came uninvited to ’Meavy Cot,’ and David always appeared well pleased to
see him. When the younger was not by, her brother often spoke of him,
and both he and Margaret endeavoured to make Rhoda share their high
opinion. From Madge she had always turned impatiently away; but to
David she had listened and not seldom wondered that he and she--who
found themselves thinking alike in most questions of life and
character--should differ so widely upon the subject of this man. The
reason was now easy to discover: she knew the truth and her brother did
not. Her judgment was confirmed. Then, upon this appalling conclusion,
came doubt and deepest perplexity. Why should such a woman as Dorcas be
right? Her evil heart might have invented the whole story with no
purpose but to torture and torment. Rhoda had next reluctantly to
consider Crocker himself and his bearing when they met.
If he was acting a lie, he was acting it well. He had made it clear
half a hundred times, though without offering another formal proposal,
that he would be rejoiced and thankful above measure if she threw in her
lot with him, and married him, and accompanied him to Canada. She asked
herself what would happen if she accepted him. Her thoughts grew more
and more difficult. She reached the lowest depth of discomfort that
life had shown her.
*CHAPTER VIII*
*UNDER THE TREES*
There is a lonely wood where Meavy hides upon her way and whence her
waters cry like siren voices from copse and thicket and the darkness
under great trees. Hither she passes, amid mossy stones and through
secret places curtained by green things. At the feet of Lether Tor
there rise forests of oak and beech; and here, by day and night, through
all times and seasons, two songs are mingling. The melodies change as
the singers do; but they never cease. In summer the shrunken river
tinkles to the murmur of the leafy canopy above it, and her voices
ascend fitfully to meet the whisper of the leaf and the sigh of the
larch; in winter the legions of the branch have vanished and naked
woodland and swollen stream make wilder music. Then the trees lend
their lyres to the north wind, and the rocks beneath utter strange cries
that combine their choral measures with fierce throbbing of the forest
harps above. The foliage fallen, Lether Tor’s grey castles and jagged
slopes are visible, lifted against the west and seen through a lattice
of innumerable boughs. Behind this mountain sinks the sun, now in an
orange-tawny aureole above the purple, and now wrapped with sullen,
lifeless cloud; now upon the clearness of summer twilights, and now
through the flaming arms of a red mist.
To-day, in August, this haunt of Meavy was a nest of light and cool
shadows dappled together, a tent of leaves--dark overhead, where the sky
filled the fretwork of the tree-tops, and alive at the forest edge with
a glory of gold, where sunshine poured through loops and ragged,
feathered fringes of translucent foliage. The leaves formed a
commonwealth of song and gladness and harmonious concessions. Each
integral of the arboreal courts advanced the same beauty, lifted to the
same zephyr, glittered to the same sun and moon, drank life from the
same dew, trembled to the same threat of autumn and of death. Beneath,
through rifts in the bosom of the wood, the blue-green brake-fern shone
and panted out her fragrance on the hillside. A colour contrast very
vivid was thus offered through the frames of the forest; and beyond this
region of rock-strewn fern there spread a haze of light and darkness--of
indigo and silver blended about the shaggy knees of Lether Tor where it
lifted to the sky.
Through the midst of the dingle under shadows, yet with her breast bared
to those amber shafts of sunshine that fell upon it, came Meavy, with
many a curl and turn and leisurely dawdling in deep pool. Fern fronds,
fingered with light, bent over the face of the water; fresh-coloured
flowers of agrimony rose above; flash of golden-rod and the seeding
spires of foxgloves mingled there; while a ripple of filched fire from
the sun-shaft broke the glass of each smooth pool, and heaven’s blue was
also reflected from many a rift in the veil of the leaves. Bramble and
woodrush spanned the stream and nodded, linked together with a spider’s
trembling web; by broken, subterranean channels the river held her way;
light, sobered into half light where moss sponges soaked crystal water
and golden sunshine together, penetrated through the heaviest shade;
darkness only dwelt in the deepest rifts and crannies and upon the
black, submerged vegetation of the rocks. Out of these mysteries arose
new songs and whispers, where the stream slid stealthily forth from her
secret places and the hidden homes of unseen things that she also
blessed and forgot not. Here the sun stars, catching upon her convex
ripples, were reflected and thrown upward, to dance and flash unexpected
brightness into gloom, or set wonderful radiance upon the under-face of
leaves.
