Orphan Dinah

By

Eden Phillpotts

Author of "Miser's Money," etc.

1920
London : William Heinemann

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. 1920.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. [THE HILLTOP]
II. [FALCON FARM]
III. [SUPPER]
IV. [AT BUCKLAND-IN-THE-MOOR]
V. [THE ACCIDENT]
VI. [ON HAZEL TOR]
VII. [AT GREEN HAYES]
VIII. [THE OLD FOX-HUNTER]
IX. [A HOLIDAY FOR SUSAN]
X. [TALKING WITH DINAH]
XI. [NEW BRIDGE]
XII. [AFTERWARDS]
XIII. [JOE ON ECONOMICS]
XIV. [THE FACE ON THE ROCK]
XV. [BEN BAMSEY'S DOUBTS]
XVI. [SUNDAY]
XVII. [DINAH]
XVIII. [MAYNARD]
XIX. [LIGHT OF AUTUMN]
XX. [THE HUNTER'S MOON]
XXI. [FUNERAL]
XXII. [AT WATERSMEET]
XXIII. [IN A SICK-ROOM]
XXIV. ["THE REST IS EASY"]
XXV. [JOHN AND JOE]
XXVI. [MR. PALK SEEKS ADVICE]
XXVII. [DISCOVERY]
XXVIII. [THE LAW]
XXIX. [JOE TAKES IT ILL]
XXX. [THE NEST]
XXXI. [JOE'S SUNDAY]
XXXII. [JANE AND JERRY]
XXXIII. [JOE HEARS THE SECRET]
XXXIV. [AN OFFER]
XXXV. [FOR RIGHT AND JUSTICE]
XXXVI. [THE WEDDING DAY]
XXXVII. [SHEPHERD'S CROSS]
XXXVIII. [RETURN FROM THE HONEYMOON]

CHAPTER I
THE HILLTOP

The spectacle of a free horizon from Buckland Beacon, at the southern rampart of Dartmoor, challenges the least discerning eye by the accident of its immensity, and attracts an understanding vision for weightier reasons. Beheld from this high place, Dart Vale and the land beyond it afford a great composition of nature, orbicular and complete. Its obvious grandeur none can question, but there is much more to be said for it, and from beneath the conspicuous and rhetorical qualities there emerge enduring distinctions. The scene belongs to an order of beauty that does not grow old. Its sensitiveness to light and the operations of the sky; its gracious, yet austere, composition and its far flung arena for the masques and interludes of the dancing hours render it a centre of sleepless variation. Its native fabrics, now gay, now solemn, are a fit habit for the lyrical and epic seasons, and its garments are transformed, not only by the robings and disrobings of Spring and Winter, but at a point's change in the wind, at a rise or fall of temperature. These delicacies, with the more patent magic of fore-glow and dawn, sunset and after-glow, crepuscule and gloaming, are revealed under the most perfect imaginable conditions; for, by many chances and happy hazards, earth here responds to air in all its heights and depths so completely that each phenomenon finds all needful for fullest achievement. One might study the vision a thousand times, yet find no picture resemble another, even in detail of large forms; for the actual modelling changes, since light and atmosphere deal with forest, rock and ridge as though they were plastic—suppressing here, uplifting there, obliterating great passages at one moment and erecting into sudden prominence things concealed at another. The hill sinks at the pressure of a purple shadow; the unseen river suddenly sparkles its presence at a sunbeam.

In this hour, after noon on a day of mid September, the light was changing, not gradually at the sun's proper declension, but under the forces of a south-west wind bringing up vapour at twenty miles an hour from the distant sea.

From the rounded and weathered masses of the Beacon, the hill sloped abruptly and a receding foreground of dying fern and grey, granite boulders broke on a gap of such extent that earth, reappearing far below, was already washed by the milky azure of the air, through which it glimmered and receded and presently again rose to lofty lands beyond. The ground plan was a mighty cup, over which the valley undulated, rising here to knap and knoll, falling there into coombs and plains, sinking to its lowest depths immediately beneath the view point, where Dart wound about lesser hills, not small in themselves, yet dwarfed by the greatness of the expanse and the loftiness of the horizon's brim. Upon that distant and irregular line, now melting into the thick air, border heights and saliencies sank and rose, repeating on a vaster scale the anatomy of the river basin. They lifted through the hazes until they faded upon the sight into the gathering clouds, that loomed still full of light, above their grey confines. The sea was long since hidden.

A chief quality of this spectacle appeared in the three dissimilar and different coverings that draped it. The body of the earth lay wrapped in a triple robe, and each garment was slashed and broken, so that its texture flowed into and revealed the others. Every furlong of these rolling leagues, save only where the river looped and twined through the middle distance, was clad with forest, with field, or with wilderness of heath and stone; and all, preserving their special qualities, added character of contrast to their neighbours. There was not a monotonous passage from east to west in this huge spectacle. Tilth and meadow oozed out through coppice and hanger; the forests ascended the steep places and fledged the hills, only drooping their dark wings where furze and stone climbed higher still, until they heaved upon the sky. The immemorial heights changed not, save to the painting of the seasons; the woods, that seemed as ancient as they, were largely the work of man, even as the tesselated patterns of the fields that spread, shorn of their corn, or still green with their roots, among them. The verdant patchwork of mangel and swede, the grey of arrish, and the gloom of freshly broken earth bosomed out in gentle arcs among the forests, breaking their ragged edges with long, smooth billows of colour. They shone against the summer sobriety of the trees, for the solid masses of the foliage were as yet scarcely stained with the approaching breath of the fall. But woodlands welcomed the light also, and the sunshine, though already softened by a gathering haze that advanced before the actual clouds, still beat into the copse and spinney, to fringe with a nimbus of pale gold the boss of each great tree and outline it from the rest. Light rained and ran through the multitude of the trees, drowning their green and raying all their faces with a dim and delicate fire.

In a gap southward, shrunk to velvet tapestry among clumps and sheaves of pine and oak, spread the lawns of Holne Chase—great park lands, reduced by distance to a garden. There the last sun gleam wakened a transient emerald; then it was gone, as a jewel revealed for a moment and hidden in its casket again.

The woods of Buckland bear noble timber and each tree in many a glen is a giant, thrusting upward from vast bole to mossy branch, until its high top ascends among its neighbours to sunlight and storm. They are worthy of the hills that harbour them, and in their combined myriads affect the operations of the air, draw the rain clouds for their own sustenance and help to create the humidity that keeps Dart Vale so dewy and so green. Down and down they roll endlessly, sinking away into the likeness of a clinging moss; for seen afar, they look no more upon this great pattern of rising and falling earth, than a close integument. Their size is lost against the greater size of the undulations they clothe; they shrink to a close pelt for the land—no heavier than the leagues of the eagle fern, or the autumnal cloth of purple and gold flung upon the hills above them.

To-day the highest lights were in the depths, where Dart flashed at a fall, or shone along some placid reach. She was but a streak of polished silver seen from aloft, and her manifold beauties hidden; while other remote spots and sparks of light that held the eye conveyed no detail either. They meant a mansion, or the white or rosy wash on cottage faces. A grey smudge, sunk in the green to westward, was a village; a white lozenge in the woods beneath, the roof of a moorland church. Here and there blue feathers of wood smoke melted upward into the oncoming clouds; and thinly, through vapours beyond, like a tangle of thread, there twined high roads, ascending from invisible bridges and hamlets to the hills.

And then, little by little, detail faded and the shadows of the clouds grew denser, the body of the clouds extended. Still they were edged with light, but the light died as they thickened and lumbered forward, spreading their pinions over the Vale. The air gradually grew opaque, and ridge after ridge, height after height, disappeared in it. They were not blotted out, but washed away, until the fingers of the rain felt dumbly along the bosom of Buckland Beacon, dimmed the heath and furze to greyness, curled over the uplifted boulder, found and slaked the least thirsty wafer of gold or ebony lichen that clung thereto.

A young man, who had been standing motionless upon the Beacon, felt the cool brush of the rain upon his face and woke from his reverie. He was of a recipient, intelligent aspect, and appeared to admire the great spectacle spread before him; but whether, behind the thing seen, any deeper emotion existed for him; whether to the outward and visible sign there responded any inward and spiritual grace, was a question not to be answered immediately. He prepared to descend, where a building stood upon the hill below him half a mile distant. There he was expected, but as yet knew it not.

CHAPTER II
FALCON FARM

Beneath the Beacon, across the great slope that fell from its summit to the river valley, a road ran into the woods that hid Buckland village, and upon the right hand of this highway, perched among open fields, that quilted the southern slope of the heights, there stood a stone house. Here was Falcon Farm, and over it the hawks that had given it name would often poise and soar and utter their complaining cries. The cluster of buildings perched on the hillside consisted of a slate-roofed dwelling house, with cartsheds, a cowhouse, and stable and a fine barn assembled round the farm yard. About them stretched square fields, off some of which a harvest of oats had just been shorn; while others were grass green with the sprawling foliage of turnip. Beneath, between the farmhouse and the wooded road, extended meadows into which fern and heath were intruding ominously. A little wedge of kitchen garden was scooped out of the hill beside the yard and a dry-built wall fell from the shoulder of the Beacon above, broke at Falcon Farm, and with diverging arms separated its field and fallow from the surrounding wild.

The door of the dwelling faced west, and here stood a man talking to a woman.

He was of sturdy build with a clean shaved, fresh-coloured face and head growing bald. But he had plenty of grey hair still and his countenance was plump and little wrinkled. His eyes were grey and, having long learned the value of direct vision in affairs, he fixed them upon people when he talked. Mr. Joseph Stockman declared himself to be in sight of seventy; but he did not appear so much and his neighbours believed this assertion of age no more than an excuse for his manner of life.

Indeed, at this moment, his companion was uttering a pleasantry at the farmer's expense. She had come on an errand from Buckland village, a mile away, and loitered because she esteemed the humorous qualities of Mr. Stockman and herself found laughter a source to existence. She needed this addition. Her lot had not been one of great emotions, or pleasures, for Melinda Honeysett was a widow after three uneven years of marriage. They passed before she was five and twenty, when a drunken husband, riding a horse that would not "carry beer," was pitched off in the night on Dunstone Down and broke his neck. She had no children and now lived with a bed-ridden father and ministered to him in the village. This had been her life for nearly twenty years. She was a connection of Joseph Stockman through her marriage, for the Bamseys and the Stockmans and the Honeysetts were related, though neither family exactly knew how.

"A day of great events," said the farmer. "My two new hands both coming and, as my manner is, I hope the best, but fear the worst."

"A horseman and a cowman, so Susan said."

"Yes. But that means more than the words on a little place like this, as I made clear. In fact, they've got to do pretty much everything—with such help as I can give and Neddy Tutt."

"Hope they'll be all right. But they mustn't count on a poor, weak, old man like you, of course."

Mr. Stockman looked into Melinda's face. She was a chubby, red-haired woman built on massive lines with a bosom that threatened to burst its lavender print, and a broad, beamy body beneath. She had a pair of pale blue eyes and a finely modelled mouth, not devoid of character. Her teeth were neglected. She wore a white sunbonnet, which threw a cool shadow over her face, and carried a basket, now full of small carrots and large lettuces.

"You poke your fun at me, forgetting I've done ten men's work in my time and must slack off," he said. "Because, thanks to plain living and moderation in all things, and the widowed state with all its restfulness, I don't look my age, that's not to say I don't feel it, I can assure you. There's certain rights I owe to myself—the only person as ever I did owe anything to in my life—and even if I was fool enough to want to make a martyr of myself, which I'm not—even so Soosie-Toosie would never let me."

"I'm sure she wouldn't."

"My daughter knows where the shoe pinches; and that's in my breathing parts. Often I'll stand to work like a young man, knowing all the time I shall have to pay for it with a long rest after."

"Poor chap!"

He shook his head.

"You be among the unbelievers I see—that's your father's bad work. But since he don't believe in nothing, I can't hope he'll ever believe in me."

"But the new men. Tell me about them. What are they like?"

"Ah, you females! It's always the outside of a man as interests you. For my part it was what their papers and characters were like that I had to think about; and even so I've took one largely on trust."

"You're such a trustful creature, Joe."

"I like to trust. I like to do unto others as they should do unto me. But it's a disappointing rule of life. To be above the staple of your fellow creatures is to get a lot of shocks, Melinda; but you can only set a good example; you can't make people follow it. One man I have seen, t'other I have not. Thomas Palk, the horseman—so to call him—is in sight of middle-age and a towser for work. He's leaving Haccombe, down Newton Abbot way, because his master's son is taking up his job. A very good man by all accounts, and he understands the position and knows what lies before him. A faithful-looking man and I hope he'll prove so. Plain as a bit of moor-stone—in fact a mighty ugly man; but an honest face if I know anything."

"Sounds all right."

"T'other I haven't seen. He comes from up country and answered my advertisement. Can't give no character direct, because his master's died sudden. But he's been along with him for nearly five years, and it was a bigger place than this, and he writes a very good letter. In fact an educated man seemingly, and nobody's the worse for that if it don't come between them and work. Though I grant it be doing so."

"So father says."

"Lawrence Maynard he's called. I've engaged him and hope for the best. Both free men—no encumbrances. I hope, with my gift of making the darkness light where farming is concerned, they'll soon be pulling their weight and getting things all ship-shape."

"Father says nobody knows better than you what work means; but somebody else has always got to do it."

"A wonderful man your father; yet I'm very much afraid he'll go to hell when the end comes, Melinda."

"He's not."

A ginger-coloured lurcher appeared. It was a gaunt and hideous dog with a white muzzle. Behind it came a black spaniel and a white, wire-haired fox-terrier.

"Us must get to work," said Mr. Stockman. "Soosie-Toosie wants a brace of rabbits for supper to-night and I'd best to fight for 'em afore the rain comes. It have been offering since morning and will be on us afore nightfall."

The dogs, apparently understanding, sat round with their eye on Joseph.

"If your godless parent was to see these poor creatures to work, I can tell you what he'd say, Melinda. He'd say thicky spaniel was like me—knows her job very well indeed and prefers to see the younger dogs doing it. And why not?"

"No use growing old if you don't grow artful," admitted Melinda.

"Of course it ban't—here's the girl. What's the matter now, Soosie? The rabbits? I be just going after 'em."

But Miss Stockman, Joseph's only child, had not come about the rabbits. She was a woman resembling her father in no respect. Her hair was black, lustreless and rough, her brown face disfigured by a "port wine" stain that descended from her forehead to her cheek. Her expression was anxious and careworn, and though large-boned and powerfully made, she was thin. She had brown, dog-like eyes, a mouth with sad lips and a pleading voice, which seemed to have the same querulous note as the hawks that so often hung in air above her home.

"Mr. Maynard's box have come, father," she said. "Be he to live in the house, or to go in the tallet over the stables? Both rooms are sweet and ready for 'em."

"Trust you for that, Soosie," declared Melinda.

"The horseman goes over the stables, as being the right and proper place for him," said Mr. Stockman. "And if there was a dwelling room over the cows, the cowman would go there. But there is not, so he'll come in the house."

"Right then," answered his daughter. "Mr. Maynard comes in the house; Mr. Palk goes over the hosses."

Susan disappeared and Mrs. Honeysett prepared to depart.

"And you tell your father that so soon as the woodcock be back—not long now—he'll have the first. I don't bear no malice."

"We all know that. And when you shoot it, you come in and have a tell with father. You do him good."

"And you too I hope?"

"Of course you do—such a long-sighted man as you."

She descended down the farm road to the highway beneath, and Joseph, getting his gun, went upwards with his rejoicing dogs into the fern brakes on the side of the Beacon.

Here, in the pursuit of the only exercise he really loved, Joe Stockman forgot his alleged years. He was a wonderfully steady shot, though it suited him to pretend that failing sight interfered very seriously with his sport; but he excelled still in the difficult business of snapping rabbits in fern. Thus engaged, with his dogs to help him, he became oblivious of weather and it was not until the sight of an approaching stranger arrested him that he grew conscious of the rain. Then he turned up his collar over his blue woollen shirt and swore.

The man who had recently surveyed Dart Vale from the summit of the rocks above, was now descending, and seeing the farmer, turned his steps towards him. He was a slight-built but well-knit youth of seven or eight and twenty. He stood an inch under six feet and was somewhat refined in appearance. His face was resolute and cleanly turned, his skin clear and of a natural olive, that his open-air life had tanned. He wore a small, black moustache over a stern mouth, and his eyes were very dark brown and of a restless and inquiring expression. He wore rough, old tweeds, a little darned at the seat, and on his left arm over the elbow was a mourning band. His legs were cased in tawny gaiters; he had a grey cap on his black hair and in his hands he carried an ash sapling with which, unconsciously from habit, he smote his leg as he walked.

"Sorry to spoil sport," he said, in a quick, clear voice somewhat low pitched, "but I'm a stranger in these parts and want Falcon Farm. Be I right for it?"

"Very right indeed," answered Mr. Stockman. "In fact, so right that it's under your nose. There's Falcon Farm, and I'm the farmer, and I guess you're Lawrence Maynard, due to-day."

The other smiled and his habitual solemnity lifted off his face.

"That's right. I walked from Bovey, because I wanted to have a look at the country."

"And what d'you think of it?"

"Fine. After flat Somerset it makes your legs wake up."

"I dare say it would. There's nothing like a hilly country for tightening the muscles. The Shire hosses find that out when they come here. Yes, that's Falcon Farm. And there's the cows—all red Devons."

The newcomer looked down upon a little cluster of kine grazing in a meadow.

"A beautiful spot sure enough. And snug by the look of it."

"Nothing to grumble at for high land. But it calls for work. I've been here five and twenty year and made it what it is; but I'm old for my age, along of hard labour in all weathers, and can't do all I would no more. However, we'll tell about it later when my other new man, Thomas Palk, arrives. Horseman, he is; but, as I explained, you and him are going to be my right and left hand now, and I can see you're the quick sort that will justify yourself from the first."

"I hope so."

"Heave up them rabbits then, and we'll go down along. I can stop a bird or beast still, though getting cruel dim in the eye."

Maynard picked up three heavy rabbits and they went down the hill together.

"We're a small party," explained Joe, "but very friendly, easy people—too busy to waste time on differences. And you and Palk will find yourselves very comfortable I hope. There's only me and my daughter, Miss Stockman, who rules us men, and a young boy, Neddy Tutt, whose making up into a useful hand. At hay harvest and corn harvest I hire. We've just got home our oats. For the roots, we can pull them ourselves. Of the men who have left me, one went for faults, and we can let the past bury the past; t'other found the winter a thought too hard up here and have gone down to the in-country. He's wrong, but that's his business."

The newcomer felt favourably impressed, for Mr. Stockman had great art to win strangers. He promised to be a kindly and easy man, as he declared himself to be.

Lawrence patted the dogs, who sniffed round him with offers of friendship, and presently all returned together.

CHAPTER III
SUPPER

"I must go and change my coat," said the farmer as they entered the house place. "There was a time when I laughed at a wet jacket, same, no doubt, as you do; but that time's past. Here's my daughter. She'll show you your room."

Susan shook hands and her hurried, fitful smile hovered upon the new arrival.

"Your box be come and I'll give you a hand up," she said. "Your room's in the house at the end of the passage-way facing east. A very comfortable room I hope you'll find."

"Thank you, miss. But I'll fetch up the box if you'll show the way."

He shouldered it and followed her.

"Us'll be having dinner in a minute," she said. "Faither likes it at half after one. Mr. Palk ban't arriving till the afternoon."

During the afternoon Mr. Palk did arrive. He drove up from Ashburton in a trap hired at an inn and brought his luggage with him. He proved a broad and powerful man of fifty, iron grey, close bearded and close cropped. His head was set on a massive neck that lifted above heavy shoulders. His features were huddled together. His nose turned up and revealed deep nostrils; his mouth was large and shapeless; his eyes were steadfast. He proved a man with great powers of concentration. Thus his modest intelligence took him farther than many quicker wits lacking that gift. He did not see much beyond his immediate vision, but could be clear-sighted enough at close range. He had no humour and received impressions slowly, as a child; but grasped them as a child. A light touch was thrown away on Mr. Palk, as his new master soon found. Nod or wink were alike futile as means of suggestion: it was necessary to speak plainly that he might grasp a point. But, once grasped, the matter might safely be left. He never forgot.

