see, too," said Mr. Moses. "I was by your house a bit ago, and I was
terrible pleased to mark all the windows mended and a bit of paint on
the woodwork of ’em, and a new swing gate where you used to have nought
but a pole across and a piece of old sacking to keep the chickens in.
The place is a changed place and so smart as any bride could wish for."
"’Tis all that and more," declared Mr. Screech. "And if you’d gone
in--and you’ll always be welcome, Moses--you’d have found my wife fresh
as paint herself in her new print, and, what’s still more wonderful, my
mother with her hair all twisted tidy and her clothes neat as ninepence.
I would have it, you must know. ’Us must pull ourselves together,’ I
said to mother. ’Dorcas comes from a terrible tidy family,--too tidy,
you might say, and I’m not pretending I mind the fowls in the kitchen
myself, or the dogs on the beds; but there ’tis--with a bride we must
meet her halfway; and she’s as clean and trim herself as a hen
hedge-sparrow.’ My mother made no objection--took to her second-best
dress without a murmur, and bought a new one for the Lord’s Day."
"You’re a reformed character, in fact," declared Maunder. "And I for
one rejoice at it, for I’ve often feared you and me might some day meet
in an unfriendly way when I stood for the law."
"Don’t fear it," answered the other. "I’m all right and full of
contrivances for making a bit of money in a straight and proper manner."
"David tells me your rabbit trap is the wonderfullest thing in that line
he’ve met with, and good for ten pounds to sell," put in Bartley.
"More like twenty," answered Screech. "’Tis a masterpiece of a trap,
and I’ve had a good offer or two already, but not enough."
"We get more greedy after money when we’m married, I suppose," ventured
Snell. "Of course we want more then."
"We ought to have more. We’re worth more," answered Billy. "The moment
a man takes a serious hand in the next generation, he becomes a more
dignified object and ought to fetch better money, for the sake of the
wife and family. A married man ought to have better wages and be
rewarded according to his breeding powers."
"And the women too. ’Tis a great fault in the State that our women
don’t make a penny by getting children," declared Moses.
"Unless they bring forth three at a birth," said Mr. Shillabeer. "Then
’tis well known that the Queen’s Majesty sends three pounds out of her
own money, to show that ’tis a glorious feat, in her gracious opinion."
"Well, we single men had better waste no more time, if Billy is right,"
said Mattacott. "For my part I’ve been looking round cautious for two
years now; but I haven’t found the right party. ’Tis the married girls
I always feel I could have falled in love with, not the maidens."
"Just t’other way with me," declared Bartley. "I like the unexpected
things the girls say and do. The ways of a woman are like the ways of
the mist: past all finding out."
"True," declared Mr. Screech. "I know a bit about ’em; and shall know
more come presently. But like the mist you’ll find ’em."
"Now here, now away again," continued Bartley. "Now lying as still and
as white as washing on the hill, now scampering off, hell for leather,
without rhyme or reason. And so with them: they never do the expected
thing."
"True," said Mr. Moses, "you’ve hit ’em there. As soon as a girl
answers me the direct opposite of what I expect, then I know that girl’s
a child no more. She’s grown up, and ’tis time for her to put up her
hair and let down her dress."
"Never the expected thing," repeated Crocker, meditatively. "They cry
when they ought to laugh; they cuss when they ought to cherish; they
fondle when they ought to whip. They forgive the wrong sins; they
punish the wrong men; they break the wrong hearts."
"And when they’ve done their bitter worst," added Charles Moses; "when
they’ve set a man against Heaven, and life in general, and made him
pretty well hungry to creep into his grave and get out of it; when
they’ve driven him to the edge of madness and forced him to damn and
blast ’em to the pit--then what do the long-haired humans do?"
"Why, they jump into his lap," declared Mr. Crocker, "and kiss his eyes,
and press their soft carcases against him, all purring and cooing--half
cats and half pigeons that they be!"
"And the men give way," summed up Mr. Moses. "Leastways the manly,
large-minded sort, like ’Dumpling’ and me and Crocker. We can’t stand
against ’em--not for a moment."
"We take, when our turn comes, in fear and trembling," continued
Bartley, "and we hope we’ll be one of the lucky ones."
"The fear and trembling comes afterwards, as you’ll find some day,
Bartley, and as Screech here may find any day," foretold Moses. "Every
man backs his own judgment and will lay you any odds he’s drawn a
prize."
