and pranksome. I’ve marked that you shoemakers do always take a hopeful
view of life. Working in leather dries up the humours of the body and
makes all the organs brisk and quick about their business, I believe.
Then, as vicar’s warden, you get religion in a way that’s denied to us
common men. You’re in that close touch with parson that good must come
of it."
"It does," admitted Mr. Moses. "It surely does."
"You can see it in your face, Charles," asserted Mr. Maunder. "Some
people might say you had a more religious face than parson’s self--his
being so many shades nearer plum-red."
"But it’s not a fault in the man," argued Mr. Shillabeer. "There’s no
John Barleycorn in the colour, only nature in him. Yet an unfortunate
thing, and certainly lessens his weight in the pulpit with strangers."
"I’m glad that you feel my face to be a good face, Ernest Maunder,"
replied Mr. Moses. "Only once have I ever had my face thrown in my
face, so to speak; and that was by a holy man of all men. In charity,
I’ve always supposed him short-sighted. ’Twas the ’revival’ gentleman
that put up with you, Shillabeer, a few years agone, and preached in the
open air, and drawed a good few to hear him."
"A Wesleyan and a burning light and proud it made me having him here,"
said the innkeeper. "A saintly soul the man had."
"Well, he met me as he was going to pitch one Sunday morning--me in
black, of course, and off to church. ’Friend,’ he said, ’be honest with
yourself and with me. Are you saved?’ You could have knocked me down
with a feather, folks. ’Saved,’ I said, ’saved! _Me_! Good God
A’mighty, man,’ I said, ’you’m talking to the vicar’s warden!’ No doubt
he was shocked to think of what he had done; but he didn’t show it. He
went his way with never a word of apology neither. But a righteous
creature."
"I quite agree. I listened to him," said Mr. Snell. "I wasn’t saved
afore; but I have been ever since."
A labourer laughed.
"You’re safe enough, Simon. It ban’t in you to do nothing wrong."
"I hope not, Timothy Mattacott, but I have my evil thoughts with the
worst among you," answered Snell. "I often wish I had more money--and
yet a well paid man."
"You leat chaps all get more than you’re worth," said Bowden. "Why,
’tis only when the snow-banks choke the water that you have anything to
do, save walk about with your hands in your pockets and your pipes in
your teeth."
Mr. Snell had certain miles of Drake’s historic waterway under his
control. This aqueduct leads from the upper channels of West Dart and
winds onward and downward to Plymouth. Behind Lowery, Simon’s home, it
passed, and for a space of two miles was in his care. They argued now
upon the extent and gravity of Snell’s task, and all agreed that he was
fortunate. Then Mr. Maunder, returning to the point from which
conversation had started, bade Reuben explain his unusual hilarity.
"Without a doubt you was above your nature when us first came in,
’Dumpling’--as Moses here pointed out. And if any good fortune have
fallen to you, I beg you’ll name it, for there’s not a man in this bar
but will be glad to hear about it," declared the policeman.
"Hear, hear, Maunder!" said Mr. Moses; "your good be our good,
neighbour."
"Thank you kindly, souls. ’Twas nought, and yet I won’t say that. A
letter, in fact, from an old London friend of mine. A very onusual sort
of man by the name of Fogo. I may have mentioned him when telling about
the old fights."
"Be it the gentleman you call ’Frosty-faced Fogo’?" inquired Mattacott.
"The same," answered Reuben. "’Frosty-faced Fogo’ is in Devonsheer--at
Plymouth, if you’ll believe it. There’s a twenty-round spar between two
boys there, and Fogo, at the wish of a sporting blade in London, who’s
backing one of ’em, be down to see the lad through. And what’s made me
so cheerful is just this: that, for the sake of old times, ’Frosty-face’
is coming on here to put up with me for a week, or maybe more. You’ll
hear some wonders, I warn ’e. That man’s knowed the cream of the P.R.s
and pitched more Rings, along with old Tom Oliver, the
Commissary-General, than any other living creature."
"My father must come down for to see him," said David. "There’s nought
rejoices him like valour, and he wouldn’t miss the sight of such a
character for money."
"All are welcome," declared Shillabeer with restrained enthusiasm. "I
shall hope to have a sing-song for Mr. Fogo one night. And he’ll tell
you about Bendigo, and Ben Gaunt, and Burke, ’the Deaf ’Un,’ and many of
the great mills in the forties. I was the very daps of Ben Gaunt
myself--though he stood half an inch higher. We was neither of us in
the first rank for science, but terrible strong and gluttons for
punishment. Gaunt was Champion in his day, but never to be named
alongside Cribb or Dutch Sam or Crawley or Jem Belcher."