At tea that night Joe Stockman expatiated on the situation and his new men listened, while the lad, Neddy Tutt, a big, fair youth, intently regarded them and endeavoured to judge their probable attitude to himself. He was inclined to like both, but doubted not they were on their best behaviour at present and might develop character averse from his interests.

"There's no manner of doubt that we're a little behind," confessed the master. "There are things you'll be itching to put right this autumn, I expect; and I doubt if men like you will rest till we're up to the mark again. When I was young, I had a hawk's eye for danger, and if I saw the thistles gaining on the meadow-land, or the fern and heath getting in while our backs was turned, I'd fight 'em tooth and nail and scarcely rest in my bed till they was down and out. On Dartmoor the battle's to the strong, for we're up against unsleeping forces of Nature as would rather hinder than help. In a word the work's hard, but I lead the way, so far as my weight of years allow it; and, what's more to the point, as you'll find, is my ideas on the subject of food and money. The money you know about; the food you don't. I attach a very great deal of importance to food, Mr. Palk."

Thomas Palk nodded.

"Them as work did ought to eat," he said.

"They did; and I'm often shocked in my observing way to see farmers that don't appear to think so. We keep a generous table here and a good cook likewise, for what my daughter don't know about a man's likes and dislikes in the matter of food ain't worth knowing. As to hours, what I say is that in private service, for that is how you must look at yourselves with me, hours are beside the question. Here's the work and the work must be done; and some days it's done inside seven hours I shouldn't wonder, and some days it's not done inside eight. But only the small mind snaps and snarls for a regulation hour, and it is one of the most mean things to a man like me, who never thought of hours but only the work, that poor spirits here and there be jealous of the clock and down tools just because of the time of day. For look at it. We ain't all built on the same pattern, and one man can do his sort of work an hour a day quicker than another, whether it is ploughing, or harvesting or what not; and the other man can do something else an hour a day quicker than he can. So I'm for no silly rules, but just give and take to get the work done."

"A very self-respecting sort of way, and much what I'm used to," said Maynard.

"Same with liquor," continued Joe. "On the subject of liquor, I take a man as I find him. I drink my beer and take my nightcap also, and there's beer and cider going; and if in drouthy weather a man says, 'I want another half pint,' the barrel's there. I'm like that. I like to feel the respect for my people that they always get to feel for me. But spirits, no. I might, or I might not of an evening say to you, 'Have a spot from my bottle, Palk'; but there wouldn't be no rule."

"I'm teetotal myself," said Maynard, "but very fond of cold tea in working hours."

"Good. You'll never have less cold tea than you want, be sure."

"I be a thirsty man," confessed the elder. "Beer's my standby and I'm glad you grant it; but I only drink when I'm thirsty, though that's often, owing to a great freedom of perspiration. But no man ever saw me bosky-eyed, and none ever will."

"All to the good, Palk. So there it stands. And one more thing: till you know the ropes and my manners and customs, always come to me when in doubt. Your way may be a good way, but where there's two ways, I like mine, unless you can prove yours better. That's reasonable—eh?"

"Very reasonable," admitted Maynard.

"The horses are a middling lot and can be trusted to do their work. I'm buying another at the Ashburton Fair presently. My sheep—Devon long wools crossed with Scotch—are on the Moor, and we'll ride out Sunday and have a look at 'em. I'm buying pigs next week at a sale over to Holne. The cows are a very fine lot indeed. We sell our milk to Ashburton and Totnes."

He proceeded amiably until the cows were lowing at the farmyard gate. Then Maynard departed with Neddy Tutt to the milking, and Palk, who would begin to plough the stubble on the following day, started alone to walk round the yard and inspect the horses and machinery.

"A quiet couple of men," said Joe to his daughter, when they had gone; "but I like the quiet ones. They save their wind for their work, which is where it ought to be."

"Mr. Maynard don't look particular strong," she said.

"Don't he? To my eye he's the wiry sort, that wear as well and better than the mighty men. Don't you go axing him after his health whatever you do. It often puts wrong ideas in their heads. We take health for granted. I'm the only person in this house where health comes in I should hope."

"You'd best turn 'em on to the fern so soon as you can," answered Susan. "Landlord was round again, when you were up over, seeing hounds meet at eight o'clock last week."

"What an early man he is!"

"Yes, and he said he'd hoped to see the work begun, because it frets him a lot that any land of his should go to rack. And he said that he'd have thought one like you, with a name for high farming, would have hated it as much as him."

"That's his cunning. The Honourable Childe's a very clever man, and I respect him for it. He knows me and I know him. The field will be as clean as a new pin before Christmas, I shouldn't wonder."

"You won't get your regular box of cigars from the man if it ain't, I expect."

"Oh yes, I shall. He's large-minded. He knows his luck. I like him very well, for he sees the amusing side of things."

"He weren't much amused last week."

Her father showed a trace of annoyance.

"What a damper you are, Soosie-Toosie! Was ever the like? You always take the dark view and be grim as a ghost under the ups and downs of life. If you'd only copy me there. But 'tis your poor mother in you. A luckier woman never walked you might say; yet she was never hopeful—always on the look out for the rainy day that never came."

"I'm hopeful enough to-day anyhow. I think the new men be the sort to suit you."

"Nobody's easier to suit than me," he answered. "Let a labourer but do his duty, or even get in sight of his duty, and I'm his friend."

Susan reminded her father that a kinsman was coming in the evening.

"You know Johnny promised to look in on his way home from Ashburton and take supper along with us."

"So he did. The man's affairs hang fire by the look of it. When's he going to be married I wonder?"

"Might ask him," answered Susan. "Not that he knows I reckon. It's up to her."

When night came John Bamsey duly arrived and shared the last meal of the day.

His father and Mr. Stockman were cousins, or declared themselves to be so, and John always called Joseph "Cousin Joe."

He was one of the water-bailiffs on the river—a position he had held for six months. But he had already given a good account of himself, and his peculiarities of character were such that they made him a promising keeper. He was keen and resolute, with the merciless qualities of youth that knows itself in the right. He was also swift of foot and strong. A poacher, once seen, never escaped him. John entertained a cheerful conceit of himself, and his career was unsullied. He echoed his mother's temperament and was religious-minded, but he had a light heart. He had fallen in love with a girl two years older than himself, and she had accepted him. And now, at twenty-two, John's only trouble was that Dinah Waycott would not name the day.

He was a fair, tall man, with a solid, broad face, small grey eyes and an expression that did not change. He wore an old-fashioned pair of small whiskers and a tawny moustache in which he took some pride.

He greeted the newcomers in friendship and talked about his work on the river. He was frank and hearty, a great chatterbox without much self-consciousness.

"And when's the wedding going to be?" asked Mr. Stockman. "Don't know; but it's about time I did; and I mean to know inside this month. Dinah must make up her mind, Cousin Joe. Wouldn't you say that was fair?"

"Certainly she should. Orphan Dinah took you very near a year ago, and the marriage ought to be next spring in my opinion."

"No doubt it will be," answered John; "but I will have something definite. Love-making is all right, but I want to be married and take the lodge at Holne Chase."

"The lodge Neddy Tutt's parents keep?" said Susan.

"Yes; and by the same token, Neddy, your mother expects you Sunday."

"I be coming," said Neddy Tutt, and John continued. "I'm lodging with 'em, but they're very wishful to be off, and they will be so soon as ever I'm spliced. The Honourable Childe wants me at the lodge and I want to be there."

Susan, who had a mind so sensitive that she often suspected uneasiness in other minds where none existed, was reflecting now, dimly, that the newcomers would not find this subject very interesting. They sat stolidly and quietly listening and eating their supper. Occasionally Maynard spoke to Susan; Palk had not made a remark since he came to the meal.

Now, however, Joe relieved his daughter's care. He enjoyed exposition and, for the benefit of his new men, he explained a relationship somewhat complicated.

"We be talking in the air no doubt for your ears," he said "But I hope you'll feel yourselves interested in my family before long, just as I shall be in your families, if you've got relations that you like to talk about. Me and this young man's father are cousins in a general way of speaking, and his father, by name Benjamin Bamsey, was married twice. First time he married the widow of Patrick Waycott, who was a footman at the Honourable Childe's, lord of Holne Manor, and she come to my cousin Benjamin with one baby daughter, Dinah by name. So the girl, now up home twenty-three, is just 'Orphan Dinah,' because her mother died of consumption a year after she married Mr. Bamsey. Then Benjamin wedded again—a maiden by the name of Faith West; and she's the present Mrs. Ben Bamsey, and this chap is her son, and Jane Bamsey is her daughter. And now Johnny here be tokened to his foster sister, 'Orphan Dinah,' who, of course, ain't no relation of his. I hope I make myself clear."

"Nothing could be clearer," said Lawrence Maynard.

"What did the footman die of?" asked Palk slowly.

"Consumption, same as his wife. In fact the seeds was in the poor girl when Ben took her. But she done very well with him as long as she lived, and he's terrible fond of Dinah."

Palk abstracted himself. One could almost appreciate outward signs of the mental retreat into his shell. He became oblivious with a frowning forehead, committing this family situation to a memory, where it would remain graven for ever.

John took up the talk.

"Father's too fond of Dinah for my peace in a way. You know father—how he dashes at a thing. The moment he heard from mother, who'd found out, that I was gone on Dinah, he swore as nothing would please him better. And he was on my side from the first. In fact if Dinah hadn't wanted me for myself, I believe father would have driven her to take me, for she'd do anything for him. She couldn't love a real father better. She doats upon him."

"He can't spoil her, however. Nothing would spoil Dinah," said Susan.

"And now," continued John, "now that the time's in sight and changes have got to come, father begins to sing small at the thought of losing her. He seemed to have a sort of notion I'd live on at home for ever, and Dinah too. He's like that. He dashes at a thing and forgets how it will touch him when it happens. He don't look all round a subject."

Maynard spoke.

"I hope the young woman is strong," he said. "'Tis rather serious for both parents to have died so young."

"A very natural and thoughtful thing to say," declared Joe. "It shows you've got intellects, Maynard. But, thank God, the girl is sound every way; in fact, out of the common hearty and nice-looking too—at least Johnny reckons she is."

"A very bowerly maid," said Susan.

"That's right, Soosie-Toosie," chuckled John.

"If she's got a fault, she's too plain-spoken," said Mr. Stockman. "I'm all for direct speech myself and there's nothing like making your meaning clear. It saves time better than any invention. But Dinah—how can you put it? She's got such a naked way of talking. I don't say that the gift of language was given us to conceal our thoughts, because that's a very hard saying, though I know what it means; but I do say it was given us so as we should present our thoughts to our fellow creatures in a decent shape. She's a bit startling at times, Dinah is."

"That's because plain speech be so rare it's always startling," answered John. "We're so used to her, we never think of it at home."

"It ain't she says anything to shock you, when you come to think over it," argued Susan. "It's just plain thinking and going to the root of the matter, which ain't common with most people."

Maynard ventured a sentiment.

"If the young woman says just what she means, it's a very rare thing," he said.

"So it is then," admitted Mr. Stockman. "Few do so—either because they don't want to, or else because they haven't got the words to fit their feelings. There's lots feel more than they're educated to put into speech. But though Dinah haven't got any more words than any other young, ignorant creature, yet she's so inclined by nature to say what she means, that she generally manages to do it."

"Can make herself bitter clear sometimes,'" Johnny assured them. He spoke apparently from experience and memory, and his cheerful face clouded a little.

"No lovers' quarrels I hope," murmured Susan.

"Of course there are," chaffed Joe. "You that have missed the state, Soosie-Toosie, and don't know no more about love than a caterpillar, no doubt think that a lovers' quarrel be a very parlous thing. But it's no more parlous than the east wind in March—is it, Johnny? A frosty breeze may be very healthy and kill a lot of grubs and destroyers, if the ground be properly worked over and the frost can get into it. And so with lovers' quarrels, they do good, if both sides take 'em in a proper spirit."

Maynard laughed.

"I reckon that's true, Mr. Stockman," he said.

"What might you think, Mr. Palk?" asked Susan. She felt the heavy silence of Thomas and knew not, as yet, that he often clothed himself in silence for his own comfort. But he had listened with attention and she thought he must probably have experience.

He declared the reverse, however.

"Couldn't offer an opinion, miss," he replied. "I be of the bachelor persuasion and never felt no feeling to be otherwise. What you might call complete in myself, so far as a man can be."

"You're a loser and a gainer, Thomas," said his new master genially. "You may lose the blessing of a good son, or daughter, and a valuable wife; and you gain also, because you might not have had those fine things, but found yourself in a very different position. You might have had what's better than freedom; but on the other hand you might have had what's a long sight worse."

"And freedom's a very fine thing," added Maynard.

Mr. Stockman loved these questions. He proceeded to examine marriage in all its aspects and left a general impression on the mind of the attentive Mr. Palk that the ideal of achievement was to have loved and lost, and be left with a faithful, home-staying daughter: in fact, Mr. Stockman's own situation. He appeared to hold a brief for the widowed state as both dignified and convenient.

"All the same, father reckons you're the sort will marry again, Cousin Joe," Johnny told him. "He says that such a good-looking man as you, and so popular with the ladies, will surely take another some day, when you'm tired of sporting."

Mr. Stockman shook his head.

"That's like Benjamin—to judge by the outside and never sound the depths. He thinks that his own pattern of mind be the pattern of all. And not a word against him, for a finer pattern of mind and one fuller of the milk of human kindness don't live; but let nobody hope, or fear, any such adventure for me. Me and Soosie-Toosie will go our way, all in all to each other; and the less we have to trouble about ourselves, the more time and thought we can give to our neighbours."

Susan displayed her wan smile at these sentiments. She was in stark fact her father's slave and John well knew it; but he made no comment. Mr. Stockman seldom said a word that was open to comment on any subject. He gave his views and opinions for what they were worth, but quarrelled with none who might differ from him. Indeed, he never quarrelled with anybody. It was his genius invariably to give the soft answer; and this he did from no particular moral conviction, but as a matter of policy. Life had taught him that friction was seldom worth the trouble; and he had an art to get his way rather by geniality of manner than force of character. He achieved his purpose, and that frequently a hard and selfish purpose, as often as a more strenuous man; but, such was his hearty humanity of approach, that people for the most part found themselves conceding his wishes. He did not, however, hoodwink everybody. A bad bargain is a bad bargain, no matter how charming may be the man with whom it is made; and there were neighbours who did not hesitate to say that Joe was a humbug always playing for his own hand, and better able so to do than many far less gracious and genial.

John Bamsey departed presently, and after he had gone the master of Falcon Farm praised him generously.

"A four-square, fine chap that," he said. "An example to the young fellows. A proper glutton for work. He'll be down on the river for hours to-night, to keep off they baggering salmon poachers. And he goes to church Sundays with his parents and always keeps his temper well in hand. For that matter a water-watcher ought to have a temper, so as the doubtful characters shall know he's not to be trifled with. A forceful chap—a little narrow in his opinions I dare say; but that don't matter when his opinions are sound and on the side of morals and good order. He gets 'em from both parents. And the larger charity will come in time. That's a question of mellowing and years. I can see you men are charitable minded, for I'm a student of character and read people pretty clever, owing to my large experience. Have a spot out of my bottle to-night for luck. Then, I dare say, you won't be sorry to turn in. We're early birds by night and early birds in the morning. I always say the hours before breakfast lay the foundation of the day and break the back of it."

Maynard took no liquor, but drank a cup of tea with Susan, whose solitary dissipation was much tea taken at all possible times. Thomas Palk accepted a glass of whisky and water.

Soon after ten all went to bed.

"Soosie-Toosie will call you at half after five," said Joseph, "and I like, in a general way, to hear Ned start with the milk cart to Ashburton before seven for the milk train. It's always a pain to me not to stir myself till breakfast. I lie awake and hunger for the hour; but lifelong rules have often got to be broke for failing health's sake in sight of seventy, as you'll find in your turn no doubt. Life, as I always say, be all cakes and cream to youth; but it's little more than physic when you be nearing the allotted span. Well, I wish you good night, and if there's anything you lack, tell my daughter to-morrow. I hope we shall be good friends and a lot more than master and man pretty soon."

He shook hands with them both, and while Palk contented himself by saying, "Good night, master," Maynard, who was clearly moved by such comfortable words, echoed them and thanked Mr. Stockman for the manner of his reception.

CHAPTER IV
AT BUCKLAND-IN-THE-MOOR

Like beehives cluster the thatched roofs of Buckland, for the cottages are dwarfed by the lofty trees which soar above them. Oak and ash, pine and beech heave up hugely to their canopies upon the hill slope, and the grey roofs and whitewashed walls of the hamlet seem little more than a lodge of pygmies sequestered in the forest. The very undergrowth of laurel has assumed giant proportions and flings many a ponderous bough across the highway, where winds a road with mossy walls through the forest and the village. Here and there green meadows break the woods and lay broad, bright tracts between the masses of the trees; then glimpses of the Vale beneath are visible through woodland rifts.

The cottage coverings were old and sombre of tone; but on this September day, before the great fall of the leaf, destined presently to sweep like a storm from tree top to earth, sunshine soaked through the interlacing boughs and brought light to the low-browed windows, to the fuchsias and purple daisies in the gardens. It flashed a ruby on the rays of Virginian creepers that sometimes clothed a wall and brightened the white faces of the little dwellings to pale gold. All was very silent about the hour of noon. For a few moments no human form appeared; only a brook poured down from the hills, foamed through its dark, hidden ways, rested at a granite drinking trough beside the road, then trickled on again. A robin sang, and far distant throbbed the note of a woodman's axe.

Midway between the squat-towered church, that stood at the limits of the village to the north-west, and the congeries of cots within the border of the woods, a second rivulet leapt in a waterfall from the hedge at the root of a mighty ash that shook out its serrated foliage a hundred feet above and made the lane a place of shade. The road bent here and the dingle was broken with great stones heavily clad in moss. Above stretched the woods, legion upon legion, their receding intricacies of branch and bough broken by many thousand trunks. Beneath, again the woods receded over steep acclivities to the river valley.

Though the houses were few and small, great distinction marked them. They held themselves as though conscious of their setting, and worthy of it. They fitted into the large and elaborate moulding of the hillside and by their human significance completed a vision that had been less without them. There was a quality of massive permanence in the scene, imparted by the gigantic slope of the hill whereon it was set. It fell with no addition of abrupt edge or precipice, but evenly, serenely from its crown on the naked Beacon above, by passages of heath and fern, by the great forests and sweeps of farmland and water meadows that broke them, down and down past the habitations, assembled like an ants' nest on its side to the uttermost depths of the river valley and the cincture of silver Dart winding through the midst of it.

At a point where the road fell and climbed again through the scattered dwellings there stood two cottages under the trees together. They adjoined, and one was fair to see—well-kept and prosperous, with a tidy scrap of garden before it and a little cabbage patch behind. The straw of the roof was trimly cut and looped heavily over the dormer windows, while above, on a brick stack, four slates were set instead of a chimney pot. But the neighbour cottage presented a forlorn appearance. It was empty; its thatch was scabbed and crusted with weeds and blobs of moss; at one place it had fallen in and the wooden ribs of the roof protruded. A mat of neglected ivy covered the face of the cot and thrust through broken windows into the little chambers. Damp and decay marked all, and its evil fame seemed reflected in its gloomy exterior. For the house was haunted, and since Mrs. Benjamin Bamsey had seen a "wishtness" peering through the parlour window on two successive evenings after the death of the last tenant, none could be found to occupy this house, though dwellings in Buckland-in-the-Moor were far to seek.

Now a man appeared in the road from the direction of the church. He was of an aspect somewhat remarkable and he came from Lower Town, a hamlet sunk in the Vale to the west. Arthur Chaffe combined many trades, as a carpenter in a small village is apt to do. He attended to the needs of a scattered community and worked in wood, as the smith, in iron. He boasted that what could be made in wood, from a coffin to a cider cask, lay in his power. And beyond the varied and ceaseless needs of his occupation, he found time for thought, and indeed claimed to be a man above the average of intelligence. His philosophy was based on religious principle and practice; but he was not ungenial for an old bachelor. He smiled upon innocent pleasure, though the lines that he drew round human conduct were hard and fast.