"’Tis always the other people be fools in this world," declared Screech.
"It holds of life in general. ’Tis said the world be full of fools, yet
no man will ever allow he is one."
Mr. Snell spoke.
"I’m sure you hear of happy marriages here and there," he said
doubtfully.
"So you do, Simon. You hear of ’em--same as you hear of pixies. But
you don’t see ’em. Leastways I don’t," answered Bartley.
"Present company excepted, I hope," said Screech.
"You forget Mrs. Shillabeer also," murmured Mattacott. "I’m sure nobody
here knows more about marriage than what the ’Dumpling’ do. He’s seen a
happy marriage."
"In a way, yes," admitted the host; "and also in a way, no. You can’t
be right down happy with a woman--not if you love her as well as I loved
the wife."
"’Perfect love casteth out fear,’ however," quoted Mr. Moses, vaguely.
"Just what it don’t do, Charles; and the man that said it, saint or
sinner, didn’t know what it was to love," answered the old
prize-fighter. "If you love a female right down from the crown of her
head to the tip of her toes, and through and through likewise, you fear
for her something cruel. I was built so soft where that woman was
concerned, that I hated for her to go for a drive in a trap, and
couldn’t be easy--for thinking of the springs--till I seed her safe
again. And when illness overtook her--why, ’fear’ wasn’t the name for
it. I crawled about like a beaten dog and cringed to God A’mighty for
her in season and out. But she had to go, and I had to be left. And
she took twenty year of my life underground with her."
They sympathised with him; then Mr. Snell returned to the main theme.
"They’m quicker than us, however," he asserted. "I’m sure their brains
work faster than what ours do. There’s many a thing a woman can’t make
clear to a male mind, try as she will."
Mr. Crocker laughed.
"Yes," he admitted. "Such things as two and two make five--when they
want ’em to make five. And they try and they try to make us see it; but
we can’t. And yet they are always ready to believe that our two and two
be five, God bless ’em!"
"I wonder," said Mr. Snell.
"’Tis so; but you must be masterful, Simon. You must make ’em feel
you’re in earnest and have no shadow of doubt," said Billy Screech.
"They love to see you strong, and they’d sooner see you wrong and
sticking to it than be blowed from your purpose by another man. Nought
on God’s earth be more hateful to a brave woman than to see her husband
bested. And if a man bests you--whether ’tis at business or in any
other way--don’t you tell her if you can help it. Love you as she will,
you’ll drop in her mind and be so much the less if she hears about it."
The clock struck; mugs were drained.
"Closing time, souls," said Mr. Shillabeer; and five minutes later the
company had separated and the bar was empty. The ’Dumpling’ mused on
the things that his guests had uttered.
"’Tis summed up in that word ’unexpected’ without a doubt," he thought.
"Never the expected thing. And if we grant so much, then us never ought
to expect the expected thing. They be all of a piece; and because my
wife looked like living for ever, I ought to have knowed she’d die. I
ought to have known it, and prepared for it, and laid in wait for it.
Yet nobody was more surprised than me, and nobody less so than her when
it leaked out of the doctor. She knowed it herself well enough; but
hadn’t the heart to tell me."
*CHAPTER X*
*CRAZYWELL*
Nature, passing nigh Cramber Tor, where old-time miners delved for tin,
has found a great pit, filled the same with sweet water, and transformed
all into a thing of beauty. Like a cup in the waste lies Crazywell;
and, at this summer season, a rare pattern of mingled gold and amethyst
glorified the goblet. Autumn furze and the splendour of the heath
surrounded it; the margins of the tarn were like chased silver, where
little sheep-tracks, white under dust of granite, threaded the
acclivities round about and disappeared in the gravel beaches beneath.
Upon the face of the lake there fell a picture of the bank, and it was
brightened, where heather and honey-scented furze shone reversed with
their colour-tones subtly changed by the medium that reflected them.
But at midmost water these images ceased and fretted away into
wind-ripples that frosted and tarnished the depths. And there, when the
breeze fell dead for a moment, shone out the blue of the zenith and the
sunny warmth of clouds. At water’s brink stood three black ponies--a
mare and two foals of successive births. The mare’s daughter already
attained to adult shapeliness; her son was a woolly baby, with a little
silly face like a rocking-horse. He still ran to her black udder when
thirsty and flew to her side for protection if alarmed.
