SONS
OF THE MORNING
BY
EDEN PHILLPOTTS
W. J. GAGE & COMPANY LIMITED
TORONTO.
Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada,
in the office of the Minister of Agriculture,
by W. J. GAGE & Co. (Limited), in the year
one thousand nine hundred.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
CHILDREN OF THE MIST
LYING PROPHETS
SOME EVERYDAY FOLKS
THE HUMAN BOY
TO
MY VALUED FRIEND
WILLIAM MORRIS COLLES
A SMALL TRIBUTE OF
GREAT REGARD
CONTENTS
BOOK I.
CHAPTER
- [The Beech Tree]
- [Bear Down Farm]
- [A Wise Man and a Wise Woman]
- [The Kiss]
- [Pagan Altars]
- [Anthemis Cotula]
- [A Badger's Earth]
- [Out of the Mist]
- [The Warning]
- [Three Angry Maids]
- [Partings]
- [The Definite Deed]
- [Snow on Scor Hill]
- [The Wisdom of Dr. Clack]
- [Sun Dance]
- [A Shelf of Slate]
- [Spring on Scor Hill]
- [Roses and Rosettes]
BOOK II.
- [The Seeds]
- [Cherry Grepe's Sins]
- [A Secret]
- [The Wisdom of Many]
- [In Spring Moonlight]
- [Sorrow's Face]
- [Plots against an Orphan]
- [A Necklace of Birds' Eggs]
- [An Old-time Prescription]
- [Oil of Man]
- [A Clean Breast of it]
- [Light]
BOOK III.
- [Vanessa Io]
- [The Meeting of the Men]
- [Flags in the Wind]
- [Drifting]
- [A Hunting Morning]
- [Love of Man]
- [Lapses]
- [The Round Robin]
- [Red Dawn]
- [A Man of Courage]
- [The Road to Peace]
- [Peace]
- [A Sound of Suffering]
- [From Words to Blows]
- [Watern Tor]
- [Threnody]
BOOK IV.
BOOK I.
SONS OF THE MORNING
CHAPTER I.
THE BEECH TREE
Above unnumbered sisters she arose, an object noteworthy even amid these aisles, where, spun from the survival of the best endowed, fabrics of ancient forest enveloped the foot-hills of the Moor and belted heather and granite with great woodlands. A dapple of dull silver marked her ascension and glimmered upwards through the masses of her robe. From noble girth of moss-grown trunk she sprang; her high top was full of a silky summer song; while sunbeams played in the meshes of her million leaves and cascades of amber light, born from her ripening harvest, streamed over the dark foliage. She displayed in unusual perfection the special symmetry of her kind, stood higher than her neighbours, and fretted the blue above with pinnacles of feathering arborescence, whose last, subtle expression, at that altitude, escaped the eye. Her midmost boughs tended from the horizontal gradually downward, and the nether branches, rippling to earth like a waterfall, fashioned a bower or music-making dome of translucent green around about the bole. Within this arbour the roots twisted down their dragon shapes into the dark, sweet-scented earth, and fortified the beech against all winds that blew. So she stood, queen of the wold, a creation loved by song-birds, a treasure-house for squirrels, pigeons, and the pheasants that, at autumn-time, strutted gorgeous in the copper lake of her fallen leaves. Beneath her now, cool and moist in twilight of shadows, grew delicate melampyre that brought light into the herbage, stood the wan seed-vessels of bygone bluebells, and trailed grasses, with other soft, etiolate things that had never known direct sunshine. The pale trunk was delicately wrought with paler lichens, splashed and circled upon its bark; while mossy boulders of granite, lying scattered within the circumference of the tree's vastness, completed this modest harmony of grey and silver, lemon and shadowed green.
Woodland roads wound at hand, and in a noontide hour of late July these paths were barred and flooded with golden sunlight; were flanked by trunks of gnarled oak and wrinkled ash; were bridged with the far-flung limbs of the former, whereon trailed and intertwined festoons of ivy and wreaths of polypody fern that mingled with tree mosses. Through this spacious temple, seen under avenues of many a pillar, sparkled falling water where the sisters Teign, their separate journeys done, murmured together and blended their crystal at an ancient bridge. Henceforth these two streams sweep under hanging woods of larch and pine, by meadows, orchards, homesteads, through the purple throat of oak and fir-crowned Fingle, and so onwards, by way of open vales, to their sad-coloured, heron-haunted estuary. Hand in hand they run, here moving a mill-wheel, there bringing sweet water to a hamlet, and ever singing their changeful song. The melody of them deepens, from its first baby prattle at springs in Sittaford's stony bosom, to the riotous roar of waterfalls below; lulls, from the music reverberated in stony gorges, to a whisper amid unechoing valleys and most placid pasture lands. Finally salt winds with solemn message from the sea welcome Teign; and mewing of gulls on shining mud-flats; and the race and ripple of the tides, who joyfully bring the little stream to that great Lover of all rivers.
Leading from dingles on the eastern bank to interspaces of more open glades beside the great beech tree, a bridge, fashioned of oak saplings, still clothed with bark and ash-coloured lichen, crossed the river; and, at this sunlit moment, a woman stood upon it and a man shook the frail structure from his standpoint on the bank. His purpose was to alarm the maiden if he could; but she only laughed, and hastened across sure-footed.
Honor Endicott was two-and-twenty; of tall, slight habit, and a healthy, brown complexion. Her face betrayed some confusion of characteristics. In repose the general effect suggested melancholy; but this expression vanished when her eyes were lighted with laughter or her lips parted in a smile. Then the sad cast of her features wholly disappeared and, as the sky wakes at dawn or sunset, Honor was transfigured. A beholder carried from her not the impression of her more usual reserve, but the face, with its rather untidy black hair, pale brown eyes and bright lips all smile-lighted. Happily she laughed often, from no vain consciousness of her peculiar charm, but because she possessed the gift of a humorous disposition, in the modern acceptation of that word, and found the world, albeit lonely and not devoid of grey days, yet well stored with matter for laughter. This sense, than which heredity—that godmother, half fairy, half fiend—can bestow no better treasure on man or woman, kept the world sweet for Honor. Her humour was no paltry idiosyncrasy of mere joy in the ridiculous; but rather a quality that helped her to taking of large views, that lent a sense of just proportion in affairs, that tended to tolerance and leavened with charity her outlook on all things. It also served to brighten and better an existence, not indeed unhappy, but unusually lonely for a young woman.
She held up a pretty brown hand, and shook her head at the man.
"Christopher," she said, "supposing that your bridge had broken, and I had tumbled in?"
"I should have saved you, without doubt—a delicious experience."
"For you. What a subject for a romance: you, the last of your line; I, the last of mine, being swept to death by old Teign! And my farm would be desolate, and your woods and hills and ancestral hall, all bundled wretchedly into Chancery, or some such horrid place."
"On the contrary, I save you; I rescue you at great personal peril, and we join hands and lands, and live happily ever afterwards."
"There's a heron! You frightened him with your folly."
The great bird ascended from a shallow, trailed his thin legs over the water, then gathered speed, rose clear, steered with heavy and laborious flight amid overhanging boughs, and sought a lonelier hunting-ground elsewhere.
"Brutes! I always walk right on top of them when I'm not carrying my gun. I hate to think of the number of young trout they eat."
"Plenty left to grow big and be caught all the same," said Honor, as she peeped down to watch grey shadows, that sped up stream at sight of her and set little sandclouds rising under the clear water where they flashed away.
"Nothing like a Devon trout in the world, I think," she added. "I caught a half-pounder in the Wallabrook last night, just at the end of the evening rise, with that fly, like a 'woolly bear' caterpillar, you gave me."
Christopher Yeoland nodded, well pleased. He was a broad and tall young man of thirty, and he walked through woods and beside waters that had belonged to his family for years without count. Ardent in some things, sanguine in all, and unconquerably lazy, he had entered the world to find it entirely a problem. Succeeding upon several generations of shiftless and unpractical ancestors—men of like metal with himself—he stood the penniless possessor of a corner of Devon wherein Nature had exhausted her loving resources. He clung to the involved home of his fathers, and dreamed of retrieving the desperate position some day. He lived an open-air life, and spun courses of action, quite majestic in their proportions, for the succour and restoration of his property; but the taking of a definite step in any direction seemed beyond his powers. In theory he swept to action and achievement, and, if words could have done it, Godleigh had been freed from all encumbrance thrice in every week; but practically Christopher appeared content to live from hand to mouth at his old manor house, to keep one horse in the huge stables, two dogs in the kennels, a solitary old woman and one man in his echoing and empty house, where, aforetime, more than half a score of folk had bustled away their busy lives.