"When’s he to be here?" asked Mr. Maunder. "I feel almost as if such a
man of war threatens to break the peace by coming amongst us."
"You’re a fool," answered David, bluntly. "A man like you, instead of
being in such a mortal dread of peace-breaking, ought to welcome the
chance of it now and again. If I was a policeman, I should soon get
tired of just paddling up and down through Sheep’s Tor mud, week in,
week out, and never have nought to do but help a lame dog over a stile
or tell some traveller the way. ’Tis a tame and spiritless life."
"The tamer the better," declared Ernest Maunder, frankly. "I like it
tame. ’Tis my business to maintain law and order, and that I will do,
Bowden. And to tell me I’m a fool is very disorderly in you, as well
you know. I may have my faults, but a fool I’m not, as this bar will
bear me out."
"I merely say," returned David, "that if I was a peeler, I should want
to earn my money, and have a dash at life, and make a stir, if ’twas
only against poachers here and there."
"Shows how little you know about it," answered Maunder. He was a
placid, straw-coloured man, with an official mind. "You say ’poachers.’
Well, poachers ban’t my business. Poachers come under a different law,
and unless I have the office from headquarters to set out against ’em to
the neglect of my beat, I can’t do it. I’m part of a machine, and if I
got running about as you say, I should throw the machine out of order."
"What for do you want to speak to the man like that?" asked Mattacott,
who was the policeman’s friend. "You Bowdens all think yourselves so
much above the common people--God knows why for. One would guess you
was spoiling for a fight yourself. Well, I daresay, the ’Dumpling’ here
could find somebody at your own weight as wouldn’t fear a set to with
you."
"Why not you?" said Bowden. "When you like, Mattacott."
"What a fiery twoad ’tis! Why, you’m a stone heavier than me, and years
younger."
Mr. Shillabeer regarded David with some professional interest.
"You’m a nice built chap, but just of that awkward weight ’twixt light
and middle. In the old days I knowed some of the best bruisers you
could wish to see were the same; but ’twas always terrible difficult to
get ’em a job, because they was thought too light for the heavies and
too heavy for the lights. But Dutch Sam in his day, and Tom Sayers in
his, showed how eleven-stone men, and even ten-stone men, can hit as
hard as anything with a fist. As for you, Bowden, you’ve a bit of the
fighting cut--inclined to be snake-headed, though your forehead don’t
slope enough. But you’re a thought old now."
"Not that I want to fight any man without a cause," said David. "If
there’s a reason, I’d fight anything on two legs--light or heavy--but
not for fun. And I hope you men--Mattacott and Ernest Maunder--haven’t
took offence where none was meant."
"Certainly not," declared Mr. Maunder. "I’ll take anything afore I take
offence. ’Tis my place to keep the peace, and if I don’t set an example
of it, who should? Twice only in my life have I drawed my truncheon in
the name of the Queen, and I hope I’ll never have no call to do it
thrice. Have a drink, David; then I must be going."
But Bowden declined with thanks, and the company soon separated.
When he was alone, fired by the prospect of seeing his old friend once
more, Reuben Shillabeer took a damp towel and, visiting each in turn,
polished up the portraits of a dozen famous pugilists which hung round
the walls of his bar. Where sporting prints of race-horses and
fox-hunting are generally to be met with, Mr. Shillabeer had a circle of
prize-fighters; and now he rubbed the yellow stains of smoke off the
glasses that covered them, so that the stern, but generally open and
often handsome countenances of the fighting giants looked forth from
their grimy frames. Before a print of the famous ’Tipton Slasher’ Mr.
Shillabeer paused, and thoughtfully stroked his battered nose.
"Ah, Bill Perry," he said, "if I’d been ten year younger--"
Then having extinguished two oil lamps, the old man retired and left his
gallery of the great in darkness.