Peace, here brooding after noon, was suddenly wakened by the stampede of
half a dozen bullocks, goaded by gadflies. Down they came from above
with thundering hoofs and tails erect. They rushed to cool their
smarting flanks, sent ripples glittering out into the lake, and
presently stood motionless, knee-deep, with their chestnut coats
mirrored in the water.
Upon the side of the pool there sat a woman--as still as a picture in a
gold frame. She was clad with such sobriety that one might have thought
her a stone; but she moved and her sunbonnet shone as she flung it off
and then wiped her hot forehead with the fall of it. For a moment she
thought of the legends of Crazywell and cast back in her memory for the
evidence of their truth. Here was a haunt of mystery and a water of
power. Voices murmured in this hollow once a year, and if none of late
had heard them, doubtless that was because none permitted himself or
herself to do so. A spirit neither malignant nor benign, but wondrously
informed, dwelt here--a sentient thing, a nether gnome, from whom was
not hidden the future of men--a being who once a year could cry aloud
with human voice and tell the names of those whose race was run. All
dreaded the sortilege of the unknown thing that haunted Crazywell; but
since its power was restricted to Christmas Eve, little general sense of
horror or mystery hung over the pool. For Margaret Bowden, however, it
had always possessed a sort of charm not wholly pleasant. She avoided
the place of set purpose and was beside it to-day by appointment only.
Another had named Crazywell as a tryst, and she lacked sufficient
self-assertion to refuse. Now she blinked in the direct sunlight and
longed for shade where no shade was.
She envied the kine below, and being in a mood a little morbid, by
reason of private concerns, she cast her thought further than the cattle
and pictured the peace and silence beneath the heart of the water. A
long sleep there seemed not the hardest fate that could fall on human
life. There was a man--and Margaret had known him--who drowned himself
in Crazywell. By night he ended a troublous life, and joined the spirit
of the pool for a season. Then he floated into light of day again, and
was found by his fellows. They drew him out and called him mad, and
buried him in the earth with Christian burial, that his wife’s feelings
might be saved a pang. Yet nobody knew better than the coroner’s jury
that this man was very sane, and had shortened his own life for sound
reasons. Margaret remembered that at the time, she had blamed him much,
but her mother had not blamed him. And she herself, having been married
nearly a year, no longer blamed him. Who was she to judge? If she, a
happy wife, could look without horror at Crazywell in this unclouded
hour, was it strange that an unhappy man might do more than look, and
rest his head there?
"A happy wife--so happy as any woman ever can hope to be, who--who--"
Her thought broke off. She envied the mare at water’s edge. The
pot-bellied old matron stood still, and only moved her tail backwards
and forwards to keep off the flies. The foal galloped around
her--playing as children will.
"So happy as any wife can hope to be, who has no child."
Margaret made herself finish the sentence; for everything that happened
to her now revolved upon it. She explained the least little cloud or
shadow of cloud thus; she referred the least impatience or short word to
the same cause. There was no rift, no failure of understanding, no
lessening of love--so the wife assured herself--but she must do her
duty. She must not much longer delay to bring to David the thing his
soul most desired.
Her thoughts ran unduly upon this theme, and her own anxiety seemed like
to stand between her and her object. She exaggerated the truth; out of
a natural and innate diffidence she imagined a condition of mind in her
husband which did not exist. David indeed desired children and expected
them; but he was in no violent hurry, and had not as yet even
entertained the possibility of having none. When she mentioned the
matter, he consoled her and blamed her for giving it a thought. In
reality, the thing in their lives that she marked and deplored and thus
explained, belonged to a far different and deeper cause. After love’s
fever certain differences of temperament began slowly and steadily to
declare themselves. There was no radical change in David; but his
self-absorption increased with his prosperity--a circumstance
inevitable. For comradeship and for sympathy in business he had Rhoda;
and her understanding of dumb animals so much exceeded Margaret’s, that
brother and sister unconsciously made common cause and seemed to live an
inner life and develop personal interests from which Margaret found
herself in some measure excluded. None could be blamed. The thing
simply so fell out; and as yet not one of the three involved perceived
it. David and Rhoda were full of his enterprises, and she did much
man’s work afield for him and advanced his welfare to the best of her
strength and sense. Margaret shopped, cooked, mended clothes, and made
ready for the others in the intervals of work. She relieved her
sister-in-law of much sewing and other toil that Rhoda might have the
more leisure to aid David. This woman, indeed, was unlike most women,
and for that reason she did not clash with Margaret as much as another
might have.