He was eight and fifty, and so spare that the bones of his face gave it expression. Upon them a dull, yellowish skin was tightly drawn. He was growing bald and shaved his upper lip and cheeks, but wore a thin, grey beard. His teeth were few and his mouth had fallen in. His cheeks puffed out when he ate and spoke, but sank to nothing under the cheek bones when he sucked his pipe. He had a flat nose, and his long legs suggested an aquatic bird, while his countenance resembled a goat and his large and pale brown eyes added to the likeness. His expression was both amiable and animated, and he could laugh heartily. Mr. Chaffe's activities were centripetal and his orbit limited. It embraced Lower Town and Buckland, and occasionally curved to Holne and outlying farms; but he was a primitive, and had seldom stirred out of a ten-mile radius in his life. Had he gone much beyond Ashburton, he had found himself in a strange land. He employed three men, and himself worked from morning to night. His highest flights embraced elementary cabinet-making, and when he did make a piece of furniture on rare occasions, none denied that it was an enduring masterpiece.

He left the high road now, approached the pair of cottages and knocked at the door of the respectable dwelling.

Melinda Honeysett it was who appeared and expressed pleasure.

"So you've come then, Mr. Chaffe. What a man of your word you are!"

"I hope so, Mrs. Honeysett. And very pleased to do anything for you and your father."

"Come in and sit down for five minutes. 'Tis a climb from Lower Town. But people say you can fly so easy as you can walk, and a hill's nought to you."

"We thin blades have the pull of the beefy ones in this country. I sometimes think I'll start a pony; but I like to use my legs and ban't often too tired."

"Will you have a drink and a piece of my seedy cake?"

"I will then and gladly. Milk for choice. How's the Governor?"

"Pretty middling for him. You must see him afore you go. You're one of his pets."

"I'm none so sure of that. But 'tis a longful time since we met. I've been busier than ever this summer. I surprise myself sometimes what I get into twenty-four hours."

"I dare say you do."

Melinda brought the wayfarer refreshment. They sat in a pleasant kitchen, whose walls were washed a pale ochre, making harmony with various brass and copper articles upon the mantel shelf and dresser. The floor was of stone, and in the alcove of the window some scarlet geraniums throve. They spoke of neighbours, and Mr. Chaffe asked a question.

"I hear from Ben Bamsey that his cousin have got two new men at Falcon Farm, and foreigners both."

"So they are. One's youngish, t'other's middle-aged; and Joe says they promise to be treasures. He's much pleased about them."

"Then they're gluttons for work without a doubt."

"So they are seemingly."

"How soft that chap do always fall," mused the carpenter.

"Because he's got the wit to choose where he will fall," answered Mrs. Honeysett. "Joe Stockman has gifts. He's a master of the soft answer."

"Because he knows it pays."

"Well, a very good reason."

"His cleverness and charity come out of his head, not his heart, Mrs. Honeysett. He's the sort may cast his crumbs on the waters, but never unless he sees the promise of a loaf returning."

"You don't like him."

"I wouldn't say I didn't like him. As a man of intellects myself I value brains. He's a clever man."

"He's spoilt a bit. He gets round one you know. There's a great power in him to say the word to a woman he always knows will please her. I properly like him some days; then other days he drives me frantic."

The gruff voice of Mrs. Honeysett's father intruded upon them. It came from a little chamber which opened out of the kitchen and had been converted into his bedroom. His lower limbs were paralysed, but he had a vehicle which he moved by handles, and could thus steer himself about the ground floor of his home.

"I hear Arthur Chaffe," rumbled the voice. "I'll see you, Arthur, afore you go, and larn if you've got more sense than when you was here last."

A gurgle of laughter followed this remark and the visitor echoed it.

"Ah! You bad old blid! No more of your sense, I promise you. We know where your sense comes from!"

"Don't you charge too much for my new gate then—sense, or no sense."

"Whoever heard tell of me charging too much for anything, Enoch?"

"Widow Snow did, when you buried her husband."

Again the slow, heavy laughter followed; but Mr. Chaffe did not laugh. He shook his head.

"Past praying for," he said.

Then he rose and suggested inspecting the old gate and making measurements for the new one.

That matter settled and the price determined, Arthur Chaffe returned to the cottage and found that Mr. Withycombe had travelled in upon his little trolley and lifted himself into a large, dog-eared chair beside the hearth.

He was a heavy man with a big, fresh face that had been exceedingly handsome in his prime, but was now a little bloated and discoloured, since fate had ended for the old sportsman his hard and active existence. He had hunted the Dart Vale Foxhounds for thirty years; then, maimed in the back by a fall, for five years he had occupied the position of indoor servant to a master who was deeply attached to him. Finally had come a stroke, as the result of the old injury, and Enoch was forced to retire. He had now reached the age of sixty-six and was a widower with two sons and one daughter. One boy was in the Royal Navy, the other lived at home and worked in the woods.

Mr. Withycombe had grey eyes, a Roman nose and cheeks of a ruddy complexion. He wore whiskers, but shaved his mouth and chin. He was a laughing philosopher, admired for his patience and unfailing good temper, but distrusted, because he permitted himself opinions that did not conform to the community in which he dwelt. These were suspected to be the result of his physical misfortunes; in reality they were but the effect of his environment. An admiration amounting to passion existed in the large heart of Mr. Withycombe for his former master, and during those years when he worked under his roof, the old fox-hunter had learned educated views on various subjects and modified his own to match them. The Honourable Ernest Childe, of Holne Chase, a lord of three manors, could neither do nor think wrong in Enoch's opinion. He was the paragon, and the more nearly did his fellow creatures take their colour from such a man and such a mind, the better it must be for all—so Mr. Withycombe declared. Others, however, did not agree with him. They followed parson rather than squire, and while admitting that the latter's sterling practice left little to be desired, yet suspected his principles and regretted that his pew in church was invariably empty. They puzzled at the discrepancy and regretted it, because it appeared a danger to the rising generation.

Mr. Chaffe shook the heavy and soft hand that Enoch extended to him.

"And how's yourself?" he asked.

"Half dead, half alive, Arthur. But, thanks be, the half that matters most is alive."

"And it be wise enough to feel patience for the weaker members."

"Now it do," admitted Enoch. "But I won't pretend. When this blow first fell upon me and I knew that my legs would be less use in the world than rotten wood, which at least be good for burning, then I cursed God to hell. However, that's past. I've got my wits and now, along of these spectacles, I can read comfortable again."

He pointed to a little shelf within reach of his hand where stood various works.

"I could wish you'd read some books of mine, Enoch," said Arthur Chaffe.

"So I will then—didn't know you'd got any books."

"Oh yes I have—Sunday reading."

"You chaps that limit yourselves to 'Sunday reading' get narrow-minded," declared Withycombe. "For why? You only see one side of life. I don't blame you, because you've got to do your work on weekdays; but you'd find there's a lot of very fine books just so good on Sunday as Monday. 'The Rights of Man,' for example. There's a proper book, and it don't interfere with the rights of God for a moment."

"Mr. Chaffe be going to ax seventeen and six for the gate and five shillings for the hinges and lachet," said Melinda.

"A very fair price and I shan't quarrel with it."

He handed his tobacco pouch to the visitor. It was covered with otter skin now grown shabby.

Arthur filled his pipe.

"We stand for different things, you and me," he said, "yet, thank God, agree in the virtues. Duty's duty, and a man that's honest with himself can't miss it."

"Oh yes he can, Arthur. There's plenty that be honest enough and don't want to shirk, yet miss the road."

"Because they won't read the sign-posts."

"Now stop!" commanded Melinda. "Talk about something interesting. How's 'Orphan Dinah'? Haven't seen her for a month."

"She's very well. Passed the time of day yesterday. Been helping in the harvest. Ben Bamsey have had the best wheat he remembers. 'Tis harvest thanksgiving with us Sunday week. And something out of the common to thank for this year."

"When's the wedding? You'll know if anybody does—Ben's right hand as you be."

"No, no; his wife's his right hand. But we'm like brothers I grant. In fact, few brothers neighbour so close I dare say. No news of the wedding; and that don't worry Ben. You know what Dinah is to him."

"Nearer than his own I reckon."

"Mustn't say that; but—well, now that the date is only waiting for Dinah, Ben begins to feel what her going will be. No doubt we shall hear soon. Faith Bamsey's at Dinah about it. She reckons it's not fair to Johnny to keep him on the hooks longer."

"More it is."

"Well, I dare say you're right, Mrs. Honeysett. Dinah's the sort that loves liberty; but the maids have got to come to it, and she's a good girl and will go into matrimony fearless."

"Fearless enough," said Enoch. "If she'd been born in a different station of life, how that creature would have rode to hounds!"

"She's more interesting than most young things in my opinion, because there's rather more to her," explained Mr. Chaffe. "With most of them, from the point of our experience, they are pretty easy to be read, and they do what you expect from their characters oftener than not. But she'll surprise you more than many grown-ups for that matter."

"It's something that a man who knows human nature so well as you should be surprised, Arthur," said the old hunter.

The other laughed at a recollection.

"You're pulling my leg I reckon—same as that sly publican, Andrew Gaunter, at the Seven Stars. 'Ah!' he said to me, 'you're a marvel, Chaffe; you get every man and woman's measure to an inch!' I told him I wasn't so clever as all that, because none but God knows all there is to know; but he swore he was right—and proved it by reminding me I'm an undertaker!"

Enoch laughed.

"One for him sure enough. Funny word, 'undertaker.' A good chap is Andrew Gaunter. Many a flip of sloe-gin I've had at his door when hounds met that way. He'd bring it out himself, just for the pleasure of 'good morning.'"

"You often hear the horn from here?"

"I heard it yesterday, and I finger my own now and again."

He looked up to where his hunting horn hung from a nail above the mantel shelf.

"There's no music like it as I always say, though not a sportsman."

"Is it true old Sparrow be gone to the workhouse?" asked Melinda, who loved facts concerning fellow creatures and reduced conversation to personalities when she could.

"It is true," answered Chaffe.

"A sparrow as fell to the ground uncounted then," said Enoch, but the carpenter denied it.

"You mustn't think that. What be the workhouse but a sign of the everlasting mercy put in our minds by a higher power?"

"A bleak fashion of mercy, Mr. Chaffe," answered Melinda.

"Many never know happiness till they get there. Human life have always been a hand to mouth business for most of us. It's meant to be, and I don't believe myself that Providence likes us to look much farther than the points of our noses."

"The great man is him that can, however," argued Mr. Withycombe. "Him as looks a few yards deeper into the mirk of the future than we can soon rises to be famous. He knows there can be no security against nature; but, outside that, he sees there did ought to be security between man and man, since we are reasoning creatures. And he thinks reasoning creatures did ought to be reasonable and he tries to help 'em to be—man and man and nation and nation."

"Good, Enoch. If everybody would fight to be friends as hard as they fight for other things, peace would set in, no doubt."

"To do it, you must come with clean hands, Arthur; but all the nations' hands are dirty. They look back into each other's histories and can't trust. Man's a brigand by nature. It's the sporting instinct as much as anything, and the best sporting nations are the best fighting nations. That's why we're up top."

"Are we?"

"The Honourable Childe always says so. He has chapter and verse for all his opinions."

"He'll drop in on the way home and tell you about a run now and again, same as he did last year, I shouldn't wonder."

"No doubt he will, Melinda."

"A puzzling gentleman," declared Chaffe. "Righteousness and goodwill made alive you may say; and yet don't go to church."

His daughter headed off her father's reply.

"What's this a little bird has whispered to me about Jane Bamsey?" she asked.

"Can't say till I know the particulars."

"That my brother, Jerry, be after her."

"Haven't heard nothing. But you ought to know."

"I've guessed it. Jerry's moonstruck and always looking that way."

"I hope it ain't true," said Enoch. "I don't much care for that maiden. She's spoiled, and she's shifty. She came to see us with her mother. Hard hearted."

"She's no more than a kitten yet, father."

"Yes; but the sort of kitten that grows into a cat devilish quick. I wouldn't wish it for Jerry's sake. He's a man likely to be under the thumb of his wife, so I'd hope a different sort for him."

"Jane's too young for Jerry," declared Melinda. "He's over thirty and she's but eighteen or so. Besides, when Dinah marries John and goes, then Jane will have to turn to and be more to her mother. She's terrible lazy."

Mr. Chaffe shook his head.

"They don't know what it will mean to that house when Dinah leaves it."

"Her step-father does," answered Enoch's daughter. "Dinah's the apple of his eye. But Mrs. Bamsey's looking forward to it on the quiet."

"It's natural in a way. She's always been a thought jealous of her husband's great love for Orphan Dinah. And so has Jane. She'll be glad enough when Dinah's away. And it's up to her, as you say, to fill the gap."

"Which she's not built to do," prophesied Mr. Withycombe.

"We must hope. With responsibility often comes the grace to undertake it."

They chatted a little longer and then, promising the new gate in a fortnight, Arthur Chaffe went on his way.

CHAPTER V
THE ACCIDENT

Though Lawrence Maynard was a man of intelligence far deeper than Thomas Palk, yet the latter began to arrive at a juster conclusion concerning his new life and his new master than did his fellow worker.

Nor was it experience of life that led the horseman to his judgment. Experience of life has little to do with duration of life; and as a gutter-snipe of eight will often know more about it and be quicker to read character than a rural boy of fifteen, so, with men, it is the native power to grind what life brings to the mill that makes the student. Maynard had both seen and felt far more than Palk, yet in the matter of their present environment, Thomas it was who divined the situation correctly. And this he did inspired by that most acute of prompters: self-interest; while precisely in this particular Lawrence Maynard was indifferent. His interests, for one with the greater part of his life still to live, were unusually limited. His own life, by the accident of circumstances, concerned him but little. Chance had altered the original plan and scope so largely that he was now become impassive and so emptied of his old former apprehension and appetite for living, that he did not at present trouble himself to use the good brains in his head. The very work he had chosen to do was not such work as he might have done. It was less than the work he once did; but it contented him now. Yet his activities of mind, while largely sharing an apathy from which it seemed unlikely the future would ever awaken him, were not wholly sunk to the level of his occupation. Sometimes he occupied himself with abstract speculations involving fate and conduct, but not implicating humanity and character.

So he took people at their own valuation, from indifference rather than goodwill, and in the case of his new master, found this attitude create a measure of satisfaction. He liked Mr. Stockman, appreciated his benevolence and took him as he found him, without any attempt to examine beneath the smiling and genial surface that Joe invariably presented. He had proved exceedingly kind and even considerate. He had, in fact, though he knew it not, wakened certain sentiments in the younger man's heart and, as a result of this, while their acquaintance was still of the shortest, moved by a very rare emotion, Maynard challenged his master's friendship by the channel of confidence. Nor did it appear that he had erred. The farmer proved exceedingly understanding. Indeed, he exhibited larger sympathies than he was in reality capable of feeling, for Mr. Stockman, among his other accomplishments, had a royal genius for suggesting that the individual who at any time approached him could count upon his entire and single-hearted attention—nay, his devotion. He appeared to concentrate on his neighbour's welfare as though that were the vital interest of his own life; and it was only the harder-headed and long-memoried men and women who were not deluded, but had presence of mind to wait for results and compare Joe's accomplishment with his assurance.

Thus, after a month at Falcon Farm, Lawrence Maynard honestly felt something like enthusiasm for the master, while Thomas Palk failed of such high emotion. Not that Thomas had anything to quarrel about actively; but weighing Joe's words against his deeds, he had slowly, almost solemnly, come to the conclusion that there was a disparity. He voiced his opinion on a day when he and Lawrence were working together on the great fern slopes under the Beacon. There, some weeks before, the bracken had been mown down with scythes, and now the harvest was dry and ready to be stacked for winter litter. They made bales of the fern and loaded up a haycart.

"The man tighteneth," said Palk. "I don't say it in no unkind spirit and I've nought to grumble at; but it ain't working out exactly same as he said it was going to. I wouldn't say he was trying to come it over me, or anything like that; but he's a masterpiece for getting every ounce out of you. If he worked a bit himself, he wouldn't have so much time to see what we was doing."

"Can't say he asks anything out of reason."

"No, no—more I do; but I warn you. He edges in the work that crafty—here a job and there a job—and such a scorn of regular hours. 'Tis all very well to say when our work's done we can stop, no matter what the hour is; but when is our work done? Never, till 'tis too dark to see it any longer."

Maynard laughed.

"We must suit ourselves. It's a free country. I find him a very understanding man, and friendly."

"So do I, so do I; but I mark the plan he goes on. 'Tis the same with the hosses. I won't say it's not a very good plan for a farmer. Feeds well and pays well and treats well; but, behind all that, will have a little more than his money's worth out of man and beast."

"Can't say I've found him grasping."

"Then I hope to God I'm wrong and 'tis my fancy. Time will show. I'm satisfied if you are; and if his daughter don't feel no call to be uneasy, why for should us?"

"For my part I like work," declared Lawrence. "I may not have been so keen once; but there's very little to my life but work. I've got used to looking at work as about the only thing in the world."

"The first thing, not the only thing," answered Thomas. "There's religion and, in the case of many people, there's their families and the rising generation. We'm bachelors and ban't troubled in that way; but I believe in regular hours myself, so far as you can have 'em in farming. I like to get away from work and just do nothing—with mind and body—for a good hour sometimes. 'Tis a restful state."

Palk started with a full cart presently, while Maynard began to collect fresh masses of the dry fern and bind it. He found himself well content at Falcon Farm. He was settling down and liked the place and the people. He did not observe, or attempt to observe, anything beneath the surface of his new neighbours; but they proved agreeable, easy, friendly; they satisfied him well. He liked John Bamsey; he liked Melinda Honeysett, and had visited her father and found a spirit who promised to throw light on some of his own problems.

Now he was to meet yet another from his new circle. He worked two hundred yards above the road that ran slantwise across the hillside to Buckland; and from below him now, whence the sound of a trotting horse's footfall ascended, he heard a sudden, harsh noise which spoke of an accident. Silence followed. The horse had ceased to trot and had evidently come down. Maynard dropped his hay fork, tightened his leather belt and descended swiftly to the hedge. Looking over into the deep lane below he saw a pony on the ground, the shaft of a light market-cart broken, and a girl with her hat crushed, her hair fallen and a bloody face, loosening the harness.

She was a brown, young woman with a pair of dark grey eyes and a countenance that preserved a cheerful expression despite her troubles. She wore a tweed skirt and a white flannel bodice upon which the blood from her face had already dropped. She was kneeling and in some danger of the struggling pony's hoofs.

"Stand clear!" shouted Lawrence. Then he jumped the sheer eight feet of the wall, falling for his own comfort on the mass of beech leaves that filled the water-table below. The girl rose. She was filled with concern for the pony.

"Poor chap; he's been down before. How's his knees? All my fault. I got thinking and forgot the road was slippery."

"You're badly cut I'm thinking."

"It's nothing much. I fell on top of him when he came down. 'Twas a buckle done it I expect."

The man freed the pony and pulled back the trap. The animal had not hurt itself, but was frightened and in a mood to run away. The cart had a shaft broken short off, but was not otherwise injured.

Its driver directed Lawrence.

"Thank you I'm sure. That comes of wool-gathering when you ought to be minding your business. Serve me right. I'll take the pony—he knows me. D'you think you could pull the trap so far as Buckland, or shall I send for it? I can put it up there in a shed and send to Lower Town for a new shaft."

"I'll fetch it along. Is your face done bleeding?"

"Very near. You'll be Mr. Lawrence Maynard I suppose?"

"So I am then. How d'you know it?"

"Guessed it. I'm Dinah Waycott. I expect my young man has told you about me. 'Orphan Dinah' they call me. I'm tokened to John Bamsey, the water-keeper, my foster-father's son."

He nodded.

"I've heard tell about you. John Bamsey often drops in at Falcon Farm."

He pulled the trap along and she walked beside him leading the pony. She spoke kind words to the creature, apologised to it and told it to cheer up.

Maynard had leisure to observe her and quickly perceived the nature of her mind and that outspeaking quality that had occasioned argument. Ac their present meeting it took the form of a sort of familiarity that impressed Lawrence as strange from a woman to a man she had never met before.

"I was wishful to see you, because Johnny likes you. But he's not much of a hand at sizing up people. Perhaps if he was, he wouldn't be so silly fond of me."

This was no challenge, but merely the utterance of her honest opinion. Nothing of the coquette appeared in Dinah. She had received his succour with gratitude, but expressed no dismay at the poor figure she cut on their meeting.