Godleigh, or Godbold's Leigh, as it was first called after its earliest Norman owner, may be identified among the Domesday manors of Devon; but it is almost beyond parallel to find possessions descending through a line of commoners so unbroken as in this case. To Yeoland's ancestors, none of whom had ever been ennobled, this place accrued soon after 1300 A.D., during the reign of the second Edward; but since that period the original estate had been shorn of many acres, and sad subdivisions and relinquishments from century to century were also responsible for its diminution. Now hill and valley immediately around Godleigh, together with those tracts upon which stood the village and church of Little Silver, with sundry outlying farms, were all that survived of the former domain, and even these pined under heavy mortgages held by remote money-lending machines with whom Christopher's father had been much concerned throughout the years of his later life. The present old fifteenth-century house, built on foundations far more ancient, peeped, with grey mullioned windows and twisted chimneys, from forest of pine on a noble hill under the eastern ramparts of Dartmoor. Granite crowned this elevation, and Teign turned about, like a silver ribbon, far beneath it.
Here the last of his line passed with Honor Endicott beside the river, and she mourned presently that the sole care of such noble woods rested with the Mother only, and that never a forester came to remove the dead or clear overgrowth of brake and thicket.
"Nature's so untidy," said Honor.
"She is," Yeoland admitted, "and she takes her own time, which seems long from our point of view. But then there's no pay-day for her, thank God. She doesn't turn up on Saturdays for the pieces of silver and bite them suspiciously, like some of your farm folk you lent to help save my hay last week; and she consumes all her own rubbish, which is a thing beyond human ingenuity."
This man and woman had known each other from early youth, and were now left by Chance in positions curiously similar; for Honor Endicott was also an orphan, also came of ancient Devon stock, and also found her patrimony of Bear Down Farm—a large property on the fringe of the Moor and chiefly under grass—somewhat of a problem. It was unencumbered, but hungered for the spending of money. Concerning the Endicotts, who had dwelt there for many generations, it need only be said that they were of yeoman descent, dated from Tudor times, and had of late, like many a kindred family all England over, sunk from their former estate to the capacity of working farmers.
Honor, who had enjoyed educational privileges as a result of some self-denial on the part of both of her parents, now reigned mistress at "Endicott's," as Bear Down Farm was commonly called. At first sovereign power proved a source of pleasure; now, blunted by nearly a year of experience, her rule occasioned no particular delight.
Presently Christopher led his companion beside the great beech and pointed to a leafy tent beneath it.
"Come into my parlour! I found this delicious place yesterday, and I said to myself, 'Mistress Endicott may take pleasure in such a spot as this.' Here will we sit—among the spiders with bodies like peas and legs like hairs; and I'll make you laugh."
"It's late, Christopher."
"Never too late to laugh. Just half one little hour. What are thirty minutes to two independent people who 'toil not, neither do they spin'—nor even knit, like your uncle? There—isn't it jolly comfortable? Wish the upholstery on some of my old-world furniture was as complete. By the way, you know that sofa thing with dachshund legs and a general convulsed look about it, as though the poor wretch had been stuffed with something that was not suiting it? Well, Doctor Clack says that it's worth fifty pounds! But he's such a sanguine brute. Yet this granite, with its moss cushions, is softer than my own easy chair. There are no such springs as Nature's. Look at heather, or a tree branch in a gale of wind, or a——"
"Now don't begin again about Nature, Christo; you've talked of nothing else since we started. Make me laugh if I'm to stop another minute."
"Well, I will. I was looking through some musty old odds and ends in our muniment-room last night and reading about my forefathers. And they did put me so much in mind of the old governor. Such muddlers—always procrastinating and postponing and giving way, and looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope."
"I've heard my father say that Mr. Yeoland was such a man."
"Yes; and money! He never paid anything in his life but the debt of Nature, dear old chap; and if he could have found a way to make Nature take something in the pound, he'd be here pouring his wisdom into my ears yet."
"We're all bankrupts to her, I suppose."
"He only made one enemy in all his long life; and that was himself."
Christopher reflected a moment, then laughed and drew a paper from his pocket.
"That reminds me of what I set out on. We are most of us Yeolands much like the governor. As I tell you, I rummaged in the archives to kill an hour, and found some remarkably ancient things, ought to send them to Exeter Museum, or somewhere; only it's such a bother. Couldn't help laughing, though it was a sort of Sardinian chuckle—on the wrong side of my face. We're always yielding up, or ceding, or giving away, or losing something. Here's a scrap I copied from a paper dated 1330. Listen!"
He smoothed his screed, looked to see that Honor was attending, then read:—
"'Simon de Yeolandde, s. of John Geoffrey de Yeolandde, gives to Bernard Faber and Alice his wife his tenement at Throwle'—that's Throwley, of course 'i.e. my hall and my orchard called Cridland Barton, and my herb garden, and my piece of land south of my hall, and my piece of land north of my hall as far as Cosdonne, and the reversion of the dowry his mother Dyonisia holds.' There—the grammar is rocky, but the meaning clear enough. Here's another—in 1373. 'Aylmer Yeolande'—we'd given away one of our 'd's' by that time, you see—'Aylmer Yeolande releases to William Corndone 4*d.* (four pence) of annual rent, and to Johanna Wordel all his right in the hundred of Exemynster.' And here's just one more; then I'll shut up. In 1500 I find this: 'Suit between Dennys Yeolandde'—we'd got our 'd' back again for a while—'Gentleman, of Godbold's Leigh, and Jno. Prouze, Knight, of Chaggeforde, as to right of lands in Waye and Aller—excepting only 12*s.* (twelve shillings) of chief rent, which Dennys Yeolandde hath; and the right of comyn of pasture.' Of course my kinsman went to the wall, for the next entry shows him climbing down and yielding at every point to the redoubtable Sir John. We're always fighting the Prouzes, and generally getting the worst of it. Then their marriage settlements! Poor love-stricken souls, they would have given their silly heads away, like everything else, if they could have unscrewed them!"
"So would you," said Honor Endicott. "You laugh at them; but you're a Yeoland to the marrow in your bones—one of the old, stupid sort."
"I believe I must be. The sixteenth and seventeenth century chaps were made of harder stuff, and went to the wars and got back much that their fathers had lost. They built us into a firm folk again from being a feeble; but of late we're thrown back to the old slack-twisted stock, I fear."
"That's atavism," declared Honor learnedly.
"Whew! What a word for a pretty mouth!"
"I was taught science of a milk-and-water sort at school."
"Smother science! Look at me, Honor, and tell me when you're going to answer my question. 'By our native fountains and our kindred gods'; by all we love in common, it's time you did. A thousand years at least I've waited, and you such a good sportswoman where other things are concerned. How can you treat a Christian man worse than you'd treat a fish?"
She looked at his handsome, fair face, and lost sight of the small chin and mouth before a broad, sun-tanned forehead, curly hair, and blue eyes.
"You knew the answer, Christo, or you'd never have been so patient."
"On the contrary, how can I know? I hang on in a storm of agony."
"You look a miserable wretch enough—such a furrowed cheek—such a haggard gleam in your eyes."
"I say, now! Of course I don't wear my heart on my sleeve, or my awful suspense upon my face. No, I hide my sufferings, go on shaving and putting on my best clothes every Sunday, and worshipping in church and carrying the plate, and all the rest of the dreary round. Only the sunrises know of all I endure. But once refuse, and you'll see what despair can drive a man to; say 'No' and I fling everything up and go off to Australia, where lives the last relation I've got in the world—an old gentleman in the 'back blocks,' or some such dismal place."
"You must not dream of that. Men have to work there."