Rhoda Bowden had struck an observer from without as an exotic creature,
who homed here by accident, but who by right belonged to no dwelling
made with hands. A sister of the deep green glade was she--a denizen of
the upland wilderness and the secret antre. She followed the train of
Selene. The silver light and the domain of nocturnal dew were hers.
Silence was her familiar; from her own brother she hid a part of her
days and her nights. And of the varied aspects of her mistress, the
moon, Rhoda shared not a few. The young of beasts seemed her special
care and joy.
"The tender whelps, new-dropped, of creatures rude,"
found a ready friend in her; but while thus gracious to all the lesser
things that shared her place in time, this girl revealed for humanity,
beyond her brother, but little love. She was zealous for him, but to
other men she stood as heretofore: in an attitude enigmatic, tending to
aloofness. Margaret, however, had yet to be convinced that she was not
to be won.
To women Rhoda’s aspect of late was made more widely manifest. Out of
her own virginal fount of feeling no drop of sympathy with the
unvirginal could flow; and the thing that Dorcas had accomplished was
above all measure infamous, treacherous to womankind, beyond hope of
pardon in her eyes. Had the power to do so rested with Rhoda, she had
swept her sister out of life; and in her mind this yielding wanton, and
her husband, and her new-born baby were already as objects dead and
banished from existence.
Margaret’s thoughts now centred on Rhoda and she lost sight of her own
misty tribulations. Two great problems awaited solution, and with the
optimism of a large heart this woman hoped yet to solve them. She
wanted to see Rhoda a wife; and she wanted to see her reconciled to
Dorcas. The one achievement might depend upon the other. Let Rhoda
once wed, and there must come understanding into her life.
Margaret had spoken often, with tact and warmth, of Bartley Crocker; and
she had been helped in a very valuable quarter, as it seemed, for David
also considered the man as among his closest friends at this season.
There had recently been some talk between them of a sort specially
interesting to David, for Bartley was attracted, or declared himself
attracted, by the prospect of leaving England to farm in Canada, and the
information he had gathered together respecting that wider world of the
Colonies could not fail to be of interest to Bowden. At David’s
invitation Bartley had spent a Sunday afternoon recently at ’Meavy Cot’;
and Madge was now at Crazywell to tell the lover what had followed his
visit.
She waited yet half an hour; then Bartley appeared on the hither bank of
the pool, looked about him a while, caught sight of Madge’s sunbonnet,
and approached her. So busy with her own thoughts was she that she did
not see him until he was beside her: then she rose and bade him find
some shade.
"The sun’s that fierce I must get out of it," she said.
Thereupon he took her to a little glen close at hand--a lip through
which the pool sometimes overflowed in winter--and under a white-thorn
they sat down together, while Margaret, looking at the golden furzes in
front of her, spoke to him.
"I do believe the gorse be going brown already. Just a little gladness
we get from it, then ’tis gone again, like a candle blown out."
"What a thought! You’re down, I see. No use saying you’re not. And of
late you’ve been like this more than once. ’Tis for me to talk to you
to-day, I think. ’Tis for me to tell you what I saw last Sunday at
’Meavy Cot,’ not for you to tell me what fell out after I was gone."
"I’m cheerful enough--only wisht to spend such a long day away from
David. He’s to Tavistock again. He’s terrible hopeful of some work
there; but I hardly think he’ll get it--hasn’t been well enough
eggicated, I fancy. Though clever enough, I’m sure."
"He don’t know everything, however."
"Who does?"
"He don’t know a thing or two that even I could teach him."
"Such as upholstering?"
"Just so. I upholster chairs--at least I know how to. And you
upholster David’s life--make it easy and comfortable and soft at the
edges. But what about your life, Madge?"
"Well, what about it, Bartley?"
"I suppose ’tis infernal impudence of me," he said. "All the same I’m an
old friend and one good turn deserves another. You’re trying to help me
to get what I want; I wonder if I could help you a bit here and there?"
"Whatever do you mean? And what did you see at our home that makes you
say such a curious thing?"
"’Tisn’t what I saw, but what I didn’t see. But there, what on God’s
earth am I saying? ’Tisn’t to you I should speak."
"Go on and tell me."
"I can’t, for I can’t give it a name. Only somehow--look here, I’m a
fool to touch this. I’m talking too soon. I must wait and see a bit
more. You can’t have your mind in two places at once, Madge. I’m not
myself of late and very likely I fancy things. You’d reckon I had enough
to think about without mixing up myself in other people’s business. But
you are different to everybody else. I feel we’ve been hunting in
couples of late, and so your good’s mine."