*CHAPTER VII*
*DENNYCOOMBE WOOD*
Of dingles under Dartmoor there is none so fair as Dennycoombe. Here
wood and water, rock and heath, wide spaces and sweet glens mingle
together, and make a theatre large enough for the pageant of the
seasons, a haunt small enough to be loved as a personal possession and
abiding treasure. Dennycoombe tends upward to Coombeshead, and the
little grey farmhouse of Bartholomew Stanbury dominates the scene, and
stands near the apex of the valley. At this hour, after noon in early
December, a croft or two made light on the hill, where green of turnips
and glaucous green of swedes ran parallel, and black tilled earth also
broke the medley of the waste. Then winked out the farm from twin
dormer windows--a thing of moorstone colour, yet splashed as to the
lintel-post with raw whitewash, so that it should be seen in the
darkness of moonless nights. Beneath, through a bottom of willow scrub,
furze and stunted oak, the Dennycoombe stream tumbled and rattled to
join Meavy far below. A single ’clapper’ of granite spanned this brook
for foot-passengers; while above it, under heathery banks, the rivulet
crossed a cart-track at right angles, and widened there to make a ford.
Over these small waters at this hour came Margaret from her home; and
though the day lacked for sunshine, her heart was full of it, because
now she went to meet the man she loved best on earth, at a place she
loved best of earth.
There are words that light a lamp in the heart and wake in the mind
images of good things, with all the colour and life, the loveliness and
harmony proper to them. There are syllables whose chance utterance
unlocks all the gates of the mind; floods the spirit with radiance;
lifts to delight, if the fair thought belongs as much to the future as
the past; but throbs chastened through the soul if the fragrant memory
is appropriated by the past alone.
Dennycoombe Wood meant much to this woman. In spring and summer, in
autumn and winter, she knew it and cherished it always. And now she saw
it with the larches feathering to a still grey sky, their crests of pale
amber spread transparently upon the darker heart of the underwood
beneath them. Grey through the last of the foliage thrust up a network
of bough and branch; here a cluster of blue-green firs melted together
and massed upon the forest; here dark green pines, straight-limbed,
lifted their pinnacles all fringed with russet cones. A haze of the
larch needles still aloft washed the whole wood delicately and shone
against the inner gloom of it. Round the spinney edge stood beeches
with boles of mottled silver, and their remaining foliage set the faint
gold of the forest in a frame of copper. Lower still, under broken
banks, lay the auburn brake; and great stones, in the glory of their
mosses, glimmered like giant emeralds out of the red water-logged tangle
of the fern. The hill fell steeply beneath Dennycoombe Wood, and there
were spaces of grass and many little blunt whitethorns, now naked, that
spattered the slope with patches of cobweb grey.
All was cast together in the grand manner of a forest edge; and all was
kneaded through by the still, gentle light of a sunless and windless
December hour before dusk. The place of the sun, indeed, appeared
behind a shield of pearl that floated westerly and sank upon the sky;
but light remained clear and colourless; tender, translucent grey swept
the firmament, and scarcely a darker detail of cloud floated upon it.
The day was a tranquillity between two storms, of which one had died at
dawn and the other was to waken after midnight.
Nothing had influenced Margaret towards Elias Bowden’s eldest son but
her own heart. She had known now for some time that two men loved her,
and she felt a certain affection for both; but the regard for Bartley
was built on their likeness in temper; the love for David arose out of
their differences. Hartley’s weakness, which in some measure was her
own, attracted Madge towards him; but David’s strength--a quality quite
different to any that she possessed--drew her forcibly into his arms.
When she found that he loved her, the other man suffered a change and
receded into a region somewhat vague and shadowy. Friendly she felt to
Bartley Crocker and eager to serve him and advance his welfare, but the
old dreams were dead. She had thought of him as a husband, in the
secret places of her heart, long before he thought of her--or of
anybody--as a wife; but now that his mind was seriously turned in her
direction and he began to long for her, the time was past and his sun
had set upon a twilight of steadfast friendship that could never waken
again into any warmer emotion. Madge liked him, and the years to come
showed how much; but she never loved him.
The tryst was a great stone under a holly tree, and through the
stillness, over a sodden mat of fallen leaves, she came and found David
waiting. He had not heard her, and he did not see her, for his back was
turned and he sat on the stone, his chin in his hands, very deep in
thought. His hat was off and his hair was brushed up on end. He wore
velveteens and gaiters, and had made some additions to his usual
week-day toilet in the shape of a collar, a tie and a white linen shirt.
The collar appeared too tight and once he tugged at it and strained his
neck. For a little while Margaret watched him, then she came forward
and stood by him and put out her hand. He jumped up, hot and red; then,
for a long time, he shook the small hand extended to him. As he did so,
she blushed and felt an inclination to weep.