"Then you'll do the only thing to stop me from such an awful fate? You'll take me for better for worse? You'll join your fat lands to my lean ones? You'll——"
"Don't," she said, rather bitterly, "don't laugh at me and mine in the midst of a proposal of marriage. Somehow it makes my blood run cold, though I'm not sentimental. Yet marriage—even with you—has a serious side. I want to think how serious. We can't go on laughing for ever."
"Why not? You know the summing-up of a very wise man after he'd devoted his life to philosophy? Nothing is new, and nothing is true, and nothing matters. God bless my own—very own little brown mouse of an Honor! Somehow I had a sneaking hope all along that you would say 'Yes'!"
"I haven't yet."
"Kiss me, and don't quibble at a moment like this. You haven't kissed me since you were fifteen."
But Honor's humour for once deserted her. She tried to conjure thoughts proper to the moment and magnify its solemnity; she made an effort, in some measure pathetic, to feel more than she really felt.
"You'll be wise, clearest Christo; you'll think of me and love me always and——"
"Anything—anything but work for you, sweet," he said, hugging her to himself, and kissing her with a boy's rapture.
"Oh, Christopher, don't say that!"
"Then I won't; I'll even work, if you can steel yourself to the thought of such a spectacle as Christo labouring with a sense of duty—like an ant with a grain of corn. God bless and bless and bless your dear little warm heart and body, and soft hair and eyes and everything! Work for you! You wait and see."
"I knew this was coming," she said a little drearily. "Ever so long ago I saw it coming and heard it coming. And I rehearsed my part over and over. Yet the thing itself is an anti-climax, Christo. I should have said 'Yes' the second time you asked me."
"The first time, my pearl."
"Perhaps so. It's like flat cider now."
"Don't say that. We've been courting continuously, if you look back, ever since we were children. Then you had dear little tails down your back—two of them—and I used to get you birds' eggs and other useful things. When will you marry me, sweetheart?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Honor. "When I can afford a cake."
But there was a tear in her eye that he did not see.
"There speaks again my own brave, heroic Honor! We will have a cake; but why should you pay for it?"
"I must—there's nobody else to do so. You can't. Come, it is time, and more than time, that I went home."
"Wait," he said; "on a great, historic occasion like the present one marks the day with a white stone. This spot is henceforward sacred to every subsequent Yeoland or Endicott. It may become the shrine of family pilgrimages. So I'll set a true lover's knot upon this venerable beech bole, together with the initials H.E.—that's God's feminine masterpiece—and C.A.Y.—that's Christopher Aylmer Yeoland—not a divine inspiration, I grant you; but a worthy, harmless child of Nature, taking him all round. Hark to my best-loved poet:—
'And in the rind of every comely tree
I'll carve thy name, and in that name kisse thee.'"
He cut and chattered; then, his work completed, bid Honor inspect the conventional bow with their united initials staring white and naked from the bark.
"Nature will tone it down and make it pretty later on," he said.
"I hope she will make you wise later on."
They departed then and wandered upward by a woodland track to Godleigh. His arm was round her; her head rested against his shoulder, and her spirits rose a little. They laughed together, each at the other's slight fancies; and then a vision of death met them. In a glade beside the way, where honeysuckle hung pale lamps about the altar of sacrifice, appeared a fallen cloud of feathers that warmed from grey to golden-green. There a hawk had slain a woodpecker, and nothing remained of the victim save the under-down and plumage, with his upper mandible and a scattered feather or two from his crimson crest.
"That's unlucky," said Honor.
"Very—for the bird," admitted Christopher. "Poor beggar—I'm sorry. I like the green woodpeckers. They've such a sense of humour, and love a laugh as well as I do myself."
CHAPTER II.
BEAR DOWN FARM
The lovers passed through Godleigh, and then, entering the main road that ran from Little Silver to those high regions above it, pursued their way by Devonshire lanes whose lofty hedge-banks shut out all view of the grass lands extending upon each side. Here and there, however, gates opened into the hayfields, and from one, where two of Honor's ricks were slowly rising, came hum of voices. The scene was set in silver-green wisps of hay; a sweet scent clung to the air; two horses rested on the shady side of the rick; an elm or two whispered into the haze of summer; and, hard by, sat above half a dozen persons taking their midday meal under the hedge. Speech was hushed; the nearest men touched their hats, and a girl dropped a curtsey as Honor walked by at discreet distance from young Yeoland. And then, upon their passing, the haymakers broke into a new subject with ready tongue.
A man, smartly attired and apparently not of the working party, winked as Christopher and his lady moved out of sight.
"'Tis a case for sartain sure," he said.
"Have been this many a day, if you ax me," answered a young woman near him. She wore a sun-bonnet of faded blue, and a brown dress dragged up to her belt on one side over a rusty red petticoat.
"They've been tinkering arter each other ever since I can mind, an' I be nineteen," she added.
Another spoke. He was a tall labourer, clad in earth-colour, with a big nose, a long neck, large, sun-blistered ears, and black hair.
"Might be a happy thing belike," he said; and to him a smaller man replied—a man whose bristly beard was nearly grey, whose frowning, dark eyes and high, discontented forehead promised little amiability.
"'A happy thing'! A happy fiddlestick, Henry Collins! Godleigh's sea-deep in debt, an' so much a land of the Jews as Jerusalem's self, by all accounts. An' missis—better her bide a maid all her days than marry him, I reckon. She's a jewel tu precious for the likes of that gude-for-nothing. An' I've my doubts, but—Sally, give awver, will 'e, an' remember you'm a grawed gal!"
This sudden exhortation Mr. Jonah Cramphorn cast at his daughter, the maiden who had first spoken; and necessity for such rebuke appeared in the fact that Sally, a ripe and plump damsel, with red lips, grey eyes and corn-coloured hair, was now pelting the youth beside her with hay, while he returned the compliment as best he could.
Gregory Libby, in his well-fitting garments with neat gaiters and cap to match, though formerly a worker, enjoyed holiday to-day for reasons now to appear. He was a mean type of man, with sandy locks, a slight hare-lip, and a low forehead; but to Sally's eyes these defects were not apparent. Mr. Libby could sing charming songs, and within the past week he was richer by a legacy of five hundred pounds. On the previous day he had come back from London to Little Silver, and now, still putting off his return to work, stood among the folk of Bear Down and posed as a person of some consequence. Sally's conduct woke indignation elsewhere than in her father's breast. Mr. Henry Collins glared at the grey figure of Gregory. The big-nosed man was a new hand at Bear Down; but one fortnight in the company of Sally had served to enslave Henry's maiden heart. He was in love with Miss Cramphorn, but thus far had hidden his secret.
Beside the rising hayrick, sitting in sunshine with his face to the others, an old, bald labourer ate bread and onions and drank from a little cider barrel. His countenance showed a marvellous network of wrinkles; his scant hair, reduced to tufts above his ears, was very white; his whiskers were also white, and his eyes, blue as the summer sky, wore an expression of boyish frankness. His small, clean-shaved mouth was pursed like a young child's.
"'Tis pity," he said, resuming the former topic, "'tis pity as missis can't find a way to mate wi' her cousin, Maister Myles Stapledon, him what be comin' to pay a visit presently. A snug man they say, an' a firm-footed—solid every way in fact. I mind last time he comed here—more'n ten year ago. A wise young youth even then."
"Ban't purty Miss Endicott's sort by the sound of un," said Gregory Libby; then, accepting a drink of cider from a horn mug which Sally brought him, he drew forth a cigar from a yellow leather case. This he presently lighted, marched about, and puffed with great show of satisfaction, not oblivious to the attention he attracted.
"A strange fashion way to take tobacco," said the ancient, who was called Churdles Ash.
"So it is then," assented Mr. Cramphorn; "an' what's more, I ban't gwaine to allow 'tis a fit an' proper way of smokin' for the likes of him. What's five hunderd pound when all's said?"
"'Twill blamed soon be five hunderd pence, if the man's gwaine to broadcast it away 'pon fantastic machines like them, as awnly gentlefolks have any business with," said Samuel Pinsent, another labourer, who passed for a great wit, chiefly by reason of a Merry-Andrew power to pull remarkable faces. He was a red man with weak eyes; and his fellows alleged him impervious to all feminine attractions.