"How you run on! And that wild. I don’t know now what you’re talking
about, you silly chap."
"More do I. I only know two things for certain. And one is that my
mother is worse, and the other is that your sister-in-law was jolly
interested in what I said about Canada. Did you mark that?"
"She was. The wildness and bigness of the land would draw her to it. I
meant to tell you. After you’d gone--but I am so sorry about your dear
mother. I thought last week that she seemed a little better."
"No--not really. It’s got to be. God knows that if talking would mend
her, I’d talk for a year. But it won’t. So go on about Rhoda, please."
"Well, she didn’t say much herself, but she listened to my husband after
you’d left us, and when he asked her joking whether she’d like Canada,
she said quite seriously that she would. ’Twas the great size and
wildness of the place took her mind. ’To think of them woods and the
wonderful creatures in ’em!’ she said. And when David thought how fine
’twould be to have a bit of ground pretty near as big as all Dartymoor
for your own, she nodded and her eyes shone."
"But she couldn’t go out walking all alone of a night there," said
Bartley. "There are bears, I believe, and Indians, too, for all I know.
But very like she’d take to them--bears and Indians both. I daresay now
one of them grimy, naked-faced men with their features looking as though
they were cut out of stone, and a hat of hawks’ feathers, would please
her better than ever I shall."
Margaret laughed.
"You must persevere," she said. "You must be patient too. After she
refused you she was more than common silent for a month. She thought a
lot about it and went afield more than usual with nought but dogs for
company. Keep at her, but don’t ax again just yet. Time ban’t ripe."
"D’you think if I was to offer to go to Canada and make her mistress of
a mile or two of it, that she’d be more like to say ’yes?’"
"’Tis a great question that, and I won’t answer ’yes’ or ’no.’ ’Tis
very difficult to guess what’s passing in her mind, for her face don’t
alter like most faces. ’Tis more the light in her eye tells you."
Mr. Crocker nodded.
"I’ve marked that. Her lips and brow don’t play and lift like yours.
She keeps her mouth shut and her eyebrows steady. But her eyes talk
more than her lips. She likes me--I do honestly think that, Madge."
"I’m glad of it. I’ve gone as near as I dare to asking her what she
thinks of you, and I’ve sung your praises--not from myself, mind, but as
an echo to David. But she gives no sign. She listens and her face
don’t alter. I’ll do all I dare, but with such a maiden we must be very
nice. If she thought I was on your side, trying to help you to get her,
she’d never forgive me."
"I know how clever you are. And David’s not against it neither; though
I can’t expect him to wish such a thing, for she’s as good as a couple
of men to him. In fact, no two would do what she does for him.
Hirelings can’t work like them that labour for love. She’d make a model
wife for an open air man. And if I win her, Madge, ’twill be farming
without a doubt, for a shop would be no use to her--nor to me neither,
for that matter."
Margaret laughed out loud at the idea of her sister-in-law in a shop.
"Nought will ever tame her down to that," she said. "’Twas a pity you
learnt the upholstering business, Bartley. It didn’t lift you in her
eyes, I’m afraid."
"Let her say ’yes,’ and I’ll learn what she pleases that’ll help to make
a living. I’d very well like to go to Canada and grow apples and corn."
"So would she, I do think--if she could get to care enough about you."
"Why shouldn’t she? A maiden can always find one chap that’s good
enough to marry, and I’m sure she’ll not meet with a better in these
parts."
"I’m very sure she won’t."
"Well, then, I’ve a right to expect her to give in. There’s nobody else?
You can honestly say there’s nobody else, Madge?"
"There’s always somebody else where a pretty girl be wife-old," she
answered. "In the case of Rhoda--well, it seems absurd--it is
absurd--too absurd to be true, and yet I won’t deny there’s something in
it."
"You mean that bearded antic of a Snell?"
"He’s very much gone on Rhoda in his cautious, lizard sort of a way. He
looks at her in church."
"Yes, like a cow looks at a passing coach. Surely that slow-witted,
knock-kneed shadow of a man can’t interest Rhoda?"
"Such things ban’t easily explained, but it’s true that he’s about the
only male that ever keeps her talking. I wouldn’t say that he ever
dreams of such a thing as marriage, but--"