His slow voice steadied her emotion and calmed them both.
"Sit here, if not too hard for ’e. ’Tis dry fern. I found it a bit
ago."
She mounted the stone with help from his arm. Then he sat beside her.
"I think it terrible kind of you to be here," he said. "To come here for
to listen to a great gawkim like me."
"You’re not a gawkim. You’re the wittiest chap this side of the Moor.
Leastways my father always says so."
"Very kind of him. There’s no man I’d sooner please. Well--well--’tis
a thing easily said and yet-- However, all the same, I wouldn’t say it
to-day if I hadn’t axed you to come here, for I had a fore-token against
it yesterday."
"Whatever do you mean?"
"A white rabbit. You’ll laugh, but your mother wouldn’t. And my father
have a great feeling against ’em, though he can’t explain it, and grows
vexed if anybody says anything. Not on the warren; but over on the
errish[#] down to Yellowmead I seed it."
[#] _Errish_ = Stubble.
"I care nothing for that--at least--" She stopped doubtfully.
"If you don’t care, more won’t I. Then here goes. Can you hear it? Can
a rare maiden like you let a rough chap like me offer to marry her? For
that’s what I’ve axed you to come here about."
She was silent and he spoke again.
"Could you? There’s things in my favour as well as things against me."
"There’s nothing, nothing against you, David."
"Then you’ll take me!"
"And proud and happy to."
"Lord! How easy after all," he said--more to himself than to her. "And
here I’ve been stewing over this job for two months, and sleeping ill of
nights, and fretting. Yet, you see, ’twas the work of a moment. Thank
you, thank you very much indeed for marrying me, Madge. I’ll make you
the best husband I know how. I must tell you all about the plans I’ve
built up in hope you would say ’yes’--hundreds of ’em. And you’ll have
to help now."
He was amazingly collected and calm. He told her how he proposed a
house for them far from other dwellings, where they would have peace
from the people and privacy and silence. He had found such a place on
the upper waters of Meavy, where stood a ruin that might easily be
restored and made a snug and comfortable home. He meant to breed ponies
and sheep. The suggestion was that Rhoda joined them and looked after
the dogs. He could hardly get on without her, and she would certainly
be very miserable away from him.
"She reckons that no woman living be good enough for you," said
Margaret, faintly. Her voice showed her heart was hungry, empty. She
had expected a meal and it was withheld.
David laughed.
"To be frank, she do."
"And no man living good enough for herself."
"As to that, the right one will come along in time. She shan’t marry
none but the best. She likes you well, Madge, as well as she may; but
she hasn’t got hold of the idea of me married yet. Now she’ll jolly
soon have to do it. There’s five hundred pound has come to me, you must
know, under the will of my mother’s brother who died back-along. It’s
goodied a bit since and us’ll have some sheep and you’ll have a nice
little lot of poultry. And Sir Guy will rebuild the ruin. It is all
his ground. And now you’ve said ’yes,’ I shall ask ’em to begin. When
can you come to see the place?"
"So soon as ever you like," she said. "I hope ’tisn’t too far away from
everybody."
"Not so far as I could wish; but far enough. The ruins be old miners’
works; and we’ll have a shippen and a dog-kennel and all complete, I
promise you."
For a long time he talked of his hopes and plans, but she came not
directly into them. It seemed that her help was hardly vital to the
enterprise. At last she brought the matter back to the present; and she
spoke in tones that might have touched the stone she sat on.
"I’ll try so hard to make you a good wife, David."
He started and became dimly conscious of the moment and the mighty thing
that had happened to him in it.
"I know that right well. Too good for me every way. Too gentle and
soft and beautiful. I’ll be tremendous proud of you, Madge. And I’ll
do my share, and work early and late for you, and lay by for you, and
lift you up, perhaps, in ten years or so to have a servant of your own,
and a horse and trap of your own, and everything you can wish."
"I wish for you to love me always, always, always--nothing but that."
"And so I shall, and the best love be what swells the balance at the
bank quickest. Now I know you can take me, I feel as if I should like
to get up off this rock this instant moment and go away and begin
working like a team of horses for ’e."
"Don’t go away yet. Think what this is to me--so much, much more than
it can be to you."
"’Tis everything in the world to me," he said solemnly. "You little
know how you’ve been on my mind. My folk will tell you now, no doubt,
how it has been with me. That glowering and glumping I’ve been--not a
word to throw at man or woman. But they’ll see a different chap
to-night!"