"For Sundays an' high rejoicings a cigar may pass now an' again," argued Henry Collins. "Not as I'm saying a word for Greg Libby," he added in violent haste, as he caught Sally's eye. "He'm a puny twoad an' always was—brass or no brass. What do the likes of him want wi' stiff collars 'pon week-days? Let un go back to his job, which was hedge-tacking, an' not done tu well neither, most times."
"He'm the monkey as have seed the world," said old Ash, lighting a black pipe and crossing his hands over his stomach.
Mr. Collins mopped his forehead, and looked up from where he sat. Then he tightened the leather thongs that fastened in his trousers below the knees and answered as he did so—
"Seed the world! Him! I knaw what he seed. He seed a cheap tailor in the Edgware Road, Paddington way; an' he seed a wicked back street or two; an' no doubt a theayter——"
"That'll do, if you please, Henery," said Mr. Cramphorn. "Me an' Ash, as weern't born essterday, can guess all the rest. I ban't in nature suspicious——"
Then in his turn Jonah was interrupted.
"Ess fay, you be, my son," declared Mr. Ash.
"Anyway," answered the parent, darkly scowling, "I see my darter pulling eyes at the fule an' I won't stand it—wouldn't for twice five hunderd pound."
"No need to fright yourself," said Churdles Ash, shaking his head. "Libby's not a marryin' man—tu selfish to marry while his auld mother's alive to slave for him an' kiss the ground he walks on. Besides, there's your other darter—Margery. He'm so set 'pon wan as t'other; but 'tis all philandering, not business."
"He'll end by havin' a sore back anyways if I see much more of it. Sally to marry him indeed! Shaw me a purtier gal than Sally this side Exeter an' I'll give 'e a gawlden sovereign!"
"An' I'll give 'e another!" declared Mr. Collins.
At this moment Jonah's second daughter, together with one Mrs. Loveys, housekeeper at Bear Down, appeared. The latter was an ample, elderly widow. She had a capacious bosom, bare arms, and a most kindly face. Her late husband, Timothy Loveys, after a lifetime of service at Endicott's, passed within a year of his master; and upon his death Mr. Cramphorn had won promotion and was now head man. As for Margery, a thin, long-faced girl, cast in mould more fragile than her sister, she worked as dairymaid at the farm. She too was personable, but her slimmer contour, reserved manner, and sharp tongue contrasted ill, in masculine opinion, with Sally's physical exuberance and good temper.
The women who now came to fetch empty utensils and baskets stayed awhile, and Mrs. Loveys asked a question.
"An' what for be you offerin' gawlden sovereigns so free, Henry Collins?" she inquired with a side glance.
"To find a purtier maiden than Sally, ma'am."
Margery laughed and blushed, with her eyes on Mr. Libby.
"What about missis?" she asked.
"Missis," answered Jonah, "be a lady. She'm built on a different pattern, though with like material. No disrespect to her, as I'd shed my life's blood for, but the differ'nce betwixt she an' my Sally's the differ'nce betwixt sunlight an' moonlight."
"Between a wind-flower an' a butivul, full-blawed cabbage rose," hazarded Mr. Collins.
"Yet theer's them as would liefer have the windflower," said Margery, who secretly believed herself very like her mistress, and dressed as near to Honor as she dared. Mrs. Loveys nodded approval of this statement; Mr. Cramphorn stoutly questioned it.
"What d'you say, Churdles?" asked Pinsent; "or be you tu auld to call home the maids you felt kind-like towards in last century when you was full o' sap?"
"I say 'tis time to go to work," replied Mr. Ash, who never answered a question involving difference of opinion between his friends. "Come, Collins, 'Thirty Acres' to finish 'fore sundown, an' theer's full work 'pon it yet! An' you, Tommy Bates; you fall to sharpenin' the knives for the cutter, this minute!"
He rose, walked with spreading feet and bent back across the road, then dipped down into a great field on the other side. There lay a machine-mower at the edge of the shorn hay, to the nakedness of which still rippled a russet ocean of standing grass. Colourless light passed in great waves over it; the lavender of knautias, together with too-frequent gold of yellow rattle, flashed in it; and the great expanse, viewed remotely, glowed with dull fire of seeding sorrels. Above, danced butterflies; within, the grasshoppers maintained a ceaseless stridulation; and soon the silvery knives were again purring at the cool heart of the undergreen, while ripe grassheads, flowers, sweet clovers, tottered and fell together in shining lines, where Churdles Ash, most just embodiment of Father Time, pursued his way, perched aloft behind two old horses. At each corner the jarring ceased a moment, and the old man's thin voice addressed his steeds; then an angle was turned, and he tinkled on again under the dancing heat. Elsewhere Tommy Bates prepared another knife, and sharpened its shark-like teeth with a file; Pinsent brought up a load of hay from a further field; Cramphorn ascended one rick, and took the harvest from the forks; while Sally and Collins turned the drying grasses at hand, and pursued the business of tossing them with dexterity begotten from long practice. Mr. Libby crept about in the near neighbourhood of the girl, but conscious that Jonah, from the high vantage of the rick, kept sharp eyes upon her, adventured no horseplay, and merely complimented her under his breath upon her splendid arms.
Meanwhile, Christopher Yeoland had seen Honor to her home and so departed.
Bear Down lay in the centre of hay lands immediately beneath the Moor. Above it stretched the heather-clad undulations of Scor Hill, and beneath subtended forest-hidden slopes. The farm itself was approached through a little avenue of sycamores, whose foliage, though it fell and turned to sere, black-spotted death sadly early in most autumns, yet made dimpled play of cool shadow through summer days on the great whitewashed barn beneath it. Then, through a grass-grown yard and the foundations of vanished buildings, one reached a duck-pond set in rhododendrons, and a little garden. The house itself was a patchwork of several generations, and its main fabric stood in shape of a carpenter's mitre, whose inner faces fronted east and south. Each portion had its proper entrance, and that pertaining to the frontage which faced dawn was of the seventeenth century. Here a spacious granite doorway stood, on one side of whose portal there appeared the initials "J.E.", set in a shield and standing for one John Endicott, who had raised this stout pile in the past; while on the other, a date, 1655, indicated the year of its erection. The fabric that looked southwards was of a later period, yet each matched with the other well enough, and time, with the eternal mists of the Moor for his brush, already began to paint modern stone and slate into tune with the harmonious warmth of the more ancient wing. Behind the farmhouse were huddled a dairy, outbuildings, and various erections, that made fair medley of rusty red tile, warm brown wood-stack, and silver thatch. A little lawn rolled away from the granite walls of the farm front, and the parterres, spread snugly in the angle of the building, were set with rough quartz and gay under old-world flowers. Here throve in many-coloured, many-scented joy martagon lilies—pale, purple, and lemon—dark monkshoods, sweet-williams, sweet-sultans, lavender, great purple poppies, snapdragons, pansies, stocks, and flaming marigolds. Along the streamlet, coaxed hither from Scor Hill to feed the farm, grew ferns and willow-herbs, wild geraniums of varied sorts, wood strawberries, orpine, and other country folks. The garden was a happy hunting-ground for little red calves, who wandered bleating about it in the mists of early morning; and for poultry, who laid their eggs in thickets of flowers, scratched up dust-baths in the beds, and hatched out many a clutch of chicks or ducklings under sheltered corners. Against the weathered forehead of its seventeenth-century wing Endicott's displayed an ancient cherry tree that annually shook forth umbels of snowy blossom about the casements, and, later, jewelled these granite walls or decorated the venerable inscription on the lintel with ruby-red fruit seen twinkling through green leaves. Elsewhere ivy and honeysuckle and everlasting pea climbed on a wooden trellis, and in one sheltered nook stood a syringa and a great japonica, whose scarlet brightened the cloud-coloured days of early springtime, whose pomaceous harvest adorned the spot in autumn.
Within doors the farm was fashioned on a generous plan, and contained large, low-ceiled rooms approached through one another by a method most disorderly and ancient. Once, in the heyday of Endicott prosperity, these chambers had been much occupied; now, as became practical farmers, the men—generation by generation—had gradually drifted from the luxuries of many dwelling-rooms. Their wives and daughters indeed struggled against this defection, but masculine obstinacy won its way, until the huge and pleasant kitchen began to be recognised as the house-place also, while other apartments became associated with Sunday, or with such ceremonious events as deaths and marriages might represent.
