sky of thin cloud, and light fell dimly upon the open spaces, but sparkled in the great darkness of evergreen things about the garden. Earth rolled night-hidden to the southern hills, and its breast was touched with sparks of flame, where glimmered those few habitations visible from this place. A lattice of naked boughs meshed the moonlight under the slope of the hill, and from beneath their shadows ascended a moving thread of men and boys. They broke the stillness with speech and laughter, and their red lantern-light struck to right and left and killed the wan moonshine as they came.
"What's toward now?" asked Mr. Baskerville, staring blankly before him.
"Why," cried Susan, "'tis the carol-singers without a doubt! They'll want an ocean of beer presently, and where shall us get it from?"
"Coming to me—coming to sing tome!" he mumbled. "Good God, a thing far beyond my utmost thought is this!"
The crowd rolled clattering up, and the woman stayed to welcome them; but the man ran back into his house, sat down in his chair, bent forward to listen and clasped his hands tightly between his knees.
Acute emotion marked his countenance; but this painful tension passed when out of the night there rolled the melodious thunder of an ancient tune.
"Singing for me!" he murmured many times while the old song throbbed.