Life, in shape of bird and beast and fish, prospered here; and
glittering insects--ichneumons, that hung motionless like golden beads
in some beam of light; butterflies, that came and went; and long-legged
spiders and great ants--likewise justified themselves. The trees were
garlanded with ivy, polypody, and many mosses, that hung in festoons and
fell even to the dim, moist river-ways, where shy flowers blossomed in
shade, and the filmy fern spread its small loveliness upon the stone.
Here, at the hour near summer twilight, when life ranges at full stress
and passion before rest, one may see, in the low red light that pierces
to each inviolate place, some vision of the shepherd god aglowing; and
through the wail of insects, under the melody of ripple and frond, there
steals sweet warbling of the syrinx at Pan’s own puckered lips. Music
full of the unfulfilled he plays--music fraught with world sorrow and
world joy. Now it is mellow as the dying day, now tender and triumphant
as the dawn; but it is never satisfied; it is never satisfying; because
it whispers of precious things felt but not known; it hungers after the
ultimate mystery; it thirsts for the secrets behind the sunset.
At one spot in this wood a young beech leapt from a rock, and the earth
cushion which supported it hung over the river. A little precipice fell
beneath to water’s edge, and the whole force of Meavy struck here and
leapt on again, crested with light. It was a human haunt and suited
well a soul who went between sadness and fitful happiness, who declared
herself reconciled and contented, yet knew that it was not so. Hither
Margaret often came and found a temple of peace. She brought sorrow and
doubt here; and sometimes the glen lifted it; and sometimes she departed
again not happier than she came.
To-day she sat with her back to the beech; and two others shared these
precincts with her. One reclined at her feet; the other watched unseen.
Prospects of important employment kept David Bowden much from home at
this season. The matter was now as good as accomplished and it appeared
certain that, with the new year, he would leave Dartmoor and enter the
service of a cattle-breeder at Tavistock. Such a position opened
possibilities far better than the man could have expected at his present
work. With mingled feelings Margaret contemplated the change; and she
met with Crocker on two or three occasions at this period during her
husband’s prolonged absence. She made no secret of these appointments,
yet it came about that one most vitally interested did not always hear
of them; because Rhoda had of late lapsed into a very saturnine vein and
eschewed converse with her sister-in-law. Madge, therefore, judging
that her affairs were of no consequence or interest to Rhoda, kept them
to herself. They were at ’Meavy Cot’ alone together and, in all
kindness, the wife had proposed that Rhoda should take this opportunity
of David’s absence and herself visit Ditsworthy for a day or two. Mrs.
Bowden had expressed a desire to this effect and the opportunity seemed
good. But Rhoda curtly refused. Her dogs might be trusty guardians for
the hearth and home of ’Meavy Cot’; but they could not guard the
mistress of it or protect her from herself.
The elder woman stopped therefore, and, the more suspicious for this
invitation to depart, watched in secret.
She was watching now, while Margaret and Bartley, under the beech, sat
close together and talked like kind-hearted children about the welfare
of another person. He had great information for her and promised to lift
a sustained cloud of darkness from her mind.
"What’ll you give me for the best piece of news you’ve heard this year?"
he asked; and she replied that she had nothing in the world to give
anybody but good-will.
"If I could give you Rhoda, I would," she said; "but nobody can give her
to you save herself."
"I’ve made a great discovery--or so good as made it," he answered.
"’Twas out of Tim Mattacott of all people that I got a clue. Him and
Maunder are well-meaning, harmless men, and in the bar--at
Shillabeer’s--three days ago--I heard them talking together. They were
at my elbow and I couldn’t help listening to a few words. After that I
didn’t blame myself for listening to a few more. It’s all about your
brother Bart and Jane West, and your mother."
"Whatever do you mean?"
"Why, there’s been a plot, and I’m after the ringleader. I may or may
not find him, but one thing is clear, and that’s all that matters.
Somebody--not Mattacott himself but a friend of his--has tried to help
him to get Jane West away from Bart."
"It looks as if they had succeeded too," said Margaret; "for Bart tells
me the girl won’t say ’yes’ and won’t say ’no.’"
"There it is! ’Twas a deep idea to stop her once and for all. How,
d’you think? By letting her hear the Voice of Crazywell call out Bart’s
name! ’Twas planned very clever that she and Bart should actually hear
it on Christmas Eve; and they would have done so, but for the fog that
kept ’em to the road. Instead, as luck would have it, your mother of
all people, hears the Voice. And now, as far as I can gather, those in
the secret--or some of them--hearing how she’s taking on, begin to be a
bit uneasy--as well they may."