Almost to the farm walls each year there rippled some hundreds of acres of grass, for no other form of agriculture served the turn so well at that high altitude. Roots and corn they grew, but only to the extent of their own requirements. Of stock Bear Down boasted much too little; hay was the staple commodity, and at this busy season Honor watched the heavens with a farmer's eye, and personally inspected the undergrass, its density and texture, in every field.
A late, cold spring had thrown back the principal harvest somewhat during the year in question; yet it promised well notwithstanding. Mr. Cramphorn alone declared himself disappointed; but seldom had a crop been known to satisfy him, and his sustained discontent throughout the procession of the seasons counted for nothing.
Honor, despite education and reasonable gift of common sense, never wholly pleased her parents. Her father largely lacked humour in his outlook, and he had passed doubly sad: in the knowledge that the name of Endicott must vanish from Bear Down upon the marriage or decease of his daughter, and in the dark fear that one so fond of laughter would never make a farmer. Indeed, his dying hope had been that the weight of supreme control might steady the girl to gravity.
Now, Christopher gone, Honor entered her house, and proceeded into the kitchen. A little separate parlour she had, but particular reasons led to the spending of much time in the larger apartment. Nor was this an ordinary kitchen. You are to imagine, rather, a spacious, lofty, and comfortable dwelling-room; a place snug against the bitter draughts which often bulged up the carpets and screamed in the windows throughout the farm; a chamber warm in winter, in summer cool. Peat fires glowed upon its cavernous and open hearth, and, like Vesta's sacred brands, they never wholly died by night or day. Above the fireplace a granite mantel-shelf supported shining metal-ware—brass candlesticks and tin receptacles polished to splendour; a pair of old stirrups were nailed against the wall, with a rack of guns—mostly antique muzzle-loaders; while elsewhere, suspended in a pattern, there hung a dozen pair of sheep-shears. Oak beams supported the roof, and from them depended hams in canvas bags. At one corner, flanked by two bright warming-pans, stood a lofty clock with a green dial-plate and ornate case of venerable date; and about its feet there ranged cream-pans at this moment, the crust of whose contents matched the apricot tone of kitchen walls and made splendid contrast with the blue-stone floor where sunlight brightened it. The outer doorstone had yielded to innumerable steel-shod boots; it was worn clean through at the centre, and a square of granite had been inserted upon the softer stone. Beside the fire stood a brown leathern screen, and beneath the window, where light, falling through the leaves of many geraniums, was cooled to a pale green, there stretched a settle.
The kitchen was full of sound. A wire-haired fox-terrier pup worried a bit of rabbit-skin under the table, and growled and tumbled and gurgled to his heart's content; crickets, in dark caves and crannies behind the hearth, maintained a cheerful chorus; and from behind the screen came tapping of wooden needles, where sat an old man knitting yarn.
"Honor at last," he said, as he heard her feet.
"Yes, uncle Mark; and late I'm afraid."
"I didn't wait for you. The dinner is on the table. What has kept you?"
"Christo has been asking me to marry him again."
"But that's an everyday amusement of his, so I've heard you say."
"Uncle, I'm going to."
The needles stopped for one brief moment; then they tapped on again.
"Well, well! Almost a pity you didn't wait a little longer."
"I know what's in your head—Myles Stapledon."
"He was. I confess to it."
"If only you could see his photograph, dearest. Oh so cold, hard, inscrutable!"
"I remember him as a boy—self-contained and old-fashioned I grant you. But sober-minded youths often take life too seriously at the start. There's a sort of men—the best sort—who grow younger as they grow older. Mrs. Loveys told me that the picture he sent you makes a handsome chap of Myles."
"Handsome—yes, very—like something carved out of stone."
The blind man was silent for a moment; then he said—
"This shows the folly of building castles in the air for other folks to live in. Anyway you must make him welcome during his visit, Honor, for there are many reasons why you should. The farm and the mill, once his father's, down Tavistock way, have passed out of his hands now. He is free; he has capital; he wants an investment. At least you'll treat him as a kinsman; while as to the possibilities about Bear Down, Myles will very quickly find those out for himself if he's a practical man, as I guess."
"You don't congratulate me on Christo," she said petulantly.
"I hardly seem able to take it seriously yet."
Honor turned away with impatience. Her uncle's attitude to the engagement was almost her own, allowing for difference of standpoint; and the discovery first made her uncomfortable, then angry. But she was too proud to discuss the matter or reveal her discomposure.
CHAPTER III.
A WISE MAN AND A WISE WOMAN
Mr. Scobell, the Vicar of Little Silver, often said, concerning Mark Endicott, that he was as much the spiritual father of the hamlet as its parson. Herein he stated no more than the truth, for the blind man stood as a sort of perpetual palliative of human trouble at Bear Down; in his obscure, night-foundered passage through the world, he had soothed much sorrow and brought comfort to not a few sad, primitive hearts in the bosoms of man and maid. He was seventy years old and knew trouble himself; for, born to the glory of light, he had been blind since the age of thirty, about which period the accident of a bursting gun destroyed his right eye. The other, by sympathetic action, soon became darkened also; and Mark Endicott endured the full storm-centre of such a loss, in that he was a man of the fields, who had depended for his life's joy on rapid movement under the sky; on sporting; on the companionship of horse and dog and those, like himself, whose lives were knit up in country pursuits. He had dwelt at Bear Down before the catastrophe, with his elder brother, Honor Endicott's father; and, after the affliction, Mark still remained at the farm. He was a bachelor, possessed small means sufficient for his needs, and, when the world was changed for him, cast anchor for life in the scene of his early activities. Before eclipse the man had been of a jovial, genial sort, wholly occupied with the business of his simple pleasures, quite content to remain poor; since loss of sight he had fallen in upon himself and developed mentally to an extent not to have been predicted from survey of his sunlit youth. Forty years of darkness indeed ripened Mark Endicott into an original thinker, a man whose estimate of life's treasures and solutions of its problems were broad-based, tolerant, and just. If stoical, his philosophy was yet marked by that latter reverence for humanity and patience with its manifold frailties that wove courses of golden light into the decaying fabric of the porch, and wakened a dying splendour in those solemn and austere galleries ere the sun set upon their grey ruins for ever. Epictetus and Antonine were names unknown to him, yet by his own blind road he had groped to some of their lucid outlook, to that forbearance, fearless courage, contempt of trifles and ruthless self-estimate an emperor learned from a slave and practised from the lofty standpoint of his throne. Mark Endicott appraised his own conduct in a spirit that had been morbid exhibited by any other than a blind man; yet in him this merciless introspection was proper and wholesome. The death of his sight was the birth of his mind, or at least the first step towards his intellectual education. Seeing, the man had probably gone down to his grave unconsidered and with his existence scarcely justified; but blind, he had accomplished a career of usefulness, had carved for himself an enduring monument in the hearts of rustic men and women. He was generally serious, though not particularly grave, and he could tolerate laughter in others though he had little mind to it himself. His niece represented his highest interest and possessed all his love. Her happiness was his own, and amongst his regrets not the least centred in the knowledge that he understood her so little. Mark's own active participation in affairs extended not far beyond speech. He sat behind his leathern screen, busied his hands with knitting great woollen comforters for the fishermen of Brixham, and held a sort of modest open court. Often, during the long hours when he was quite alone, he broke the monotony of silence by talking to himself or repeating passages, both sacred and secular, from works that gave him satisfaction. Such were his reflections that listeners never heard any ill of themselves, though it was whispered that more than one eavesdropper had overheard Mr. Endicott speak to the point. His quick ear sometimes revealed to him the presence of an individual; and, on such occasions, the blind man either uttered a truth for that particular listener's private guidance, or published an opinion, using him as the intelligencer. It is to be noted also that Mark Endicott oftentimes slipped into the vernacular when talking with the country people—a circumstance that set them at ease and enabled him to impart much homely force to his utterances. Finally of him it may be said that in person he was tall and broad, that he had big features, grizzled hair, which he wore rather long, and a great grey beard that fell to the last button of his waistcoat. His eyes were not disfigured though obviously without power of sight.