"He's a good chap," he said, "and terrible fond of you, miss."

Thus unconsciously he fell into her own direct way of speech. He did not feel that he was talking to a stranger; and that not because he had already heard so much about her, but because Dinah created an atmosphere of directness between herself and all men and women. She recognised no barriers until the other side raised them. There was a frank goodwill about her that never hid itself. She was like a wild thing that has not yet fallen in with man, or learned to distrust him.

"Are you a chap with a pretty good judgment of your fellow creatures?" she asked. "You've got a thoughtful sort of face as if you might be."

He smiled and looked at her.

"Your fellow creatures make you thoughtful," he answered.

"Don't they? Never you said a truer word! Your life all depends upon the people in it seemingly."

"They make or mar it most times."

"Yes, they're the only difficult thing about it."

"If we could live it all to ourselves, it might be easy enough."

"So I think when I look at a squirrel. But I dare say, if he could talk, he'd tell us the other squirrels was a nuisance, and cadged his food and worried him."

"I dare say he would."

"I'm one of the lucky ones," she said.

"Ah!"

"Yes. If I could put my finger on a trouble, which I can't, I should find it was of my own making."

"Like to-day?"

"This don't amount to a trouble—just an accident with nobody the worse. Only a cranky mind would call this a trouble."

"You might have broke your neck, however."

"But I didn't, nor yet the pony's knees—my luck."

"You may have marked your cheek for life."

"And what does that matter? Suppose I'd knocked half my teeth down my throat: that would have been something to worrit about."

"You're the hopeful sort. Perhaps that's your best luck—that you're built to take a bright view, miss."

"Perhaps it is. Aren't you?"

"We may be built to one pattern and then life come along and unbuild us."

"I wouldn't let life unbuild me."

He did not answer, and presently she asked him a question.

"What d'you think of Johnny Bamsey, Mr. Maynard?"

"Hardly know him well enough to say."

"You know him as well as he knows you—better, because Johnny will be talking more than thinking, same as me. But you're not like that seemingly. In fact, though he's took to you and sees you've got a brain, he says you're rather glum for a young man."

"I expect I am to the eyes of my own generation."

"Why? People ain't glum for nought."

"Oh yes, they are—often for less than nought. It ain't life, it's nature makes many downcast. You see chaps, chin-deep in trouble, always ready to forget it and laugh with the loudest."

"So you do then."

"And others—prosperous men, with nothing to grizzle about—always care-foundered and fretty."

"You'd say you was glum by nature then?"

"I wouldn't say I was glum—you've only got John Bamsey's word for it. Miss Stockman wouldn't tell you I was glum."

"She likes you very much. She told me so when she was over to my home last week. Soosie-Toosie's a woman quick to welcome a bit of luck, because she don't get much, and she likes you, and Mr. Palk also."

"I'm glad she does."

"And what d'you think of Johnny?"

"A very good chap I'm sure. Rather excitable, perhaps."

"He is, you might say a thought unreasonable sometimes."

"Never where you are concerned I'm sure."

"He's got the loveliest hair ever I saw on a man."

"Fine curly hair, sure enough."

"I believe temper always goes with that fashioned hair. I've noticed it."

"I'm sure his temper is good most times."

"He's sulky if he's crossed."

"He's young. Perhaps he hasn't been crossed often."

"Never—never once in his life—until now. But he's a thought vexed because I won't name the day."

"Who shall blame him?"

"Nobody. I'm sure I don't."

"I expect you will name it pretty soon, miss?"

"I expect so. How d'you like Cousin Joe?"

"Mr. Stockman? Very much indeed. I feel a lot obliged to him—a kindly, understanding man. He looks at life in a very wise way, and he's got a thought to spare for other people."

"I'm glad you like him. He's cruel lazy; but what does that matter? It takes all sorts to make a world."

"Everybody tells me he's lazy. I shouldn't call him particular lazy for his time of life. He's done a deal of work in the past."

"Glad you're so well suited. Where d'you come from, if I may ask?"

"Somerset."

They had reached Buckland, and Dinah hitched her pony to the hedge, opened a gate and directed Lawrence to wheel the trap into a byre close at hand.

"I'll tell Mr. Budge what's happened and he'll let father's cart bide there for the minute. Then I'll take the pony and my parcels home."

"You're all right?"

"Never righter. And thank you, I'm sure—a proper good Samaritan. I won't forget it; and if ever I can do you a good turn, I will."

"I'm sure you will. Very pleased to meet you, miss. And you see doctor for that cut. 'Tis a pretty deep gash and did ought to be tended."

"Foster-father'll put me right. And if you're in a mind to come over one day to Sunday dinner, I hope you will. He'll be wishful to thank you."

"No need at all. But I'll come some time, since you're so kind as to offer."

"Mind you do then. I want for you to."

They parted and Lawrence returned to his work in the fern. He came back as swiftly as he might, but the better part of an hour was past, during which he had been absent. He found Thomas Palk and his master. Joe had taken his coat off and placed it on a stone. He was handling Lawrence's fork and assisting Thomas to fill the haycart. As Maynard entered a gate beneath and ascended to the fern patch, Mr. Stockman laboriously lifted a mass of litter up to Thomas on the cart. Then he heaved a heavy sigh, dropped the fork and rubbed his side.

He spoke to Lawrence as he arrived.

"Here's the man! Well, Lawrence, you've been taking the air I see; but I can't help feeling, somehow, that it's a thought ill-convenient in the midst of a busy working morning, with the dry litter crying to be stored, that you should make holiday. I've filled the breach, of course, as my custom is. I've been doing your work as well as I was able—an old man, gone in the loins through over-work; but what d'you think? What d'you think about it, my son?"

"There was a good reason, master."

"Thank God! I'm glad of that. I told Palk I hoped there was; for, if I'd thought just for a thirst, or some wilful fancy to see a maid, or suchlike nonsense, you'd forgot your duty, I should have felt a lot cast down in my mind and wondered how I'd come to misread you. And what was the reason? Work while you tell me."

The young man explained, and Stockman was instantly mollified.

"Enough said as to you. You could do no less. A female in trouble is a very good excuse for leaving your duty. In fact you may say a female in trouble is everybody's duty."

The silent man in the cart made a note of this admirable sentiment, while Joe continued.

"To think that Orphan Dinah should let the pony down—such a very wide-awake young thing as her! Dreaming about Johnny no doubt. And hurt you say?"

"Miss had got a bad cut across her face; but she made nothing of it, for joy the pony wasn't scratched."

"A nice maid. Too large-minded for safety some might think; but she ain't. Hope she's not marked. Not that her face is her fortune by any means; her fortune's in her heart, for by the grace of God her heart is gold. But she's got a nice sort of face all the same. I like a bit hidden in a woman myself—for the pleasure of bringing it to light. But she's so frank as a young boy, and I dare say, to some minds, that would be more agreeable than tackling the secret sort."

"She says what she means, master."

"She does, and what's a lot rarer even than that, she knows what she means—so far as a human can. Many never do. Many in my experience find the mere fact of being alive such a puzzle to them that they ain't clear about anything—can't see clear and can't speak clear. They go through their days like a man who've had just one drop too much."

"Life be a drop too much for some people," said Lawrence.

"It is. Keep working, keep working. An hour lost is an hour lost, even though you'd knocked off to help the Queen of England. Oh, my poor side! There's a muscle carried away I'm fearing. Shouldn't wonder if I was in bed to-morrow. What a far-reaching thing a catastrophe may be! Orphan Dinah gets mooning and lets down her pony. Then you, as needs you must, go to the rescue, and drop your work and make a gap in the orderly scheme of things in general. Then I come along, to see how we'm prospering, and forgetting my age and infirmity, rush in to fill the gap. Then once more my rash spirit gets a reminder from the failing flesh, and I'm called to suffer in body as well as pocket. That's the way how things be always happening. Nobody to blame, you understand, but somebody to pay. Somebody's got to pay for every damn thing. Nature's worse than they blasted moneylenders."

"I'll put my part right."

"Yes, exactly so, Lawrence; and somebody always do offer to put their part right. Good men are always offering. But 'tis in the cranky nature of things that oftener than not the wronger ban't the righter. You can't call home sixty minutes of time, any more than you can order the sun to stay in his tracks. And you can't right my twisted thigh. So the harm's done for all eternity."

"The fern will be in to-night before milking."

"That's a brave speech, such as I should have spoken at your age," said Joe. "Now I must limp back afore I'm stiff, and see what my daughter can do for me. I dare say a valiant bout of elbow grease on her part may stave off the worst. If you use 'Nicholson's embrocation'—-the strength they make it for hosses—it will often save the situation. Many a day when I've been bone-tired after working from dawn till moon-up, I've refreshed the joints with 'Nicholson's'—hoss strength."

He left them, going slowly and relying much upon his stick. Then, when he was out of ear-shot, Thomas spoke.

"What d'you think of that?" he asked.

"Did he do much work?"

"Pitched three forks of fern, or it might be four—not a darned one more."

"He's a clever old man, however."

"I never said he weren't," answered Palk. "He's the cleverest old man ever I saw. I'm only telling you us may find out he's too clever."

"We'll get the fern in anyway."

Mr. Stockman had sat down two hundred yards from them by the grassy track to the farm.

"He's waiting for me to give him a lift home," said Thomas.

CHAPTER VI
ON HAZEL TOR

John Bamsey was a youth who had not yet felt the edge of life. His own good parts were in a measure responsible for this fortune, and the circumstances destined to make trial of his foundations and test what fortitude his character might command, were yet to come. He was quick minded and intelligent, and his success had made him vain. His temper was short, and in his business of water-keeper, he held it a virtue to preserve a very obstinate and implacable front, not only to declared evil-doers, but also against those who lay under his suspicion.

He was superior in his attitude to his own generation and therefore unpopular with it; but he set down a lack of friendship to natural envy at his good fortune and cheerful prospects. He liked his work and did it well. The fish were under his protection and no ruth obscured his fidelity to them. Into his life had come love, and since the course thereof ran smoothly, this experience had chimed with the rest and combined, by its easy issue, to retard any impact of reality and still leave John in a state of ignorance concerning those factors of opposition and tribulation which are a part of the most prosperous existence.

Dinah accepted him, after a lengthy period of consideration, and she was affectionate if not loverly. He never stayed to examine the foundation of her compact, nor could he be blamed, for he had no reason to suppose that she had said "yes" from mixed motives. A girl so direct, definite and clear-sighted as Dinah, seemed unlikely to be in two minds about anything, and John, knowing his own hearty passion and ardent emotions, doubted not that, modified only as became a maiden's heart, she echoed them. Yet there went more to the match than that, and others perceived it, though he did not. Dinah's position was peculiar, and in truth love for another than John had gone largely—more largely than she guessed herself—to decide her. There was little sex impulse in her—otherwise her congenital frankness with man and woman alike had been modified by it. But she could love, for a rare sense of gratitude belonged to her, and the height and depth of her vital affections belonged to her foster-father, Benjamin Bamsey. Him she did love, as dearly as child ever loved a parent, and it was the knowledge that such a match would much delight him, that had decided Dinah and put a term to her doubts. But she had become betrothed on grounds inadequate, and now was beginning, as yet but dimly, to perceive it. Her disquiets did not take any shape that John could quarrel with, for she had not revealed them. She was honestly fond of him, and if she did not respond to his ardour with such outward signs of affection as he might have desired, his own inexperience in that matter prevented any uneasy suspicion on his part. He judged that such reserve in love was becoming and natural to a maiden of Dinah's distinction, and knew not the truth of the matter, nor missed the outward signs that he might have reasonably expected.

The beginning of difficulty very gradually rose between them, and since they had never quarrelled in their lives, for all John's temper and Dinah's frankness, the difference now bred in a late autumn day gave both material for grave thought.

They met by appointment, strolled in the woods, then climbed through plantations of sweet-smelling spruce, till they reached great rocks piled on a little spur of the hillside under Buckland Beacon. Here the granite heaved in immense boulders that broke the sweep of the hill and formed a resting-place for the eye between the summit of the Beacon and the surface of the river winding in the lap of the Vale beneath.

Hazel Tor, as these masses of porphyry were called, now rose like a ridge of little mountainous islets from a sea of dead heath and fern. The glories of the fall were at an end, and on an afternoon when the wind was still and the sky grey and near, pressing down on the naked tree-tops, Dinah, sitting here with her sweetheart, chatted amiably enough. The cicatrix on her cheek was still red, but the wound had cleanly healed and promised to leave no scar.

Johnny, however, was doubtful.

"I won't say you won't be marked now."

"If kissing could make me safe, I should be."

"I wish you'd give me something to kiss you for; and that's the name of the day next Spring we're to wed."

"Isn't it enough if we say next Spring?"

"Quite enough, if you mean next Spring. But I don't know whether you do; and more do you know. And for that matter you never have said next Spring. If you say the word, then you'll keep your word; but you haven't, and patient though I am, I can't help wondering sometimes why you don't."

"You're not the only one that wonders for that matter."

"Of course I'm not. Cousin Joe wonders every time I see him, and father wonders, and mother does more than wonder. In fact it's getting to be a bit awkward and unreasonable."

"I know it is, Johnny. I never thought it would be so difficult when the time came."

"So you grant that the time has come—that's something."

"I do grant it. I dare say a man doesn't quite realise what a tremendous thing it is for a girl to lose her liberty like this."

He was irritable.

"Do chuck that! I'm fed up with it. If you think what you call liberty at the farm is better than living with me in your own house, you must be a fool, Dinah."

"No," she said. "I'm right. Marriage cuts into a woman's liberty a lot. It's bound to, and, of course, home along with foster-father must be a much freer sort of life than home along with you."

"You are a cold-blooded little devil sometimes," he said. "What's freedom, or slavery, or any other mortal thing got to do with a man and woman if they love one another? You don't hear me saying I shall lose my bachelor liberty."

"No, because you won't," answered Dinah. "I know you love me very dear, and I love you very dear; but marrying a woman don't turn a man's life upside down if he's a strong man and got his aims and objects and business. He goes on with his life, and the woman comes into it as an addition, and takes her place, and if all goes well, so much the better, and if all don't, then so much the worse for the woman—if the man's strong. A man's not going to let a woman bitch up his ways if he's strong. And you are strong, and no woman would spoil your show, because you wouldn't let her. But a woman's different. Marriage for her be the beginning of a new life. She can't take anything of the old life into it except her character and her religion. Marriage is being born again for a woman. I've thought of these things, Johnny."

"Well, what about it? If you know so much, you ought to know more. Granted it don't always pan out well, and granted I'm a sort of man that wouldn't be turned to the right or left, are you a sort of woman that would be like to try and turn me? Are you masterful, or cranky, or jealous of your fancied rights? If you'd been such a she as that, should I have falled in love with you, or would you have falled in love with me? People fall in love with character quite as much as looks. And as we've grown up side by side, our characters were laid bare to each other from the time we could notice such things."

She took him up eagerly.

"Now that's the very matter in my mind. I've been getting to wonder. There's a lot in it, John. Do we know one another so well as we think we do? And isn't the very fact that we're grown up under the same roof a reason why we don't know each other so well as we might?"

"You're always for turning a thing inside out, my words included. I say we must know each other as well as a man can know a girl, or a girl a man. We was little children together, when nothing was hidden between us, and grew up in perfect understanding which ripened at the appointed time into love—all natural and right and proper. Of course we know each other to the bottom of our natures; and so our marriage can't fail to be a good one. Any jolter-head would see that a man and a woman seldom come together on such a bed-rock of common sense and reason as us. And knowing all that, 'tis pure cussedness in you to argue different."

"You can be too near a thing to see it," she said. "I don't say we don't understand each other beautiful, John; but look at it without feeling—just as an interesting question, same as I do. Just ask yourself if we're all you say, how it comes about that, despite such a lot of reasons, I hang back from naming the date. You say you want to know why. Well, so do I. What makes me refuse to name it—an easy-going creature like me, always ready and willing to pleasure anybody if I can? It's interesting, and it's no good merely being cross about it. I don't want to fix the date. I don't feel no call to do it."

"Then you ought."

"That's what I'm saying."

"And since you're well used to doing what you ought, it's about time you let your duty master you."

"Granted. I allow all that. What I want to know is why I'm not so keen to name the day and get to the day as you are?"

"Along of this silly fooling about losing your liberty I suppose. As if a married woman wasn't a lot freer than a single one."

"Oh no, she isn't. The single ones was never so free as now. They can do scores of things no married woman would be suffered to do for a moment. That's because mothers and fathers care a lot less about what happens to their daughters than husbands care what happens to their wives. A daughter's good name be outside a parent's; but a wife's good name is her husband's. So the unmarried ones are a lot freer. There's few real parents nowadays be what your father is to me."

"If you think such a lot of him and feel you owe him such a lot, why don't you do what he wants you to do and fix the day?"

She did not answer, knowing well that old Mr. Bamsey, at the bottom of his heart, little liked to dwell on her departure. Indeed, she realised with growing intensity the reasons that had made her agree to marry John; and she knew more: she was aware that John's father himself had become a little doubtful. But the deed was done and Dinah appreciated the justice of her sweetheart's demands.

They talked and he pressed and she parried. Then he grew angry.

"Blessed if you know what love is despite all your fine talk. A little more of it, and I shall begin to think you're off the bargain and haven't the pluck to say so."

For answer she put her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"It's all very well; but you leave me guessing too often: and I'm not the sort that care to be left guessing. From a man I always get a plain answer, and I never leave him till I have. I hang on like a dog, and turn or twist as they may, they know they've got to come to it. But you—it's rather late in the day to begin all over again and ask you if you really love me, or not. It's putting a pretty big slight upon me; and perhaps, if I wasn't a fool, I should see the answer in that, without asking for it. For you wouldn't slight me—not if you cared for me one quarter what I care for you."

He showed temper, and the girl made no very genuine attempt to turn away wrath. She was in a wilful and wayward mood—a thing uncommon with her; yet such a mood was capable of being provoked by Johnny oftener than most people.

"I love your hair," she said, stroking it.

He shook his head and put on his cap.

"You're not playing the game and, what's a lot more, you know you're not. It's outside your character to do this—weak—feeble—mischievous. You know I smart a bit under it, because—fault or not—I'm a proud man. How d'you think that's likely to pan out in my feelings to you? Does it occur to you that with my very keen sense of justice, Dinah, I might begin to ask myself questions about it?"

She changed her manner and, from being idle and playful, gave him her undivided attention. He had said something that rather pleased her when he hinted that his own feelings might grow modified; but she knew well enough that such a remark ought not to have pleased her and was certainly not uttered to do so.

"There's a screw loose somewhere, Johnny," she said.

"Where then? And whose fault—yours, or mine? God's my judge I didn't know there was a screw loose, and it's pretty ugly news, I can tell you. Perhaps you'll let in a little more light, while you're about it, and tell me what the screw is and why i'ts loose?"

"I wish I could. Oh Johnny, don't you feel it?"

"No, I do not. And if I don't, then it's up to you to explain, not me."

"I don't know enough yet," she answered. "I'm not going to flounder into it and make trouble that can never be unmade again. I'll wait till I see a bit clearer, John. It's no use talking till we've thought a thing out and got words for it. A row will often happen just for lack of words to say what anybody really means. There is something—something growing; but since you've not felt it, then it can only be on my side. You shall know if it's anything, or nothing, pretty soon. Feelings never stand still. They fade out, or else get bigger. I love you very dearly, and, so far as we stand at present, it's understood we are to be married in the Spring."

"Then why hang it up any longer? You love me and you'm tokened and there's no reason why we shouldn't be wed and a great many reasons why we should. But now a screw's loose, or so you say. But you won't give it a name. Don't you see that instead of being yourself, Dinah—famed for thinking straight and seeing clear and saying what you mean—you're behaving like any stupid giglet wench, with no wits and not worth her keep to anybody?"

"Yes; and that's why a screw's loose. If I can feel like I do, and act away from my general plan, and dally with a thing—don't you see there's something wrong with me?"

"Well, if you know it, get it right."

"I must do that for all our sakes. I must and will, John."