"Oh, Bartley!"
"’Tis true; but we must go to work witty and catch the sinner himself.
’Sinner’ I call him, yet that’s too strong a word belike. All that
really matters is for you to tell your mother ’twas nonsense, and that a
man lay hid by the pool, and that ’twas never meant to fret her to
fiddle-strings about it."
Margaret jumped to her feet.
"Sit down," he said. "Can’t let you off like this before I’ve been here
two minutes. We’ll go up over to Coombeshead together presently. Must
talk a bit first. An hour more or less won’t make no difference to your
mother."
She sat by him and put her hand on his arm. Then she bent and kissed
his hand impulsively.
"You’ve paid me after all!" he laughed.
"I’d give you your heart’s desire and the keys of heaven, if I could,"
she answered. "This is the best fortune that’s come to me for many,
many a long day; and I bless you for bringing it."
"Thought you’d be pleased. But tell ’em to say nought yet. I’m putting
my mind into it, for I’ve got nothing to do now but twiddle my thumbs
and wait till I can decently go to her--Rhoda--for the third and last
time of asking. I doubt ’tis a vain thing, though. She likes me less
and less, I believe."
"I hope not; but this I know: she likes me less and less."
"You!"
"Yes--for reasons I can’t fathom. Either that, or she’ve got some deep
matter on her mind that keeps her more than common silent. With David
away the nights be cruel. Sometimes ’tis all I can do to help crying
out and begging her, for pity, to open her mouth. I get off to bed so
soon as I can; and so like as not, when I’m gone up, she’ll go abroad
again and keep out, Lord knows where, till long after midnight."
"I don’t call it respectable," said Bartley, shaking his head with
pretence of disapproval. "I really don’t, Madge. I wish I could meet
her on one of these moony walks. Perhaps she’d listen to reason
then--if she didn’t set her pack of dogs on me!"
"’Tis hard to live so close to a fellow-creature and understand her so
little."
"I understand her well enough--if she’d only believe it," he said.
For a moment they lapsed into silence. Then he plucked a long
grass-blade and began to tickle her ear. She shook her head and laughed.
A bright thought came to her mind.
"I heard by letter from David this morning. The matter’s settled.
He’ll be bailiff of the great breeding farm--everything under him--the
actual head man under the master. I feel very proud about it, for it
shows how high the people rate him."
"And well they may. You could trust him with the Bank of England.
Never was such a dead straight, lofty-minded man in the world before."
"I like you to praise him. He thinks such a lot of you. He’s even been
at Rhoda about you too."
"What will she do if you go to Tavistock? I reckon ’tis the thought of
that more than me, or anything else, is making her down on her luck."
"I was hopeful ’twould perhaps turn her more to you. She could never
live in Tavistock."
"No," he said, "that’s a certainty. She wants more room than a town can
give her. You’re right, Madge: this must make her think a bit more of
me. Canada, or here, or the North Pole--’tis all one to me if she’ll
come. And if she says ’no’ again, then I’m off alone--to the Dominion.
Why I’m drawn that way I hardly know. But I am."
"Third time’s lucky. How I hope it will be!"
"If she cared for me, even half as much as you do, I’d win her."
"If she knew what a rare good chap you are, you’d win her, or any
woman."
"You’re always too easy with me," he said. "Lucky you didn’t marry me:
you would have spoilt me utterly--not that there was much to spoil. Yet
I daresay we should have jogged along very comfortable."
"Who knows? Perhaps none too well, Bartley."
"Perhaps not. We’re too much alike," he declared.
"In many things we are."
"But the weak help the weak. You’ll see a pair of bryony stems twirl
round each other, and so do far better and go farther than ever they
could single-handed."
"’Twould be the blind leading the blind--you and me together. The oak’s
more good to the ivy than anything soft like itself."
"Pity I haven’t a bit of David’s iron in me," he confessed.
"It is," she admitted. "A pity I haven’t too."
"And a pity he haven’t got a bit of my--"
She nodded strong assent.
"That’s pity too," she said. "That’s what I’ve wished many and many a
time--just like a silly creature to wish what can’t be. ’Tis worse than
a child crying for the moon to want a man’s nature changed."