She put out her hand timidly. Would he never touch her? Was she never
to put her face against his?
Love reigned in his plans, and the little things that he had thought of
surprised her; but there came no arm round her, no fierce caress, no hot
storm of kisses. He talked hopefully--even joyfully, with his eyes upon
her face; but there was no sex-light in their brightness; while hers
were dreamy with love and dim with unshed tears.
"I must get back-along with the great news now," he said. "And it will
be well if we’re moving. Coarse weather’s driving up again. I’ll see
you home first."
"You’ll come in and tell mother?"
"Must I?"
"Yes," she answered. "You’ve got to obey me now, you dear David. I
wish it."
"Then off we go."
He helped her down like a stranger and talked of crops as they returned
to Coombeshead. Rhoda was better at figures than he was. He hoped that
Margaret was good at figures. She said waywardly that she was not, and
he regretted it but felt sure that she would soon learn.
A rain-laden dusk descended over Eylesbarrow as they returned, and
through, the gloaming the white lintel and door-posts of the farm stared
like an eye.
Silence fell between them, and during its progress some touch of nature
woke in David. After they had crossed the stream and reached a
rush-clad shed where a cart stood, he spoke in a voice grown muddy and
gruff.
"Come in here a minute," he said, "afore we go on, Madge. I want--I
want--"
She turned and they disappeared.
"I want to kiss you," he said.
A fearful clatter ascended from long-legged fowls roosting on the cart,
for their repose was roughly broken. They clucked and cried until Mrs.
Stanbury, supposing a fox had descended from the lulls, hastened out to
frighten it away.
Then she met Margaret and David--shame-faced, joyous.
"We’m tokened, mother!" cried the man; "and please God, I’ll be a
dutiful second son to you."
"Thank you for that," she said. "Give you joy, I’m sure. And I’ll be
proud to have you for a son; and may you never repent your bargain."
She put up her face to his and kissed him; and since he still held Madge
by the waist, all three were thus, for an instant, united in a triple
caress.
By chance some moments of happy magic in the sky smiled upon this
incident, for the grey west broke at its heart above the horizon and
little orange feathers of light flashed suddenly along the upper
chambers of the air. The Hesperides--daughters of sunset--danced
golden-footed on the threshold of evening, and their glimmering skirts
swept earth also, set radiance upon Eylesbarrow and hung like a beacon
of fire against the deep storm-purple of the east. Thrice this glory
waxed and waned; then all light vanished; the colour song was sung; the
day died.
Not observing these gracious phenomena upon Night’s fringes, the mother,
the man and his maiden went in together.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*IN PIXIES’ HOUSE*
Various interests are served by the great bulk of Sheep’s Tor. Not only
the colt and the coney prosper here and the vixen finds a place for her
cubs, but man also avails himself of the hill in a manner little to be
guessed. Battleships, swinging far off to adjust their compasses in
Plymouth Sound, use the remote, ragged crown of the tor as a fixed point
for determining the accuracy of their instruments; while once, if oral
tradition may be respected, the stony bosom of the giant offered hiding
in time of stress to a scion of the old Elford clan, lords of the
demesne in Stuart days. This king’s man, flying for his life from the
soldiers of Cromwell, hid himself in a familiar nook; and we may suppose
the ’foreigners’ tramped Sheep’s Tor in vain, and perhaps stamped
iron-shod over the rocks under which he lay safe hidden. To-day this
cleft, called the Pixies’ House, can still be entered. It is of a size
sufficient to contain two adults in close juxtaposition; but an inner
chamber has fallen, and certain drawings, with which it was alleged the
concealed fugitive occupied his leisure, have, if ever they existed,
vanished away.
In the very bosom of the great south-facing rocky slope of Sheep’s Tor
where the lichen-coated slabs and boulders are flung together in
magnificent confusion, there may be found one narrow cleft, above which
a mass of granite has been split perpendicularly. Chaos of stone
spilled here lies all about, and numberless small crannies and chambers
abound; but the rift alone marks any possible place of concealment for
creature larger than dog or fox; and beneath it, invisible and
unguessed, lies the Pixies’ House, one of the local sanctities and a
haunt of the little people.
Here, two days after Margaret had accepted David Bowden, Bartley Crocker
was walking with a gun. His goal lay up the valley and he hoped to
shoot some snipe; but circumstances quite altered his intentions.