"You certainly must. And the sooner you put a name to it and let me know what that name is, the better pleased I'll be. If I was the fast and loose sort, or if I'd ever done anything since we hitched up to give you a shadow of distrust, or make you look back in doubt, then it would be different; but this I will swear, that no man ever loved a woman better than I love you, or have been a better or truer lover. I must say that for myself, Dinah, since you've given up saying it."

"I did say it and I do say it. You're all right, and you've every reason to be pleased with yourself, Johnny. You're a wonder. But it's me. I'll work at myself. I can't promise more. I'll thresh it out and try to find where I'm wrong; and if you can help me, I'll tell you. It's not a happy thing; but at the same time it's not an unhappy thing—not yet. I owe you a very great deal—only less than your father. I'd sooner make anybody on earth unhappy before you; but it's no good pretending, and I couldn't hide worry from you even if I wanted to."

"Leave it then," he said, "and get it off your mind so quick as you can."

They talked about other things, and for the most part chimed harmoniously enough; but they did not always agree in their estimate of other people, or in their views of action and conduct. Dinah never conceded anything, nor pretended to see with his eyes if she did not, yet sometimes she praised him if he put a point and changed her own view by enlarging her vision of the subject.

John was in a better temper when presently the dusk fell and the lovers, leaving Hazel Rocks, passed through a clearing, reached the road to Buckland and presently climbed again to Falcon Farm, where they were to drink tea with Susan and her father.

Soosie-Toosie had a heavy cold in her head and appeared more unsightly than usual. Her large frame shook with her sneezes, and Joe, while humorously concerned for her and anxious that she should take steps to get well, soon dropped the humour for a little genuine trouble on his own account.

"There's some people I catch cold from, and there's some I don't catch cold from," he said, "just like some fires you catch heat from and some you never can. But Soosie-Toosie's colds be of the catching order. 'Tis the violence of her sneezes no doubt—like a fowling-piece going off. And though a cold be nought to her and here to-day and gone to-morrow, if I get 'em they run down the tubes and give me brownkitis and lay me by for weeks."

"Never seen you look better, Cousin Joe," declared John. "You be always at your fighting best when the woodcock comes back, so father says."

"He will have his bit of fun. There's only one thing wrong about your dear, good father, Johnny; and that is he ain't a sportsman. For a man to live in the Vale and not be a sportsman is like for a man to live by the sea and not care to go fishing. With a place in his heart for a bit of sport, I do believe Ben Bamsey would have been a perfect human. But as that's contrary to nature, no doubt the sport had to be left out."

"He is perfect," said Dinah, "and I've often told him so."

"He'd never believe it if you did," said Susan; "he's much too good a man to think he's good."

"As to that, my dear," answered Joe, "it's only false modesty and silliness to pretend you'm not good, when you know perfectly well you are. If I said I wasn't a good man, for example, it would be merely fishing for compliments; and if Soosie-Toosie said she weren't as good as gold, who'd believe her?"

"'Tis easy to be good if you're so busy as Soosie-Toosie and Johnny and a few more," answered Dinah; "but how you can be so amazing good with nothing on your hands, Cousin Joe? I'm sure that's wonderful."

"Nothing on my hands? you bad girl! Little you know. And me the mainspring. You ax Susan if I've got nothing on my hands, or Thomas here."

Lawrence Maynard was absent, but Mr. Palk took tea with the rest. He had not so far spoken.

"You'm the head of the house," he said.

"And if my hand have lost its cunning, my head have not—eh, Thomas?"

"It have not," admitted Thomas.

"Father makes his head help his heels, don't you, father?" asked Soosie-Toosie, following her question with an explosion.

"I should hope so; and do, for God's love, go out in the scullery when you feel a sneeze coming, there's a dear! You be scattering the evil germs around us so thick as starlings."

"I'm just going," she said, "they'll be done their tea in a minute; then I'll gather the things and get away for the wash-up."

Dinah soon departed to help the sufferer; then Joe smoked and bade the others do the like.

"'Twill lay Soosie's germs," he said.

They discussed Maynard, who had gone to see some cows for a neighbour.

"What he don't know about 'em ain't worth knowing," said Mr. Stockman. "A tower of strength the man is going to be."

"Is he growing a bit more cheerful?"

"If he's not cheerful, there's a reason for it. But he's very sensible, with a head rather old for his shoulders—eh, Thomas?"

"Made of sense, I reckon."

"And what is his opinion of me, Thomas, if I may ask?"

Mr. Palk was always rendered cautious at the hint of personalities. He did not reply immediately, though there was no need to hesitate. But he never replied immediately to any question.

"He thinks a great lot of you, master. He holds you to be a very good man indeed."

"Then I shall think higher of his opinion than ever," replied Joe; "and you may drop in his ear that I rate him high too, Thomas. All well within reason, of course—he ain't indispensable—nobody is, great or small. Still, I'm suited and I'm glad he is."

Thomas made no reply, but rose and went out. Then Joe addressed his kinsman.

"Have you got the date out of her?"

Johnny shook his head.

"She allows it must be in the Spring, but holds off naming the time any nearer."

"Not like her. We must all have a go at her. But if your father can't do it, who can?"

"If I can't, who can? That's the question, I should think."

They argued Dinah's delay and presently she returned.

"Susan did ought to go to bed," she said. "See me down the hill, Johnny; I must be off, else they'll wonder what's become of me."

CHAPTER VII
AT GREEN HAYES

To Dinah Waycott there came an experience familiar enough, yet fraught with shock and grief to any man and woman of good will who is forced to suffer it. By gradual stages the truth had overtaken her, and now she knew that what in all honesty she believed was love—the emotion that had made her accept John Bamsey and promise to marry him—was nothing more than such affection and regard as a sister might feel for a favourite brother. Their relations had in fact been upon that basis all their lives. She remembered Johnny as long as she remembered anything, for she had been but two years old when he was born, and they had grown up together. And now, being possessed of a mind that faced life pretty fearlessly, and blessed with clear reasoning powers, Orphan Dinah knew the truth.

First she considered how such an unhappy thing could have happened. She was young and without experience. She had never heard of a similar case. And what most puzzled her was why the light had been thrown at all, and what had happened to convince her that she had erred. When she accepted her lover, most fully and firmly she believed that her heart prompted. It did not beat quicker at his proposition, and for a time she could not feel sure; but before she accepted him she did feel sure and emphatically believed it was love that inspired her promise. But now she knew that it was not love; and yet she could not tell why she knew it.

For the usual experience in such cases had not proved the touchstone. There was none else who had come into her life, awakened passion and thus revealed the nature of her error with respect to John. No blinding light of this sort had shone upon the situation. But gradually, remorselessly, the truth crept into Dinah's brain, and she saw now that what she had taken for love was really an emotion inspired by various circumstances. Her step-father had desired the match and expressed his delight at the thought; and since he was by far the most real and precious thing in the girl's life, his opinion unconsciously influenced her. Then, for private reasons, she desired to be away from Benjamin Bamsey's home—that also for love of him. The situation was complicated for Dinah by the fact that Jane Bamsey, John's sister, did not like her and suffered jealousy under her father's affection for his foster-daughter. Dinah was some years older than Jane and far more attractive to Mr. Bamsey, by virtue of her spirit and disposition, than Jane could ever be. Ben himself hardly knew this, but his wife very clearly perceived it. She was a fair woman and never agitated on the subject, though often tempted to do so. But she was human, and that her husband should set so much greater store upon Dinah than Jane caused her to feel resentment, though little surprise. Astonishment she could not feel, for, though the mother of Jane, she admitted that the elder girl displayed higher qualities, a mind more loyal, a heart more generous. But Jane was beautiful, and she could be very attractive when life ran to her own pattern. Jane was not a bad daughter. She loved her mother and worshipped her brother. She might have tolerated Dinah too, but for the ever present fact that her father put Dinah first. This had been a baneful circumstance for the younger's character; and it had served to lessen her affection for her father. The fact he recognised, without perceiving the reason. On the contrary, he held Dinah a very precious influence for Jane, and wished his own child more like the other. Friction from this situation was inevitable; and now Dinah, considering the various causes that had landed her in her present plight, perceived that not the least had been a subconscious impulse that urged her, for everybody's sake, to leave Lower Town and the home of her childhood. Thus she had deluded herself as well as others, and declared herself in love with a man, while yet her heart was innocent of love. For a long time she had been conscious of something wrong. She had surprised herself painfully three months after her engagement by discovering that her forthright mind was seeing things in Johnny that she wished were different. This startled her, and instinct told her that she ought not to be so aware of these defects. Before they were engaged such things never clouded her affection; but in the light of altered relations they did. She grew to hate the lover's kiss, while the brother's kiss of old had been agreeable to her. Her kiss had not changed; but his had. She detected all manner of trifles, vanities, complacencies, tendencies to judge neighbours too hardly. These things did not make Dinah miserable, because her nature was proof against misery, and the emotion excited in her by ill fortune could never be so described. Indeed, under no circumstances did she display the phenomena of misery. But she was deeply perturbed and she knew, far better than Johnny could tell her, that serious reasons existed for her present evasion and procrastination. She also knew, as he did, that she was taking a line foreign to her character; but he did not guess the tremendous discovery that, for the moment, caused his sweetheart to falter and delay action.

He was in love, heart and soul, and Dinah understood that well enough. No hope of any revelation existed for him. He poured all his energy and quality into his plans for her future happiness. If he could be unselfish, it was with her; if he could be modest, it was with her. She awoke the best of him and influenced him as no other power on earth was able to do. He saw her pleasant face beautiful; he heard her pleasant voice as music; he held her laugh sweeter than a blackbird's song. She knew his adoration and it increased the threatening difficulties. But he was changing now, and the recent evidence of his irritation on Hazel Tor, Dinah recognised as perfectly natural and reasonable.

Still she hesitated before the melancholy conviction that she could not marry John, and the vision of the family when they heard it. She was waiting now in rare indecision; but she knew that such inaction could only be a matter of a very short time. The problem touched many, and she was aware that her change of mind would bring hard words to her ears from various quarters. She began to be sorry, but not for herself. She was concerned, first for John, and then for her foster-father. She was also in a lesser degree regretful for Mrs. Bamsey, and even for Jane; but she judged that their tribulation would be allayed by two things: first, in the conviction that John was well out of it; secondly, at the knowledge that Dinah herself would leave Green Hayes, Ben Bamsey's farm. She could not stop after the events now foreshadowed, and she felt tolerably certain that none would desire her to do so. Thus she hung on the verge, but had not taken the inevitable step upon a Sunday when Lawrence Maynard visited Lower Town according to his promise and came to tea.

Green Hayes was "a welcoming sort of place," as the owner always declared, though at first glance it did not seem so. The farmhouse was built of granite and faced with slate, which caused it to look sulky, but made it snug. A wide farmyard extended before the face of the dwelling, and pigeons and poultry lent liveliness and movement to it. A great barn, with a weathered roof of slate, extended on one side of the yard, and orchards and large kitchen gardens arose behind it; for fruit and vegetables were a feature of Mr. Bamsey's production. He better loved planting trees than rearing stock. Indeed, his neighbours denied him title to be farmer at all. But he did great things with pigs and poultry, and he grew plenty of corn in Dart Vale a mile below his home.

Maynard was welcomed and found that Dinah had made more of his past succour than seemed necessary. He discovered also whence the young woman had derived her directness of speech and clear vision, for Mr. Bamsey displayed these qualities, though in a measure tempered by age and experience. On the subject of himself he could be specially clear. He did not mind who knew his failings.

He was a man of moderate height, grey bearded and grey headed. His nose had been flattened by an accident in youth, but his face was genial and his eyes, behind spectacles, of a pleasant expression. He enjoyed humour, and a joke against himself always won his heartiest laugh. His wife was larger than himself—a ponderous woman, credited with the gift of second sight. She had been beautiful and was still handsome, with regular features, a clear skin, and large, cow-like eyes. Jane Bamsey, her daughter, a girl of eighteen, rejoiced in more than the beauty of youth. She was lovely, but she had a disposition that already made her beautiful mouth pout oftener than it laughed. She was jealous of Dinah, though the elder girl entertained no unfriendly emotion towards Jane. She admired her exceedingly and loved to look at her for the satisfaction of her fine curves, round, black eyebrows, lustrous, misty blue eyes and delicate, dainty nose. It was not her fault that she pleased Benjamin Bamsey better than his own child. Jane was spiteful, and Dinah's direct methods, which often defeated the younger in argument, never convinced her, but increased a general, vague feeling of resentment, the more painful to Jane, because she was no fool, and knew, at the bottom of her heart, that honest grounds of complaint against Dinah did not exist. The real grievance lay in the fact of her father's preference; but when, in a moment of passion, she had flung this truth at Dinah, the elder disarmed her by admitting it and also explaining it.

"If you thought for foster-father like I do, and loved him half as well as what I do, you'd have nothing to grumble about, and he'd love you so well as he loves me," said Dinah; "but you don't."

"I'd do all you do for him, and more, if you wasn't here," declared Jane, and met an uncompromising answer.

"No, you wouldn't, or anything like what I do; and well you know it, you pretty dear."

Mr. Bamsey thanked Lawrence heartily for his good offices in the past on Dinah's behalf, and Faith Bamsey, his wife, echoed him.

"The blessing is she ain't marked," said Ben. "I much feared she would be, for 'twas an evil cut, but such is the health of her blood that she healed instanter, and now, you see nought but a red mark that grows fainter every day."

The visitor regarded Dinah's face and admitted it was so.

"Wonderful," he said. "I never should have thought that ugly gash would have cleared up so well."

"Nature's on the side of the young," replied Benjamin. "She spoils 'em you may say. Not that anything could spoil Dinah."

"You can, and you do," she said.

"Oh, no. 'Tis the other way round. You'd keep me in cotton wool if you could. I'm feared of my life for Johnny that you'll make him soft."

"And tell him he's not to go out and fight the poachers by night, and silly things like that," added Jane.

"More likely offer to go out and help him fight 'em," said Maynard, and Ben applauded.

"That's right! You know her better than Jane do seemingly. Dinah won't stand between John and his duty—that's certain sure."

"No woman will ever come between my son and his duty," said Faith. "There's some young men be born with a sense of duty, and some gets it by their training and some, of course, never do. But John was doing his duty when he was five year old—came natural to him."

"And what's the duty of a five year old, ma'am?" asked Lawrence. He found himself easy and comfortable with the Bamseys.

"To obey his parents and trust in 'em first and last and always," answered Faith. "He was blessed with a very fine nature from his birth, and nothing ever happened to make him depart from it."

"One of the lucky ones, that finds it easier to be good than anything else."

"No, Mr. Maynard; you mustn't say that," answered Johnny's father. "You may be as good as gold, but you can't escape the old Adam. God Almighty don't make us angels, though he gives us the chance to imitate them."

"In fact, nobody can get high virtues by nature," summed up Mrs. Bamsey. "They've got to be worked for. And another thing—you can't win to goodness and then sit down and say, 'I've got the Lord, so now I'm out of the wood and safe for ever more.' That's not life. Nobody's ever out of the wood, and them that think they stand be often most like to fall. Things be sent to try our faith in God, and He sends 'em Himself."

Dinah, with proleptic instinct, looked ahead at her own affairs and wondered. Mrs. Bamsey, from whom moral principles flowed easily at a touch, proceeded awhile and Maynard's spirits began to fall. He was not religious and his own standards of conduct, upon which his past had been directed, had resulted from innate qualities of mind, rather than along the directions of dogma and creed. He perceived that Mrs. Bamsey's ideas ran in fixed channels and felt glad when Benjamin, upon some opinion of his wife, took up the conversation. She had been saying, with regard to her son, that while he owed certain qualities to herself, his father was also apparent in him. Dinah supported her, but Benjamin was not so sure.

"No," he said. "I can't flatter myself that John has to thank me for much. His mother stares out of him you may say, and all the best is hers. But there's a very wicked side of me that John haven't got, I'm glad to say. Leastways if he have, he's never let on about it."

Dinah laughed.

"Now I know what's coming," she said.

"And what might your wicked side be, Mr. Bamsey, if it ain't a secret?" inquired Lawrence.

"No secret at all. I've got no secrets. Hate 'em. It's just a queer bit of human nature."

"He's invented it," said Dinah. "It ain't true. He dreams it."

"It's very true indeed, and shows a weak spot where one didn't ought to be," confessed Ben. "If you'll believe it, Maynard, I often wake up of a night, somewhere about two o'clock, a changed man! Yes, I do; and then the whole face of nature looks different, and I find myself in a proper awful frame of mind against my fellow creatures. I mistrust 'em, and take dark views against 'em, setting out their wrongs and wickedness. At such times I'll even plan to sack a harmless chap, and lash myself up into a proper fury, and think the fearfullest things against man, woman and child. I'll go so far as to cuss the cat, because she haven't caught a mouse for a week! If the folk were to see me at such a moment, I dare say they wouldn't know me."

"What d'you say, ma'am?" asked Maynard.

"I say nothing, because I'm always asleep," answered Mrs. Bamsey.

"Do it pass off pretty quick, master?"

"It do. I slumber again after a bit, and come daylight, you may say butter wouldn't melt in my mouth. I don't write none of they rude letters I've invented, and I don't sack nobody—not even the cat. I wake up calm and patient with the neighbours and quite ready to forgive 'em, as I hope to be forgiven. After such a night I'm mild as old cider and only a bit tired."

"'Tis a sort of safety-valve I expect," suggested Lawrence.

"That's just what it is; and sometimes I've seen the like happen in daylight with other people. If you can send your neighbours to hell without them knowing it, it don't hurt them and comforts your nerves wonderful sometimes."

"A very shameful thought, Ben," declared his wife, "and you oughtn't to say such things."

"I know it's shameful. But I only tell the man these facts to open his eyes and show him how much better Johnny be than his father."

"May he never have nothing to cuss about," hoped Lawrence.

"I don't see how he ever can, when he's got Dinah."

"Yes—when," said Jane Bamsey. "He's got to wait Dinah's pleasure till the stroke of Doom seemingly."

Maynard had been admiring the younger girl. But he noticed that her beauty was clouded by discontent. There chimed also a note in her voice that carried with it slight, indefinite protest. His own voice embraced the identical note; but he was not aware of that.

"No politics, Jane," said Mrs. Bamsey. "You never did ought to strike into family affairs before a stranger."

"Mr. Maynard's not a stranger," argued Jane. "We're heard tell lots about him from Johnny, and Dinah too."

"That's right," said Lawrence.

Benjamin Bamsey nursed an old Skye terrier and scratched its back with a bunch of keys—a process the animal loved. He talked of dogs and cattle awhile; then they all went to tea. Faith Bamsey asked after Susan.

"She's quite recovered, ma'am. She was in a mind to come over herself to-day, being wishful to see you; but her father wanted her help. He's very busy with his figures this afternoon."

Faith shook her head.

"Just like him—to put off his duty all the week, then do it on the Lord's Day, when he didn't ought."

"He went to worship in the morning, however, as he generally does."

"That's to the good then."

"Soosie-Toosie's one of the best women on this earth," said Dinah, "only she's too much of a doormat. So cruel busy that she's never got time to think what she owes herself."

This struck the visitor as very true, but he had never been greatly interested in Susan. She was very unobtrusive and unchallenging in every way.

"She likes it," said Jane. "She likes being driven about and never getting even with her work."

"If work is prayer, her life is a prayer," said Mr. Bamsey.

"It's a prayer that never gets answered, then," replied Jane. "A dog's life really, only Susan don't see it, more than any other dog would, I suppose."

"Don't talk so free, Jane," urged her mother.

"She'll work herself to the bone and die afore her time I expect," continued Mrs. Bamsey's daughter. "Then very like you'll see her ghost, mother."

This gave Lawrence an opportunity to inquire concerning Faith Bamsey's famous gift.

"Is it true, as they tell, that you be a ghost-seer, ma'am?" he asked.

"I am," she replied placidly. "It runs in my family and I take no credit for it."

"Never afeared?"

"Never. They come and they go. 'Tis just something in my nature that lets my eyes see more than other people. There's animals have the gift also, so it's naught to brag about. I'll see the spectrums any time—just the ghostes of dead folk, that flicker about where they used to live sometimes; and if I be that way by chance when they be there, then I see 'em."

"And do they see you, ma'am?"

"I can't say as to that. I've never had no speech with them and they don't take no notice of me. Sometimes I recognise the creatures as people that lived in my time and memory; sometimes I do not. Only last week I see old Noah Parsons hanging over New Bridge, just as he did in life times without count, looking down over to see if there was any fish moving. An old poacher he was—till he got too feeble to do anything but right."