Honor made a hearty meal and then departed to continue preparations for her cousin's visit. In two days' time he was arriving from Tavistock, to spend a period of uncertain duration at Bear Down. The bright afternoon waned; the shadows lengthened; then there came a knock at the outer door of the kitchen and Henry Collins entered. He had long been seeking for an opportunity to speak in private with Mr. Endicott; and now his face brightened from its usual vacuity to find that Mark was alone.
"Could I have half a word, maister, the place bein' empty?"
"You're Collins, the new man, are you not?"
"Ess, sir; Henery Collins at your sarvice; an' hearin' tell you'm ready to give your ripe judgment wheer 'tis axed an' doan't grudge wisdom more'n a cloud grudges rain, I made so bold—ess, I made that bold like as to—as to——"
"What is it? Don't waste breath in vain words. If I can give you a bit of advice, it's yours; an' take it or leave it as you mind to."
"I'll take it for sure. 'Tis this then: I be a man o' big bones an' big appetite, an' do handle my share o' vittles braavely; but I do allus get that cruel hot when I eat—to every pore as you might say—which swelterin' be a curse to me—an' a painful sight for a female, 'specially if theer's like to be anything 'twixt you an' she in the way of keepin' comp'ny. An' if theer ban't no offence, I'd ax 'e what I should take for't."
Mr. Endicott smiled.
"Take less, my son; an' don't swallow every mouthful as if the devil was arter you. Eat your meat an' sup your drink slow."
"Ban't a calamity as caan't be cured, you reckon?"
"Nothing at all but greediness. Watch how your betters take their food an' see how the women eat. 'Tis only gluttony in you. Remember you're a man, not a pig; then 'twill come right."
Mr. Collins was greatly gratified.
"I'm sure I thank 'e wi' all my heart, maister; for 'twould be a sorry thing if such a ill-convenience should come between me an' a bowerly maid like Sally Cramphorn, the out-door girl."
"So it would then," assented the elder kindly; "but no need—no need at all."
Collins repeated his sense of obligation and withdrew; while elsewhere that identical young woman who now began to distract the lethargic solidity of his inner life was herself seeking advice upon a deep matter touching heart's desire. Soon after five o'clock Sally escaped from the supervision of her jealous parent, and started upon a private and particular errand through leafy lanes that led northerly from the farm and skirted the Moor in that direction. Presently she turned to the left, where a gate marked the boundaries of common land and arrested cattle from straying on to the roads. Here, dipping into a little tunnel of living green, where hazels met over a watercourse, Sally proceeded by a moist and muddy short cut to her goal. It was a cottage that rose all alone at a point where the Moor rippled down to its hinder wall and a wilderness of furze and water-meadow, laced with rivulets and dotted with the feathers of geese, extended in front. A dead fir tree stood on one side of the cot, and the low breast-work of granite and peat that separated a little garden from the waste without was very strangely decked with the vertebræ of a bygone ox. The bones squatted imp-like in a row there—a spectacle of some awe to those who knew the significance of the spot. Upon the door were nailed many horse-shoes, and walls of red earth or cob, painted with whitewash and crowned by venerable and moss-grown thatch, formed the fabric of the cottage. Upon fine days this mural surface displayed much magic of varied colour; it shone cool in grey dawns, hot at noon, delicate rose and red gold under such brief gleams of sunset light as the Moor's ragged mane permitted to reach it. Stone-crops wove mellow tints into the rotting thatch above, and the moss cushions of dark and shining green were sometimes brushed and subdued by a haze or orange veil thrown over them by the colour of their ripe seed-vessels. In the garden grew many herbs, knowledge of whose potency their owner alone possessed, and at one corner arose the golden spires of great mullein—a flower aforetime called "hag's taper" and associated with witches and their mystic doings. Here the tall plant towered, like a streak of flame, above pale, widespread, woolly leaves; and it was held a sign and token of this wise woman's garden, for when the mullein flowered she had proclaimed that her herbs and simples were most potent. Then would such of her own generation as remained visit ancient Charity Grepe in her stronghold; while to her also came, with shamefaced secrecy, young men and maidens, often under cover of darkness, or in the lonely hour of winter twilights.
"Cherry," as old Charity was most frequently called, had openly been dubbed a witch in times past. She recollected an experience, now near fifty years behind her, when rough hands had forced open her jaws to seek those five black spots observed upon the roof of a right witch's mouth; she knew also that the same diabolic imprint is visible upon the feet of swine, and that it indicated the point where unnumbered demons, upon Christ's command, once entered into Gadara's ill-omened herd. Since then, from a notoriety wholly sinister, she had acquired more seemly renown until, in the year of grace 1870, being at that date some five or six years older than the century, Mother Grepe enjoyed mingled reputation. Some held her a white witch, others still declared that she was a black one. Be that as it may, the old woman created a measure of interest in the most sceptical, and, like the rest of her vanishing class, stood as a storehouse of unwritten lumber and oral tradition handed on through generations, from mother to daughter, from father to son. The possessor and remembrancer of strange formularies and exorcisms, she would repeat the same upon proper occasion, but only after a solemn assurance from those who heard her that they would not commit her incantations to any sort of writing. In her judgment all virtue instantly departed from the written word.
At this season of her late autumn, the gammer was entering upon frosty times, for, under pressure of church and school, the world began to view her accomplishments with indifference. Yet the uncultured so far bowed to custom and a lustre handed down through half a century as to credit Cherry with some vague measure of vaguer power. Little Silver called her the "wise woman," and granted her all due credit for skill in those frank arts that pretend to no superhuman attribute. It is certain that she was familiar with the officinal herbs of the field. She could charm the secrets and soothing essences from coriander and anise and dill—with other of the umbel-bearing wild folk, whose bodies are often poison, whose seeds are little caskets holding carminative and anodyne. Of local plants she grew in her garden those most desirable, and there flourished peppermint, mother-o'-thyme, marjoram, and numerous other aromatic weeds. With these materials the old woman made shift to live, and exacted trifling sums from the mothers of Little Silver by preparing cordials for sick children; from the small farmers and credulous owners of live stock, by furnishing boluses for beasts.
Sally Cramphorn, however, had come on other business and about a widely different sort of potion. She was among those who respected Cherry's darker accomplishments, and her father himself—a man not prone to praise his fellow-creatures—openly confessed to firm belief in Mother Grepe's unusual powers.
The old woman was in her garden when Sally arrived. It had needed sharp scrutiny to observe much promise of wisdom about her. She was brown, wrinkled and shrivelled, yet exhibited abundant vitality and spoke in a voice that seemed musical because one expected the reverse. Her eyes alone challenged a second glance. They were black, and flashed in the twilight. Dame Grepe's visitor, a stranger to shyness, soon explained the nature of the thing desired. With blushes, but complete self-possession in all other respects, she spoke.
"'Tis 'bout the matter of a husband, Cherry; an' you'm so wise, I lay you knaw it wi'out my tellin' you."
"Ess—you be wife-auld in body; but what about the thinking part of 'e, Sally Cramphorn? Anyway I wonder you dare let your mind go gadding arter a male, seeing what fashion o' man your faither is."
Sally pouted.
"That's the very reason for it I reckon. What gal can be happy in a home like mine?"
"A man quick to think evil—your faither—a vain man—a man as scowls at shadows an' sees gunpowder treason hid behind every hedge—poor fule!"
"So he do then; an' ban't very nice for a grawed woman like me. If I lifts my eye to a chap's face, he thinks I be gwaine to run away from un; an' there ban't a man in Little Silver, from Squire Yeoland to the cowboy at the farm, as he've got a tender word for."
"I knaw, I knaw. Come in the house."
Sally followed the old woman into her cottage, and spoke as she did so.
"It's hard come to think on it, 'cause I'm no more against a husband than any other gal. 'Tis awnly that they'm feared of the sound 'pon theer tongues as gals won't awn up honest they'd sooner have husbands than not. Look at missis—she'll find herself a happy wife bimebye if squire do count for anything."
"Be they much together?"