"Yet half the people spend their time wanting the other half to change,"
he told her.
Again there was a pause and then he spoke.
"So long as it’s well with you, I don’t care."
"Well enough--if I could see it," she said.
"If you could see it!"
"I mean if I could feel it."
"If you don’t feel it, then ’tisn’t well."
"It can’t be well because we’ve got no family. ’Tis a grievance--and a
just grievance. But yet ’tis well with me none the less, Bartley. The
real way to be happy is never to look at home too much. Perhaps, better
still, never to look at home at all. By ’home’ I mean a person’s own
heart. Keep out of that and always be busy for other people. Then you
haven’t time to be miserable."
He shook his head.
"We’ve all got time for that; there’s always the night," he answered.
"Nature gives us the night time for sleep, and life takes a big slice
out of it for trouble."
"I ought to understand him by now. But ’tis the ups and downs I never
can get used to," she explained. "My dear man will be a husband in a
thousand now and again, and I’ll thank God in my prayers and say to
myself as he understands my poor feeble nature at last, and that we
never shan’t see a cloud again; then he’s off and hidden away behind
himself for months at a time, and I can’t win a smile from him or hardly
a good word."
"He’s so ambitious."
"No doubt ’tis that. ’Twas Rhoda herself got him into his good way last
time; and a right glad week we had of it. Then there came all this over
his mind. Somehow he can’t bring himself to ask my advice over anything
bigger than his own clothes. He lets me choose them, bless him. That’s
something."
"And jolly smart he always looks. But mind this, Madge, you talk of ups
and downs. That’s no hardship--’tis the natural, healthy state, like
the ebb of the river in summer drought and the seasons coming round one
after the other. You can’t have ups without downs, and if you want one
you must brave the other."
"I don’t want neither," she said. "I’d sooner far we kept at a steady
jog-trot and got closer to each other every year we lived, and saw with
the same eyes, and felt with one heart."
"Things balance out pretty fair. That sort be comfortable, but ’tis
terrible tame work. If you don’t fall out, you never make it up, and my
experience of females is that almost the best part of the fun with ’em
is making it up. They like it as much as we do too."
"Marriage is different."
"Nought keeps the air of marriage sweeter than a good healthy breeze now
and again."
"You talk as one outside. You know nothing at all about it!"
"I’ll kiss _you_ in a minute--and not on the hand neither!" he laughed.
"And ’twill be for punishment, not payment, if you can say such hard
things to me. No, I’m not married, worse luck; but you oughtn’t to throw
it in my face like that, for ’tis no fault of mine, I’m sure."
"I’d be happier than any woman ever was on Dartmoor, I do think, if
she’d take you."
"You’ve done all you could--so’s David. But there’s no more in your
power. If I can’t rise to the skill to win her, then so much the worse
for me."
"Come and do a kind thing," she said suddenly. "Come and explain to my
dear mother this wonder you’ve found out. Nobody but you ever would
have been so clever as to do it."
"And may I come home and have supper with you and Rhoda afterwards as a
reward?"
"And welcome," she answered.
"There’s a moon and everything. I wish to God she’d let me go out
walking in the dark with her afterwards."
"Perhaps she might. She took walks with Mr. Snell."
"Not by moonlight? No--no, ’tis all waste of time and hope and sense.
But, good Lord! if she’s so frosty under the summer sun, what must she
be in moonlight? Freezing cold enough to make a man’s heart stand
still!"
"Perhaps ’tis all the other way and the dark hours soften her,"
suggested Margaret.
They rose and she brushed his back, which was covered with scraps of
leaf and moss.
Presently they moved away together towards Coombeshead; and then from
her lair in a brake fifty yards distant, Rhoda departed to return home.
Their speech had been entirely hidden from her, but their actions were
all observed; and their actions, unlit by the spirit that informed them,
left her soul dark.
Mr. Crocker, on second thoughts, decided that he would not sup at ’Meavy
Cot’ until David came back, and Madge went her way alone after bringing
large comfort and peace to Mrs. Stanbury. She was full of the incident
when she came back to Rhoda, and gave her silent and sceptical listener
the true account of the meeting by Meavy.
*CHAPTER IX*
*DARKNESS AT ’THE CORNER HOUSE’*
As time advanced even the least observant took note of an increasing
gloom that hung over Reuben Shillabeer. It fluctuated but set steadily
in upon him. He grew more silent and more fanatical where matters of
religion formed the topic. He talked of giving up ’The Corner House.’