"And mother seed Lazarus Coomstock in Holne Wood not a month after he was teeled*—didn't you, mother?" asked Jane.

* Teeled—buried.

"I did," answered Mrs. Bamsey. "I saw him outside his own house on the day of the sale, with live neighbours at his elbows—for all the world as though he'd come with the rest to bid for the things."

"A terrible queer gift," said Maynard. "Have you handed it on to Miss Jane here, I wonder?"

"No," declared Jane. "I've never seen a ghost ana never want to."

"You be young yet. Perhaps when you get up to years of discretion you'll see 'em."

"When Jane gets up to years of discretion, I'll give a party," laughed Ben; but Jane did not laugh.

"You always think I'm a fool, father; and you'll always be wrong," she snapped. Then she got up and left the room.

"You didn't ought to poke fun at her," said Faith. "You know she don't like being thought a child—least of all by you."

"If you make jokes, you must take 'em," said Ben. "Jane's got a very sharp tongue for her age and nobody doubts her wits; but if a father can't make a laugh at the expense of his child—no, no—we mustn't truckle under to Jane. Mayhap a good ghostey will teach her sense some day."

"She's that wishful to please you always," murmured Jane's mother.

"Well, well, she can do most things she sets her mind to. I ban't a man very difficult to please."

Lawrence struck in again. He had ignored these passages, and was still considering Mrs. Bamsey's alleged second sight.

"Would you say that John has got your gift, ma'am?" he asked

"Time will show," replied Faith. "He's a godly, plain-dealer is John, but I've never heard him say he's seen one."

"I hope he won't," said Dinah. "Because, in his business as water-keeper, and looking out against trespassers and such-like, it might confuse him and waste his time a lot, if he was to see shadow people about by the river and think them poaching."

Her foster-father exploded at the absurdity of the idea; but neither Lawrence nor Faith Bamsey saw anything amusing in it. Then Ben grew serious and set down his old dog, which had returned to his lap after tea was ended.

"There's church bell," he said, "and us be going. Have you worshipped at our church yet, Maynard?"

The thin tinkle of bell music fell from the wooded height above Green Hayes.

"No," said Lawrence. "I have not. I don't go to church."

Ben shrank, and his wife started and tightened her lips.

"Ban't you a Christian then?"

"Couldn't say as to that, ma'am; but I don't find church-going help me, so I don't go."

"Dear, dear—that's bad," said Mr. Bamsey, while his wife put further searching questions.

"Do you say your prayers, or do you not, if I may ask?"

"I say my prayers—yes."

She looked at him very suspiciously.

"We're bid to go," she said; "and you didn't ought to feel any doubt as to whether you're a Christian or not, did he, Ben?"

"Certainly he did not," answered her husband. Then he brightened and made a suggestion.

"You come along of us to-night. Won't hurt you, and you'll very like catch a grain that'll sprout. That's the beauty of church-going: 'tis like rough shooting—you never know what you're going to flush. And our parson's a man that abounds in plain truths. So like as not he'll get one home on you."

"Come, Mr. Maynard," said Dinah.

"Certainly I will if I may," he replied. "I've no feeling for, or against."

"If us can throw a light for your soul, you won't have come to tea in vain," suggested Mrs. Bamsey.

"And have got supper by it in the bargain," added Ben, "for you'll have to bide after."

"No, no—no occasion at all."

"Yes, you must," said Dinah. "They'll have finished at Falcon Farm long afore you can get back."

Therefore Lawrence Maynard joined the party at evensong and sat between Jane and Dinah. Jane was indifferent, but Dinah shared her hymn-book with him. He did not sing, however, though it gave him pleasure to hear her do so. She was devout and attentive; Jane was not. He praised the sermon afterwards and told Mr. Bamsey that it was full of sense. When supper had ended, he thanked them very earnestly for their great kindness to a lonely man, and Benjamin trusted that he would come again. Dinah also pressed him, and Jane, who was now in a very fascinating and gracious mood, ordered him to do so.

"If you don't, we shall think you don't like us," she said.

He was grateful, and left them in an amiable spirit.

They discussed him after he had gone, and Dinah praised him, but Mrs. Bamsey felt dubious.

"He's rather a secret sort of man in my opinion," she said.

"He is," admitted Ben; "but he's secret by accident, not nature, I believe. I took note of him. He's got a grievance against life I reckon; but what it may be, of course, we don't know."

"I'll get it out of him," said Jane.

"No you won't, my dear," answered her father. "Dinah's more like to than you."

"I don't want his secrets," declared Dinah.

"We'm often burdened with secrets we don't want," replied Ben. "It's part of duty sometimes to listen to 'em; though I grant the folk most ready to tell their secrets are often the hardest to help. Silliness is a misfortune that little can be done for."

"He won't be in no hurry to tell his secrets, if he's got any," prophesied Mrs. Bamsey. "He's not that sort."

CHAPTER VIII
THE OLD FOX-HUNTER

Joe Stockman had tried a new haricot bean for his own table and was now engaged in the easy task of shelling the brown husks and extracting the pearly white seeds. It amused him and put no strain upon his faculties. But he tired of it after ten minutes. He sat in an out-house with a mass of the dried pods beside him, and as the boy, Neddy Tutt, passed by, Joe's eye twinkled and he called.

"Look here, Ned—a-proper wonder—I'll show 'e something as no human eye have ever seen since the beginning of the world!" he cried out, and Neddy, agape, approached.

"Don't you be frightened," said Joe. "Won't hurt 'e."

Then under the lad's round eyes, he opened a bean pod and roared with laughter. Neddy also grinned.

"Now you go about your business, my son," said his master, and then, wearying of the beans, he stretched himself and looked out of doors. The day was mild and still. Mr. Stockman went into his kitchen and called Susan.

"Get on with they beans, there's a dear; I've been at 'em till my fingers ache; and we'll have a dish to-night for supper if you please. Such things be never so nice as when fresh and soft—far better than boughten beans. And I'll poke round and see if I can pick up a wood-pigeon to go with 'em. 'Tis soft by the feel of it this morning and a little exercise won't do me no harm."

She nodded, and getting a gun, Joe disappeared with his dogs. He skirted an outlying field, where Maynard and Palk were pulling mangel-wurzel. Bending low they plodded along, with the rhythmic swing and harmonious action proper to their work. Simultaneously with each hand they pulled up two roots from the earth, then jerked their wrists, so that the great turnips fell shorn of their foliage. The roots dropped on one side, the leaves were thrown down on the other, and behind each labourer extended long, regular lines—one of mangel awaiting the cart, one of heavy leaves. Mr. Stockman praised the roots, put a task or two upon Lawrence and Thomas for later in the day, and proceeded into the woods. It was Saturday, and when first they came, there had been a general understanding that on the afternoon of that day leisure might be enjoyed at Falcon Farm as far as possible; but slowly—so slowly that Lawrence had hardly remarked it—the farmer appeared to forget this vague arrangement; indeed, he exhibited a marked ingenuity in finding minor tasks for the later hours of that day. Thomas Palk, who had less to occupy his mind than his fellow labourer, was conscious of this fact, and when Joe had proceeded after the wood-pigeons he pointed it out.

"His hand tightens," he said. "You may have marked it, or you may not, and it don't matter to you seemingly, because you've got nothing to do of a Saturday afternoon; but I have."

Lawrence conceded the fact.

"He likes his pound of flesh. But you haven't got anything to quarrel with, Tom."

"I don't say I have."

"Best way is to tell him clear at the beginning of a week that you want next Saturday afternoon off—then he knows and it goes through all right."

"You might think it was the best way," answered Palk; "but it ain't, because I've tried it. If you do that, he'll run you off your legs all the week, and hit upon a thousand jobs, and always remind you about Saturday, and say he knows as you'll be wanting to put in a bit extra, owing to the holiday coming. Then he'll offer to do your work o' Saturday afternoon, though of course there ain't none, and make a great upstore about putting off a bit of pleasuring he'd planned for himself."

Maynard laughed and stood up for a moment to rest the muscles of his back.

"It'll take cleverer chaps than us to be even with him."

"A cruel, vexatious man, and knows how to balance the good against the bad so clever that nobody in his senses would leave him," grumbled the elder.

They continued to pull the great golden roots from the earth, and for a long time neither spoke. Then Palk, whose mind still ran on his Saturday afternoon, explained that he had intended to meet a man at Ashburton and would now be unable to do so.

"If that's it, don't bother. I'm free and I can do all he wanted," said Lawrence.

"If you can, then I'm obliged," answered the horseman. "It's somebody I'm very wishful to see, because he married my sister. She's dead, but she had a son, and I like to know, for his mother's sake, how he's going on."

Maynard was not interested and they spoke no more. At the side of the field they were building up the roots into a "cave"—packing them together and then heaping earth upon them. The hour was early noon, and at the end of the row they desisted, emptied the full cart at the hedge-side and presently went in to dinner.

"I'm going to see that old hunter, Enoch Withycombe, again to-morrow," declared the younger. "He's a queer man to meet. Wonderful the learning he's gotten, along of being crippled and nought much to do but read and think."

"Miss Susan says he's not a very good companion for you young men, however."

"Why, Tom?"

"Along of his opinions."

"He's taught me a lot."

"That you may have to unlearn. They clever men are dangerous. I don't like clever men. You never know where you are with 'em."

Mr. Stockman did not return for dinner and they ate it with Susan. She was perturbed at the necessity of going to Ashburton for her father.

"He wants half a dozen things, and I'm so properly busy here this week-end that I don't know how I'll do it," she declared, unaware that Thomas was going down.

Slowly it dawned over his mind that he might serve her. He hesitated, for he dreaded making any original proposition. He felt ready and even desirous to offer his services, but spoke not from native caution. Maynard, however, helped him.

"Tom's going in," he said. "Can't he do it?"

"I've no right to trouble him," answered Soosie-Toosie.

"Why not, then? I'm sure he'll do anything he can."

"He might be busy on his own account?"

"He'll make time if he can save you trouble."

They debated the question as though Mr. Palk were not present. He listened quite silently; but finally, when it became impossible not to state his opinion on the point, he spoke.

"I will certainly do so," he said. "If you'll write them down, I will carry out the items, miss."

"It's asking too much," hesitated Susan.

"It may be, or it may not," he answered. "But I'll do it—for you."

She thanked him very heartily. She was honestly most grateful.

"It's proper kind and will take a great weight off my mind, Mr. Palk."

"Set 'em down; and if there's anything to be carried, I'll carry it."

Susan evinced her gratitude, but repeated her fears that she was asking too much. She was almost excited and forgot her dinner.

"There's the patterns from the tailor first. Father wants a new, warm suit, and be hopeful Mr. West have got the same stuff as before; but tailor will give you a little book of patterns, as will go in your pocket I should think. And there's they cough drops made with black currants for father, and his boots, that went to be mended, and his new leggings."

"Nought for yourself?" asked Thomas.

"That'll be enough. What I want can wait."

"No," he said slowly. "If there's any chores for you, set 'em down. In for a penny, in for a pound."

"A reel of thread at Miss Bassett's shop and a pound of loaf sugar—but there, you've got enough without them."

"Put 'em down."

"And if tailor's shut, will you knock at the side door? 'Tis understood I be coming."

"I'll knock at the side door if tailor's shut," promised Thomas. He was really gratified at receiving this commission, but his vague, subconscious emotion on the subject, even if he had desired to declare it, was of a nature far too nebulous for any words.

He went and duly returned with the patterns for Joe's new suit, his cough lozenges and the rest. Both Susan and Mr. Stockman expressed the deepest thanks.

"Nevertheless, Thomas, another time it may be better, in my humble judgment, if each of us does his appointed task," said the master. "You see, if I may say so, it puts us out of our stride if you do my daughter's lawful work, and Maynard does yours. I'm a great believer in method, Thomas, as you are yourself, thank God; so I feel pretty sure you'll put duty afore pleasure another time. And now I hope you're going to take a spot out of my new bottle of whisky along with me."

Mr. Palk replied nothing, but accepted the drink and hid his thoughts.

Next day Lawrence kept his engagement to see the old huntsman, and their conversation advanced their friendship. Maynard was under a common experience and had found that one man might charm his confidence in one direction, while another could win him upon a different plane. One string in him had vibrated to the geniality, tolerance and worldly wisdom of his new master and he had responded thereto; while the bed-ridden man in the valley served to awaken a different interest and attract the young man on higher, impersonal grounds. Enoch Withycombe was friendly and fearless. He loved talking, for no other social activity remained to him, and he enjoyed to retail the experiences of his life and the results of his reading, both in season and out. He declared that there was no better way to remember the things that he best liked in his past, and in his books, than by restating them to any who would listen. Some indeed mourned Enoch's opinions; but others were impressed by his acquired learning, and humble men, though they failed to follow his arguments, felt flattered that he should be at the trouble to discourse with them on such large subjects.

Maynard had found a common bond, and with the enthusiasm of the young went farther in some directions than the veteran was prepared to follow. For Enoch had a great theory that nobody must move faster than his wits could carry him, or accept any truth beyond his intelligence to grasp and, if need be, explain again.

Thus it happened that while Joe Stockman knew most about Lawrence's actual history, Mr. Withycombe alone learnt the result of the young man's experience in terms of opinion and belief. The one had sympathy and understanding for the objective events in Maynard's life, the other listened to the subjective convictions arising from those events. To-day Enoch's visitor indicated the nature of his own ideas, in language that Mr. Withycombe felt was too definite.

Lawrence sat by the invalid's bed, for the day was cold and wet and Enoch had not risen. Melinda was out for the afternoon, and Maynard had undertaken to keep her father company and make the tea. Invited to give his views on the eternal question, the young man did so.

"You can only judge of things by your own experience," he said. "You must talk of life as you find it, I reckon, not as somebody else finds it. It's what God Almighty does to us must decide our honest view about Him—not what He does to our neighbours."

Enoch was alert at once.

"A doubtful view, but go on; I'll hear your argument first."

"My argument is that God Almighty have treated me like a cat treats a mouse—that's my argument. Let me go a little way in hope, then down comes His Hand again; let me think I'm clear and free of doubt and difficulty and begin to get my breath and look round, and He pounces again. Cruelty for certain, and makes you feel that what He taught the cat to do, He thinks is a very good plan and worth copying."

"That's too ownself a view—too narrow far. You're not everybody."

"No; but I'm somebody; and if God makes a mouse, He ought to respect it; and since He's made me, He ought to respect me, so long as I'm respectable. I've got my rights, same as everything that comes in the world. If you make a child, it's your duty to cherish it, and think for it, and be jealous for it."

"But God don't make us like we make our children," said Enoch. "We ain't His own flesh and blood, Maynard. With a child, the kinship's closer. Our blood be in them and our faults, belike, are handed on. In fact, 'tis a terrible serious thing, knowing yourself, to make a child in your own image; and that's why Nature tickles us to do it afore we've got the wits to think twice. But God—that's different."

"Why? Either He's our Eternal, loving Father, or He ain't? And we're told He is. Then why don't He go one better than our good, earthly fathers, Mr. Withycombe, and put a bit more of Himself into us to start us safer? Have God ever neighboured with me? Have He ever allowed for my weakness, or lent a hand to help me through the dark places, or shown a light when I needed it most? Never. I've had to go single-handed all my life. And, when I've done my best to be straight and honest, has He ever patted me on the back and rewarded me? Never. He's flung my pride and my blood in my face, and showed up the past, when I hoped and prayed it was buried, and landed me in new difficulties, when I thought by my own just acts I had the right to suffer no more. He won't come between a man and his past, or save your character from the tyrant things stuffed into it by your havage."*

* Havage—ancestry.

"The sins of the fathers are visited on the children, my lad, because the Lord's reasonable and can't strain His own laws for special cases."

"Then He's weaker than man, who can do so. A just judge will often strain a law in particular cases, when he knows that to enforce it would be unjust. No God of justice would visit the sins of the fathers on the children surely?"

"When you say 'justice,' you use a very big word. There's the justice of Nature, which often looks unjust to our eyes, the justice that makes the fittest to survive. Not the fittest in our point of view, very likely. We fight Nature there, because what we understand by 'fittest' be what makes for our own convenience and advancement. But she's not out for us more'n anything else, and if she was to set to work on our account, and banish our enemies, and serve our friends, that wouldn't be justice from her point of view. And the justice of God's the same as that, Maynard. You may be tolerable sure He ain't out for us first and last and always. God's got a darned sight more on His hands than Buckland-in-the-Moor, or the world for that matter; and if our intellects was big enough to fathom His job, or get an idea of the Universe and the meaning of the Creator of the Universe, then we should see that His justice must be something long ways different from ours. 'Tis a quality of sin that it plays back and forth, like an echo, and every human knows that the sins of the children be visited on the parents, quite as often as it goes t'other way. Law's law."

"You wouldn't whip your child for showing the sins you put into him yourself?"

"Yes, I would, if I could help whip 'em out of him by so doing. I know a man, who told me he never felt his own sins come back to roost so bitter cruel, as when he had to flog his son for committing the same. These things are dark mysteries, you must know, and we can only see 'em, not solve 'em. But you mustn't let your own faults and misfortunes make you a sour man. That won't help you."

"It comes down to this," said Maynard: "either you end in believing in God, or not. I can talk to you, because you're broadminded and a thinker."

"Yes, it comes down to God, or no God," admitted Enoch. "And if you do believe in Him, then it's no manner of use yelping at Him, or whining at the way He treats you. You've got to knuckle under and there's an end of it. And if you don't believe in Him, then it's equally silly to snivel; because, if there's no God, then you might as well be a hound and bay at the moon as talk hard words against Him. There's a lot I read in my books that shows me the free-thinkers ain't so much angry with God, as angry with their neighbours for believing in Him. And what's the sense of that?"

"Do you believe in Him, if I may ask?"

"Most certainly I do. But once I did not. For a time I did in my fox-hunting days. Then I was terrible frightened of Him and felt a lot of fear when I saw good men suffer bad things. Then, when I was smashed, I flung Him over, lock, stock and barrel, and didn't worry no more. But now I believe in Him again."

"I believe in Him too," said Lawrence.

"Then believe in Him, and don't waste your wind and fret your wits blaming Him, because He don't do to others as He teaches us to do to others. If you believe, you must hold that His ways ain't our ways and that He sees the end from the beginning and suchlike comforting opinions. To believe in Him and think that you could go one better than Him is silly."

"One thing's certain: you can't have it both ways."

"You never spoke a truer word," admitted Mr. Withycombe. "Foxhunting taught me that afore you were born; and life didn't ought to hurt a man that admits it. You've looked at life with seeing eyes no doubt, and you must have seen lots of men treated worse than you, as well as better. The machine treats the blades of grass much the same, whether they be tall or short, and to be under the harrow, or under the weather, is the common lot of us all. Only a man's self knows his luck—not them looking at him from outside. One primrose be set on the south side of the hedge, another on the north; but that never puzzles me, or troubles them."

Maynard was very silent before this philosophy. The ideas came as something new and the speaker's attitude of good-humoured, mental superiority did not tempt him to explain the reason for his own pessimistic attitude.

Presently Enoch challenged him.

"And what have you got to say against that?" he asked.

"Nothing at all. The point of view's everything, and if you, from your bed of sickness, can feel all's for the best, I suppose I ought."

"There's all sorts of beds of sickness," answered Mr. Withycombe, "and no doubt the highest wisdom would say that sickness of the body is a lesser evil than sickness of the mind. But it's a very natural thing that a young man like you should be more interested in your own case than any other, and think it harder than any other. You all do; I don't blame you for that. But, with your good wits and good health and the world before you, there's no reason why you should let the past make you too down-daunted, whatever it may have done to you. There's always the future for a young man."

"The past can bitch up the future past praying for, however," argued Maynard, and the hunter considered the statement.

"The future be at the mercy of the past in a manner of speaking I grant," he said; "but a lot depends on whether we hurt ourselves in the past, or was only hurt by other people. Of course bad blood in our veins and vices can maim our future past praying for, as you say; but, with an even-minded man like you, I should judge you'd always been master of your past, and so ought to face the future more hopeful than what you seem to."