"Ess fay—allus!"
The old woman shook her head.
"A nature, hers, born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards. Fine metal, but easy to crack by fire. She comed to me wance—years agone—comed half in jest, half in earnest; an' I tawld her strange things to her fortune tu—things as'll mean gert changes an' more sorrow than joy when all's acted an' done. Full, fair share of gude an' bad—evil an' balm—an' her very well content to creep under the green grass an' rest her head 'pon the airth come fulness of time."
"Lor, mother! You do make me all awver creepy-crawly to hear tell such dreadful things," declared Miss Cramphorn.
"No need for you to fear. You'm coarser clay, Sally, an' won't get no thinner for love of a man. An' why should 'e? Pray for a fixed mind; an' doan't, when the man comes beggin', begin weighing the blemishes of un or doubtin' your awn heart."
"Never, I won't—and my heart's fixed; an' I be so much in love as a gal can be an' hide it, Cherry."
"I knaw, I knaw. 'Tis Greg Libby you wants," answered the sibyl, who had observed certain hay-makers some hours earlier in the day.
"Ess, I do then, though you'm the awnly living sawl as knaws it."
"Doan't he knaw it?"
"Not a blink of it. He'm a wonnerful, dandified man since he come from Lunnon."
"Be he gwaine to do any more work?"
"Not so long as his clothes bide flam-new, I reckon. Ban't no call for un to. An' I love un very much, an' do truly think he loves me, Cherry. An', in such things, a little comin'-on spirit in the man's like to save the maid much heart-burnin'; an' I minded how you helped she as was Thirza Foster, in the matter of Michael Maybridge, her husband now. 'Tis pity Gregory should bide dumb along of his backward disposition."
"A love drink you're arter! Who believes in all that now?"
"I mind how you made Maybridge speak, whether or no, an' I'll give 'e half-a-crown for same thing what you gived Thirza."
It was growing dusk. Gammer Grepe preserved silence a moment, then rose and lighted a candle.
"Half-a-crown! An' I've had gawld for less than that! Yet times change, an' them as believed believe no more. It all lies theer. If you believe, the thing have power; if not, 'tis vain to use it."
"I do b'lieve like gospel, I assure 'e. Who wouldn't arter Thirza?"
"Then give me your money an' do what I bid."
She took the silver, spat upon it, raised her hand, and pointed out of the window.
"Do 'e see thicky plant in the garden theer, wi' flowers, like to tired eyes, starin' out of the dimpsy light? 'Tis a herb o' power. You'll find un grawin' wild on rubbish heaps an' waste places."
She pointed where a clump of wild chamomile rose with daisy-like blossoms pallid in the twilight.
"Ess, mother."
Then the wise woman mouthed solemn directions, which Sally listened to as solemnly.
"Pick you that—twenty-five stalks—at the new moon. Then pluck off the flowers an' cast 'em in the river; but the stalks take home-along an' boil 'em in three parts of half a pint o' spring watter. Fling stalks away but keep the gude boiled out of 'em, an' add to it a drop more watter caught up in your thimble from a place wheer forget-me-not do graw. Then put the whole in a li'l bottle, an' say Lard's Prayer awver it thrice; and, come fust ripe chance, give it to the man to drink mixed in tea or cider, but not beer nor other liquor."
With the ease of an artist Cherry improvised this twaddle on the spot, and the girl, all ears and eyes, expressed great thankfulness for such a potent charm, bid the gammer farewell, and hastened away.
CHAPTER IV.
THE KISS
Some days later Christopher Yeoland was returning from the village of Throwley to Little Silver, by a road that winds along the flank of the Moor. He carried a basket in which reposed a young collie pup. Himself he wanted no such thing, but the little beast came of notable stock, possessed a special value, and seemed worthy of Honor. Among those delights represented by his engagement was the facility it afforded for giving of presents. He had already sketched on paper the designs of many engagement rings. A circle of gold with diamonds and emeralds in it was his vague intention; while his visions of how he should come at such a jewel were still more doubtful. This man possessed great power in the direction of dreams, in projecting the shadows of pleasant things and winning happiness from these conceits despite their improbability. Love of beauty was a characteristic in him, but otherwise he could not be described as sensual. Beauty he adored; yet delight of the eye appeared to suffice him. His attitude towards the opposite sex is illustrated by an event now to be described.
The day was done and the hour of rest had come upon the workers. Labouring folk moved through the long July twilight upon their own concerns, as private pleasure or business led them; and now, under the huge shadow of the Moor, there unfolded a little drama, slight enough, yet reflecting sensibly upon the future concerns of those who played in the scene. Christopher Yeoland, his mind quite full of Honor, overtook Sally Cramphorn in the valley, and being upon friendly terms with all the countryside, marched awhile beside her. He allowed no social differences at any time to obtain between him and a pretty face. Sally was good to see, and as for Yeoland, of late days, chiefly by reason of an exceeding honour that the mistress of Bear Down had done him, he felt pliable, even reverential before all things feminine, for her dear sake. He was not of that sort who find all other women sink into shadows after the unutterable One has joined her fate with his for evermore; but, contrariwise, the possession of Honor heightened his interest in her sex. He might have been likened to a bee, that indeed loved clover before all else, yet did not disdain a foxglove or purple lupin upon occasion. So he walked beside Sally and contemplated her proportions with pleasure, watched her throat work and the rosy light leap to her cheek as he praised her.
In Sally's heart was a wish that Greg Libby might see her with such a courtier; but unfortunately a very different person did so. Mr. Cramphorn, with an ancient muzzle-loading gun at full-cock and a fox-terrier under the furzes ahead of him, was engaged in stalking rabbits a few hundred yards distant. His keen eye, now turning suddenly, rested upon his daughter. He recognised her by her walk and carriage; but her companion, in that he bore a basket, deceived Mr. Cramphorn. Full of suspicion and growling dire threats in his throat, Jonah forgot the rabbits for this nobler game. He began stalking the man and woman, skulked along behind the hazels at the common edge, and presently, after feats of great and unnecessary agility, found himself snugly hidden in a lofty hedge immediately beneath which his daughter and her escort must presently pass.
Meanwhile, she strolled along and soon recovered her self-possession, for Yeoland was in no sense awe-inspiring. The young woman had now come from securing a priceless thimbleful of water that bathed the roots of forget-me-nots. She carried this magic liquid concealed in a little phial; the rest of the ingredients were hidden at home; and she hoped that night to brew the philtre destined for Mr. Libby.
"Sally," said Christopher, "I'll tell you a great piece of news. No, I won't; you must guess it."
She looked up at him with a knowing smile on her red mouth.
"You'm gwaine to marry missis, sir—be that it?"
"You gimlet of a girl! But, no, you never guessed—I'm positive you didn't. Somebody told you; Miss Endicott herself, perhaps."
"None told me. I guessed it."
"How jolly of you! I like you for guessing, Sally. It was a compliment to us."
"I doan't knaw what you mean by that, sir."
"No matter. You will some day, and feel extremely flattered if people congratulate you before you've told them. If you simply adore one girl, Sally, you love them all!"
"Gude Lard! Ban't so along wi' us. If we'm sweet in wan plaace, we'm shy in t'others."
"Only one man in the world for you, then?"
"Ess—awnly wan."
"He's a lucky chap. Mind that I know all about it in good time, Sally. You shall have a fine wedding present, I promise you—whatever you like, in fact."
"Things ban't come to that yet; though thank you kindly, sir, I'm sure."
"Well, they will."
"He haven't axed ezacally yet."
"Ass! Fool! Dolt! But perhaps he's in mortal fear of you—frightened to speak and not able to trust his pen. You're too good for him, Sally, and he knows it."
"I be his awn order in life, for that matter."
"I see, I see; it's this hidden flame burning in you that made you so quick to find out our secret. I love you for it! I love every pretty face in Devonshire, because my lady is pretty; and every young woman on Dartmoor, because my lady is young. Can you understand that?"
"No, I caan't," confessed Sally. "'Tis fulishness."
"Not at all. At this moment I could positively hug you—not disrespectfully, you know, but just out of love—for Miss Endicott."
"It do make a man dangerous seemin'ly—this gert love of a lady."