He declared that had it been in his power, he would long since have
emulated the bold Bendigo and preached to his fellow men.
"I can’t do that, along of having no flow of words," said Mr. Shillabeer
moodily. "Speech in the pulpit manner have been denied to me. All the
same, I may have done more for the Lord than any of you men know about."
He addressed a Saturday night bar and reduced most of those who listened
to an embarrassed silence.
"’Tis things like that we don’t expect and have a right to object to in
a public house," declared Mr. Screech afterwards. "We come here for
peace and quietness and a pint. At this rate ’the Dumpling’ will very
soon want to end the evening with a prayer meeting; and I for one shall
be very glad when he goes and us get a cheerfuller pattern of publican
there."
Many were of Billy’s mind. Two potmen in succession left ’The Corner
House’ owing to the depressed atmosphere of that establishment; the
regular guests held serious meetings to discuss the situation. Some
were for strong measures; others held the evil must soon cure itself.
"Either the poor soul will go melancholy mad and have to be taken from
among us--and ’twill ask for half a dozen strong men to do it--or else
the cloud will pass off," explained Mr. Moses. "Be it as ’twill, we
can’t go on like this. I advise that we wait till the turn of the year;
and then, if nothing happens, we’ll make a regular orderly deputation,
with me and Mr. Bowden as ringleaders, and wait upon Sir Guy Flamank and
explain to him that ’The Corner House’ under Shillabeer isn’t what it
should be."
"’Twould be better far," Ernest Maunder had said, "if the man would be
as good as his word and retire. If we can urge him without unkindness to
do so, he might get calmer and easier in his mind in private life."
"Not him," prophesied Screech. "Take the life and company and stir of
the bar from him, and he’d become a drivelling old mump-head in six
months. As ’tis he may be seen half a dozen times in a week sitting on
his wife’s grave, when he ought to be to work in his house."
"Mr. Merle have said the same," admitted Charles Moses. "To me the man
said it. ’I don’t like to have poor Shillabeer in the churchyard so
often,’ was his word. ’Tisn’t seemly for the people to observe him with
his hand over his face and his hat off beside him sitting there. To
display his grief in this manner, after nearly fifteen years, is not
true to nature, and I feel very alarmed about it.’ That was what his
reverence said to me; and I answered that he echoed my very thought."
"The man wants to be lifted to more wholesome ideas," declared Mr.
Maunder. "Nobody can say of me that I’m against the Bible; but there’s
times and seasons--a time for everything and everything in its time--as
the Book says itself, I believe; but he thrusts Scripture into
conversation and peppers talk with texts till free speech be smothered.
He ought to go--to say it without feeling."
And meantime the anti-social instinct in Shillabeer, filtering by secret
ways through the old man’s brain, took another turn and led him upon a
road none had foreseen. Vaguely at first he glimpsed it, and on his
declining years a dark short cut to peace suddenly yawned.
The first glimpse of this haunting evil that now crept upon the old
prize-fighter was revealed to a woman; and on the occasion Mr.
Shillabeer not only shocked her with a thought, but astonished her by a
confession.
First, however, there came dark words between them, as happens at the
meeting of unhappy and restless spirits. Then Margaret Bowden, for it
was she, learnt the man’s simple secret. It argued some unexpected
cunning in him that he could have pursued his purpose and also hidden
it; and the circumstance taken in conjunction with the present theme,
made her fear for his sanity. Not the subject so much startled her as
its existence in this particular man’s brain. She listened, was
surprised to find how reasonable his arguments seemed, yet strove with
all her wits to refute them.
One day on his way back from Princetown Mr. Shillabeer noted the smoke
rising from ’Meavy Cot’ under Black Tor. He had never seen David
Bowden’s home and the opportunity was a good one. He left the main
road, therefore, and soon reached the house. David happened to be away,
and Rhoda was also out. But Margaret made the visitor welcome, hastened
the hour of tea-drinking, and insisted that he should stop for it.
"As nice a house as one might wish for," he said. "And I’d like to say
that I’m among them that wish all joy and good fortune and good luck to
your husband. He’s one of the fortunate ones, and well he deserves to
be. I suppose it won’t be long now afore he takes up the new work?"
"We go after the winter," she answered.