Lawrence still felt no desire to go into details. He guessed that Mr. Withycombe must be a great talker and knew not as yet whether confidences would be sacred. Moreover, he was weary of the subject and thought that the other might be.

"I dare say you're right. It may be a fool's trick always to keep the past before your eyes and let it shadow the future. That is if you can help it. But—however, you'll be pretty tired of me and my affairs. The thing is to take big views."

"It is—and to take views that ain't got the figure of No. 1 stuck in front of 'em, Maynard. The first thing to do, if you be going to set up for a thinker, is to rule yourself out, and all you dread and fear, and all you wish and desire. You've got to clear yourself out of the way; and some can, and then, if they've got brains, they see things clearer; and some can't, and that sort will never add a mite to their own wisdom, or anybody's. Get me my tea now. Us'll drink some tea. It's good of you and other men to be here now and again, because it gives my daughter a chance to stretch her legs and get the news. Now I should call her a sensible pattern of woman."

"So she is then. And a very popular woman, Mr. Withycombe."

"She's one that haven't let ill fortune sour her. No childer, and a husband lost before his time. But there she is, fifty year old and facing life and its duties and the dull task of a bed-ridden father, all so quiet and seemly as need be. No grumbling—not a sigh. I'm devilish cranky when the pain's bad; and though we can all be very wise to our neighbours of a Sunday afternoon, like this, there's times when we ain't very wise to our relations on weekdays. The past—the past—small wonder we look back if it's been as good as mine."

Maynard got the tea from the kitchen and arranged a bed-table for the invalid.

"Fire's right for toasting," he said. "Shall I make some?"

"Do so. A good thought. You don't tell me the reasons for your dark view of things and I don't want 'em—don't think it. But I'll ax you something of a private nature, because you'll respect confidence. No need to answer, however, if you feel it's none of your business. And it certainly is not. But if you can reply in strict confidence, young man, you'll pleasure me. Does Joe Stockman ever tell about Melinda, or give his opinion upon her?"

"He does. He's got a mighty high opinion of her and says she's a burning light and a lesson to all the women. He don't hide his feelings. He was figuring up her age a bit backalong."

Enoch laughed.

"Ah! But you can't have it both ways, as we said just now. Master Joe's always crying out about being an old man, but he don't want to feel an old man, or look an old man where my Melinda's concerned. I read Joe like a book I may tell you. He often thinks what a fine thing it would be to wed Melinda; but he knows he couldn't make a servant of her, like he does of his daughter."

"He's always been uncommon friendly to me," said Lawrence.

"Long may he continue so. You're a good man at your job I doubt not, and he knows it. But—well, enough said."

Maynard sat another hour with the old man and the talk drifted to fox-hunting.

When Melinda returned, she found her father in the best of tempers and the tea things cleared away and washed up.

"My!" she exclaimed. "What a husband you'll make some of these days, Mr. Maynard!"

"And he's going to come again," said Enoch. "He's promised. We'll set the world right between us afore we've done—him and me. And next time you go up over to Falcon Farm, you've got to take the man a book. I can't put my hand on it for the minute; but he's got to read it."

"You let what my father says go in at one ear and out at the other," warned Melinda. "He's a dangerous old man and we all know it."

"You won't fright him," declared Enoch. "He's going to be a great thinker some day, same as me!"

Then Lawrence went his way.

CHAPTER IX
A HOLIDAY FOR SUSAN

The church of St. Peter's at Buckland-in-the-Moor has a fine waggon roof and a noble little oak screen. The windows are mostly of uncoloured glass and the light of day illuminates the building frankly. It stands, with its burying ground round about it, on a little plateau uplifted among sycamore and pine. A few old tombs lie in the yard with others of recent date; but for the most part, on this January day, the frosty grass glittered over the mounds of unrecorded dead. The battlemented tower, sturdy and four square, rose in the midst of meadows at a step in the great slope from the Beacon. Trees surrounded the gap, ascending above and falling below in their winter nakedness. It was a place of peace and great distinction, marked by the fine quality of the human care devoted to it.

The five bells rang through the frosty morning, and Melinda Honeysett, with her brother, Jerry Withycombe, stood by the parapet of the burying ground and looked across the valley, where Lower Town lay far beneath upon the other side. It glimmered pale grey amidst its dim orchards and ploughed lands, and beyond it Dartmoor flung out ragged ridges from south to north, clean and dark under the low sun. Beneath was a gorge where the land broke and fell steeply to the junction of the Webburn Rivers at Lizwell Meet; and so still was the day in the interval of the bell music, that Jerry and his sister could hear the sister waters mingling and sending a murmur upward.

The man's eyes sought the roof tree of Green Hayes, which made a respectable splash above the lesser habitations of Lower Town; and Melinda knew very well of whom he was thinking. Jerry resembled his father, the old fox-hunter. He was large and finely put together, but he lacked his father's intelligence and possessed no great individuality of character. At present he was in love, and the fact transformed him, lent its own temporary qualities and lifted him into a personality.

"If you'd only see it, Jerry, you'd understand she's too young and selfish to make any man happy yet awhile," said Melinda. "I don't say she won't be a good wife some day, when she's properly in love with a man, and cares for him well enough to put him first and his wishes and welfare above her own. That may come to her; but it haven't yet. She's young for her age and not wife-old up till now, however you look at her."

"She ain't young for her age."

"Yes she is—and a cat-handed, careless girl about the house. Never got her thought on her work, as her mother will find out when Dinah goes."

"Well, I shan't be no damn good in this world without her," answered Jerry frankly. "That's a cast iron certainty; and she haven't turned me down yet, whether or no."

"She don't take you serious, however."

"She don't take nothing serious. She's built that way. And I don't take nothing serious but her. We'd neighbour very well, and her father haven't got a word against me, knowing I'm Church of England and a good character."

"Nobody's got nothing against you," said Mrs. Honeysett. "I should think not—nor yet against anybody of the name. Lord knows I don't blame you for falling in love with the girl—or any man. She's a lovely creature, and where she came from exactly among they homely, nice people, who can say? A proper changeling; and if one believed the old stuff you might say she was a changeling. Only the fairy stories all made it clear they fairy-born girls weren't no good for humans."

"She ain't a fairy; but she's the only creature in the world that's any good to me."

"Well, you study her character when you're along with her, and don't let yourself be thrown all in a mizmaze by her looks. She ain't a very contented girl, remember."

"She would be if Dinah was away. 'Tis beastly hard on John, Dinah not saying the word. And I wouldn't suffer it if I was him."

"You wait. You don't know what you'd suffer, or what you wouldn't. The thing to find out for you is Jane's idea of your opinions and prospects. They like a man to know a bit and be wiser than them."

"She's as clever as they make 'em and sharp as a needle. 'Tis no good my pretending to be cleverer than her, because she knows I ain't."

"Don't you eat humble pie all the same. She's not the sort to take that in a very loving spirit. God help the man she masters."

They were still talking when a pair approached from Falcon Farm. Mr. Palk was a steadfast churchgoer and to-day he had brought Susan Stockman.

"Wonders never cease!" cried Melinda. "How did you get off to worship, Soosie?"

Susan was excited at her rare adventure.

"Father's away. He's gone down to a friend at Kingsbridge for a day or two's shooting. Decided yesterday and went off in the afternoon, and Mr. Palk and Mr. Maynard was quite content to let dinner look after itself and be a thought late."

"Why not? 'Tis less than human of Joe to keep you moiling Sunday morning. I've told him so for that matter."

"But he always comes himself," said Susan, "and he likes his dinner uncommon well Sunday."

Melinda shook her head.

"'Tis no good being religious if we won't let other people be," she answered. "Your soul did ought to be more to your father than a hot Sunday dinner."

The gaunt woman smiled.

"Well, here I be to-day anyway; and the walk, which Mr. Palk kindly allowed me to take along with him, have rested me wonderful."

"Very proud I'm sure," said Thomas.

They returned together after the service, and Mrs. Honeysett could not fail to notice that Susan's adventure had done her good. For a time her anxious eyes harboured a little rest. But her Sunday gown did not please Melinda.

"You ought to get yourself a new dress and a thicker jacket," she declared. "You could put your finger through that old thing and the moths be got in the neck of it."

"I hardly ever want go-to-meeting clothes," explained Susan, and the other woman grew mildly indignant.

"You be so meek as a worm, Soosie-Toosie. No doubt a very Christian virtue; but it do make me a thought wild off and on. Not a word against your father, of course, but a man's a man, and 'tis their nature to put on us; and 'tis our duty to see they don't. You've got to watch the best of 'em like a cat watches a mouse, else they'll come between you and your rights. The creatures can't help it. They be built so, like all the other male things. It's deep in 'em; and we've got to get it out. Why, I'll flare out against my own father, love him as I do, and a bed-lier though he is, if I find he's forgetting I'm flesh and blood and thinking I'm a machine. Once let 'em think we're machines and it's good-bye to our self-respect for evermore. We're no more machines than they be."

Mr. Palk nodded vigorously to himself at these sentiments, but he did not speak.

"I know my place," said Susan.

"That's just what you do not, and you'll make me cross in a minute and undo the good of church. You're a reasonable creature, ain't you?"

"I hope so, Melinda."

"You've got a soul, ain't you?"

"I believe so. It's a poor come-along-of-it if I haven't."

Susan looked almost frightened.

"Very well then, act according. You wouldn't cling after the next world so frantic if you was having a better time in this one. That's cause and effect, that is, as my father would tell you. It's your feeling for getting back a bit of your own after you be dead. If your Maker had meant you to be a donkey and a beast of burden, He'd have made you one."

"We're taught to bear other people's burdens, my dear."

"Yes, but we ain't taught to do other people's work—not if they can do it themselves."

"I only do my own work, Melinda."

"Not a chance! You do a cook's work and an all-work's work and you're a sewing machine thrown in, not to mention washing for three men and a boy, and all the thousand odd jobs from sun-up till you drop in your bed."

Mr. Palk could not contain himself.

"Gospel!" he said. "Gospel!"

"To do their work for 'em is to encourage our neighbours in selfishness and laziness; and Lord knows such vices don't want encouraging in the men," continued Melinda.

"What would you do if you was in power?" asked Susan. "What could you do for that matter?"

"I'd strike," replied the elder. "I'd strike for a maid-of-all-work first. I'd tell your father I was his daughter. He wants reminding."

"He's terrible fond of me, however. He looks to me if he scratches his finger."

"And right to do so, seeing he's got no wife. I'm not saying he's not a very fine man indeed, because we all know he is; but I'm saying you ought to help him to be finer still and open his eyes to a fault he could cure if he was minded to. What do you think, Mr. Palk?"

But, at a direct question, Thomas subsided. His caution thrust upon his private feelings and kept him quiet. He shook his head.

"Least said, soonest mended, ma'am. I wouldn't go for to offer an opinion—though I might have my views. A man's a right to his views, haven't he?"

Melinda snorted.

"See how they take sides against us!" she said.

But this Thomas would not allow.

"I won't take no sides, though you're made of sense and—and—well—there 'tis."

They parted presently and Susan proceeded homeward with the labourer. They spoke very little, but, apropos of some remark from Mr. Palk, Susan committed herself to the opinion that animals were very backward in their minds.

"They be," admitted Thomas. "Their ignorance is something awful. Take a cat, generally counted a clever creature. He's been catching mice since creation, no doubt, and yet don't know to this day what a mouse be called!"

With such reflections they beguiled their journey and each was cheered in a subconscious fashion by the companionship of the other.

Thomas framed a sentiment and nearly spoke it. He had it on his tongue to hope that Mr. Stockman might be inspired oftener to go away for a week's end; but he felt it unwise to commit himself to such a strong wish and therefore kept it hidden.

Soosie-Toosie, for her part, felt some increase of well-being from her religious exercises.

"You shan't suffer, you men," she said, as they entered the wicket gate. "Give me fifteen minutes and 'twill all be hotted up."

CHAPTER X
TALKING WITH DINAH

On a public holiday in early spring, Joe Stockman suddenly declared an urgent necessity to communicate with Arthur Chaffe at Lower Town on the subject of some hurdles.

"And if you saw your way to take the air in that direction, Maynard, I shall be more than a bit obliged," he said.

Susan mildly protested.

"'Tis a holiday, father, and Mr. Maynard's bound for pleasuring, be sure," she said.

"I know, and I hope he is," answered her father, "but I thought perhaps he might be taking a bit of a walk and would so soon go that way as another. 'Tis no odds, of course, if not convenient. I must meet a few men in Ashburton myself—more business than pleasure, however—else I'd ride down."

"I'll go then," suggested Susan. "I'm wishful to see Faith Bamsey."

Lawrence, however, declared himself very willing to go.

"I'm not for the fair," he said, "and would just so soon walk down to the carpenter as anywhere else. I've got no use for revels."

"I'm much to blame, mind you," confessed Joe. "I heap blame on myself, because I did ought to have written to Chaffe on the subject a month ago; but it slipped my memory along of my rheumatism, and being so busy helping you chaps afterwards to spread muck on the land. Then I was with the shepherd a lot too, and so on. But Chaffe's always got a little stock of seasoned hurdles in his big store, and he can send me just so many as ever he likes up to fifty yards of 'em; and if he can cart them up to-morrow, the better pleased I'll be. And if he can't, I must get 'em elsewhere, bitter sorry as I shall feel to do so. Make that clear, Lawrence. And say I'm blaming myself a good bit about it. I ought to have given Arthur time, I allow—wonder though he is."

Accordingly the cowman set out for Lower Town and took his holiday on foot. The day was fine, and he told Soosie-Toosie that he should not be back before milking. She was taking no pleasure herself, but glad to devote the day to some spring cleaning. Palk and the boy, Neddy Tutt, had started at daybreak for the old home of Thomas near Newton Abbot. Maynard had spent a second Sunday afternoon with the Bamseys, and now he called there on his way to Mr. Chaffe with Susan's message for Faith. But Mrs. Bamsey was from home with Benjamin. They and Jane had driven early to Ashburton and were taking holiday. Dinah had not gone, and she answered the door when Lawrence knocked. She was surprised to see him.

"I never!" she said. "Why ain't you gone to the fair?"

"No use for fairs. Why ain't you for that matter, miss?"

"No use for them either. I'm under the weather a bit. Come in and have a tell. There's nobody home but me."

Their acquaintance had ripened a little, for Dinah came to Falcon Farm sometimes with messages. Lawrence admired Dinah's straightforward mind, but was puzzled at some things about her; while she, inspired by her step-father's opinion, that the man had some hidden grievance against life, found him interesting. She did not think he had a grievance, for he was not particularly gloomy with her or anybody else; but she had found him reticent concerning himself and he never spoke about his own experiences, or earlier existence, though she had invited him to do so.

"Where's Johnny?" asked the visitor.

"Fairing—or so he said; but if truth's known I expect he's to work. He often gives out he's away when he isn't. He's catched a chap once or twice like that."

"Ah! He knows his business. I expect he's down on the water somewhere. I should have guessed, now, you would have been up to his plans and going to take him his dinner by the river presently."

Dinah was rather aghast at this pleasantry. It argued an intimate knowledge of lovers' ways on the part of the other.

"You might think so," she said. "And often I have for that matter. But we're out—my fault, too."

"Never!"

"Yes—and that's why I say I'm under the weather."

"Well, Miss Susan wants Mrs. Bamsey to lend her the cheese press. We're going to have a try at cheese-making. Mr. Stockman's got an idea the thing be well worth trying; and Miss Susan wants to come over and have a tell about it and learn Mrs. Bamsey's wisdom. And the clutch of chickens be ready for you."

"Didn't you hear me say I was under the weather?"

"Twice. Yes. Sorry. It'll come right. Lovers' quarrels be naught."

"What have you heard Cousin Joe say about me and Johnny?"

"D'you want to know?"

"I do then."

"He says you're not treating John fair, and that it's a very black mark against you not fixing up the wedding."

"So it is, and nobody knows it better than me."

"You've got your reasons, no doubt."

"God knows if I have."

He said nothing, and she asked a curious question.

"Be you faithful, Mr. Maynard?"

"I hope so."

"I can talk to you. Funnily enough I've wanted to talk to you for a month, but held off. And now's the chance. I can trust you?"

He was a little uneasy.

"Don't you tell me anything you'll be sorry for."

"I'll tell you this. Johnny's sworn he won't see me no more till I name the day. And his people are on his side—very properly. And why don't I name the day? Can you answer that?"

"No, I can't—nor anybody else but your own self I should think."

"What's love like?"

"You did ought to know."

"So I did; and that's the trouble. I did ought to know; but I don't. Only I know this bitter clear: I'm not in love with Johnny. And it's hurting me and it's wrong."

He was sorry for her, but not astonished to learn the truth. Indeed he had already guessed it. Others also suspected it. Susan had spoken plainly on the subject one night to her father.

"'Tis whispered you took him for Mr. Bamsey's sake."

"No, I can't be let off like that. I wouldn't have done that, though it helped me to decide, of course. But I took him, because I thought I did love him, and now, after keeping company just on a year, I know I do not. Now you're a man that understands things."

"Don't you fancy that. None on God's earth is more puzzled about things than me. I've had a puzzling life I may tell you."

"I haven't. Till now my life's been as clear as sunshine. But now—now I'm up against a pretty awful thing, and it's cruel hard to make up my mind. Was you ever really in love?"

"Never mind me."

"Was you ever in doubt, I mean?"

"Never."

"I don't ask for rudeness, but reason. There's nobody you can ask in my life, because they be all biased. I'm not thinking of myself—God judge me if I am. I'm just wondering this: Can I be the right down proper good wife Johnny deserves to have if I don't love him? And the question that's so hard is, ought I to marry him not loving him? Not because of my feelings, but because of his future. Think if you was him, and loved a woman as truly as he loves me, and you had to say whether you'd marry her and chance the fact she didn't love you, or, knowing she didn't, would give her up."

"That's not how it is, though. Johnny don't know you don't love him. He don't know what you're feeling. I judge that by what he says, because he often drops in and talks openly, finding all on his side."

"What would you do?"

"If I wanted to marry a woman and she'd said 'yes,' but afterwards found herself mistook, I shouldn't love her no more."

"Then you don't know much about love."

"Very likely I don't."

"It's a selfish thing. If I was in love, I'd be like Johnny—and worse. A proper tigress I expect."

"Are you in love?"

"No, I swear I'm not. Not with anybody. I've growed up, you see, since I said 'yes' to John. I was a child, for all my years, when I said it. Growing up ain't a matter of time; it's a matter of chance. Some people never do grow up. But I have, and though I don't know what it would be like to fall in love, I know parlous well I'm not, and never was. And it comes back just to what I said. Would it be better for Johnny to marry him not loving him, because I've promised to do so, or would it be better for him if I told him I wasn't going to? That's the question I've got to decide."

"You'll decide right," he said. "And you don't want other people's views. You know."

"I know what I'd like to do; but just because my own feeling is strong for telling him I won't marry him, I dread it. Of course he'll say I'm only thinking of myself."

"You can't be sure what he'll say."

"Yes, I can: I know him."

"If he knew you didn't love him——"

"He'd only say he'd larn me how to later. But he wouldn't believe it."

"If you was to hold off much longer, he'd chuck you perhaps."

"Never. I'm his life. He says it and he means it."

"But to marry him would be your death?"

She nodded.

"Yes, I think."

"Perhaps you're wrong, however."

"Very likely. My first thought was to tell him how it was with me and leave it to him. But I know what he'd do. He'd only laugh at me and not take it serious, or let me off."

"You are thinking for yourself then?"

"I suppose I am."

"It's natural. You've got your life to live."

"Be sporting," she said. "Don't think of me and don't think of him. Put us out of your mind and just say what you'd do if you was me."

He felt a little moved for her. It is pathetic to see a resolute creature reduced to irresolution. The manhood in him inclined Lawrence to take her part against the man. It seemed an awful thing that her life should be ruined, as it must be if she married one she did not love. He liked Dinah better than Johnny, for the latter's arrogance and rather smug and superior attitude to life at large did not attract Maynard.

"It's never right under any circumstances for a woman to marry a man she does not love," he said.

"You think so?"

"I do—I'm positive."

"Even if she's promised?"

"Your eyes are opened. You promised because you thought you loved him. Now you know right well you don't. A proper man ought to bend to that, however much it hurts. And if you still think it's your duty to marry him, I say duty's not enough to marry on."