"Not at all. Far from it. It draws his claws. He goes in chains. Did anybody ever dare to hug you, Sally?"
"No fay! Should like to have seed 'em!"
"You wouldn't have minded one though?"
"Caan't say, as he never offered to."
"D'you mean he's never even kissed you, Sally?"
"Wance he axed if he might."
"'Axed'! And of course you said 'No' like any other girl would?"
"Ess, I did."
"Fancy asking!"
"What should he have done then?"
It was a dangerous inquiry on Miss Cramphorn's part, and it is within the bounds of possibility that she knew it. Had she been aware that her sole parent was glaring, like an angry monkey, from a point in the hedge within six yards of her, Sally had scarcely put that disingenuous problem. The answer came instantly. Honor's pup fell headlong into the road and greeted its descent with a yell; like lightning a pair of tweed-clad arms were round Sally, and a rough, amber-coloured moustache against her lips.
"Sir—give awver! How dare 'e! What be doin' of? You'm squeezin' me—oh——!"
There was a crash in the hedge, the bark of a dog and the oath of a man. Then Christopher felt himself suddenly seized by the collar and dragged backwards. He turned red as the sunset, swore in his turn, then realised that no less a personage than Jonah Cramphorn had been witness to his folly. Trembling with rage, Bear Down's head man accosted the squire of Little Silver.
"You! You to call yourself a gen'leman! Out 'pon 'e—to rape a gal under her faither's awn eyes! By God, 'tis time your wicked thread was cut an' Yeolands did cease out of the land! Small wonder they'm come down to——"
"Shut your mouth, you fool!" retorted Christopher savagely. "How dare you lay a finger upon me? I'll have you up for breaking other people's hedges, and, what's more, I've a mind to give you a damned good hiding myself."
"You tell like that, you hookem-snivey young blackguard! I'd crack your blasted bones like a bad egg—an' gude riddance tu! Ban't she my awn darter, an' wasn't you carneying an' cuddlin' of her in broad day? 'Struth! I could spit blood to think such things can happen! An' me to be threatened by you! You'll hide me—eh? Thank your stars I didn't shoot 'e. An' if I'd slayed the pair of 'e 'twouldn't have been no gert loss to clean-livin' folks!"
"I'm ashamed of you, Cramphorn—reading evil into everything that happens," said Yeoland calmly.
"God stiffen it! Hear him! Hear him! Preachin' my duty to me. You lewd, stalled ox, for two pins——"
"Put that gun down or I'll break it over your head!" answered Christopher; but the other, now a mere maniac, shaking and dancing with passion, refused. Whereupon Yeoland rushed at him, twisted the gun out of his hands, and threw it upon the ground. The next moment Jonah had hit his enemy in the face with a big fist; Christopher struck back, Sally screamed, and Cramphorn spit blood in earnest. Then they closed, and Jonah's dog, grasping the fact that his master was in difficulties, and needed assistance, very properly fastened on one of Yeoland's leathern leggings and hung there, as both men tumbled into the road.
The girl wrung her hands, lifted her voice and screamed to the only being visible—a man with a cart of peat outlined against the sunset on the heather ridges of the Moor. But he was a mile distant and quite beyond reach of poor Sally's frantic appeal. Then both combatants rose, and Cramphorn, returning to battle, got knocked off his feet again. At the same moment a man came round the corner of the road, and mended his steps upon hearing a frenzied announcement that two fellow-creatures were killing each other. A moment later he hastened between the combatants, took a hard blow or two from both, swept Christopher aside with no particular difficulty, and saved the elder from further punishment.
Sally wept, thanked God, and went to minister to her parent; while the new-comer, in a passionless voice that contrasted strangely with the rapidity of his actions, accosted Yeoland.
"What is this? Don't you know better than to strike a man old enough to be your father?"
"Mind your own business," gasped Christopher, brushing the dust off himself and examining a wound in his wrist.
"It's anybody's business, surely."
The other did not answer. His passion was rapidly cooling to shame. He scanned the speaker and wished that they might be alone together. The man was tall, very heavily built, one who would naturally move with a long and tardy stride. His recent energy was the result of circumstances and an action most unusual. He still breathed deep upon it.
"I'm sure you'll regret what has happened in a calmer moment, and pardon me for helping you to your senses," he said.
"So he shall regret it, I'll take my dying oath to that," spluttered Mr. Cramphorn. "Idle, lecherous, cold-hearted, hot-blooded beast as he be."
"Get cool," said the stranger, "and don't use foul language. There are remedies for most evils. If he's wronged you, you can have the law of him. Put some cold water on his head."
Sally, to whom the last remark was addressed, dipped her apron in the brook by the wayside, but Mr. Cramphorn waved her off.
"Get out o' my sight, you easy minx! To think that any cheel o' mine would let strange men put theer arms around her in broad day!"
"I'm entirely to blame—my fault altogether—not hers," said Christopher. "I felt in a cuddling mood," he added frankly. "I wouldn't have hurt a hair of her head, and she knows it. Why should it be worse to kiss a pretty girl than to smell a pretty flower? Tell me that."
"Theer's devil's talk for 'e!" gurgled Jonah.
"You miserable old ass—but I'm sorry—heartily sorry. Forgive me, and go to Doctor Clack and get a soothing something. And if I've hurt your gun I'll buy you a new one."
"Likely as I'd have any dealin's wi' a son of Belial Beelzebub same as you be! I'll put the law to work against 'e, that's what I'll do; an' us'll see if a woman be at the mercy of every gen'leman, so-called, as loafs 'pon the land because he'm tu idle to work!"
"That'll do. Now go off about your business, Cramphorn, and let us have no more nonsense. We ought both to be ashamed of ourselves, and I'm sure I am. As a Christian man, you must forgive me; I'm sure, as a Christian girl, Sally will."
"Leave her alone, will 'e! I won't have her name on your tongue. Us'll see if folks can break the laws; us'll see——"
He strode off, pulling his daughter by the hand, and entirely forgetting his gun beside the way; but after the irate father had departed, Yeoland recovered his weapon and found it unhurt. He then picked up Honor's pup, and overtook the stranger who was proceeding in the direction of Little Silver.
"How came you to get that man into such a white heat?" the latter asked him.
"Well, I kissed his daughter; and he was behind the hedge at the critical point and saw me."
"Ah!"
"I'm a chap who wouldn't hurt a fly, you know. But I'm particularly happy about some private affairs just at present, and—well, my lightness of heart took that turn."
The other did not smile, but looked at Christopher curiously.
"You said a strange thing just now," he remarked, in a deep voice, with slow, dragging accents. "You declared that to kiss a girl was no worse than to smell a flower. That seemed a new idea to me."
Yeoland opined that it might well be so. This was no woman's man.
"I believe it's true, all the same," he answered.
"Isn't there a lack of respect to women in the idea?"
The speaker stood over Christopher by two inches. His face had a cold comeliness. His features were large, regular, and finely modelled; his complexion was dark; his eyes were grey; he wore a moustache but no other hair upon his face. A great solidity, slowness, and phlegm marked his movements and utterances, and his handsome countenance was something of a mask, not from practised simulation or deliberate drilling of feature, but by the accident of flesh. A high forehead neither declared nor denied intellect by its shape; the man in fact showed but little of himself externally. One might, however, have predicted a strenuous temperament and suspected probable lack of humour from a peculiar sort of gravity of face. His eyes were evidently of exceptional keenness; his speech was marked by an uncertainty in choice of words that denoted he was habitually taciturn; his manner suggested one who kept much of his own company and lived a lonely life—either from necessity or choice.
CHAPTER V.
PAGAN ALTARS
The men proceeded together, and Christopher's companion made himself known by a chance question. He inquired the way to Bear Down, whereupon Yeoland, aware that a kinsman of the Endicotts was expected, guessed that this must be he.
"You're Myles Stapledon then?"
"I am. I walked from Okehampton to get a glimpse of the Moor. Came by way of the Belstones and Cosdon—a glorious scene—more spacious in some respects than my native wilds down West."
"You like scenery? Then you'll be joyful here. If Honor had known you were walking, I'll dare swear she would have tramped out to meet you; still, thank the Lord she didn't."