"It's hurting me fearfully, and there's something awful wrong about it. They want me away from here—Mrs. Bamsey and Jane—that's natural too. Though why I'm confiding in you I don't know. Something have drove me to do it. But I know you'll be faithful."

"I wish I could help you, miss. I can only say what I think."

"You have helped me I reckon. You've helped me a lot. I was half in a mind to go and see Enoch Withycombe; but he's old, and the young turn to the young, don't they?"

"I suppose they do; though I dare say the old know best, along of experience."

"The old forget a lot. They always begin by telling you they remember what it was to be young themselves; but they don't. They can't. Their blood runs slower; they're colder. They've changed through and through since they were young. They can't remember some things."

"I dare say they can't."

"Will you come for a walk with me one day and show me that stone you was telling about—the face?"

"You remember that?"

"Yes; you was going to say more about it the last Sunday you was here; then you shut up rather sudden."

The idea of a walk with Dinah had certainly never entered Maynard's head. He remained silent.

"D'you think it would be wrong, or d'you only think it would be a nuisance?" she asked.

"It's a new notion to me. I'd like to pleasure you and it wouldn't be a nuisance—far from it I'm sure; but as to whether it would be wrong—it would and it wouldn't I fancy. It couldn't be wrong in itself; but seeing you're tokened to another man, you're not free to take walks with Dick, Tom, or Harry. No doubt you see that."

"John wouldn't like it?"

"Certainly he wouldn't. You know that."

"Would you mind my walking with another man if you was engaged to me?"

"Yes, I should, very much indeed; especially if I was in the same fix that John Bamsey is."

"Poor John. There's such a thing as liking a man too well to love him, Mr. Maynard."

"Is there?"

"I'm beginning to feel—there—I've wasted enough of your time. You won't go for a walk with me?"

"I'd like to go for a walk with you."

"I'll ask you again," she said. "Then, whether I marry John, or don't marry John, there'll be no reason against."

"I quite understand."

"To see that face on the stone. You'll find Mr. Chaffe in his workshop. Holidays are naught to him. Good-bye. Truth oughtn't to hurt honest people, ought it?"

"Nothing hurts like truth can, whether you're honest, or whether you're not."

He went forward turning over with mild interest the matter of the conversation. He was little moved that she should have asked him to go for a walk. From any other young woman such a suggestion had been impressive; but not from her. He had noticed that she was never illusive and quite unpractised in the art of lure, or wile. The stone he had mentioned was a natural face carved by centuries of time, on the granite rocks of Hey Tor, some miles away. He had mentioned it in answer to a remark from Benjamin Bamsey, and then, for private but sufficient reasons he had dropped the subject. His connection with the stone belonged to a time far past, concerning which he was not disposed to be communicative. That she should have remembered it surprised him. But perhaps the only thing that had really interested her was the fact he dropped the subject so suddenly.

He fell to thinking on his own past for a time, then returned to Dinah. That she could confide in him inclined him to friendship. He admired her character and was sorry for the plight in which she found herself. He hoped that she might drop Bamsey and find a man she could love. He was aware that her position in her step-father's house held difficulties, for the situation had often been discussed at Falcon Farm. Whether she decided for John, or against him, it was probably certain she would leave Green Hayes; and that would mean distress for Benjamin Bamsey. He was sorry for all concerned, but not inclined to dwell over-much on the subject. His own thoughts were always enough for him, and his experience had tended somewhat to freeze the sources of charity and human enthusiasm at the fount. He was not soured, but he was introspective to the extent that the affairs of his fellow creatures did not particularly challenge him. Thus it was left for Thomas Palk to see the truth of the situation at Falcon Farm; Lawrence had never troubled to realise it for himself. It seemed improbable that he would be woven into the texture of other lives again. Indeed, he had long since determined with himself that he would never be.

Arthur Chaffe was making a coffin.

"The dead can wait for no man," he said. "A poor old widow; but I'm under her command for the moment; and she shall have good work."

Lawrence told the matter of the hurdles and Mr. Chaffe promised to do what he could.

"Joe treats time with contempt," he declared. "He did ought to have told me long ago; but I always reckon with the likes of him. I think for a lot of people and save them from their own slow wits. Not that Stockman's got slow wits. His wits serve him very well indeed, as no doubt you've found."

"He's a good farmer and a kind-hearted sort of man."

"So he is, so he is. You'll not hear me say a word against him."

"Yet a few do."

"They do. But mind you, when he says he worked as a young man, it's true. He did work and took a long view, so now you find him as he is. But he never loved work for itself, same as I do. Work never was meat and drink to him; and when it had got him what he wanted, he was very well content to play and let others work for him. And knowing well what work means, nobody he employs will ever deceive him on the subject."

"He sees that we earn our money. But he's fair."

"Ah! To be fair with your neighbour is a great gift. Few are, and who shall wonder? Now Joe's a man who takes a generous view of himself. But 'tis better to be hard on yourself and easy with other people—don't you think?"

"A fine thing, to be hard on yourself, no doubt," admitted Lawrence.

"Yes, and them who are hardest on themselves will often be easiest with their neighbours. But that's a high position to reach, and few can."

"It's very easy in my opinion not to judge other people. But when life demands you to judge, then the trouble begins."

"When our own interest comes in, we often make a mess of it and judge wrong," admitted Mr. Chaffe. "And what I always say to anybody in a fix is this: to get outside the question and think how it would be if it was all happening to somebody else. If you've got the sense to do that, you'll often be surprised to find the light will shine. And you'll often be surprised, also, to find how much smaller the thing bulks, if you can wriggle out of it yourself and take a bird's-eye view."

"I expect that's true."

"Oh yes, it's true. I've proved it. A thing happens and you're chin deep in it. Then you say to yourself, 'Suppose I was dead and looking down on this job from my heavenly mansion, how would it seem then?' And if you've got the intellects to do it, then you often get a gleam of sense that you never will while you're up against the facts and part of 'em. It's like the judge trying a case, without having any interest in it beyond the will that right shall be done."

"Men haven't the gift for that."

"They have not; yet even to try to do it stills passion and breeds patience and helps religion."

"Very good advice, no doubt."

"This coffin will go along early to-morrow morning, and I'll bring half the hurdles this week in two or three loads; and tell Joe the price be up a thought since last year. He knows that as well as I do."

Maynard noted the instructions in a little pocket-book and presently departed. He took a meal of bread and cheese and cider at the inn hard by, then set out on an extended round, walked to Widecombe, tramped the Moors, watched the swaleing fires, that now daily burned upon them, and did not return home until the hour of milking.

CHAPTER XI
NEW BRIDGE

On New Bridge, over Dart, stood Dinah with the sun warm upon her face, while a first butterfly hovered on the golden broom at water's edge. She had sent a message to Johnny by his sister that she would meet him here, and now, while she waited, she speculated on the difference between the beauty of the May day and the ugliness of what she was about to do. But she had decided at last, and having done so, she could only wonder why it had taken her so many weeks to reach a decision. To her direct instincts delay had been a suffering and produced a condition of mental bad health; but it was not for her own sake that she had delayed, and she knew now that her hesitation had been no kindness to Johnny, though endured largely out of affection for him. She was convinced, beyond possibility of doubt, that her regard could not be called love and she had determined with herself, as she was bound to do, that to marry under such circumstances would be no marriage in any seemly interpretation of the contract. She had the imagination to know, however, that what was beaten ground to her—a way exploited a thousand times by day and sleepless night—was no such thing for him. He had said that he would have nothing more to do with her until she named the day, and he was coming now under expectation of hearing her do so. Instead he must learn that the day could never be named.

She was full of sorrow, but no fear. Dinah had long discounted the effect of the thing she was called to do. She did not expect anybody to be patient, or even reasonable, save her step-father.

Johnny appeared punctually, with his gun on his shoulder. They had not met for more than a month, but he ignored the past and greeted her with a kiss. She suffered it and reflected that this was the last time he would ever kiss her.

"At last," he said. "I've hated this job, Dinah; and you'll never know how much I hated it; but what could I do?"

"I don't know, Johnny. You could have wondered a bit more why I held off perhaps."

"And didn't I wonder? Didn't I puzzle myself daft about it? I don't know now—such a downright piece as you—I don't know now why you hung back. It wasn't natural."

"Yes it was—everything's natural that happens. It couldn't happen if it wasn't natural—old Arthur Chaffe said that once and I remembered it."

"If it was natural, then there was a reason," he answered, "and I'd like to hear it, Dinah—for curiosity."

"The reason is everything, John. I didn't know the reason myself for a good bit—the reason why I held away from you; and when I did, I was so put about that it seemed to alter my whole nature and make me shamed of being alive."

"That's pretty strong. Better we don't go back then. I'll ask no questions and forget. We'll begin again by getting married."

"No; the reason you've got to hear, worse luck. The reason why I behaved so strange was this, John: I'd made a terrible mistake—terrible for both of us. I thought the love that I had for you, and still have for you, and always shall, was the love of a woman for the man she's going to wed. Then, like a cloud, it came over me, denser and denser, that it was not. Listen—you must listen. I examined into it—give me that credit—I examined into it with all my senses tingling night and day. I never worked so hard about anything after I'd got over my first fright. And then I saw I'd slipped into this, being young and very ignorant about love—much more so than many girls younger than me; because I never was interested in men in the way they are. I found that out by talking to girls, and by the things they said when they knew I was tokened to you. They looked at marriage quite different from me, and they showed me that love is another thing altogether seen that way than as I'd seen it. They made me terrible uncomfortable, because I found they'd got a deep understanding that I had not got about it; and they laughed at me, when I talked, and said I didn't know what love meant. And—and—I didn't, Johnny. That's the naked truth."

He was looking at her with a flushed face.

"Get on—get on to the end of it," he said.

"Be patient. I'm bitter sorry. We was boy and girl for so many years, and I loved you well enough and always shall; but I don't know nothing about the sort of love you've got for me. The first I heard about it was from Jane. She knows. She understands far deeper about what love is than I do. I only know I haven't got it, and what I thought was it didn't belong to that sort of love at all. Haven't you seen? Haven't you fretted sometimes—many times—because I couldn't catch fire same as you, when you touched me and put your arms round me? Didn't it tell you nothing?"

"How the devil should it? Women are different from men."

"Not they—not if they love proper. But how could you know that—you, who was never in love before? I don't blame you there; but if you'd only compare notes with other men."

"Men don't compare notes as you call it about sacred things like love."

"Don't they? Then they're finer than us. Women do. Anyway I found out, to my cruel cost, I was only half-fledged so far as you were concerned."

"I see. But you needn't lie about it—not to me. You loved me well enough, and the right way too. You can't shuffle out of it by pretending any trash about being different from other girls. You loved me well enough, and if you'd been on-coming like some creatures, I'd have hated you for it. That was all right, and you knew what you were doing very well indeed. And you're lying, I say, because it wasn't women have brought you to this. It was men. A man rather. Be plain, please, for I won't have no humbug about this. You've found some blasted man you hanker after and think you like better than me. And it's not the good part in you that have sunk to any such base beastliness; it's the bad, wicked part in you—the part I never would have believed was in you. And I've a right to know who it is. And I will know."

"Hear me then, Johnny. May God strike me dead on this bridge, this instant moment, if there's any man in the world I love—or even care for. I tell you that I've never known love and most likely never shall. 'Tis long odds it be left out of me altogether. And I can't marry you for that good reason. I didn't come to it in a hurry. For one of my nature I waited and waited an amazing time, and for your sake I hoped and hoped I'd see different, and I tried hard to see different. I thought only for you, and I'm thinking only for you now. It would have been far easier for me to go on with it than break. Can't you see that? But afterwards—you're a quick man and you're a man that gives all, but wants all back again in exchange for all; and rightly so. But what when you'd found, as find you must, that I'd not loved you as you thought? Hell—hell—that's what it would have been for you."

"You can spin words to hide your thoughts. I can't. You're a godless, lying traitor—and—no—no—I call that back. You don't know what you're saying. Have some mercy on a man. You're my all, Dinah. There's nothing else to life but you! Don't turn me down now—it's too late. You must see it's gone too far. You can't do it; you can't do it. I'm content to let it be as it is. If you don't love me now, I'll make you love me. I'll—all—I'll give all and want nothing again! It's cruel—it's awful—no such thing could happen. I believe you when you say there's not another man. I believe you with all my heart. And then—then why not me? Why not keep your solemn oath and promise? If anything be left out of you, let me put it in. But there's nothing left out—nothing. You're perfect, and the wenches that made you think you wasn't ban't worthy to black your boots. For Christ's sake don't go back on me—you can't—it wouldn't be you if you did."

"Don't make it worse than it is, dear John. I'm proud you could care for me so well; but don't you see, oh, don't you see that I can't act a lie? I can't do it. Everything tells me not to do it. I'm in a maze, but I know that much. I must be fair; I must be straight. I don't love you like that. I thought I did, because I was a fool and didn't know better. It can't be. I'm fixed about it."

For a moment he was quiet. Then he picked up his gun, which he had rested against the parapet of the bridge. His face was twisted with passion. Then she heard him cock the gun. For a moment she believed that he meant to shoot her. She felt absolutely indifferent and was conscious of her own indifference, for life seemed a poor possession at that moment.

"You can kill me if you like," she said. "I don't want to go on living—not now."

He cursed her.

"Lying bitch! Death's a damned sight too good for you. May your life be hell let loose, and may you come to feel what you've made me feel to-day. And you will, if there's any right and justice in life. And get out of Lower Town—d'you hear me? Get out of it and go to the devil, and don't let me see your face, or hear your voice in my parents' home no more."

A market cart came down the hill and trundled towards them, thus breaking into the scene at its climax. John Bamsey turned his back and strode down the river bank; Dinah hid her face from the man and woman in the cart and looked at the river.

But the old couple, jogging to Poundsgate, had not missed the man's gestures.

The driver winked at his wife.

"Lovers quarrelling!" he said; "and such a fine marnin' too. The twoads never know their luck."

With heavy heart sat Johnny by the river under great pines and heard the rosy ring-doves over his head fluttering busily at their nest; while Dinah leant upon the parapet of the bridge and dropped big tears into the crystal of Dart beneath her.

CHAPTER XII
AFTERWARDS

The shock of Orphan Dinah's sudden action fell with severe impact in some directions, but was discounted among those of wider discernment. The mother of John had seen it coming; his father had not. In a dozen homes the incident was debated to Dinah's disadvantage; a few stood up for her—those who knew her best. In secret certain of John's acquaintance smiled, and while expressing a sympathy with him, yet felt none, but rather satisfaction that a man so completely armed at all points, so successful and superior, should receive his first dose of reality in so potent a shape.

The matter ran up and down on the tongues of those interested. His mother and sister supported Johnny in this great tribulation, the first with dignity, the second with virulence, hardly abated when she found herself more furious than John himself.

For after the first rages and intemperate paroxysms in which Jane eagerly shared, she fancied Johnny was cooling in his rage; and, such are the resources of human comedy, that anon her brother actually reproved Jane for some particularly poignant sentiments on the subject of Dinah. He had set her a very clear-cut example in the agonised days of his grief; but presently, to the bewilderment of Jane, who was young and without experience of disappointment, John began to calm down. He roughly shut up the girl after some poisonous criticism of Dinah, and a sort of alliance into which brother and sister had slipped, and into which Jane entered with full force of love for John and hate for Dinah, threatened to terminate.

Jane lessened nothing of her fervid affection for John, however, and it remained for another man to explain what seemed to her a mystery. He was not a very far-seeing, or competent person, but he had reached to the right understanding of Johnny's present emotion.

With Jerry Withycombe Jane fell in beside a track through the forest, where he was erecting a woodstack, and since their relations were of the friendliest and Jane, indeed, began to incline to Jerry, she had no secrets from him and spoke of her affairs.

"What's come to them I don't know," she said. "Father's plucking up again, and I can see, though Dinah's trying to get a place and clear out, that he'll come between and prevent it very likely. Mother's at him behind the scenes, but God knows what they say to each other when they go to bed. You'd think Dinah wouldn't have had the face to bide in the house a day after that wickedness; but there she is—the devil. And John ordered her to go, too, for he told me he had."

"It's your father," answered Jerry. "My sister was telling about it. Melindy says that Mr. Bamsey's troubled a lot, and though he knows Dinah has got to go, he's taking it upon himself to decide about where she shall go and won't be drove."

"I see through that; mother don't," said Jane. "Father only cares for Dinah really, and he thinks, in his craft, that very like, given time, things may calm down and her be forgiven. That's his cowardly view, so as he shall keep her. But nobody shan't calm down if I can help it. I won't live with the wretch, and so I tell John. Men ban't like us: they don't feel so deep. They're poor things in their tempers beside us. A woman can hate a lot better than a man. Why, even Johnny—you'd never believe it; but you'd almost think he's cooling a bit if it was possible."

"He is," answered Jerry. "And why not? What the hell's the good of keeping at boiling point over what can't be helped? Especially if, on second thoughts, you begin to reckon it can be helped."

"What d'you mean by that?" asked Jane.

"Why, you see John's a very determined sort of customer. He's never took 'no' for an answer from anybody, and he's got an idea, right or wrong, that a man's will is stronger than a woman's. I thought so, too, till I got to know what a rare will you've got. But there it is in a word; not two days agone I met Johnny, and he said where there was life there was hope."

Jane gasped.

"That's what be in his head then! That's what made him stop me pretty sharp when I was telling the truth about her?"

Jerry nodded.

"Very likely it might have been. In fact, he ain't down and out yet—in his own view, anyway. You see, as John said to Lawrence Maynard, and Maynard told me, 'If Dinah ain't got no other man in sight, she's what you may call a free woman still.' And I believe that John be coming round to the opinion that Dinah may yet live to see she was wrong about him."

Jane stared and her thoughts reeled.

"D'you mean to tell me that a man like my brother could sink to think again of a girl that had jilted him?" she flamed.

"Don't you turn on me," protested Jerry. "It ain't my fault men are like that. You know John better than I do. But it wouldn't be contrary to nature if he did want her still. A man in love will stand untold horrors from a woman; and though it may make you, looking on, very shamed for him—still, life's life. And I believe, if John thinks he can get Dinah back, he'll come down off his perch yet and eat as much dirt as she likes to make him."

"It's a beastly thought—a beastly thought!" cried Jane. "But he shan't—he never shall have her now if I can prevent it. I'd be a miserable woman if I had to suffer her for a sister-in-law now."

Jerry saw danger in this attitude.

"I always feel just like you feel," he said, "but for God's love, Jenny, don't you go poking into it. It's a terrible good example of a job where everybody had best to mind their own business. You let John do what he's minded to do. Men in love be parlous items, and if he's still that way, though wounded, then 'tis like a wild tiger a man have fired at and only hurt. He's awful dangerous now, I shouldn't wonder; and if he wants her still and counts to get her, God help anybody who came between. He'd break your neck if you tried to: that I will swear."

But Jerry was more perturbed at the vision he had conjured than Jane. For his information she was able to give facts concerning the other side.

"If that's what John's after, he's only asking for more misery then," she said. "I hope you're wrong, Jerry, for I should never feel the same to John if I thought he could sink to it; but anyway he needn't fox himself that she'll ever go back on it again. That much I'm positive certain. Cunning as she is, I can be more cunning than her, and I know all her sorrow about it and pretended straightness and honesty was put on. She weren't sorry, and she never was straight, and I've sworn before to you and will again, that she's got somebody else up her sleeve."

"Who then?" asked Jerry Withycombe.

"I can't tell you. Lord knows I've tried hard enough to find out; but I haven't—not yet. Only time will show. It's a man not worthy to breathe the same air with John you may be sure. She was too common and low ever to understand John, and his high way of thinking; and she'd be frightened to marry such a man, because she knows she'd always have to sing small and take a second place. She's a mass of vanity under her pretences."

"We all know you don't like her; and more don't I, because you don't," answered Jerry. "But if you are positive sure she'll never come round to Johnny again, it might be truest kindness to tell him so. Only for the Lord's sake do it clever. You may be wrong, and if there's a chance of that, you'd do far better to leave it alone."

"I'm not wrong; but all the same I shall leave it alone," said Jane. "What mother and me want is for her to get out of the house, so as we can breathe again. It's up to father, and father's going to have a bad time if he stands against mother."

"Dinah won't stop, whether your father wants for her to or not," prophesied Jerry.